While generously conceding “it would be a stretch to regard Ms. Meloni, who would be Italy’s first female premier, as a fascist,” ...
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...which is a rhetorically cute trick used to label someone.
“I’m not saying Biden is a pedophile, but...” immediately plants the idea “Biden is a pedophile” in people’s brains thru word association as people generally don’t “hear” the qualifiers “not”, they focus instead on the nouns.
Or the classic “Some people say that....”