How Italy's 'Anti-Fascist' Hegemony Was Broken
In Antonio Gramsci's own country, the left has lost the cultural influence it once had. We can learn lessons from how the right was able to break it.
Italy is the ‘last man standing’ in the West in regards to the dismantling and perversion of the definition of marriage.
Giorgia Meloni, the leader of a party with its roots in Fascism, is Prime Minister, and is subtly influencing the direction of both Italy and Europe, in a similar process to that done by Türkiye’s Erdogan who we discussed previously.
Like Erdogan, the disguise is so good that many on our side denounce her as a traitor. But this is to misunderstand her long-term strategy, and indeed how the Right in Italy came out of its long period in the wilderness.
Jacobin Magazine of all places, coming from the opposite value judgements of course, has done some important analysis of how the political culture in Italy shifted from the 1980s to the present day, away from a left-wing hegemony and towards the acceptability of right-wing ideas. In Italy, like in large parts of continental Europe, the young are not Woke, and are in fact less Woke than their parents.
Many didn’t like my previous article as they dislike the project Erdogan represents, which I understand, but I still thought he deserved to be mentioned as his movement against cultural leftism was the most successful. However, Italy is an example within the West where a similar, albeit less dramatic and still in flux, process has taken place.
In this article, I’m going to analyse the historical trajectory of Italy’s political culture, why this happened, and what we can learn from it.
The ‘Anti-Fascist’ Republic
I have previously described myself as an ‘anti-anti-fascist’, a bit like how many 1960s and 1970s New Leftists were ‘anti-anti-communists’. Whilst I am not a fascist myself, I believe that the ideology and movement of ‘anti-fascism’, particularly in its ‘anti-racist’ form, is a corrosive element of Western society, far more so than the ‘fascists’, who are mostly patriotic victims of Woke cancellation.
As these various Jacobin articles recount, Italy in the post-war period was founded on a common ‘anti-fascist’ narrative. It is what united such disparate groups as Christian Democrats and Communists; they all celebrated the Italian Resistance.
However, unlike in Germany, where ‘anti-fascism’ meant ‘German guilt’, the Italian anti-fascism, at least initially, was left-nationalist in scope. It saw the anti-fascist partisans as the truest expression of Italian patriotism.
This was the ‘Old Left’ position. It did not demonise whole nationalities for the sins of some of it’s individuals, but rather emphasised the unique ‘proletarian nationalism’ of each country, choosing to focus patriotism on the proud history of each nation’s working-class.
The Italian Communist Party (PCI) never won national elections, but it did constitute a powerful opposition force and controlled many municipal governments, as well as having a huge influence on the trajectory of the culture in post-war Italy. It was the counterweight to the Catholic Church, represented by the ‘Christian Democracy’ party.
This gave post-war Italy a somewhat balanced political culture, though it was also extremely polarised, and violently erupted in the 1970s with the ‘Years of Lead’.
The PCI was the chief communist party to promote ‘Eurocommunism’, which was a tendency within Western communist parties to accept political pluralism and the legitimacy of the liberal democratic process, and move towards a more ‘gradualist’ road to socialism. In practice, it was not too different from the ‘Democratic Socialism’ of figures like Olof Palme. Mikhail Gorbachev was arguably the personification of the Eurocommunist ideal, and his failure to reform the USSR led many Eurocommunists to abandon communism altogether.
PCI was home to a proud working-class culture of the Old Left. Communist Parties are always far more positive forces when out of power; the PCI were responsible for creating a strong tradition of mutual aid, efficient local government administration, and sense of brotherhood amongst working-class Italians. Initially, they were very much not Woke; whilst it seems impossible to believe today, was a time when the left was not for mentally unbalanced women and sexual deviants, but for the patriotic working man.
However, New Left tendencies started to creep in after the 1968 protests, whereby the PCI incorporated the student counter-culture. This article from Jacobin shows how this process unfolded.
The Italian Social Movement, the heir to the Fascist Party, was shunned in post-war Italy, held at bay by the strong communist presence that carried a strong left-nationalist flavour and valorised the traditional, blue-collar working-class.
However, the Italian Communists, in the name of ‘Europeanism’ and ‘Human Rights’, moved away from this left-nationalist stance to one that was comfortable with globalised neoliberalism. The Mani Pulite corruption scandal in 1993, that heralded the end of the ‘First Republic’ as all the major parties were implicated including the communists, simply accelerated a process that was ongoing. In 1983 a ‘Communist’ Party in Italy was saying that it would stay in NATO, and the British Labour Party’s election manifesto that same year was further to the left than that of the Italian Communist Party.
