Author Description

This cross-disciplinary book provides the first account of the history and evolution of Italian neo-fascism; from the early clandestine and terrorist insurgency in 1943 to the contemporary blackshirt archipelago. It focuses on the adaptation of Italian fascists to post-war democracy and society, and covers some specific neo-fascist movements and events, including the transition from dictatorship to democracy, the birth and institutionalisation of the Movimento Sociale Italiano, the radical Ordine Nuovo, the creation of the Fronte della Gioventù, Destra Nazionale and neo-fascist terrorism and the creation of Alleanza Nazionale and its young activists. The book reveals the patterns of political and cultural continuity since Fascism as well as the constant contradiction within the history and cosmology of Italian neo-fascism, notably the coexistence of a strategy of respectable insertion into the democratic political system and more radical grass roots activism.