Neo-fascist or revolutionary leftist: Family politics and social movement choice in postwar Italy

Abstract

Spanish

French

This article examines the relations between parental politics and the choice of activists entering radical movements of the communist left or neo-fascist right between the late 1960s and early 1980s in Italy. Analysis reveals a dominant pattern of parent–child continuity that reproduced the main sociopolitical cleavage but also some discontinuity (with activists from non-partisan households over-represented). Overall the findings confirm the importance of primary social networks while also suggesting claims about generational revolt in the postwar West neglect the patterned complexity of intra-family political relations; overstate the importance of discontinuity; and underestimate the resilience of established cleavages.

Keywords

Activism families Italy networks political cleavage social movements

Do families, which are not chosen, limit freedom of activist choice? Changing from a non-participant into an activist involves at least two kinds of choice: (1) to act outside the boundaries of institutional politics; (2) to join one kind of movement instead of another. The first of these choices occupies a considerable body of research showing the importance of social networks (e.g. Diani, 2007; Klandermans, 1984; McAdam, 1986; McAdam and Paulsen, 1993; Viterna, 2006). Much less is known about the second choice despite its consequences for established, latent or new sociopolitical cleavages; and relations between movements and their audiences, rivals and fellow niche occupants (interest groups, political sects and parties whose ideas, constituencies, allies or resource base overlaps with a movement’s). This article contributes by studying how choice between movements is shaped by parent–child ties.

I proceed by reviewing three linked issues: (1) is political choice likely to be continuous across generations; (2) how important are primary social ties that predate contact with movements; (3) what are potential contributions of – and limits to – a recent development in political science, the bounded partisans approach? I then consider activist choice in Italy during a period of heightened contention from the late 1960s to the early 1980s known as the Anni di piombo. Drawing on a rare study of activists who joined either the revolutionary left or the neo-fascist right, I identify patterns of variation in parent–child relations; ascertain their relative importance for activist choice; and explore underlying processes of transmission.

Activist choice followed family politics when at least one parent was clearly positioned on either side of the dominant sociopolitical cleavage. In most cases, therefore, left–right positioning tended to remain stable across the generations. A minority of households (where the mother and father disagreed politically, supported the centre or lacked partisan preferences) displayed discontinuity, however. Boundaries around choice varied as well, with activists more constrained if their parents had a clear left–right preference. Construing a wave of contention such as Italy’s as a form of generational revolt thus misses the patterned complexity of intra-family political relations, the prevalence of continuity over discontinuity and the resilience of sociopolitical cleavages. Aggregate-level differences in political action across generations may coincide with considerable cross-generational stability in political orientations.

Issues in the study of family effects on activist choice

Exploring the linkage between parental politics and offspring choice involves three connected issues: (1) the problem of generations; (2) the effect of primary social ties; (3) the shaping of political choice.

The problem of generations: Cohort or lineage, conversion or continuity?

Treated by Karl Mannheim (1952 [1927]) as part of the problem of generations, relations between the politics of parents and their offspring became a classic theme of twentieth-century sociology (Adorno et al., 1950; Banfield, 1958; Lipset, 1981 [1959]). Stimulated by Almond and Verba (1963), an influential body of research on political socialization thus stressed the family’s centrality in transmitting norms and preferences. Interpretations of the 1960s youth movement in turn treated it as a form of generational revolt. For Feuer (1969: 25) since the French Revolution such movements have attracted ‘persons in a common age group who in their formative years have known the same historical experiences, shared the same hopes and disappointments, and experienced a common disillusionment with respect to the elder age groups’. Similarly, Shils (1969) perceives a romantic rebellion against bureaucracy and authority by segments of a generation coming of age under unprecedented material wellbeing. Raised liberally at a time when deference toward authority was eroding, activists rejected the established left and right alike. Even Flacks (1971), an admirer rather than a critic of youth protest, sees a conflict between generations in a society undergoing cultural breakdown.¹

Emphasis on the distinctiveness of generations also underpins the theory of Touraine (1981), who treats new social movements as carriers of a post-capitalist counter-culture. As civil society gains autonomy from the ruling class and the state, an ethic of communication erodes older values of saving and investing. This produces a crisis of socialization for church, school and family, hence new forms of contention. Melucci (1996) instead emphasizes institutional differentiation and increased opportunities for personal autonomy and self-realization, yet agrees the family has lost ground to other forces that form identity. Subjected to competing influences, youths hold ambivalent attitudes toward authority but when mobilized their action is antagonistic (opposed to dominant understandings of pain, death, ecology and time), heterogeneous (encompassed by multiple types of organization) and non-specific (comprised of multiple types of actors). The foregoing suggests youth activism in the West since the 1960s has involved biographical conversion – ‘a clean break with the past’ – rather than biographical continuity – ‘a life history whereby participation appears as the logical result of political socialization’ (Van Stekelenburg and Klandermans, 2010: 191).

