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 Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Italy

FATHERS OF THE LEGA

POPULIST REGIONALISM AND POPULIST
NATIONALISM IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

George Newth
Fathers of the Lega

This book investigates the historical roots of the Italian Republic’s oldest
surviving political party, the populist far-right Lega (Nord), tracing its
origins to post-war Italy.
The author examines two main case studies: the Movements for Regional
Autonomy (MRAs) the Piedmontese Movement for Regional Autonomy
(the MARP) and the Bergamascan Movement for Autonomy (the MAB),
both of which formed a first wave of post-war populist regionalism from
1955 to 1960. The regionalist leagues which later emerged in both Piedmont
and Lombardy in the 1980s – and which would later form part of the Lega
Nord – represented in many ways a revival of the MRAs’ populist regionalist
discourse and ideology and, therefore, a second wave of post-war populist
regionalism. Despite this, neither the MRAs nor the 20-year gap between
these waves of activism have received the attention they deserve. Drawing on
a series of archival and secondary sources, this book takes an innovative
approach which blends concepts and theories from historical sociology and
political science. It also provides a nuanced examination of the continuities
and discontinuities between the MRAs and the Lega from the 1950s until the
time of publication. This contributes to debates not only in contemporary
Italian history, but also on populism and the far right.
While rooted in historical approaches, the book’s interdisciplinarity
makes it suitable for students and researchers across a variety of subject
areas including European history, modern history, and political history.

George Newth is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bath. Researching

links between regionalism, nationalism, the far right, and populism, his
publications examine the Lega (Nord)’s ideology in relation to Movements
for Regional Autonomy (2018), populist regionalism (2019), (anti)-fascism
(2022), Euroscepticism (2022), and contentious politics (2022).
Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Italy
Edited by Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti
University College London
Mondini Marco
University of Padua and Italian German Historical Institute-FBK Trent
Patriarca Silvana
Fordham University
Schwarz Guri
University of Genoa

The history of modern Italy from the late 18th to the 21st centuries offers a
wealth of dramatic changes amidst important continuities. From occupying
a semi-peripheral location in the European Mediterranean to becoming one
of the major economies of the continent, the Peninsula has experienced
major transformations while also facing continuing structural challenges.
Social and regional conflicts, revolts and revolutions, regime changes, world
wars and military defeats have defined its turbulent political history, while
changing identities and social movements have intersected with the weight
of family and other structures in new international environments.
The series focuses on the publication of original research monographs,
from both established academics and junior researchers. It is intended as
an instrument to promote fresh perspectives and as bridge, connecting
scholarly traditions within and outside Italy. Occasionally, it may also
publish edited volumes. The sole criteria for selection will be intellectual
rigour and the innovative character of the books.
It will cover a broad range of themes and methods - ranging from
political to cultural to socio-economic history – with the aim of becoming
a reference point for groundbreaking scholarship covering Italian history
from the Napoleonic era to the present.

Drafting Italy
Conscription and the Military from 1814 to 1914
Marco Rovinello

Jewish Displaced Persons in Italy 1943–1951

Politics, Rehabilitation, Identity
Chiara Renzo

Fathers of the Lega

Populist Regionalism and Populist Nationalism In Historical Perspective
George Newth
Fathers of the Lega
Populist Regionalism and Populist
Nationalism in Historical
Perspective

George Newth
First published 2024
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2024 George Newth
The right of George Newth to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-032-28565-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-28566-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-29742-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003297420
Typeset in Sabon
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents

List of Figures vi
List of Tables vii
Acknowledgements viii

Introduction 1

1 Conceptual and Theoretical Considerations of a Dual

Approach to Leghismo 14

2 Crisis, Transition, and Demands for Regional

Autonomy in the History of the Italian Nation-State 54

3 Populist Regionalism in Abeyance 92

4 Making or Unmaking Italians? Regionalism, the

Region, and the Nation-State between Two Waves of
Activism 119

5 Populist Regionalism 158

6 Populist Nationalism 201

Populist Regionalism and Populist Nationalism in

Historical Perspective: Conclusions 249

Bibliography 264
Index 303
Figures

3.1 Abeyance: The Genealogy of Piedmontese and Lombard

Regionalism. 1946–1991 98
3.2 The Hen with the Golden Egg 101
3.3 The Roman Wolf 102
3.4 Slave Breaking Free of Chains 103
4.1 United Federal States of Italy 141
Tables

