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Fascisti di un altro millennio? Crisi e partecipazione in CasaPound Italia
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Questo volume analizza i percorsi di militanza, l'attivismo politico e le forme di mobilitazione di CasaPound Italia, ricostruendone le radici ideologiche e gli orizzonti valoriali, approfondendo il progetto identitario subculturale e discutendone le strategie politiche a livello nazionale ed europeo. Un lavoro attento nato da interviste, conversazioni, partecipazione a riti collettivi, manifestazioni politiche del gruppo, che costituisce un contributo alla comprensione della natura politica dei nuovi fenomeni di coinvolgimento al tempo della crisi.(Résumé éditeur)
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... Our point of departure is recent research investigating militant engagement and participation in extreme right movements (Bouron, 2015;Albanese et al., 2014;Di Nunzio and Toscano, 2011). Theoretically, we combine insights from social movement literature with evidence from research on the ideology of the fascist and neo-fascist right, which helps contextualising this form of contention within the broader ideological framework of the fascist doctrine and its neo-fascist legacy (Gentile, 2013;Tarchi, 1995Tarchi, , 2010. ...
... Bjorgo and Witte, 1993). Finally, some researchers have ob-served the far right from the inside, analysing radicalisation and militancy within these organisations emphasising the role of individual motivations, militant trajectories and life experiences (Albanese et al., 2014;Blee, 2003Blee, , 2007Klandermans and Mayer, 2006). ...
Social movements scholarship has increasingly turned to the study of direct social actions (DSAs) in times of economic hardship. This paper broadens this perspective to extreme right organisations. Combining a Political Claims Analysis of newspaper articles and online press releases, with a qualitative discussion of online propaganda material, we explore the engagement in direct social activism by three neo-fascist organisations in Italy: Forza Nuova, Fiamma Tricolore and CasaPound Italia (1996 -2015). Our findings suggest that their propensi-ty to direct social activism, rather than being exclusively related to economic distress, responds to a broad set of ideological, organisational and strategic incentives. Ideologically, DSAs are linked to the interpretation of the re-lationship between ideas and action of historical Fascism and of parts of the Italian neo-fascist tradition. Organi-sationally, DSAs serve as a tool to build support and solidarity, especially at the local level. Strategically, they are used to frame activism as a direct intervention in defence of interests of native peoples, and against political elites accused of being unresponsive to the needs of citizens. Our results offer a first empirical observation of the use of DSAs by extreme right actors, paving the way for comparative work at the cross-national level and on dif-ferent arenas of engagement
... LI and CPI are thus comparable in terms of both ideology and organization. 4 CPI first appeared in 2003, when a building in Rome was squatted by a group of disenfranchised neofascist militants (Albanese et al., 2014). The group initially referred to the youth section of Fiamma Tricolore, 5 but tensions soon emerged concerning party leadership accountability, leading to a 3 The Nouvelle Droite (New Right) is a prominent political stream of Europe's right-wing thought. ...
... splinter and the establishment of CPI as an autonomous non-profit association. Openly rejecting 'leftwing' and 'right-wing' labels, CPI claimed its difference from traditional parties and rooted itself in the tradition of Italian Fascism (Albanese et al., 2014). Starting from 2013, CPI regularly took part in elections with its own electoral lists, scoring rather poor results at the national level (0.14 per cent), but securing the election of its officials in some local councils in Italy. ...
Although the media are ascribed much power in discussions about far-right politics, to date the communicative dimension of extreme right mobilization received little rigorous scholarly attention. To address this gap, this paper addresses the media practices of the extreme right, offering an empirical study of two emerging social movement organizations of this area: CasaPound Italia in Italy and Les Identitaires in France. Rather than treating them as incidental beneficiaries of media populism, the paper disentangles the various ways in which these groups interact with the mass media, discussing the forms and meaning of their activism in relation to extreme right political culture, and differentiating between inward-oriented and outward-oriented media practices. Based on ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews with far-right militants, the paper shows that media practices not only try to respond to the demands of the media environment in which the groups are embedded, but also seek to reinforce the groups’ internal organization and hierarchy, building collective symbolic imagery, and ensuring ideological consistency among activists and sympathizers. In so doing, the paper offers initial insight on how protest movements of the extreme right consolidate their profile and become recognizable in the public sphere.
