This study examines the political communication strategies of the Italian Marxist-Leninist and neo-Stalinist party, Sovereign and Popular Democracy (DSP), through a qualitative thematic analysis of its online discourse. The analysis identifies the core elements of the party’s agenda and assesses their potential alignment with the red-brownist movement, often linked to the pro-Russian far right. The research investigates the historical and political intersections between the Stalinist communist sphere and the postfascist Eurasianist and red-brownist factions. Particular attention is given to their shared anti-Western stance and historical connections to ‘left-wing fascism’ in the post-Second World War era. Italy provides a crucial case study, given its postwar role as a hub for radical movements on both the left and the right. The analysis also considers the ideological trajectory of the Italian far-right, particularly the Jeune Europe movement, to situate DSP’s discourse within broader historical and ideological frameworks.

This article uses the hitherto partially unpublished diary of Virginia Minoletti Quarello and her husband Bruno Minoletti to shed a light on the Resistance and on the transformation of Italian politics after the war from an original angle. Virgina and Bruno, members of the Italian Liberal Party, played a central role in the Resistance and in consolidating the network of the Liberal partisans led by Edgardo Sogno, first in Genova, where their house hosted the local National Liberation Committee, and then in Milan. Their diary offers new perspectives on events and processes that preceded and followed 25 April 1945: from the arrival of the Allies in Milan to the killing of Mussolini and the display of his body in Piazza Loreto; from the struggle and division within the antifascist front to the marginalisation of the Liberals; from internal conflicts in the Liberal Party on the institutional question to the value of the Resistance.

In December 1959, several episodes of antisemitism occurred in West Germany. These events spread rapidly to other countries and were dubbed by newspapers the ‘swastika epidemic’. In Italy, the episodes sparked intense debate among the main political forces of the time, framing the interpretation of antisemitic episodes within a context that considered the comparison between the two countries, while also being influenced by the political transition of centrist governments shifting to the left and the transition of religious opinion on Jewish-Christian relations. The general and unanimous condemnation of antisemitism was accompanied by various interpretations of the racism of Fascist Italy and the historical responsibilities of the Catholic world. The result was an extremely fragmented picture, but with significant political and cultural implications in a year that would see the explosion of political violence.

This article uses the postwar trial of Fascist Italy’s most prominent general, Rodolfo Graziani, to examine issues of transitional justice and the formation of popular memory of Italian Fascism and colonialism after 1945. During the Fascist ventennio, the regime constructed Graziani as the nation’s colonial ‘hero’ despite his leading role in genocidal measures during Fascist Italy’s colonial wars in North and East Africa. His position as minister of defence in Mussolini’s Nazi-backed Salò Republic in 1943–5, however, threatened his heroic reputation as he worked with Nazi commanders and became responsible for atrocities against Italian civilians. After the Second World War, Graziani was tried for Nazi collaborationism at the Supreme Court in 1948, but his colonial conduct was left unquestioned. Unlike in the Nuremberg Trials in post-Nazi Germany, few Italians were tried for war crimes after 1945. This historical inquiry analyses the legal proceedings, transnational representation and outcome of Rodolfo Graziani’s 1948 trial as an emblematic case study to explore de-fascistisation and decolonialisation initiatives and their limitations in post-Fascist postcolonial Italy.

This article examines the causes and geographical trajectories of the globalisation of vermouth, one of the most famous Made in Italy products in the world. Of all the fortified wines, vermouth stands out for its unique history. Originally a product of Piedmont consumed mainly by the aristocracy and the emerging bourgeoisie, vermouth became the subject of a growing export trade between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, gaining credibility thanks to the prizes won at international exhibitions and the marketing strategies of the main companies in the sector (Martini & Rossi, Carpano, Gancia, Cinzano). Despite the commercial difficulties it experienced in the twentieth century as a result of protectionist measures, the effects of war, the heterogeneous policies applied to the alcoholic beverage industry and widespread imitation and counterfeiting, vermouth has managed to maintain an appeal that has made it an international icon and one of the most resilient products in the medium to long term. This is partly the result of a media representation that was capable of deeply influencing the collective imagination of consumers.

Through an analysis of the Italian context, this article illustrates how censoring attitudes shaped the modern meaning of pornography between the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the years of the Great War. The difference between the ideas of pornography and obscenity is pointed out through a concise examination of censorship archive documents from the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, the State of the Church, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, followed by an overview about how sexuality was intended by Italian sexologists and moralist intellectuals during the period of nation-building following the unification of 1861. In their writings, pornography is described as a source of corruption, especially for young people, and a social threat to be stopped. From 1891 onwards, mobilisations and struggles against pornography were organised by associations and politicians: these activities and debates, which led to the demand for specific legislation to address this phenomenon, are here reconstructed through newspaper articles and archive documents until the Great War period, when the use of the word pornography became even wider, as well as the debates around it and its social meaning.