1.1 Summarises the key ideational and discursive features

examined in the paragraphs above, with a particular
emphasis on how each of these features relies on an ‘us’
vs ‘them’ dichotomy 29
1.2 An interpretive framework for three waves of activism:
Populist regionalism and populist nationalism 30
4.1 Patriotic regionalism vs neo-federalism/secessionism 122
5.1 Two waves of populist regionalism 168
6.1 Matteo Salvini’s populist nationalism – A third wave of
activism 219
Acknowledgements

Writing a book is never a solo pursuit. It requires the support of a network

of friends, family, and comrades. The fact that there are too many to
mention here is incredibly humbling. I hope those whose names do not
appear below nevertheless recognise my gratitude and do not interpret
their omission here as anything other than my desire to be succinct.
Nevertheless, I would be remiss not to mention some names who have
been fundamental to this project.
This book is dedicated to the memory of Christopher Duggan. Quite
simply, the book would not exist without the faith and enthusiasm
Christopher showed in the PhD proposal from which it has developed.
I continue to be infinitely grateful for Christopher’s careful, discreet, and
skilful supervision which was invaluable in the progress that I made in the
first two years of my research on this project.
A huge debt of gratitude also goes to my former PhD supervisors at
University of Bath, Anna Cento Bull and Aurelien Mondon, whose
research and guidance have been an inspiration.
Thank you to all who have read through various drafts of book
proposals and chapters and provided critical, constructive feedback. You
know who you are, and this book is stronger for your input. Thanks also
to the fantastic team at Routledge for their support throughout the
process. Having said that, the usual caveat applies that I take full
ownership of any errors or oversights in the text.
Grazie mille to my friends and comrades in Bergamo, Milan, and Turin.
A huge thanks in particular to Maria Chiara Gonella and Giuseppe Sala
for allowing me access to invaluable materials.
I would like to thank my parents, Gay and Jonathan Newth, for their
emotional and psychological support both throughout my doctoral
research and the writing of this book.
Last, but by absolutely no means least, a huge thank you to the
wonderful Lucy-Anne Katgely for her unconditional love, affection,
understanding, and support while I was writing this book.
Introduction

1 Crisis and Leghismo

‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’ is an oft-cited mantra in politics, but
what does it mean in practice? One political party which has amplified,
navigated, and invariably benefited from a series of crises since its official
formation in 1991 is the populist regionalist/nationalist and far-right
Lega Nord (hereby referred to as the Lega).1 In 2012, the Lega found
itself in a crisis of its own making. Punished by its electorate after a
corruption scandal which directly implicated its founder and leader,
Umberto Bossi, it languished between 4% and 5% in the polls.
Following Bossi’s resignation and the brief interim leadership of party
co-founder Roberto Maroni, the task of navigating this internal crisis
was handed to Matteo Salvini, elected new Federal Secretary by a
landslide in 2013. Salvini’s answer was a gradual but steady abandon-
ment of the party’s historic cause of regionalism for nationalism between
2013 and 2017. In anticipation of general elections in March 2018,
Salvini set up a nation-wide sister party, the Lega per Salvini Premier,
stripped of the iconic words ‘Padania’ and ‘Nord’ which had long
formed part of the Lega’s battle-cry of regional autonomy. Now a vague
reference to ‘autonomy and responsibility’ in Salvini’s 2018 electoral
programme was all that remained in terms of regional autonomy and
federalism. This represented a seismic shift for a party which had since
the early 1990s gained significant political capital via the construction of
a ‘Northern Question’ that emphasised ‘a growing economic and social
gap between a wealthy North and a much less developed South.’2 The
Lega, under Bossi, had 18 years previously seized on the crisis of the
post-war Italian Republic in the early 1990s, campaigning for a
‘Republic of the North’ to ‘amplify’ this crisis and ‘penetrate into the
cracks of a system which was by then in decline’.3 Salvini now promised
to put ‘Italians First,’ abandoning the historic battle cry of ‘Rome the
Thief’ in favour of focusing on Brussels elites. He received 17% of the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003297420-1
2 Introduction

