| Summary: | This doctoral thesis adopts a transnational and historical analytical approach to challenge the exceptionalist parochialism of academic orthodoxy (e.g. schools of thought associated with Rene Remond and Renzo De Felice), which promotes the idea that the extreme Right in France and Italy is indissolubly rooted in a domestic historical Sonderweg. The thesis seeks instead to identify and examine the processes of cross-fertilisation, political and cultural transfer, and a commonality of behaviour between extremist parties across nation-state borders, and thereby demonstrate the convergence between Italian and French right-wing extremism in political attitudes and strategies. The doctoral dissertation therefore does not focus on the history of 'fascisms' or 'neo-fascisms' per se, but on what unifies the case studies, i.e., in other words, on their transnational history. Secondly, this thesis argues that both the French and the Italian movements possess an ideological core that distinctively belongs to the political universe of the extreme Right. It thus strongly refutes the case made by those who insist on the general category of populism or on a specific country-based ------._-_._._-----------_.~------_.._---_.-.._-.-------- ----------- --,-_._--~---~--_._---.-... _._-------- national-populism. It is indeed argued that the political philosophy and discourse of contemporary parties, far from being novel, has remained almost intact through the years and has been adapted to the .socio-economic and political transformations that have characterised both Italy and France since the 1980s. The thesis suggests, therefore, that the notion of an 'old' neo-fascism and a 'new' populist Right should be replaced by that of a 'contemporarised' right-wing extremism, which still in many features resembles its fascist and neo-fascist antecedents. Supplied by The British Library - 'The world's knowledge'
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