The Italian Social Movement (Movimento sociale italiano) (MSI) was a neo-Fascist party formed 1946 in the post-World War II period by supporters of the executed dictator Benito Mussolini under the lead of Pino Rauti .

The MSI was relegated to a state of paralegality because it refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the new republic- it was therefore found at once inside and outside the post-war party system.

It was in a way the keeper of the fascist torch mostly in a nostalgic mode, loyal to the fascism of the Republic of Salo. An array of themes remained nearly identical for forty years which incuded:

• advocacy of the third way in between liberal capitalism and social-communism
• rejection of the party system
• intransigeant anticommunism
• appeals for a strong executive branch
• support for aggressive government intervention in the social sphere
• opposition to the guiding role of superpowers in international politics.

Its national election results were around the 5%. Its members were mostly of the southern underclass and the rural oligarchy and in the 1970s from the urban middle classes.

Gianfranco Fini took over the party leadership from Giorgio Almirante in January 1995 , officially proclaimed the party's dissolution as well as the abandonment of the ideological stances, symbols, gestures and salutes that had closely identified it with the Mussolinian past.

He announced the foundation of the Alleanza Nazionale (AN), a neoliberal right-wing movement committed to the democratic process, centrist in orientation and opposed in its constitution to antisemitism, xenophobia and racism.

The Fiamma Tricolore was born from the more hardline right-wing members of the party. MEPs from the AN have joined the UEN Group of the European Parliament with MEPs from the Fiamma Tricolore remain unattached to any group of the European Parliament.

Other well-known party members have included Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the former Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

In November 2003, after Gianfranco Fini visited Israel in the function of Italian deputy prime minister and described fascism as "an absolute evil", Alessandra Mussolini, left the party together with some hardliners and founded the Alternativa Sociale.

Literature

• Roberto Chiarini: "The 'Movimiento Sociale Italiano': A Historical Profile" in Neo-Fascism in Europe, op.cit.,
• Betz, Radical Right Wing Populism in Western Europe, op.cit., p 41.

External links

• Extreme Right in Europe: A Comparative Study of Recent Trends (pdf)