vote in March 2018 and went on to form a coalition government with the
populist and anti-establishment Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star
Movement, M5S). Just like Bossi’s exploitation of the political crisis of the
early 1990s, Salvini had, therefore, not allowed the Lega’s internal crisis of
2012 to go to waste. Salvini’s ‘revolution’ marked a watershed moment for
the Lega’s identity. However, its significance runs deeper than just a break
with the Bossi era. It also signalled a turning point for a tradition of populist
regionalism which was born alongside the formation of the Italian Republic
in 1948.
This book provides a reconceptualisation of the roots of the political
phenomenon of the Lega, the programme of which has often been referred to
as leghismo (‘league-ism’). Over the following pages, I argue that leghismo not
only has roots in the political crisis which led to the transition of the First to
Second Italian Republic in the 1980s and 1990s but also in another period of
crisis and transition in the 1940s and 1950s. These earlier decades saw the
emergence of ‘Movements for Regional Autonomy’ (MRAs), the Bergam-
ascan Autonomy Movement (Movimento Autonomista Bergamasco - hereby
referred to as the MAB), and the Piedmontese Regional Autonomy Movement
(Movimento per l’Autonomia Regionale Piemontese - hereby referred to as
the MARP), which were in many ways significant antecedents of the leghismo
that emerged in the 1980s. Further to this, however, it also considers a third
period of crisis and transition: the combined Euro-zone crisis and so-called
refugee crisis combined with the internal corruption scandal and crisis of
leadership of the Lega which had culminated in the resignation of the party’s
charismatic founder and leader, Umberto Bossi, in 2012. In doing so, the
book challenges a dominant trend in the literature on the Lega which insists
on viewing this party as a uniquely ‘new’ political actor rather than the second
wave of populist regionalism in the history of the Italian Republic.
The presence of two waves of populist regionalist activism prior to
Salvini’s latest wave of populist nationalism raises important questions that
this book aims to address; namely, how did three separate periods of crisis
and transition affect North Italian populist regionalism, transforming it from
a force of unity to one of fragmentation and later into populist nationalism?
How did populist regionalism survive, following the decline of the MRAs in
the 1960s, only to re-emerge in the form of leghismo in the early 1980s?
Finally, to what extent and how do populism and nativism account for
continuities and discontinuities between the far-right political message of the
MRAs and the Lega? In addressing these questions, Fathers of the Lega re-
conceptualises the political and ideological roots of Lega, filling a significant
gap in the literature by examining the continuities and discontinuities
between two waves of North Italian populist regionalism and their eventual
evolution into populist nationalism. The following paragraphs will outline
the dual approach taken in this book to address these questions.
 Introduction 3

2 A Dual Approach to Leghismo

As I will illustrate over the following pages, the post-war movements of
both the MARP and the MAB were responsible for developing populist
regionalist repertoires which attacked the centralist Italian state and ar-
gued that regionalism was the best way to cure the country’s ills. This
book proposes a dual approach of historical sociology grounded in
political science to argue that the regionalist leagues which emerged in
northern Italy in the 1980s and from 1992 to 2017, acting under the
umbrella term Lega Nord, have clear precedents in the MARP and the
MAB. This allows for populism to be viewed as a socio-political phe-
nomenon which has been recurrent but also somewhat intermittent
throughout political history both within and outside of Italy.4 Prior to
outlining the key concepts and principles behind this approach, it is worth
establishing a rationale for why this approach matters.
A good point of departure for this is a speech made by the founder of the
Lega, Umberto Bossi, in 1994 at the party’s annual rally at Pontida, in which
he claimed the 1950s autonomist movement, the MARP, was the ‘Father of
the Lega.’5 This claim of direct heritage from the MARP came barely a
month after the 1994 elections which inaugurated what became known as
the Second Italian Republic. Amidst the birth of this ‘Second Republic,’ in
which the Lega formed part of the new governing coalition, it was politically
expedient of Bossi to claim historical legitimacy while trying to detach
himself from the corruption which had contributed to the fall of the First
Republic. While simplistic and lacking in nuance, Bossi’s claim raises an
under-researched question for scholars of regionalism, nationalism, popu-
lism, and, more broadly speaking, Italian history: to what extent has the
Lega been subject to historical analyses in order to understand its emergence?
Until now, any comprehensive attempt to look at the phenomenon of le-
ghismo from a historical perspective has found little favour in literature on the
Lega. As will be established in a review of a cross-section of literature in the
following chapter, most studies have tended to overlook the more historic
movements such as the MARP and the MAB.6 Bearing in mind the immediacy
of the political challenges to the Italian state to which the Lega contributed in
the 1980s and 1990s, it has been natural to treat leghismo as a political rather
than a historical subject and, therefore, to look to the immediate decade prior
to the first successes of the regionalist leagues in Piedmont, Lombardy, and the
Veneto. Indeed, histories of the movement have tended to start no earlier than
1979.7 More frequently, the existence of historic movements has in the past
been seized upon by Lega Nord ideologues such as Gilberto Oneto and Beppe
Burzio who, in writing for Quaderni Padani (Padanian notebooks – a Lega-
affiliated journal), have referred to such movements to endow the Lega with
historical legitimacy.8 This represents one of the key pitfalls for the historian
4 Introduction