Italy had a period in the late 1980s when it was richer than Britain, as the post-war boom benefited it greatly. But it’s increasing integration into the EU and adoption of the Euro destroyed it’s economy, with deindustrialisation and de-unionisation breaking the power of the Old Left like it did almost everywhere. What was left of the left was always the middle-class Woke activists.
Because Italy had its period of left-wing hegemony, though it was of a far superior kind than the degenerate Wokeism of today, in the immediate post-war period, and was implicated in the political scandals and seen as part of the establishment, the left does not have the novelty it has in the Anglosphere today.
Silvio Berlusconi was a result of the collapse of the left; utilising the power of television to catapult himself to the position of Prime Minister. In many ways he was the precursor to Trump.
The Rise of Berlusconi
One cannot understand modern Italy without understanding Berlusconi, the most influential figure of the ‘Second Republic’. The distinction between ‘First’ and ‘Second’ republic is not how it is usually defined (different constitution), but rather before and after the 1993 Mani Pluite corruption scandal, which dismantled the post-war party system, and led to the creation of a more majoritarian electoral system where pre-election coalitions were necessary.
Berlusconi was a media magnate who owned almost all media in Italy by the early 1990s, and after the 1993 Mani Pulite corruption case and the start of the Second Republic, launched his own party, Forza Italia, in 1994 to get himself out of prison for corruption charges against himself. He succeeded, and became Prime Minister.
The kind of culture Berlusconi promoted was very much not Woke, but a tabloid, politically incorrect libertinism of a similar kind to the tabloid journalism and Jerry Springer style trash-TV in the Anglosphere in the same era.
He had a much more flamboyant style than Italian politicians in the ‘First Republic’, which connected well to an Italian audience, and he succeeded at presenting political conservatism as ‘high status’. Berlusconi succeeded in being a giant ‘fuck you’ to the nascent Woke movement that was emerging in Italy at that time with his proto-Trumpist persona.
However, what was also very important about him is that he mainstreamed right-wing revisionist talking points. By calling his opponents ‘communists’ as a pejorative, he normalised praising Mussolini and the historical revisionist narratives that strengthened the right.
He also gave a political boost to the political forces on the right. As the various more majoritarian Italian electoral systems of the ‘Second Republic’ required coalitions with other parties, Berlusconi formed coalition partners with Lega Nord, the Northern separatist party that Matteo Salvini would go on to lead, and also the successor to the Italian Social Movement, which had dissolved itself into the ‘National Alliance’ at the hand of ‘moderniser’ Gianfranco Fini.
The ‘Brothers of Italy’ party emerged out of a split between Berlusconi’s coalition, then called ‘The People of Freedom’, and took many members from the National Alliance, including Giorgia Meloni. This split happened when Algelino Alfono challenged Berlusconi in a primary election, before Berlusconi cancelled it as he feared he would lose. Whilst the Italian Social Movement no longer exists, Brothers of Italy carries on many of its intellectual traditions.
But this mainstreaming of right-wing politics was highly aided by Berlusconi. ‘Money in politics’ is often seen as a bad thing, and in many ways it is. But often, it is rich magnates that serve a counterbalance to highly motivated, fanatical activist groups, and can be a moderating influence on the culture.
We can see this in Britain as well. GB News has somewhat started to change the political discourse, which is why the Deep State is so eager to bring it down and uses Ofcom as a weapon to constantly penalise it. It’s also why the American left hates the repeal of the so called ‘Fairness Doctrine’, which stopped them exercising complete ideological control and freed conservative talk-show radio and news media from left-wing policing.
In the 1990s, the Italy of Catholicism and Communism was replaced by the Italy of Berlusconi, who filled a cultural void that might otherwise have been taken over by Woke. As the Jacobin article ‘Berlusconi: The Iconic Figure of Our Times’ said: ‘His continual sexist and racist comments, his trivialization of historical fascism, and his denunciations of the supposedly “Communist” magistrates’ attacks on him enraged his opponents and stirred his own base.’
During the 2010s economic crisis in Italy, parties like the Five Star Movement emerged to oppose the EU-imposed austerity measures and the political establishment. But ultimately, Italy’s political system, with its ‘mediator’ President, is very good at neutralising all opposition movements, with Presidentially-appointed ‘technocratic’ governments appointed outside of democratic mandate becoming the norm throughout the decade to adhere to Brussels-imposed austerity measures. But the political culture Berlusconi set paved the way for Giorgia Meloni to become Prime Minister.
Historiography
Another interesting factor in Italy’s changing political culture was that unlike in Germany, historical debate moved against the anti-fascist consensus. Historians are often dismissed, but they have huge implications for a society. The fact that Jurgen Habermas is said to have ‘won’ (extremely undeservedly, and as a result of ‘anti-fascist’ foul play) the German Historikerstreit against Ernst Nolte in the 1980s and 1990s is a huge part of why Germany has its unique ‘culture of self-loathing’, which Anglosphere liberals adore and want to bring to their own countries regarding colonialism.
