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Post-fascism is a label that identifies political parties and movements that transition from afascist political ideology to a more moderate and mainline form ofconservatism, abandoning the totalitarian traits of fascism and taking part in constitutional politics. At the same time, they still retain many non-totalitarian features of fascism, such as nationalism, anti-communism, anti-liberalism, and aversion to liberal democracy.[1]
Its creatorGáspár Miklós Tamás stated in 2018:
"I have coined the term post-fascism to describe a cluster of policies, practices, routines and ideologies which can be observed everywhere in the contemporary world. Without ever resorting to a coup d’etat, these practices are threatening our communities. They find their niche easily in the new global capitalism, without upsetting the dominant political forms of electoral democracy and representative government. Except in Central Europe, they have little or nothing to do with the legacy of Nazism. They are not totalitarian; not at all revolutionary; not based on violent mass movements or irrationalist, voluntarist philosophies. Nor are they toying, even in jest, with anti-capitalism.I should define what I mean by the term “post-fascist”. I take the term “fascism” to refer to a break with the enlightenment tradition of citizenship as a universal entitlement; that is to say, with its assimilation of the civic condition to the human condition. It is this concept of universal citizenship that underpinned the notion of progress shared by liberal, social democrat and all the other assorted progressive heirs of the Enlightenment. Once the Enlightenment equated citizenship with human dignity in this way, its extension to all classes, professions, both sexes, all races, creeds, and locations was only a matter of time. Universal franchise, the national service, and state education for all had to follow. National solidarity demanded, moreover, the relief of the estate of Man, a dignified material existence for all, and the eradication of the remnants of personal servitude."[2]
TheItalian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI) was aneo-fascist political party established in Italy in 1946 by former members of theNational Fascist Party and theRepublican Fascist Party. Despite being an explicitly fascist party, the MSI included a post-fascist faction headed byArturo Michelini andAlfredo Covelli, who favoured political cooperation with moderate conservative parties, such as theChristian Democracy, theMonarchist National Party and theItalian Liberal Party.
In 1977 a moderate faction of the MSI led by Covelli split away and establishedNational Democracy (Democrazia Nazionale, DN), the first real post-fascist party in Italy. Covelli attempted to create an alliance between DN and the Christian Democracy, but electoral results were very poor and DN was eventually disbanded in 1979.[3]
The MSI eventually repudiated fascism in a party congress held inFiuggi in 1995, where the party voted to disband itself and transform intoNational Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN),[4][5] a party which has been labeled by several scholars and journalists, including academicRoger Griffin, as a "post-fascist" party.[6] A minority faction in the MSI, led byPino Rauti, refused to abandon fascism and created a new party calledSocial Movement Tricolour Flame.[7]
The right-wing[8] partyBrothers of Italy (Fratelli d'Italia, FdI), which was established in 2012 by several former members of AN and currently leads the government of Italy, has also been described as a post-fascist party by several media reports,[9][10] and academics.[11][12]
