In this paper, I analyse the ideology of key players of the early phase of Italian fascism (-1922) and show that it shares important similarities with Italy’s ‘post-fascist’ present. I apply a ‘conceptual morphology’ approach to ideology (Freeden, 1996; Freeden, 2013/2015) to assess the definition and relative importance of political concepts—e.g. the nation, the state, the people, etc.—for the ideology of these players. Also, I follow a ‘generic minimum’ (Eatwell, 1996) understanding of fascism: fascism is a phenomenon that goes beyond the regimes of interwar Europe; still today, fascism is a top-tier political ideology.

This paper is part of a larger study, in which I ask whether the ideology of Italy’s current ruling party—the ‘post-fascist’ Fratelli d’Italia (FdI)—presents elements of fascism. In the larger study, I perform an ideological analysis (Lindberg, 2017; Mayring, 2022) of FdI’s texts and speeches (2012-24) and compare it with the ideology of its predecessors—the historical exponents of Italian fascism.

In this paper, I focus on the ‘movement phase’ of Italian fascism, that ended with the fascists’ takeover of power after the March on Rome (October 1922). For this, I study primary and secondary sources: I retrace the historical evolution of key concepts; then, I systematise the material into seven ideological portraits of the main currents and figures. This two-step analysis is an original contribution to the study of the history of Italian fascism.

I argue that the movement phase shares important similarities with the present. First, fascists were forced to appeal to citizens within a liberal-democratic framework. Second, they were forced to and successfully managed to gain cultural hegemony first, on their way to political hegemony. Third, fascism in the movement phase shared many similarities with liberalism: nominal support for popular democracy was widespread, as was support for capitalism and market liberalism. Support for democracy or market liberalism cannot be a sufficient criterion to classify a political actor as ‘not fascist’—e.g. populist or conservative. These elements all apply for today’s FdI, too. The similarities are at the ideological level. Finally, I argue that fascism must be studied in its historical and ideological plurality, as I seek to redress the biased view of fascism as being mainly, or exclusively, a form of totalitarian etatism. My long-term, ideational, comparative approach is the most productive way to historicise fascism, as it allows to recognise continuities and assess threats to contemporary democracies.

This paper delves into Hungarian public attitudes toward the EU, and public perceptions of EU policies in Hungary. The analysis digs deeper than the standard “remain or leave” question concerning the EU, trying to get a more nuanced picture of how Hungarians perceive the policy balance of EU membership and their country’s place within the EU, two decades after EU accession. We present what the EU means to Hungarians, what they consider to be the main advantages and disadvantages of EU membership, and how they assess the economic balance of EU membership. This paper focuses especially on the question of how much Europe Hungarians actually want: How strong is domestic support for deeper integration on the one hand, and how strong is the support for a policy of national sovereignty on the other? With these questions in mind, we examine the public policy areas in which Hungarians would like to see the EU as the competent decision-making level, and the issues that they would prefer to remain exclusively within national competence. Building on this, we use a typology based on support for EU membership and national/EU competences to classify domestic attitudes towards the role of the EU. By examining the interplay between public opinion and policy decisions, this paper offers valuable insights into the broader implications of Euroscepticism in Hungary.