Back to the Post-Fascist Past or Landing in the Populist Radical Right? The Brothers of Italy Between Continuity and Change

Abstract

ABSTRACT Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) is the new rising star of Italian politics. Scholars and pundits briskly categorised it as a (new) populist radical right (PRR) party. Still, FdI’s newness needs to be properly framed. A splinter party of the Popolo della Libertà, it claims a direct lineage with the Alleanza Nazionale – two cases not easily agglutinated into the PRR family. The article analyses the (dis)continuity associated with FdI, examining ideology, organisation, and the continuity of elites. It demonstrates that FdI’s organisation and political elites largely overlap with its predecessor parties. However, FdI accomplished a major ideological rebranding, positioning itself as radically different from both the mainstream centre-right and the post-fascist tradition of the Italian right.