ABSTRACT
In Italian political jargon, the term ‘right’ has long been used to identify only the ‘extreme right’, that is the neofascists. No other party or movement has declared itself to be a right-wing political actor. The ostracism of this term derived from the automatic superimposing in public perceptions of the term ‘right’ with fascism. Even if the identification between fascism and right is a debated and debatable question, argued both by some fascist and neofascist protagonists and theoreticians, and also by some scholars, nevertheless Italian post-war political discourse labelled the neofascist party—the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI; Italian Social Movement) as ‘the right’. Therefore no other party wished to be confused or assimilated with such a term given the stigma it had via its identification with fascism (Chiarini 1995; Tarchi 1995).