who, in trying to provide a critical analysis, is sometimes dealing with the

same materials used by those who have clearly partisan political motives.
This book presents a challenge to existing approaches to leghismo and
argues that the regionalist leagues which emerged in northern Italy in the
1980s and from 1992 to 2017, acting under the umbrella term, Lega Nord,
have clear precedents in the MARP and the MAB. It should, however, be
stated unequivocally from the outset that the MRAs were not ‘Fathers of the
Lega’ in the direct sense which Bossi was suggesting; it is historically
inaccurate to claim a direct line of continuity between the MRAs and le-
ghismo due to the differing contexts in which each movement operated.
Nevertheless, the post-war populist regionalists did in many ways set the
foundations for the second wave of populist regionalism (and later, Salvini’s
populist nationalism). Writing of the latent nature of populist politics, Paris
Aslanidis stated that it can often ‘remain “in abeyance,”9 awaiting political
reactivation, bound to inspire and inspire again’. It is here that a historical
sociological approach grounded in political science can shed light on the
change and continuity between different waves of political activism.
Historical sociology has taken many different forms in its evolution as a
discipline;10 here the term refers to an examination of how contemporary
events are shaped by the past.11 It is, thus, an approach

which is not dominated by either by history or sociology but is influenced

by elements of both, and is situated in the context of a wider and more
multi-disciplinary field in which sociology is only one player.12

The two key components in this ‘multi-disciplinary field’ are social move-
ment analysis and political science. Long seen as divergent in nature, these
areas are increasingly becoming a focus of cross-disciplinary research,13 to the
extent that some have viewed ‘social sciences and politics’ as ‘two different
discourses on the same subject’.14 While social movements have been studied
under the lens of political concepts such as populism, the same is also true
vice-versa, i.e. political movements have been subject to social movement
study approaches.15 This has encouraged a ‘cross-fertilisation’ between
scholars from political science and social movement analysis as movements are
studied as socio-political phenomena by combining political science concepts
with social movement theory.16 While concepts from political science (and
sociology), such as populism, regionalism, racism, and nativism, will be used
to help define the Lega in terms of its political ideology and discourse, the field
of social movement analysis – in particular, the social movement theory of
abeyance – will enable an examination of links, change, and continuity
between leghismo and the MRAs. This dual approach will also allow for an
examination of how north Italian regionalism has more recently (to the time
of writing) morphed into a broader nationalist narrative under Matteo Salvini.
 Introduction 5