Generation covers two meanings, however: cohort and lineage. Cohort refers to age peers, people born around the same time who have formative historical experiences in common. Lineage refers to family peers, people with immediate family ties in common. Claims that formative experiences have enduring effects on politics across the life course have been made both for cohort (Inglehart, 1977) and lineage (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1982). Significantly, inter-cohort conflict may coexist with lineage consensus: although the youth movements of the 1960s were opposed to older cohorts, participants did not necessarily oppose the politics of their parents (DeMartini, 1992). American youths from conservative Protestant families were less likely to join counter-cultural movements (Sherkat, 1998). Further, members of opposing movements tended to stay on their parents’ side of the left–right cleavage (Braungart and Braungart, 1990; Klatch, 1999). Parent–child continuity is also suggested by studies of far-right activists in contemporary Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands (Dechezelles, 2008; Klandermans and Mayer, 2005). In sum, activist choice may display more continuity with parental politics than claimed by interpretations of postwar youth protest or theories of new social movements.

The effect of social ties: From secondary to primary networks

Relations – not individuals – constitute the basic units of sociology, with the repetition of observed forms of interaction providing evidence of structure (Tilly, 1984). Consistent with this premise, Snow et al. (1980: 798) claim social networks ‘are of equal, and perhaps greater, importance than dispositional susceptibilities in the determination of differential recruitment’. Network research on movements thus emphasizes relational conditions such as structural proximity, countervailing ties and interaction with movement members (Fernandez and McAdam, 1988; Gould, 1995; Kim and Bearman, 1997; Mische, 2008; Pfaff, 1996).

The disciplinary shift from social psychology to social networks has affected our understanding of process and timing, however. Older approaches attributing collective action to alienation, relative deprivation, irrational outbursts or other states of mind emphasized the formation of socio-psychological predispositions prior to contact with movements. Network studies instead concentrate on the probability of actual contact with movement members, recruiters or messages, for example through: ties that favour bloc recruitment (Oberschall, 1993); consensus mobilization and action mobilization (Klandermans, 1984); and interaction with people who are, or know, movement members (Kim and Bearman, 1997; Snow et al., 1980). Yet weak ties must reach a threshold before they can outweigh strong ties as a source of outside information (Friedkin, 1982). Strong network ties can also have a greater effect than weak ties on the evaluation of outside information (Jack, 2005). Earlier attachments based on strong social bonds lay the basis for later attachments to a particular type of political group (Owens et al., 2010). Neglecting strong ties thus risks: a conception of identity too thin for adequate explanation of activist choice (Whittier, 1997); a truncated view of how activism unfolds across the life course (Corrigall-Brown, 2012); and an overemphasis on strategy, rational action and entrepreneurial initiatives by movement organizations.

Primary networks in turn affect the reproduction of sociopolitical cleavages. Referring originally to voter alignments accompanying the rise of the nation-state and the capitalist economy in Western Europe, the cleavage concept has proven useful for linking macro-historical processes to political subcultures, institutional contexts and individual action. It also seems applicable to new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and elsewhere (Bornschier, 2009). Crucial to the reproduction of cleavages is encapsulation: the segmentation of society into vertical networks by primary and secondary institutions that promote subcultural (e.g. class, religious, ethnic or regional) loyalties and insulate members from cross-cutting pressures (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967: 15–16). Studying the linkage between parental politics and activist choice can reveal if encapsulation operates at the family level.