Ludovico Luigi Nicola di Giura (1868–1947) was an Italian doctor who lived in Beijing from 1900 to 1931. In addition to his medical practice, di Giura actively engaged with the local elite, developed a profound interest in Chinese literature, and contributed to introducing Chinese reality and culture into Italy through journalistic, literary, and translation works. Upon his return to Italy, he constructed a ‘Chinese library’ at his family estate in Chiaromonte, located in the Basilicata region. This article adopts the ‘Heraclitean approach’ proposed by Weingarten (2022) to examine di Giura's personal library, analysing the evolution of both individual and communal cultural longings reflected by his collection and marginalia within the books spanning different periods. Drawing upon the primary sources recently discovered and catalogued from the library, along with archival and bibliographical materials from both Italian and Chinese sources, the paper not only aims to reveal di Giura's intellectual profile, but also aims to utilise his individual experiences as a lens for observing the social and cultural life of Italians in China during the early twentieth century.

This article analyses the political determinants of antipoverty policy in Italy between 1948 and 2022, providing a long-term analysis of the Italian minimum income scheme. We look for an explanation of that evolution drawing on three theoretical perspectives: veto players, gradual institutional change, and party competition. Our methodology is process tracing which involves the examination of ‘diagnostic’ pieces of evidence for our broad political-historical analysis. We argue that the so called ‘neglect’ phase until 1992 can be explained by the veto players theory, the period after 1992 by gradual institutional change, whereas the final introduction of a minimum income scheme in 2018 is the result of competitive dynamics. The main lesson is that a case study analysis of the politics of anti-poverty policy offers fresh insights into a major challenge in capitalist systems, combating rising poverty trends.

The role that Roma communities played in the Resistance during the Second World War is a little-known part of history, especially in Italy. Through consideration of their involvement, we can highlight the complexity of the Resistance, and recognise Roma communities as an integral part of Italian society. Roma involvement in the Resistance had distinctive characteristics compared to that of the gagi (non-Roma), particularly in how they viewed it not only as a fight against fascism, but also it as a means of honouring the mulé (the dead). However, only a handful of Roma partisans are recorded in the Ricompart archive, which contains documentation relating to those who participated in Resistance activities. To trace history, personal testimony, in addition to secondary historiography, is key. Roma communities share a rich oral tradition, which forms the basis of a significant part of this article, and which offers an account of civil resistance and armed action both within partisan groups and as part of small formations based on ethnicity. This piece examines the reasons why the Roma partisans who fought and died in the Resistance did not receive full public recognition, a form of historical amnesia of the postwar period rooted in the absence of a cultural ‘defascistisation’ whereby fascist-style racism permeated the Republic.

This paper analyses the period following the annexation of Veneto to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866 from the standpoint of forest history. Recent historiography has demonstrated that the development of scientific forestry was a crucial factor in the state-building process. Post-unification Veneto provides an opportunity to explore these dynamics from a decentralised perspective, focusing on two critical aspects, relevant in Italy as in many other countries at that time: (a) the administration's attempts to study and manage forest resources, and (b) the forest conflicts arising from economic and institutional transformations in rural areas.

This article describes the results of the Progetto di ricerca di interesse nazionale (Research Project of National Interest [PRIN]) ‘Il brigantaggio rivisitato’ (‘“Brigantaggio” Revisited’), which investigated the practices and imagery of brigandage (and the fight against it) in modern and contemporary Italy from a Euro-Atlantic perspective. A large community of scholars, both within Italy and further afield, tackled numerous historiographical issues: forms of rural criminality in the modern age; the profile of the brigands (both male and female); their level of politicisation and relationship with the Legitimists and the Catholic Church; the reaction of the security forces and the unification movement; the evolving definition of the word ‘brigand’; the politics and military strategy of the post-unification anti-brigandry campaign; and the interaction between the local dimension and global view of banditry and irregular warfare. In-depth work was also conducted on the image of the bandits spread through visual and material culture by the media and on their performative consequences in different eras, through to their present-day reuse.

This contribution summarises the scientific discussions that developed during a one-year cycle of international and interdisciplinary seminars focusing on the relationship between migration and citizenship in Italy. We considered human mobilities in their relation to the politico-administrative institutions of the state and observed the latter's attempt to define and govern them. The relative marginality of the Italian case in the literature about state building, nation building and citizenship is an opportunity to examine these processes with fresh eyes. The first section is a critical analysis of the policies regulating access to Italian citizenship. The second examines the entanglement between external and internal migrations and how they are governed, considering various administrative borders and statuses such as Italian municipal residency. The third section addresses the role of different field actors (from street-level bureaucrats to legal practitioners and activists) in shaping or negotiating the borders of citizenship while implementing the law.

The end of the civil war, the fall of the Italian Social Republic, the allied occupation and the gradual transition to the new Italian Republic not only set Italy on the path to democracy, but also gradually gave Italians access to a new public space. This article proposes to revisit the classic question of the legacy of Fascism by looking at the question of space and the difficult construction of a genuine democratic space. During the ventennio, opponents were largely denied access to common spaces, both symbolically and physically. The article raises the question of violence and the exclusive appropriation of space, showing that the representations and practices inherited from Fascism did not disappear overnight. But these practices of space were not always violent: by looking at aspects that are often neglected (graffiti, manifestos, noises and singing), the aim is to show that the transition took time and was sometimes complicated, despite the political leaders of the Italian Republic claiming to have opened up a completely new era.

