Far-right growth masks decades-long membership decline since mid-century peaks

Evidence

Much the same holds true for Europe’s new far right. Giorgia Meloni’s postfascist Fratelli d’Italia has grown remarkably in recent years and now leads a governing coalition. Still, it will not soon equal the 230,000 members that its predecessor Italian Social Movement (MSI) had in the early 1960s. If the latest advance for a far-right party in the homeland of fascism “surely lends itself to evocative analogies,” historian David Broder writes, “this does not mean that Mussolini’s heirs repeat the past in the present” or that their authentically fascist aspects are modeled on Italian precedent. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 158

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the reader’s core argument that hyperpolitics = politicization without organization: even Europe’s surging far right sits on hollowed-out mass-membership institutions. — connects to: American community group membership rose steadily for decades before the 1960s — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 24