... Peterson 2015; Pirro and Castelli Gattinara 2018), others have reconciled the study of movements and parties through the analysis of extra-parliamentary actors and grassroots activism (e.g. Albanese et al. 2014;Busher 2015;Caiani et al. 2012;Meadowcroft and Morrow 2017;Molnár 2016;Pirro and Róna 2018). Others have taken yet another route by adopting heuristic devices elaborated within social movement theorye.g. the 'political opportunity structure' Tarrow 1994), 'frames' (Snow and Benford 1988), and the dynamic processes subtending them (McAdam et al. 1996) As those external elements part of the political opportunity structure can only partly determine mobilisation prospects (Gamson and Meyer 1996), this article factors in agentic features (i.e. ...
... Contemporary far-right organisations went however uncharted in their work. Movement-electoral interactions have been nonetheless instrumental to the far right, as testified by the role of Ordre Nouveau (ON) and other far-right movements in the establishment of the French Front National (FN) in the early 1970s (Ignazi 2003: 90); or the electoral contests disputed by the movement CasaPound Italia (CPI) after their establishment in 2003, first as part of the Movimento Sociale -Fiamma Tricolore (MS-FT), then as an independent, and lately endorsing the new secretary of the Lega Nord (LN, now simply called Lega), Matteo Salvini, in his recent electoral endeavours (Albanese et al. 2014;Pirro and Castelli Gattinara 2018: 373). ...
Far‐right organisations offer an ideal common ground to bridge the scholarships on social movements and party politics. Indeed, they can be often interpreted as ‘movement parties’, i.e. hybrid collective actors spurring from the protest arena and translating social movement practices in the arena of party competition. This contribution enhances our understanding of the contemporary far right by focusing on the neglected links between movements and elections within the broader context of contention. The article assesses and refines propositions about such interactions through the adoption of a specific framework, ultimately showing that the Hungarian Jobbik consistently subscribed to the linkage mechanisms discussed.
... Other messages of Spanish parties and politicians that have sometimes approached the extreme right have also been analyzed 2 . The research also has compiled the comments of other users to the publications, however in this text only the first level of the discourse has been analyzed (Albanese et al 2014), discarding the interactions. The analysis has had a qualitative dimension, although some tools have been used to synthesize and to group messages as MessageSaver or Twlets, there has never been an attempt to cover all the groups, messages and fascist expressions. ...
... Among their most highlighted actions are the distribution of food and clothing to Spaniards, the occupation of buildings for cultural activities and for the relocation of Spanish families without housing and demonstrations in favor of Spaniards' rights. The collective is inspired by Casa Pound Italia, born in Rome in 2003 and widely analyzed by Italian researchers as Albanese et al (2014), Di Nunzio y Toscano (2011) or Bartolini (2008), who define it as a new fascism à la carte. They take fascism's ugliest characteristics and hides them, they avoid any symbolism that reminds us of Nazism or fascism, and they focus on cultural and social actions as a vehicle to spread their political message. ...
Since the beginning of the millennium and especially since the birth of social networks, a large number of studies have emerged that analyze the influence of these new spaces on social movements. These new forms of communication have generated new ways of making and understanding politics, expanding democracy, making it more participatory, enlarging freedom, making possible to break of censorship and the mass media monopoly of information and communication, etc. The Arab Spring, the Indignados 15M movements, the occupations in North America and Gezi Park, are just some examples of how social networks and global communications have opened new spaces of protest, denounce, experimentation, transformation, etc. But there is also a negative side of the power of social networks and these new forms of communication. New fascisms have also understood the power of social networks. In the past the indoctrination took place face to face, in the street, in more or less hidden places, in football stadiums, or in certain bars, now the networks allow to spread out a message globally. In addition to the channel, new fascisms have realized how important is the aesthetic aspect of the message. They omit any kind of symbolism that reminds fascism or Nazism, and they mask their racist discourse pointing out the importance of helping Spaniards in times of crisis. The nationalist exaltation
is articulated into an identitarian discourse but no longer makes reference to the Franco regime, to Catholicism or traditional elements. In this way many people who support these groups consider neither them nor themselves to be extreme right, but Spaniards who help other Spaniards. In this text, I am going to expose some of the main results of a netnography I have been doing for the last three years following the actions of some right-wing groups and parties on social networks. I will reflect how some events as the independence of Catalonia and the refugee crisis have increased the support of these groups and ideas. There will be two theses in this document: there are new forms of captation different from the past, and the most important, even if there is no important representation or success of the extreme right in the Spanish political arena, its ideas are disseminated in large spheres of Spanish society, including moderate parties. This is one of the most important differences
in the Spanish context, there is not “liga norte”, “Front national” or any other extreme right party, because these ideas are normalized and naturalized by society, and this is increasing.