However, examining the historic connection between the MRAs and the
Lega is of interest not just to Italianists, but to anybody studying the con-
temporary phenomenon of populism and the far right. It builds on the
various scholarly contributions over the past decade which have helped us
situate the current wave of populist politics in historical perspective.17 This
interest has been sparked by a recent resurgence of populist regionalism,
populist nationalism, and populist far right in Europe and beyond. From
independence referenda in Catalonia (2017) and Scotland (2014) to the
victories of Brexit and Trump (2016), these populist forms of politics have
mobilised voters by constructing ‘the people’ in alignment with regional and
national identities both against an elite and (in the case of far-right articu-
lations) against ‘others,’ such as foreign migrants and/or Muslims.18
Capitalising on rising distrust in mainstream politics, these parties and
campaigns have redrawn the political map and sent shockwaves through
decisive electoral victories. Beyond the case of Italy, this book contributes to
a greater understanding of the broader political transformations we are
currently witnessing vis-à-vis the resurgence of populist politics in Europe
by examining connections between populism, regionalism, nationalism, and
the far right. While rooted in a contemporary context, such phenomena are
often not without historical precedent or a specific genealogy. Political ac-
tors, therefore, draw on repertoires, tactics, and discourse from previous
waves of activism which can potentially be better understood through the
inter-disciplinary approach developed in this book.

3 Where Does the ‘Mother of All Leagues’ Fit into All of This?
With this historical approach in mind, there will inevitably be some raised
eyebrows from colleagues at the absence of the ‘Liga Veneta’ (the Venetian
League) from my analysis over the following pages. This is understandable,
considering this party’s status as ‘the mother of all leagues’ (having emerged
prior to the Lega Lombarda) and being the first regionalist league to send
representatives to the Italian Senate. However, the decision not to include
this movement and to instead focus on Lombardy and Piedmont is not the
result of mere oversight, but rather due to three interlinked key factors.
First, given that one of the aims of this book is to trace the genealogy of
leghismo, it should be noted that such a ‘genealogy of the Autonomous
Leagues in the Veneto’ and their preceding ‘Venetian Autonomy Movement’
(the MARV) has already been articulated elsewhere.19 Furthermore, while
the MAB has been subject to historical analysis by Lynda DeMatteo and
Christophe Bouillaud, who have attempted to trace the roots of leghismo
this movement, my approach is fundamentally different. First, by high-
lighting both continuities and discontinuities, it will counter the claim that
leghismo was ‘an old political programme, new only in appearance’.20
6 Introduction

Second, by focusing on both the MAB and the MARP, I provide a com-
parative analysis which illustrates how the two movements influenced one
another and worked together in the 1950s.
This links to a second point which is that Lombardy and Piedmont
(more specifically, Bergamo and Turin) were the two principal birthplaces
of autonomist movements in the immediate post-war period. The
Associazione Regionale Italiana of Turin and the Movimento per le
Autonomie Locali in Bergamo would later evolve into the MARP and the
MAB to protest against the fact that the ‘ordinary regions were simply not
set up’ following the constitution of the post-war Italian Republic in
1948.21 They would both stand in the 1956 administrative elections and
later form an alliance in 1958 before gradually disbanding in the 1960s.22
As examined in greater detail in chapter 4, the 1958 alliance included
Venetian movements affiliated with the MRAs . Following this, a short-
lived Movement for Venetian Autonomy (the MARV) emerged in the early
1960s just as the Piedmontese and Lombard movements were in decline;
thus, a diachronic comparison between the MARV and its Piedmontese
and Lombard counterparts is beyond the scope of this book.
Finally, while the Venetian leagues have been the subject of numerous
studies, the role of Piedmontese regionalism in Italian history has been
comparatively neglected and deserves to be re-evaluated. The Piedmontese
origins of many materials examined in this book from the 1950s onwards
will contribute to this re-evaluation of Piedmont’s role in developing
regionalist ideology not only in the 1950s but also in the 1980s. Piedmont’s
influence on leghismo should not be solely measured on the electoral success
of the Piedmontese leagues during these early years. The pioneering role
played by a number of Piedmontese autonomists in the mid to late 1950s
acted both as an inspiration to its smaller sister movement, the MAB, as well
as forming a key part of the framework for leghismo.
A nuanced analysis of both continuities and discontinuities between the
MRAs and the Lega allows for a reappraisal of the roots of leghismo while
raising awareness, in general, of the relationship between political move-
ments and the context in which they are active. For such nuance to come
forth from the following pages, the sources used have been viewed through
the lens of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and, in particular, the
Discourse Historical Approach (DHA).

