Forza Nuova
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Founded by Roberto Fiore and Massimo Marsello in 1997, Forza Nuova (New Force, FN) is a neo-fascist political party known for its extreme positions on issues like same-sex marriage and immigration. The party began as a grassroots division of Movimento Sociale Fiamma Tricolore (Social Movement Tricolor Flame), which was established in 1995 after the dissolution of the Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement, MSI). FN opposes abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage, stitching together "historical Fascism ideals with ultra-Catholic values" (Froio et al. 2020: 26).
The party has a history of carrying out racist and homophobic propaganda campaigns. Nearly all of FN's propaganda materials, which the Counter Extremism Project describes as "highly inflammatory," are explicitly fascist in tone and imagery and some posters even include images celebrating Mussolini (N/D; Cheles 2023: 169). In 2019 the party produced a xenophobic poster with the headline: "Defend her from new invaders" (2017). Beneath an image of a white woman being raped by a Black man, the poster provocatively stated: "She could be your mother, your wife, your sister, your daughter." The poster replicates a propaganda campaign in 1944 during Benito Mussolini's Repubblica Sociale Italiana (Italian Social Republic; 1943-45), when his regime sought to depict Black Allied soldiers as dangerous "invaders" and a threat to the "racial purity" of Italian women. In addition to its xenophobic materials, FN frequently produces homophobic posters that stigmatize same-sex parenting, which it describes as "homomadness." These posters celebrate a white, "traditional" nuclear family, with slogans like "Stop homomadness. The only family is the natural one." For an additional example of the deployment of homophobic themes in contemporary Italian far-right propaganda materials, see the Family – Sorry if It's Normal poster in the Magnitudo Italia (Magnitude Italy) collection.
During a demonstration against COVID-related restrictions in 2021, FN militants attacked the Roman headquarters of Italy's largest trade union, the Confederazione Generale Italiana di Lavoro (Italian General Confederation of Labor), which was reminiscent of the "punitive expeditions" carried out by Benito Mussolini's Fasci italiani di combattimento (Italian Fight Squads) during the Red Biennium uprisings (1919-20) in the immediate aftermath of World War I. In July 2023, several FN militants were sentenced to between four and a half and six years in prison (2022). Among them was Fabio Corradetti, whose mother is the partner of the Roman leader of FN, who was saddled with a six-year prison sentence. Roberto Fiore, FN's co-founder, Giuliano Castellino, the leader of FN's Roman branch, and Luigi Aronica, formerly a member of the neo-fascist militant group Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Nuclei) during the Years of Lead (1968-82), were also prosecuted for looting, property destruction, and the instigation of others to commit crimes.