... Hence, a number of comparative studies have successfully applied an 'internalist' approach and/or used interviews with members and representatives (Art 2011;Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015). These studies complement the small amount of scholarship relying on in-depth interviews with far-right activists (Klandermans and Mayer 2006;Ellinas and Lamprianou 2017;Pirro and Róna 2019), and the even smaller ethnographic literature focusing on the far right (Blee and Deutsch 2012;Albanese et al. 2014;Meadowcroft and Morrow 2017;Thorleifsson 2018). Despite their potential to innovate the literature, however, the data produced via face-to-face interactions with individuals holding far-right values poses specific challenges, for instance concerning value neutrality and the management of stigma, which are increasingly addressed in recent works (Avanza 2008;Boumaza and Campana 2007;Toscano 2019). ...
Over the past decades, the far right has become one of the most studied phenomena in international political science, attracting more attention than all other party families combined. This article critically assesses the scholarly progress made so far and discusses what future research on the far right should focus on. It argues that although the number of studies has grown disproportionately, scholars have been slow in acknowledging that far-right politics have entered a new phase, where traditional aspects progressively lost momentum and new ones acquired central stage. To understand the transformations in the contemporary far right, scholars must address three shortcomings of international comparative research—Eurocentrism, Electoralism and Externalism. Today, we need to re-embed the study of the far right into the broader literature on party politics and political sociology, acknowledging the diversity that exists within the far right, its diffusion beyond (western) Europe and its mobilization outside the electoral arena.
This article explores the connections between anti-fascism and hip hop in Italy between the 1990s and today. In the first part, I look at how several bands affiliated with the posse movement of the early 1990s relied on the network of students and of young people hanging out in the centri sociali (squatted centres) to spread their political messages. Picking up the baton from the militant singer-songwriters of the 1970s, Italian posses often mixed rap with other foreign musical influences such as reggae and punk, frequently rapping about the lack of anti-fascist activism among the youth and denouncing the gradual abandonment of anti-fascist ideals by members of the parliamentary Left. In the second part of the article, I discuss how, in the late 2000s, a new generation of anti-fascist hip hop artists emerged, with rappers such as Kento and Murubutu being among the most influential representatives of a subgenre known as ‘letteraturap’ (literature-rap). Kento and Murubutu’s narrative skills show their opposition to Fascism through the use of fictional characters, using short stories that are rich of metaphors to illustrate the importance of resisting to contemporary forms of fascism. Lastly, this article explores the gradual appropriation of hip hop culture by neo-fascist groups such as CasaPound. Understanding hip hop’s potentialities to recruit large numbers of young people, CasaPound organized street art conventions on graffiti, and promoted the emergence of hip hop crews like Rome’s Drittarcore. I conclude the article by analysing the efficacy of anti-fascist rap in earlier decades and considering CasaPound’s attempt to appropriate some of hip hop culture’s disciplines, ultimately showing not only a general crisis in political ideologies and cultural values, but also the power of neo-fascist movements to manipulate and reinvent subcultural formations to influence the youth.
In the 1970s Portuguese rights played a role in two social movements in opposition to Marcelist reformism and in favor of the post-PREC turn to the right. Among the different actors, the youth organization Movimento Nacionalista (MN) is present in both moments. A qualitative analysis of these two historical-political contexts allows us to describe the collective behavior of rights from the perspective of social movement theory: windows of opportunity, network structuring, identities, interactions among actors, strategies for resource mobilization, and objectives. We seek to make an innovative contribution to the study of Portuguese social movements between late-authoritarianism and democratization.