4 The DHA: The Importance of Context and Triangulation in

Understanding Two Waves of North Italian Populist
Regionalism
This book draws on an analysis of hundreds of available archival docu-
ments on the MARP, the MAB, and the regionalist leagues from Piedmont
 Introduction 7

and Lombardy located in both National and Communal archives in Turin,

Rome, Bergamo, and Milan, and several other archival repositories in
North Italy. From these archives, a rich tapestry of 1950s and 1960s
Lombard and Piedmontese regionalist activism emerged, illustrated
through visual and textual propaganda as well as other repertoires of
contention.23
Given the scope of this book, the methodological approach chosen is one
that brings to light and explains the continuities and discontinuities between
the political discourse of two waves of populist regionalism. The research
method employed here is, therefore, that of the Discourse Historical
Approach (DHA) in the broader field of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS).
Prior to examining the relevance of this approach, I will outline the rele-
vance of the ontological and epistemological foundations of CDS for this
study and provide a brief definition of discourse. ‘Discourse’ is understood
here as ‘a practice not just of representing the world, but of signifying the
world, constituting and constructing the world in meaning.’24 CDS’ key
objective of ‘[shedding] light on the ways through which discourse helps to
sustain social and political inequalities, abuses of power, and domination
patterns’ makes it a suitable methodology for two reasons.25 First, one of
the key purposes of the production of texts and images by the two waves of
populist regionalist activism was to portray themselves as victims of unequal
power relations at the hands of the centralist Italian state. Second, both
waves of activism also contributed to unequal power relations by discur-
sively constructing racialised ‘outgroups’ through their textual and visual
propaganda. The fact that CDS has proved influential in the study of both
populism and far-right politics therefore makes it suitable for examining
how populist regionalism evolved into far-right ideology.26
Due to its emphasis on both context and the principle of triangulation,
the branch of CDS used in this book is Reisigl and Wodak’s DHA.27
Regarding the first element, while context is important in all approaches to
CDS, within the DHA it holds particular significance. This is because it is
especially interested in integrating ‘a large quantity of available knowledge
about the historical sources and the background of the social and political
fields in which discursive “events” are embedded.’28 Further to this,
however, scholars engaging in the DHA also analyse ‘the historical
dimension of discursive actions by exploring the ways in which particular
genres of discourse are subject to diachronic change.’29 The DHA,
therefore, enables the application of ‘theory to real-world situations while
formulating a wider critique situated in various levels of context’.30 The
fact that the DHA pays particular attention to the broader socio-political
and historical context makes it particularly relevant to the analysis in this
book which situates the two waves of populist regionalism firmly in their
contexts of crisis and transition of the Italian Republic.31
8 Introduction

Historical context will be emphasised and reiterated in all chapters of

this book yet plays a particularly significant role in chapter 2 which will
outline a history of regionalism and regionalist movements in Italy. The
long-term and comparative nature of this study invites a combination of
the three ‘practical applications’ of the DHA with regards to context
identified by Reisigl.32 This consists of the reconstruction of not only the
prehistory of contemporary discourse by relating the present to the past
but also the historical interrelationships between discourse within a spe-
cific period. This is key to understanding how the Lega Nord’s discourse in
the 1980s and 1990s evolved from post-war MRA discourse. The com-
parative approach also consists of a critical analysis of how different social
actors talk, write, sing, etc., about the past with respect to claims of truth,
normative rightness, and truthfulness. The content of this book is the
product of such analysis of articles, speeches, and textual and visual
propaganda from both waves of activism. Meanwhile, the principle of
triangulation, i.e. working with different approaches, multi-methodically,
and on the basis of a variety of empirical data as well as background
information, lies at the heart of the analysis in Fathers of the Lega.33 This
book’s approach to data collection is rooted in the discipline of history,
yet analysis moves beyond historiographical lenses towards theoretical
paradigms relating to regionalism, nationalism, populism, and the far
right. Further to this, as will become evident in chapter 3, political theory
is blended with more sociological approaches and social movement theory
in order to understand the ‘gap’ between two waves of populist region-
alism and, later on in chapter 6, to examine the transition from populist
regionalism to populist nationalism under Matteo Salvini.