The shaping of political choice: From party to movement

Considering activists in relation to their parents may trouble sociologists because it evokes ‘collective behaviour psychologism’ (Calhoun, 1993: 413). Attitudes do not predict behaviour and movement participants are not homogeneous in their actions, beliefs or motivations (Gurney and Tierney, 1982). These concerns lend appeal to the bounded partisans approach, which mediates between two older political science approaches. Under the economic approach, voters are assumed to be rational, self-interested actors who revise their preferences according to relevant information. Preferences are changeable due to instability in relations between voter demand and available alternatives. Under the social logic approach, voting reflects identities formed through interaction with intimates, acquaintances and opinion leaders. Partisan preferences tend to be stable except when upset by major political events.

Under the bounded partisans approach, consideration of relevant information can indeed lead voters to reconsider their loyalty. Choosing does not proceed from scratch, however. Voters rely on heuristics, which adapt decision-making to scarcities of time, resources and attention by placing limits on information-gathering and reasoning. With their options filtered by cognitive short-cuts, the pared-down choice facing most voters is whether to maintain or withdraw support for the major party they supported in the past. The dependence of heuristics on ties involving trust and frequent interaction gives special importance to the preferences of family members (Zuckerman et al., 2007; for applications see Fitzgerald, 2011; Kroh and Selb, 2009; Neundorf et al., 2011; Rico and Jennings, 2010).

The bounded partisans approach might not apply to movement activism because voting usually involves lower levels of risk and commitment. Further, intergenerational continuity may be weaker for activism because political interest tends to be stronger among people whose parents disagreed politically (Fitzgerald and Curtis, 2012). Finally, Zuckerman et al. (2007) find the partisan preferences of children agree more with those of the mother. This fits with the theoretical assumption that trust and frequent interaction are central to preference formation, but comes from studies of contemporary Britain and Germany. Only a few decades ago gender attitudes in Western Europe were noticeably less egalitarian, especially in countries with higher religiosity or lower educational attainment (Wilcox, 1991). In a more patriarchal society the balance of influence between discordant parents could tilt toward the father.

Left and right activism during the Anni di piombo

The Anni di piombo (‘Years of Lead’) were a long decade of contention by Italian neo-fascists and their revolutionary left opponents starting in 1969. Activism of the revolutionary left peaked in the mid-1970s and fell especially after the kidnapping and assassination of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978. Concentrated in industrial centres of the north (Genoa, Milan and Turin) and university cities such as Pisa, Trento and Bologna, the far left’s repertoire of contention included both non-violence (blocking traffic; occupying buildings; writing and distributing tracts, leaflets or newspapers; organizing and attending strikes, protests, assemblies, meetings, study groups) and violence (bombing, robbery, kidnapping, wounding, assassination). Aiming to create a student–worker revolutionary front, the extra-parliamentary left turned schools, offices, factories and neighbourhoods into sites of conflict and recruitment. It also disowned the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, or PCI) as authoritarian and a pillar of the country’s political system (Della Porta, 1995; Della Porta and Tarrow, 1986; Lange et al., 1990; Moss, 1989).

Neo-fascist activism flourished until state repression after an explosive killed 85 people at the Bologna train station in 1980. Concentrated in Rome and Milan, the far right’s activities included: painting graffiti; pasting outdoor posters; writing, printing and distributing tracts; attending meetings to discuss ideas, action and organization; selling newspapers and other neo-fascist publications. Some attacked leftists while others stole weapons, robbed banks, vandalized the property of rival organizations or assassinated state agents (including police officers and judicial officials). Activists deemed the neo-fascist party (Movimento sociale italiano, or MSI) a traitor to fascism and deplored its accommodation with the postwar regime (Buso, 1993; Cento Bull, 2007; Chiarini and Corsini, 1983; Ferraresi, 1996).

The social bases of contention differed somewhat: proportionately more manual and white-collar workers among revolutionary leftists; more professionals, military personnel, police officers and business owners among neo-fascists. Recruitment levels among students were similar, however (Weinberg and Eubank, 1988: Table 5). Alienated from their respective ‘father parties’ – which were accused of betraying political ideals – revolutionary leftists and neo-fascists adopted tactics that overlapped considerably in opposing capitalism, political pluralism and institutional politics (Cento Bull and Giorgio, 2006). Previous interpretations emphasize a break between activists and families: ‘Far from loyalty to the family and the furtherance of it being absolute values, the family was attacked as a source of oppression and evil’ (Ginsborg, 1990: 305). Despite a collective rejection of institutions and practices associated with older cohorts, however, individual participants may not have rejected the politics of their parents. Even if immersion in an extremist group lessened contact with family members (Orsini, 2011: 254–264), the kind of group entered might reflect familial constructs of political anger and utopia (Catanzaro, 1990a: 27–31; Drake, 1989: 159–161).

