Beyond Left and Right? Traditions and political cultures during the Italian Republic

di Maurizio Ridolfi
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 41 (2012), p. 37

A sharp contrast between left and right arose in Italy especially after World War Two, as a legacy of the conflict between fascism and anti-fascism, which had developed between the two wars. However, at this cleavage was added the majority and hegemonic centre pole represented by Christian Democracy (both anti-fascist than anti-communist), which would make more mobile the identity boundaries and more marked the dissonances between the reality of political-administrative life and the self-representation of left and right widespread cultures. A history of politics truly attentive to the social and cultural factors, contribute to overcome the dissociations between a limited political representation of an ungraspable right and the wider circulation of languages and images of identity (in the moderate and populist press, in the youth field, in the silent majority). Key words: Anti-fascism, Anti-communism, Left, Right, New Left, Populism