The ‘post‐Fascism’ of the Alleanza Nazionale: A case study in ideological morphology

Abstract This article sets out to resolve the contentious issue of the Alleanza Nazionale's (AN's) relationship to Fascism by focusing on the party's first official programme, the Theses published when it formally replaced the overtly fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano in January 1995. Considered in the light of a particular model both of generic fascism and ideological morphology, these theses document the considerable extent to which the AN's vision of a new political class and regenerated national community is rooted in historical Fascism, even if care has been taken to express this vision in a ‘modernized’, anti‐Nazi and anti‐totalitarian discourse. At the same time the party unequivocally commits itself to upholding the institutions and methods of liberalism as the corner stone of Italy's ‘Second Republic’. What results is a new ideological hybrid, ‘democratic fascism’, one which could yet establish itself as the ideology of the dominant faction in Italy's government coalition.