The Cattaneo Study and method of analysis

During 1984–1985 the Cattaneo Institute conducted lengthy, semi-structured interviews that probed the life history of 50 activists. This yielded information about the politics of the parents of 27 revolutionary leftists and 21 neo-fascists, a valuable resource given the theoretical issues discussed above.² The data pertain to individuals and thus are sufficiently detailed to permit the investigation of lineage rather than cohort effects. Parental politics are included, moreover, which allows examination of whether primary social ties had a consistent effect on activist choice between movements; and whether intergenerational conversion or continuity prevailed. These features also make the Cattaneo data appropriate for empirical application of the bounded partisans approach to the question of choice between movements.

Methodological considerations lend further value to the Cattaneo Study: (1) a review of the literature finds no larger sample with data linking activists and parental politics; (2) left–right variation in activist choice avoids problems inherent in sampling on the dependent variable; (3) proportions of activists with a parent who had engaged in some form of contentious politics were similar across the sample (19% of leftists vs 29% of rightists); (4) participation in the Cattaneo Study did not require parent–child cooperation, which tends to boost the response rate for harmonious families (Connell, 1972); (5) comparison with the largest sample (N = 2335) of Italian activists from this period suggests the Cattaneo sample is representative in terms of gender, region and city residence, only over-representing students and youths under 25 years of age (Weinberg and Eubank, 1988). Given the difficulties in mounting this research and the resources needed to overcome them, the Cattaneo Study will probably remain the best source of data on relations between parents and activists during the Anni di piombo.³

I classified the parents in the sample as follows: left – supporter of the Socialist Party or the PCI; centre – supporter of the Liberal Party, the Republican Party or the Christian Democrats; right – supporter of the Monarchist Party or the MSI, or adhered to the Italian Social Republic of the wartime Fascists; non-partisan – non-voter, apolitical (indifferent toward politics) or anti-system (opposed to parties and the political system).

The evidence comes from activists’ recollection of parental discourse (conversation with each other, their children or non-family members) and deeds (attendance at partisan events; activism in unions, parties or paramilitary units; ideological preference in selecting political publications, including newspapers). This raises two possible objections: (1) recall is not infallible; (2) children’s perceptions may be unreliable. Given an average birth year of 1954 for left and right activists respectively, however, interviewees were not delving into the remote past. Further, childhood perceptions of preferences are precisely what matter here. Discrepancies between what parents said at home and how they voted, for example, lack relevance unless perceived by future activists. No such discrepancies arise in the interviews. Finally, recalling a parent’s political orientation requires attention to a period, not a single event. Interviews show the political orientation of parents manifested itself both repeatedly and in different ways. In fact, classifying parents proved straightforward: no wartime Fascist later supported a non-right party, for example, and no former member of the Communist Party ever supported a non-left party. The lone exception in the entire sample (a one-time Monarchist who switched to the Christian Democrats during the childhood of her activist son) was classified as a Christian Democrat.

For comparison with all Italians, I draw on results of national elections held between 1953 and 1972. Defined as non-partisan are eligible voters who did not vote or cast a ballot that was invalid (blank or spoiled). Assuming the effect of parental politics is lagged, I started with the 1953 elections because these occurred closest to the median year of birth for both left and right activists in the sample (1954) and ended when the median activist in the Cattaneo sample was entering adulthood (1972). Alternatives (such as starting with 1948 or ending with 1983) produce almost identical averages due to stability in Italian electoral results across this period. Using the data for 1953–1972, I calculated the proportion of Italians occupying the same categories used for parents: left, centre, right and non-partisan.⁴

Consistent with the bounded partisans approach the analysis assesses the effect of conflicting cues. On the face of it, only maternal–paternal agreement would seem to indicate absence of dissonance. Yet the interviews suggest a child also did not receive conflicting cues when one parent was a non-partisan: the partisanship of the other parent seemed to prevail in these instances. Accordingly, households classified as dissonant are those in which two parents had partisan preferences that differed. The analysis also explores the possible importance of a third, intermediate category between parent–child continuity and conversion: semi-continuity, instances where the politics of only one of two parents fit with activist choice.

