Revitalizing and de-territorializing fascism in the 1950s: the extreme right in France and Italy, and the pan-national (‘European’) imaginary

This article explores a still relatively neglected story in the history of post-war neo-fascism, notably the attempts by some French and Italian right-wing extremists to revitalize fascist ideology after the war by means of two interconnected strategies, namely, radicalization (rejection of the democratic
system) and ‘de-territorialization’ (in the sense of converting narrow fascist
nationalism into pan-European nationalism). It describes these project(s), as well as the influence of thinkers such as Julius Evola and Maurice Bardèche, and their location in the wider ideological context of the extreme right in the 1950s. The immediate outcome of this ‘de-territorialized fascism’ was the creation of an extreme-right international association, the Mouvement Social Européen, in which French and Italian activists played a central role. The article breaks new ground regarding the non-national dimension of extreme-right thought, a topic too often studied within the boundaries of a given geographical territory and nationalist ideological landscape. By utilizing a transnational framework, it also shows the continuous connections and interactions between the Italian and the French extreme right.