With the collapse of the large Italian Communist Party came historical revisionism in Italy about the cult of ‘Anti-Fascism’. Firstly, some proto-Woke Italian historians, echoing their German counterparts, presented a narrative of Italian guilt for the crimes of Mussolini as many supported him. However, unlike the Germans, who had all sense of national pride beaten out of them, Italians used the historical evidence presented to them, which dismantled the left-nationalist ‘Anti-Fascist Myth’ and revealed how many Italians supported fascism, to conclude ‘well maybe Fascism wasn’t that bad after all?’
Historians tackling this subject included Giampaolo Pansa, who documented the crimes of the Italian communist partisans, and also the Yugoslav communist partisans crimes against ethnic Italians, to present a narrative of the communists not being liberators but traitors to Italy following the orders of Stalin. The fact that Berlusconi also affirmed this narrative, as well as a few ex-communists in the Democratic Party (more-a-less the successor to the PCI) to ‘mainstream’ themselves, was crucial at mainstreaming this historical narrative.
The left is extremely angry at discourse around ‘totalitarianism’ and presenting communism and fascism in an equal light, because they understand it stops the accusation of ‘fascist’ being uniquely powerful. In continental Europe, there is a more balanced ‘twin totalitarian’ view of the 20th century, whereas in the Anglosphere, ‘communist’ has lost its sting whereas ‘fascist’ continues to have major weight, an example of the cultural left’s hegemony. This is part of why Wokeism is weaker in continental Europe, the pejorative punches can fly in both directions and not just towards the right.
If we are to reverse this, we must seek to relativise the crimes of fascist regimes by also talking about the crimes of communist regimes just as often, and say that they were equally as bad. Eric Kaufmann has recommended exactly this, and I think it would have major metapolitical implications if a unique focus on the crimes of Nazism in schools was replaced with a focus on ‘totalitarianism’, which mostly focuses on the crimes of communist regimes, and linking those to Wokeism.
Whilst the ‘Old Left’ that focused on economic class isn’t the enemy we are fighting today, the term ‘communist’, associated with some of the greatest horrors in history, can be weaponised against Woke activists if people are taught to see communism with equal disdain to Nazism. Whilst I acknowledge it may be unfair to paint Old School Marxists with the same brush, ideological precision isn’t as important as useful slogans to establish metapolitical dominance, and anti-Woke Marxists (at least anti-Woke in any meaningful sense) are virtually non-existent in the Anglosphere today, making alienating them fairly inconsequential.
Right-Wing Civil Society
Italy’s right-wing has also been far better than the Anglosphere Right at youth movements and civil society organisations. Part of this is due to the far less repressive ‘hate speech’ laws, and the non-enforcement of the ones that do exist. However it’s also true that the Italian Right has a far greater organisational skill and interest in attracting the youth.
There is a strong counter-culture to the Left that exists in Italy. There are mutual aid networks, literary societies, and youth clubs that Wikipedia describes as ‘far-right social centres’.
CasaPound is one such example of an Italian right-wing movement that has attracted substantial youth support. It does not primarily operate as a party but instead as a cultural nexus, getting its ideas our there and being engaged in street activism and culture generation. They have a theatre studio, movie studio, music bands, sports associations, recreational events, speaker events and a monthly magazine. It’s cultural capital like this that the Anglosphere right doesn’t have, and to be fair, hasn’t invested in (1).
For far too long, the right in Britain has dismissed attracting youth, selling themselves the comforting lie that people naturally get more conservative as they age. But the fact that this isn’t happening ought to be a wakeup call; there is nothing inevitable about getting more conservative as they age, but nor is there anything inevitable about them being culturally left-wing to begin with: right-wing ideas need to be actively promoted and fought for. Even if you do not get a majority of them, a well-organised minority with enough elite human capital can do great things, as organisations like the Federalist Society show in the US.
Whilst they often convince themselves that their movements were ‘defeated’, and they were in regards to economics, the proliferation of left-wing Trotskyist groups in Britain has not been without cultural effect, especially as the establishment is so friendly to the far-left whilst strongly guarding against the far-right, at least when it comes to cultural issues. We should aim to be ‘Trotskyists of the Right’.
Brothers of Italy
But whilst movements like CasaPound have been a success on the ‘cultural’ front, the actual parties that are in power are equally as important. Like in Turkey, the political form and the cultural/personnel form of the right-wing movement create a mutually reinforcing feedback loop.