Social learning theory posits that agreement in maternal and paternal politics reinforces the intergenerational transmission of political identity (Rico and Jennings, 2010). Yet bounded partisans research shows people whose parents disagreed politically tend to be more interested in politics (Fitzgerald and Curtis, 2012). Are movement activists thus more likely to have parents who transmitted dissonant political messages?

Zuckerman et al. (2007) find the political choice of children more closely resembles that of the mother than the father. In postwar Italy, however, the patriarchal structure of household organization and domestic labour imposed significant limits on women’s political involvement (Ergas, 1982). After the Second World War the percentage of Italian women in the labour market fell, reaching the lowest levels in Western Europe (Ginsborg, 1990: 244). Increasingly confined to the domestic sphere during the 1950s and 1960s, Italian women lived in a society whose higher religiosity and lower educational levels made support for gender equality weak by comparison with other Western European countries (Wilcox, 1991). Does the balance of parental influence shift away from the mother in a more patriarchal society?

Bounded partisans research has neglected non-partisan parents. These would seem incapable of transmitting a heuristic for political choice. Yet not choosing between parties does not rule out a preference for alternative political systems or forms of political action. Does parental non-partisanship also condition the type of social movement entered?

Findings

Between 1953 and 1972 an average of 38.6% of Italians supported the left, 41.7% supported the centre, 7.9% supported the right and 10.0% did not vote or cast an invalid ballot. As Figure 1 shows, the proportion of leftists is high among parents of revolutionary leftists in the sample but almost nil among parents of neo-fascists; and the proportion of rightists is almost nil among parents of revolutionary leftists but high among parents of neo-fascists. Among parents of both activist types, finally, centrists are underrepresented while non-partisans are overrepresented.

Figure 1.

Voting of Italians in national elections (1953–1972) and politics of parents of activists.

Tables 1 and 2 give frequencies for all potential combinations of parental partisanship (in the following, L = leftist, C = centrist, R = rightist, N = non-partisan, with the mother first and the father second, e.g. CL means centrist mother and leftist father). Among activists from dual-parent families: households with at least one leftist parent (LL, LC, NL) account for 64% (14 out of 22) of revolutionary leftists; households with at least one rightist parent (RC, RR, RN, CR, NR) account for 71% (12 out of 17) of neo-fascists. Another combination (NN) appears among households of revolutionary leftists (23%) and neo-fascists (18%) alike. The seven remaining possibilities have very few observations and cross-cleavage couples (LR, RL) are notably absent from the sample.

Table 1.

Politics of parents of revolutionary leftists.

		Mother’s politics				Total
		Left	Centre	Right	Non-partisan	Total
Father’s politics	Left	45% (10)			14% (3)	59% (13)
	Centre	5% (1)	9% (2)	5% (1)		18% (4)
	Right					(0)
	Non-partisan				23% (5)	23% (5)
Total		50% (11)	9% (2)	5% (1)	36% (8)	100% (22)

Notes: Number of households within parentheses. One revolutionary leftist from a single-parent household omitted from table.

Table 2.

Politics of parents of neo-fascists.

		Mother’s politics				Total
		Left	Centre	Right	Non-partisan	Total
Father’s politics	Left				6% (1)	6% (1)
	Centre			12% (2)	6% (1)	18% (3)
	Right		6% (1)	18% (3)	29% (5)	53% (9)
	Non-partisan			6% (1)	18% (3)	24% (4)
Total		(0)	6% (1)	35% (6)	59% (10)	100% (17)

Notes: Number of households within parentheses. Two neo-fascists from single-parent households omitted from table.

Tables 1 and 2 also show whether activist choice agreed more with maternal or paternal partisanship in dual-parent households where parents differed. Mother–father divergence might be of two types: (a) both are partisans, but their orientations differ; (b) one parent is a partisan, the other a non-partisan. Type (a) is rare across the sample. Among instances of type (b), activist choice tended overwhelmingly to align with the father’s.

As Figure 2 shows, continuity – instances in which an activist followed the political tendency of both parents or, in the few single-parent families, the lone parent – accounts for over half of the sample (weighted average 55%). Conversion – instances in which an activist’s choice differed from parental politics – accounts for another 36% of the sample, while semi-continuity – an activist’s choice disagrees with the politics of one parent, but not the other’s – makes up the remaining 10% of the sample.

Figure 2.

