1 February 2018

openDemocracy: How the Italian media have helped CasaPound ‘glamourise’ fascism

Over the past five years, CasaPound Italia (CPI) has sought to build new political credibility and clean up its image in order to penetrate mainstream Italian political debate. And the media have played their own, starring role in this project, helping to normalise and even ‘glamourise’ the far-right movement.  [...]

In Ostia’s election, CPI got 9% of votes and obtained one seat in the local municipal council. These numbers are not big, and only 36% of citizens voted – but they received huge attention from the media (also because a member of one of Ostia’s crime families, who happened to support CPI, broke a journalist’s nose with a violent headbutt).

According to anthropologist and researcher Maddalena Gretel Cammelli, “since the foundation of CasaPound, women’s presence was overexposed, but in reality there was a small number of them.” [...]

Chiaraluce’s media profile is meanwhile growing steadily: in early January, she was invited to be a regular commentator on a political talk show on Rai3, a national Italian TV channel (though she only lasted a week). The anchorman of the talk show, known for being on the left of the political spectrum, “understood that he could not ignore us,” she said. [...]

“Existing research shows that, historically, the far right has struggled with the so-called ‘gender gap’, for example an overrepresentation of men, and men’s policy preferences, among members, voters and political personnel. However, this seems to be changing in contemporary Europe, in several ways. Electorally, women represent a large potential reservoir of support for the far right.”

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