page_title: Neo-Nazism
section_title: Italy
hierarchical_section_title: Neo-Nazism / Analogous European movements / Italy
caption_attribution_description: English: Italian fascist politician, Junio Valerio Borghese (1906-1974)
context_page_description: Neo-Nazism consists of post-World War II militant, social or political movements seeking to revive and implement the ideology of Nazism. Neo-Nazis seek to employ their ideology to promote hatred and attack minorities, or in some cases to create a fascist state.
  Neo-Nazism is a global phenomenon, with organized representation in many countries and international networks. It borrows elements from Nazi doctrine, including ultranationalism, racism, xenophobia, ableism, homophobia, anti-Romanyism, antisemitism, anti-communism and initiating the Fourth Reich. Holocaust denial is also a common feature espoused by neo-Nazis.
  Neo-Nazis regularly display Nazi symbols and express admiration for Adolf Hitler and other Nazis.
  In some European and Latin American countries, laws prohibit the expression of pro-Nazi, racist, anti-semitic, or homophobic views. Many Nazi-related symbols are banned in European countries in an effort to curtail neo-Nazism.
context_section_description: Following the last stand of Italian fascism with the German-supported Italian Social Republic towards the end of the Second World War, those elements within Italian society which remained loyal to the legacy of Benito Mussolini and fascism (especially veterans of the National Republican Army), rejecting both the Catholic and Communist alternatives prominent in mainstream Italian politics, founded the Italian Social Movement in 1946 under Giorgio Almirante. The MSI was regarded as the successor of the National Fascist Party and the Republican Fascist Party. The motto of the party was "not repudiate, not restore", indicating a more moderate parliamentary democratic neo-fascism, which did not heap scorn on the recent past. Italian society did not undergo a process as extensive as the post-war Denazification campaign in occupied Germany, partly due to the Cold War and the Western Allies not wanting Italy to move towards the Warsaw Pact (which was not an impossibility at the time).
  The Italian Social Movement held a similar position in Italian politics that the National Democratic Party of Germany did in Germany; careful enough to stay within the laws of the new democratic state, but still clearly identified with the Axis legacy. During the 1950s, the MSI moved closer to bourgeois conservative politics on the domestic front, which led to radical youths founding hardline splinter groups, such as Pino Rauti's Ordine Nuovo (later succeeded by Ordine Nero) and Stefano Delle Chiaie's Avanguardia Nazionale. These organisations were influenced by the esotericism of Julius Evola and considered the Waffen-SS and Romanian leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu a reference, moving beyond Italian fascism. They were implicated in paramiliary attacks during the late 1960s to the early 1980s, such as the Piazza Fontana bombing. Delle Chiaie had even assisted Junio Valerio Borghese in a failed 1970 coup attempt known as the Golpe Borghese, which attempted to reinstate a fascist state in Italy.
  During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Italian Social Movement under the leadership of Gianfranco Fini moved closer to conservative politics, adopting a "post-fascist" position. This was opposed by the fascist element under Rauti who created Fiamma Tricolore in 1995. The party was dissolved under Fini in 1995, who replaced it with the National Alliance. This party rapidly moved away from any connection to the fascist past, towards the center-right in coalition with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. The two parties merged in 2009 to become The People of Freedom. Alessandra Mussolini, troubled by Fini's explicit condemnation of her grandfather broke with the AN to found Social Action. Aside from Fiamma Tricolore, the other extant neo-fascist groups in Italy are Forza Nuova, the Fronte Nazionale, Movimento Idea Sociale (another Rauti creation) and the cultural CasaPound project. In terms of current size, they are mostly negligible.
caption: The nearest Italy came to returning to fascism was the 1970 Golpe Borghese of commando veteran Junio Valerio Borghese.
exif: {}