Focalizing new-Fascism: Right politics and integralisms in contemporary Italy

Abstract

In this article, we examine the role of fringe new-Fascist movements within broader right-integralist politics in today’s Europe. Our focus lies with CasaPound, one of the most active movements in the Italian far-right galaxy, and highly visible in both the Italian as well as international mass media. We argue that while the strength of the movement itself should not be exaggerated, CasaPound has played a crucial role in the wider realm of integralist politics in Italy. Examining the movement’s discursive as well as material interventions in both urban and rural spaces, we suggest that CasaPound’s extreme rhetoric and highly spectacularized performances deserve attention for they serve to focalize in distinct ways migration and precarization, and in so doing help sustain calls by more “respectable” political forces to reclaim the national community from the assault of globalizing and neo-liberalizing forces and increasingly racialized migrant others.