Continuity, semi-continuity and conversion.

Parental politics affected not only which boundaries constrained activist choice, but also their rigidity (see Table 3). Left and right families tended to bequeath rigid boundaries around choice: the kind of movement entered agreed with parental politics. Other households bequeathed loose boundaries: parental centrism kept both options open, with a left bias; non-partisanship kept both options open, with a right bias. The Cattaneo interviews provide further insight into the processes responsible for these patterns.

Table 3.

Parental politics and activist choice sets.

		Activist choice set
		Strong option	Fairly strong option	Fairly weak option	Excluded option
Parental politics	Left	Revolutionary left			Neo-fascism
	Centre		Revolutionary left	Neo-fascism
	Right	Neo-fascism			Revolutionary left
	Non-partisan		Neo-fascism	Revolutionary left

Tighter boundaries around choice: Leftist and rightist parents

All leftist fathers in households producing revolutionary leftists were Communist and most were members of the Party. One revolutionary leftist says: ‘I saw myself as a leftist, even a Communist, due to the fact that at home my father always said he was a Communist’.⁵ During the 1950s the Communist father of one revolutionary leftist was imprisoned after arming farm workers (braccianti) during a violent strike. The son of another who quit the Communist Party after Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956 maintains that during his working-class childhood in Turin ‘the biggest and most formative element was no doubt the tie between my father and the PCI. It was enormous because we talked about it so much at home.’ Children from leftist households accompanied their parents to Communist rallies (the Feste de l’Unità) or were encouraged to join Communist youth groups (the Associazione pionieri d’Italia and the Federazione Giovanile dei Comunisti Italiani). Most self-identified as leftists by the time they reached middle or high school, where differences in leisure activities or dress styles among students confirmed their inherited notions about the centrality of class. Political consciousness was solidified by neo-fascist attacks on schoolmates; teachers who vilified Communism in the classroom; and propaganda from student activists against the Italian educational system or American foreign policy in Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia. One activist recalls a phrase used by leftist recruiters at his high school in Turin: ‘Are you the son of a proletarian?’ Unlike their parents, however, revolutionary leftists criticized the PCI for its compromises with the regime. By the age of 17, one activist says, he ‘became aware the Italian Communist Party was doing nothing less than acting increasingly as a power broker with the state’.

In 1960 violent protests erupted across Italy after the Christian Democrats under Prime Minister Fernando Tambroni formed a new government with the support of the Monarchists and the neo-fascist MSI. Only seven years old at the time, a revolutionary leftist from Rome recalls the graffiti on neighbourhood walls:

Someone had written ‘Down with Tambroni’, frankly to me it meant something competitive, like in sports, instead of having a meaning that was clearly political. Anyway, I asked my father what it meant and he told me there had been disorder, fights, protests against the government, a government he dismissed as Fascist, and obviously he was giving me a reading of these events that came from the Communist newspaper we had around the house.

In some leftist families a switch to the right represented an affront to older generations. The politics of one Communist father landed him in prison under the Mussolini regime. Other fathers (as well as uncles and grandfathers) belonged to the underground movement against Fascism and Nazism during the war. One activist refers to ‘the air in which the family breathed … the weight of the Resistance, of the Partisans’. A Partisan grandfather from Piedmont told his family about ‘the failed revolution, the Resistance against Fascism, of armed struggle that was completely justified, of militant anti-Fascism’. In another family a Partisan father lamented that postwar Italian politics had betrayed the ideals for which he had fought.

Nearly all right-wing parents in households producing neo-fascist activists were supporters of the neo-fascist party (the MSI). Again the war weighed heavily, with half of these families suffering losses. Fathers of seven of the 21 neo-fascists in this sample had volunteered for the Fascist army of the Italian Social Republic (with two wounded, one mortally). After the war, ex-Partisans threatened to kill the father of another activist while anti-Fascist purges ensnared the parents of two others. One neo-fascist says, ‘Fascism meant heroism, it was a vital force for Italy, it was a golden era for Italy. The war went badly, but Fascism was responsible for many good things.’ Another says, ‘undoubtedly the climate I absorbed at home as a child was a bit unusual. When I was ten years old, eleven years old and I was reading my first books, in the library at home I found books about the lost war, the war betrayed – what you would call the climate of postwar neo-Fascism.’ Parents who admired Mussolini and sought coherence with the Fascist heritage thus produced non-conformists: ‘from boyhood I positioned myself in opposition to society because I was a Fascist and Fascists were marginalized’.

