Italy’s Extreme Right-Wing on the Rise
The center is officially a meeting place without ideological background but it’s an open secret in Rome that supporters of the Italian division of the neo-Nazi network “Blood & Honor” - which was founded in Great Britain - is hiding behind the cultural center.
Roman members of the network disguise themselves as pretended family-friendly social conservatives. But in order to see how extreme this group really is, a quick Internet search is all that’s needed. On their website they call for “keeping the Italian people pure” and threaten foreigners, homosexuals, and left-wing liberals with violence.
In their center, however, they offer normal leisure time activities and complimentary childcare, filling in where the state is missing. The ongoing economic crisis and increasing unemployment have let families from Italy’s middle-class drift into poverty and it’s easy to assume that this trend has given right-wing extremists a boost because they offer simple solutions.
But there are also right-wing extremists that openly appear as such. The 2,500 members of the Italian far-right political party “Forza Nuova” (New Force) reveal themselves as right-wing extremists while handing out flyers.
They have contacts deep within the civic middle class, also thanks to personal friendships. For instance, Rome’s former mayor Gianni Alemanno is married to the daughter of a well-known neo-fascist. Their son is leading an extreme right-wing student movement. That’s one of the ways in which extreme right-wing organizations have received financial support from communities that were led by non-extreme politicians in the past.