Neo-fascist mobilization in contemporary Italy. Ideology and repertoire of action of CasaPound Italia

Although the most researched extreme right actors take the form of political parties, social movements research has recently started analysing extreme right organizations that go beyond ordinary politics and that take the form of 'groupuscular’ organizations. However, most existing contributions rely on secondary data and focus mainly on public networks and online activism of extreme right actors and their strategies of action. Very few ethnographic studies of extreme right social movements exist with the result that we still need a deeper understanding of their off-line mobilization, ideological discourse and militancy and how these in turn interact with the choice of specific repertoires of action. In this framework, the aim of this paper is to present the findings of a research project that explored dynamics of militant participation and forms of activism promoted by a neo-fascist organization: CasaPound Italia. Combining ethnography, semi-structured interviews and content analysis, we analyse the communicative, organizational and ideological nature of CasaPound’s political engagement, and its heterogeneous, unconventional melange of political references, communication strategies and choices of protest action