Instead of being the period of Italy’s liberation from Fascism and Nazism, right-wing parents deemed 1943–1945 the years of an Allied foreign invasion and fratricidal civil war whose outcome made them pariahs in their own country. They blamed Communists for their wartime suffering, subsequent persecution and ongoing marginalization. Accommodation with the postwar PCI seemed surrender to an anti-Italian, anti-Christian force working on behalf of the USSR and its satellites like Yugoslavia, which to the fury of postwar nationalists was awarded former Italian territories on the Adriatic. Children who by the age of 12 or 13 were labelled as Fascists in their school and neighbourhood wondered why Communists killed in the war were praised as ‘courageous and clever’ but fallen Fascists were ‘sons of whores’. One activist says joining a neo-fascist group allowed youths like him to find ‘a deeper correspondence’ with people outside their family. By comparison with right-wing parents, however, neo-fascists were far more critical of the MSI, deemed a prop of the political establishment.

In sum, four processes were responsible for parent–child transmission: (1) witnessing political activity; (2) hearing political discourse; (3) reading political discourse; (4) enacting political support. Apart from teaching children how a leftist or neo-fascist could or should act, talk, think and feel, these processes upheld boundaries between political options. As frequent references to painful or heroic events of the Second World War make clear, these boundaries were emotional as well as cognitive. Not respecting them implied betrayal of family and the political subculture in which it was embedded, hence selfishness, shame and moral weakness.

Looser boundaries around choice: Centrist and non-partisan parents

Some centrist parents supported the leftist, pro-labour wing of the Christian Democrats. Even if such a parent were not left-leaning, other close relatives – aunts, uncles or grandparents – might be Socialist or Communist. In some centrist and non-partisan households the effects of the war lingered on. Families of revolutionary leftists with centrist or non-partisan parents include: a father who joined the Resistance; grandparents who sheltered a Jew; and a cousin killed by German soldiers in the 1944 mass execution at the Fosse Ardeatine outside Rome. As one revolutionary leftist puts it, at home he overheard ‘negative judgments’ about Fascism even though his father seemed otherwise indifferent about politics. As with the progeny of left-wing parents, some revolutionary leftists with centrist or non-partisan parents were disturbed by signs of class inequality at school. Comparison could be upward or downward: activists from less well-off families remember students who could spend more on books, clothing, sports and entertainment; others from more privileged families recall the radicalizing effect of seeing students with less. Schools were also points of contact with propaganda from the left-wing student movement. By comparison with the children of leftists, however, revolutionary leftists with centrist or non-partisan parents give more weight to the youth counter-culture and the romance of revolution.

Likewise it was during middle or high school that neo-fascists from centrist and non-partisan households chose to align themselves with the right. Centrist parents of neo-fascists tended to support the anti-socialist Liberal Party or the right wing of the Christian Democrats. Although anti-communism was common at home, family memories of the war or personal memories of differences in social class at school are notably absent from interviews with neo-fascists from non-partisan households. Instead references to non-conformity and the beauty of lost causes proliferate in explaining their choice. The interviews make clear that between the parents of neo-fascists the father exercised far greater influence than the mother when she was a non-partisan. Finally, activists with non-partisan fathers dwell on the anti-system message received at home.

Activists whose parents or near relatives were centre-left thus tended to choose the left. By comparison with activists who inherited tighter boundaries around political choice, however, those from centrist or non-partisan families inherited weaker heuristics. Lacking from interviews with activists who inherited looser boundaries around political choice are references to the meaning of the Second World War. More prevalent instead is what Italians call qualunquismo: a mix of indifference toward public issues, wariness of institutional politics, rejection of socialism and susceptibility to plebiscitary appeals (Chiarini, 1995: 81–88). While learning that parties, politicians and parliament cannot be trusted must have made transgressive politics more appealing, apart from the anti-socialist element in qualunquismo it says little about why such activists joined one movement instead of another. Instead the interviews suggest in left-wing cities such as Genoa and Turin the children of centrist or non-partisan parents were more likely to be reached by messages, networks and recruitment efforts of the revolutionary left. Neo-fascist penetration was stronger in certain schools in Rome or Milan, by contrast.⁶

Conclusion

Most activists followed the politics of at least one parent and almost none crossed the left–right cleavage. Complementing research on how political opportunities (Tarrow, 1989) and emergent social networks (della Porta, 1995) shaped activism during the Anni di piombo, this study confirms prior social networks constrained movement choice (Passy, 2001). Building on past research that considers neo-fascists only (Veugelers, 2011), this study also establishes that patterns of parent–child transmission spanned both sides of the left–right cleavage in Italy. And, complementing research on how belonging to a family of activists provides an incentive for activism (Viterna, 2006), this study shows the importance of ties with non-activist family members.