Street signs in Italian, Hebrew and Arabic, installed in the twenty-first century, mark Palermo's former Jewish quarter, over half a millennium since Sicily last had a substantial Jewish population. They recall a medieval Jewish minority, but also symbolise what some consider to be Palermo's essentially pluralistic character. What motivates this inchoate revival of ‘Jewish space’, and what does it mean for contemporary Palermo? ‘Rebranding’ Palermo as a crossroads of civilisations encourages tourism, but this alone does not explain the re-evaluation of its multi-religious heritage. Palermo is an often-overlooked case study for the contemporary emergence of Jewish ‘sites of memory’. Using a micro-scale ethnographic study to analyse a narrative rooted in history, I show how the ‘rediscovery’ of Jewish history can have multiple catalysts. In Palermo, these include a Europe-wide interest in ‘things Jewish’, and Sicily's increasing religious diversity in the present.

In 2005, Enzo Traverso argued that a very problematic trend was affecting German memory culture and scholarship about Nazism. Echoing an alarm raised earlier by Timothy Mason, the scholar contended that at least since the 1980s there had been a progressive ‘disparition de la notion de “fascism” du champ historiographique’ (disappearance of the concept of ‘fascism’ from historiography) (p.94). The phenomenon observed by Traverso has found concrete materialisation in the EU's politics of memory developed throughout the twenty-first century. As Filippo Focardi argues in his work Nel cantiere della memoria (2020), the EU memory discourse has been shaped around a totalitarian paradigm centred on the memorialisation of Nazi and Communist crimes, in which the notion of a general form of fascism finds little space, and Italian Fascism only exists as a marginal epiphenomenon. This situation has begun to change in recent years as the growing success of far-right movements across the globe has brought international attention to the concept of fascism. Many Italian scholars, who have never ceased to study fascism, are now directing their efforts towards the international arena to contribute to a discussion that seems to have acquired particular significance for the understanding of our time.

This article uses an original dataset to sketch a portrait of women mayoral candidates and women elected as mayors in Italy in the period 1993–2021. The analysis highlights several significant findings. Women must compensate for their political marginality by deploying other resources, such as higher levels of education. Nevertheless, women are penalised not only by the reluctance of parties to put them forward as candidates, but also by the elections themselves. More specifically, the electoral presence and strength of women decreases when the population size of the municipality grows, except for municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Moreover, women candidates are most disadvantaged in geographical areas where the socioeconomic condition of women is more marginal. However, women mayors running for a second mandate have the same chance of winning as men. Finally, it is the protest parties, rather than the left-wing parties, that are revealed as doing the most to promote women.

This article delves into the historical trajectory of Lotta Femminista, a pioneering separatist feminist network in Italy during the early 1970s, and its significant influence on feminist discourse, particularly concerning the advocacy for wages for housework. Through an examination of the group's development within the broader context of the Italian women's movement, this study illuminates the theoretical foundations and practical activism associated with the perspective on wages for housework. Drawing on archival documents and personal accounts, the essay investigates how Lotta Femminista depicted domestic labour as a form of women's exploitation within a Marxist framework. Despite facing criticism and opposition, Lotta Femminista's ideas resonated globally, leaving a legacy in feminist theory and activism. Through its engagement with issues such as the refusal to work and the recognition of unpaid care as a site of capitalist exploitation, Lotta Femminista contributed to the broader history of feminism in Italy and beyond.

You can never really get tired of Italian politics. Over the last 30 years, we have seen many turning points, the most memorable of which was undoubtedly Silvio Berlusconi's unexpected ‘descent into the field’ in 1994. Nor have we been deprived of colourful characters, such as Matteo Renzi or Matteo Salvini, who, as their careers took off, ended up burning their wings. And after many unsuccessful attempts, imagination has finally come to power (as they used to say in the 1960s), although the 1968 generation has nothing to do with it. Indeed, all the credit goes to the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S), whose activists were seen carrying their leader Beppe Grillo – sitting in a dinghy – through the streets of Bologna during a procession of sorts. The general elections of 25 September 2022 added an important chapter to recent Italian political history, which has sometimes taken on a dramatic tone but more often that of a comedy or even a farce. All in all, nothing out of the ordinary; in the society of the spectacle, this is how the Darwinian struggle for political survival can also be played out.

This article is about the seminar held at Luiss University in Rome on 17 June 2024. The seminar focused on ‘The End of Christian Democracy: A New Direction for Research’ and was the first milestone and official launch of the PRIN research project ‘The End of Christian Democracy: The Collapse of a Political Dream – Voices from the Margins’, led by a consortium of four universities: Luiss, Roma Tre, Bologna and Suor Orsola Benincasa, Naples.