Tolerating the Intolerant? The Revival of Far-Right Ideas at the Dawn of the Cold War Through a Comparative Analysis

Despite the outcome of the Second World War, journalists, writers, and politicians of the far right continued the circulation of their ideology by publishing newspaper articles, founding new periodicals, and writing memoirs. The environment in which they operated was hostile, yet it would be a mistake to underestimate the impact of the phenomenon. The ideas associated with the far right have proven resilient. In many respects, they have been more adaptable to changing geopolitical contexts than the political formations themselves. This issue calls for an examination of the production, circulation, and reception of such culture. While acknowledging the importance of these dimensions, the article will primarily focus on the response of democratic governments. It will examine the Italian case in particular, but it will place it within a comparative framework that includes France and Great Britain. Although the comparison is asymmetric, it serves to prevent the Italian case from being reduced to an anomaly within the broader European context. Indeed, the resurgence of the far right posed a delicate challenge for all Western European governments: how to reconcile freedom of expression with the need to prevent those same democracies from collapsing under the pressure of hostile ideological movements. The first part of the essay examines the transitional phase and the measures adopted by governments against individuals who attempted to revive nostalgic narratives through the press and literary production. The second part turns to the following period, increasingly shaped by Cold War dynamics, during which the threat of communism came to dominate governmental concerns as the most pressing danger to public order. By drawing on both archival materials and secondary literature, this article enables a reassessment of the immediate postwar era, not merely as a phase of peace and progress, but rather as a moment characterized by uncertainty and multifaceted challenges.