Giorga Meloni’s positioning of Brothers of Italy is very smart, though it continues a trajectory set by Gianfranco Fini, the last leader of the Italian Social Movement before it dissolved itself into the National Alliance. Meloni presents herself not as a ‘fascist’ but simply as a ‘conservative’, and has frequently praised Reagan, Thatcher, and Roger Scruton, whilst translating more radical ideas into a form that mainstream conservatives can understand. She is a very skilled political tactician who is able to connect with both Brussels bureaucrats and also the National Conservatism Conference.
Meloni is often accused of being a traitor for not cracking down on immigration harshly enough, but one needs to recognise that her power in this regard is very limited. Italy is essentially a colony of Brussels, and any wrong move, not just in terms of the budget but in terms of bogus ‘human rights’ claims, could end her government. Therefore, unlike Matteo Salvini, who flew too close to the sun and was more-a-less removed by Brussels, Meloni is trying to gradually reform the EU from within. The European elections this year will be interesting as the populist right is geared to win. Meloni belongs to the ‘European Conservatives and Reformists’ which is different from Identity and Democracy, and there remains divisions on Russia.
However, Meloni is smart in placing herself as staunchly pro-NATO and an Atlanticist, it has to a certain extent cut her flack on at least holding the line (and implementing some minor pushback) on the LGBT agenda, though this didn’t work for Poland.
If her constitutional reform proposal passes, it will be a major step forward for Italian political culture, creating more direct accountability with voters and ending government instability.
Conclusion
There are many things that we can learn from the Italian experience.
Firstly, private television freed from state regulation can be a moderating influence from the left’s stranglehold grip of state broadcasting and communication regulation agencies. People like Rupert Murdoch and Paul Marshall can serve as a vital counterbalance to the cultural left dominating the journalism profession.
It was through television that Berlusconi was able to create a cultural shift in Italy, which if state broadcasting had retained its influence, the collapse of the Old Left communists might have given rise to the Woke New Left. In Britain, it is essential that GB News succeeds; a right-wing government should completely liberalise private television and abolish Ofcom.
Secondly, youth outreach is critical. You cannot assume that young people will naturally become more right-wing as they age, and in turn, it is not inevitable that young people will ‘always be Woke’, as the experience of continental Europe shows.
But changing youth opinion requires right-wing parties to get on campuses and make the case for these ideas. This will be very difficult at first, with the cultural left having a stranglehold over public perception on university campuses. But the way that strangleholds start to be rolled back is if brave young people openly, under their real names, oppose their agenda, and are willing to take social sanction for it. Then, if more and more people start openly advocating for our ideas and openly opposing those of the cultural left (within the very letter of the speech codes and hate speech laws, which can be by-passed if you are intelligent with language, use ‘code-words’, and maintain ‘plausible deniability’), the latter’s grip on youth public opinion will weaken.
This will not be a complete fix, and this is not to negate the need for defunding Woke universities and passing various laws to implicitly weaken their hegemony, but in order to get momentum for those kinds of changes, you need a vanguard of ‘Elite Human Capital’, not the majority, but ‘enough’, to be able to staff institutions. Like what CasaPound does, we should dedicate a large portion of our time to youth outreach and the creation of a distinct ‘cultural space’.
Finally, we need to as much as possible intermerge ourselves with mainstream conservative circles. Matteo Salvini and Georgia Meloni came to prominence through participating in Berlusconi’s various coalitions and persuading many within those coalitions. We should not needlessly burn bridges with people who share many of our values. This would involve stopping with the destructive puritanism of #ZeroSeats, replacing it with a more targeted desire for Zero Seats for the CINO ‘One Nation Caucus’ and ‘Tory Reform Group’ whilst providing support to those Tories that are at least persuadable to our worldview.
Like what Giorgia Meloni did, we need to package our views in the language of mainstream conservatism. In Britain, that would involve praising Thatcher and justifying what we believe through references and quotes of hers, which will go along way at establishing mainstream credibility within conservative circles. I previously have said that Thatcher quotes are the British equivalent to Fuentes’ ‘America First’, packaging radical ideas in the language and aesthetic of mainstream conservatism within thar particular country.
It is vital that a ‘Cordon Sanitare’ against the so-called ‘Far-Right’ is broken, and those in centre-right parties who attach themselves to the paradigm of the cultural left and endlessly punch right, like David Cameron and Theresa May, forced out.
It is essential to keep the faith, and realise that things aren’t hopeless. The doomerist ‘Black-Pillers’, ‘Accelerationist’, ‘Only Way Out is Through’ people are our worst enemies, as they do the demoralisation of the left for them. Their doomerism is a coping mechanism to excuse themselves from doing nothing and absolving themselves from any responsibility.
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Bibliography
Castelli Gattinara, P., & Pirro, A. L. (2019). The far right as social movement. European Societies, 21(4), 447-462.
This is an incredible analysis. Thank you!!!
Great series. Looking forward to future entries