Today that process has culminated in Ms. Meloni’s arrival on the precipice of power, after several decades in which hard-right elements were gradually brought into the political fold, legitimized and made familiar to Italian voters. “The country has not moved to the right at all,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political scientist at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, who said that voters had little sense or interest in Ms. Meloni’s history and simply saw her as the new face of the center right. “They don’t see her as a threat.” But in having long preferred to forget their past are...