Applying the bounded partisans approach by treating parent–child relations as triadic (mother/father/child) instead of dyadic enhances analytical precision because spouses may differ politically. Contrary to recent research on voter preferences, however, offspring of disagreeing couples tended to align with the father’s politics, not the mother’s. Finally, this study advances and refines the bounded partisans approach by showing the utility of distinguishing between rigid and loose boundaries around choice.

More generally, the findings carry implications for the study of social movements and: (1) collective identity; (2) emotions; (3) recruitment; (4) sociopolitical cleavages.

Collective identity: Not only ‘esprit de corps’, but also endowment

Scholarship on new social movements gives the search for identity a central role in movement formation, with its emergence depending on movement processes (e.g. storytelling or joint action) that in turn affect movement trajectories, activist biographies and responses of allies, bystanders or opponents (Hunt and Benford, 2007). Yet the internalization of binary codes fundamental to collective identity (such as ‘we/them’, ‘friend/foe’, ‘us/other’) involves more than induction into an esprit de corps (Polletta and Jasper, 2001). Clearly, transformative projects characterize some collective identities. Others are more defensive of tradition, purity or what people take to be their roots: not only region, religion or ethnos (Castells, 2010) but also communism, fascism or threatened occupations. When pre-existing identities become salient, they too affect protest, solidarity and loyalty (Klandermans et al., 2002).

Emotions: Not only forged, but also tapped

Emotional bonds forged by movements affect cooperation, solidarity, agenda-setting, decisions and identity formation (Goodwin et al., 2007). Nonetheless, emphasis on the participation phase downplays earlier affective bonds. Movements tap into already-rooted affective emotions (e.g. love, admiration, pride, shame, guilt, hatred). These interact with more transient reflex emotions (e.g. fear, anger) that flare during protest. They also affect commitment to activism that is high-risk or more enduring. Instead of presenting a barrier to activism, therefore, prior affective bonds to non-members can provide an incentive for participation.

Recruitment: Not only differential, but also selective

A large body of research addresses the issue of differential recruitment: how the interplay between collective identity, emotion and social networks affects the likelihood of changing from non-participant into activist. By contrast, what I call selective recruitment – the channelling of activists into different movements – has received remarkably little attention. Possibly this stems from a methodological inhibition: the case study approach that prevails in movement studies precludes comparison between different alternatives (Pichardo, 1997). Yet selective recruitment bears on a classic theme that social movement research has relinquished to scholars who study voting and party systems: the birth, reproduction and waning of political cleavages. Attention to selective recruitment thus reorients social movement studies toward the macro-structural concerns inherent in the cleavage question.

Sociopolitical cleavages: Not just change, but also continuity

Cleavage reproduction depends on encapsulation: a dual process entailing the insulation of a segment of society from cross-cutting pressures and the exposure of that segment to influences loyal to a given political alternative. Change in contemporary social networks is strengthening cross-cutting influences on people, groups and organizations (Diani, 2000). The forces responsible seem to include educational attainment, geographic and social mobility, and exposure to ideological diversity through mass media and information technologies. Yet erosion of the socio-structural conditions favouring encapsulation need not mean established cleavages will disappear. While new social movements are mobilizing across these cleavages, families may still perpetuate old boundaries between friend and foe in politics.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to the Istituto Carlo Cattaneo in Bologna, Italy, for access to its archive and a congenial environment in which to carry out research; and to Robert Brym, Giorgio Buso, Raimondo Catanzaro, Anna Cento Bull, Samuel Clark, John Hannigan, Randle Hart, Stephen Hellman, Marco Santoro, Barry Wellman, the anonymous reviewers and the Editor of International Sociology for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Funding

Research for this article was made possible by a Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Notes

Author biography

John W.P. Veugelers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto.

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