In 2003, the occupation of a state-owned building in Rome led to the emergence of a new extreme-right youth movement: CasaPound Italia (CPI). Its members described themselves as "Fascists of the Third Millennium", and were unabashed about their admiration for Benito Mussolini. Over the next 15 years, they would take to the street, contest national elections, open over a hundred centres across Italy, and capture the attention of the Italian public. While CPI can count only on a few thousands votes, it enjoys disproportionate attention in public debates from the media. So what exactly is CasaPound? How can we explain the high profile achieved by such a nostalgic group with no electoral support?
In this book, Caterina Froio, Pietro Castelli Gattinara, Giorgia Bulli and Matteo Albanese explore CasaPound Italia and its particular political strategy combining the organization and style of both political parties and social movements and bringing together extreme-right ideas and pop-culture symbols. They contend that this strategy of hybridization allowed a fringe organization like CasaPound to consolidate its position within the Italian far-right milieu, but also, crucially, to make extreme-right ideas routine in public debates. The authors illustrate this argument drawing on unique empirical material gathered during five years of research, including several months of overt observation at concerts and events, face-to-face interviews, and the qualitative and quantitative analysis of online and offline campaigns.
By describing how hybridization grants extremist groups the leeway to expand their reach and penetrate mainstream political debates, this book is core reading for anyone concerned about the nature and growth of far-right politics in contemporary democracies. Providing a fresh insight as to how contemporary extreme-right groups organize to call public attention, this study will also be of interest to students, scholars and activists interested in the complex relationship between party competition and street protest more generally.
https://www.routledge.com/CasaPound-Italia-Contemporary-extreme-right-politics/Froio-Gattinara-Bulli-Albanese/p/book/9780367435493
Recent research on collective action has focused on the occurrence, timing, and sequencing of such events as regime changes, riots, revolutions, protests, and the founding of social movement organizations. Event analysis allows information on the duration, number of participants, presence of violence, or outcome of some particular type of collective action to be compared across social systems or across time periods. This review considers issues of definition, measurement, and methods of estimation in event analysis. It also compares two general varieties of event analysis: approaches that model the dynamics of collective action as a process, and those that do not. A process-oriented approach evaluates how time and covariates (including past events) affect the timing and sequence of repeatable events, and it attempts to explain how events unfold over time. The nonprocess approaches summarize static relationships between levels or characteristics of units and some type of event count.
Intellectual debates surrounding modernity, modernism and fascism continue to be active and hotly contested. In this ambitious book, renowned expert on fascism Roger Griffin analyzes Western modernity and the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler and offers a pioneering new interpretation of the links between these apparently contradictory phenomena.
As long as we use the generic term ‘leadership’, we imply that there is a common denominator regardless of the specific contexts, types, and requirements. At the most general level we can characterize leadership as a relational concept, or, more precisely, a concept of vertical relationship within a collectivity. Some theorists have characterized this relationship as ‘symbiotic’ (Burns 1978, 452). Others rather stress the aspect of asymmetry, since the leader has more power than those individuals who are part of the ‘rank and file’. The existence of a leader implicitly points to a ‘lower’ complement, namely a following, a group, or an organizational body to be led or governed.1 While one clearly associates leadership with taking an active role in performing a number of functions, the complement to the leader tends to remain a black box. Yet for the understanding of leadership and its empirical variations it is crucial to look at the ‘nature’ of the complement. It matters for the demands and skills of leadership whether we refer to a government, a multinational corporation, a political party, a trade union, a citizen initiative, or a criminal gang, to mention just a few examples. This will also be my main argument when discussing leadership in social and political movements.2
One of the central points in the debate on the transformation of political behavior in advanced Western democracies has been the argument that modern voters increasingly tend to privilege issue- and value-oriented forms of participation over ideology-oriented ones. In the past, political parties distinguished themselves from each other by offering to the voters competing conceptualizations of a future ideal society and the different ways to get there. In the “postmodern” present, where the ideological foundations of the modern age are fundamentally questioned, and where idealism has largely been displaced by skepticism, ideology appears to have given way to a pragmatism of common sense. Populist parties are generally held to lack grand visions or comprehensive ideological projects. Instead, they are presumed to appeal to the common sense of the common people, seek to divine the mood swings of an increasingly volatile electorate, and shape their political programs accordingly. It seems then hardly surprising that radical right-wing populist parties have been relatively successful in attracting significant electoral support among the growing number of disenchanted and skeptical voters more interested in voicing their grievances than in evaluating alternative approaches to solving pressing societal problems.