The Cultural Basis of Youth Involvement in Italian Extreme Right-wing Organisations

Taking into account the cultural dimensions of extreme right-wing parties, this article attempts to open the 'secret box' of these organisations through a comparison of two groups of young Italian activists inside Alleanza Nazionale and Lega Nord. It is shown that these cultural frames are collectively constructed and composed of three main elements: an ideal model of society, a legendary narrative and a symbolic territory. But to understand why young activists appropriate such elements, it is worth examining the different ways in which party members experience their political involvement, their family socialisation and their social origins. The mechanism that allows individual appropriation of the above mentioned elements is driven by certain shared biographical, familial and social experiences. Thus, in the first case (AN) intimate (familiar) memory and political commemoration are inexorably associated and transmitted, whereas in the second case (LN) the topographical and historical inventions of the party organisation are in response to the poor 'family memory' of the young activists.