5 Chapter Outline
Chapter 1 will provide an overview of the key concepts relevant to
defining the Lega and its precursor movements in the 1950s. In particular,
the chapter addresses the tension between approaches to the Lega which
have focused on either its regionalist or populist element. In doing so, the
pages lead to a nuanced redefinition of the Lega which takes account of its
regionalist ideology, articulated through a populist discourse. The key
paradigm to emerge from this chapter is that of populist regionalism/
nationalism, which, with its components of regionalism/nationalism,
nativism (as a racist discourse), and populism, will form the basis for the
comparison between the different waves of populist regionalist (and later
nationalist) activism examined in this book. Further to this, the chapter
makes a significant contribution to debates on terminology surrounding
the far right by situating both the MRAs and the Lega amongst respective
first/second and third waves of post-war right-wing extremism.
 Introduction 9

Chapter 2 provides the necessary historical context for navigating the

subsequent archive-based and case study-driven chapters. First, it estab-
lishes not only the crucial role of crisis and transition in the emergence of
regionalist and federalist narratives in the history of Italy; second, it places
both the MRAs and the Lega in a wider historical context, whilst also
recognising them as movements intrinsically linked to their separate socio-
economic contexts; and finally, the chapter expands on the history of the
Lega which in this opening chapter traces a brief history of the Lega,
laying the foundations for the analysis of how the Lega’s far-right ideology
is connected to the 1950s’ MRAs.
Chapter 3 is the book’s first archive-based chapter and completes the
genealogy of North Italian populist regionalism started in chapter 2. It de-
velops the social movement theory of abeyance and interprets populist dis-
course as a form of ‘contentious politics’ to construct a theoretical lens which
will allow for the examination of continuities and discontinuities between two
waves of populist regionalist activism. By recognising populist regionalism’s
potentially latent nature, this framework contributes to the field of populism
studies by analysing it as a socio-political phenomenon under the social
movement theory of abeyance. The chapter focuses on a case study of three
overarching populist regionalist discursive repertoires which were reproduced
by the Lega. These repertoires, therefore, act as a useful point of departure for
the more in-depth study of the creation and reproduction of repertoires
relating to regionalism in chapter 4, populism and nativism in chapter 5, and
finally, Salvini’s latest iteration of populist nationalism in chapter 6.
Chapter 4 is this book’s second archive-based chapter and turns its
attention to defining the central regionalist and federalist ideology of the
MRAs and the Lega; it returns to the working definition of ‘crisis’ es-
tablished in chapter 2 to examine two significant moments of crisis and
transition in more depth. This chapter highlights that whereas the MRAs
were born alongside and defended the First Italian Republic, the Lega
contributed to its fall and the subsequent transition to the Second Italian
Republic. Two case studies on the Risorgimento and Europe help illustrate
the change and continuity in the discourse of the MRAs and the Lega
relating to representations in the political discourse of each wave of
activism and how these relate to an emerging notion of a separate northern
state of ‘Padania,’ introduced in chapter 3. These case studies bring the
chapter to the conclusion that while the MRAs’ aim was to promote
regional autonomy and, to a certain extent, federalism as a way of
strengthening the Italian nation-state, the Lega promoted a different type
of neo-federalism and separatism which aimed to divide the nation-state.
Chapter 5, the book’s third archive-based chapter, focuses specifically
on populist regionalism in order to analyse how the regionalist, populist,
nativist, and racist elements of the Lega hold roots in 1950s autonomist
10 Introduction

politics. This chapter makes use of two case studies of MRA and Lega
discourse to illustrate how the populism and nativism at the heart of each
wave of activism were articulated through its regionalist ideology. The
first case study concerns the ‘regime of the parties’ vs ‘the Northern
regions,’ while the second case study focuses on how nativism formed part
of a wider racist ideology of both the first and second waves of populist
regionalism, situating them as elements of post-war right-wing extremism.
Chapter 6 returns to the concept of crisis and transition to examine the end
of the second wave of North Italian regionalist activism and the transition to
a third wave of activism based on nationalism. Examining both endogenous
and exogenous crises with regards the Lega, the chapter examines how the
ideological core of the Lega has now shifted from regionalism to nationalism
while the populist and nativist elements represent continuity with the two
previous waves of populist regionalism. This third wave of activism has also
seen Salvini’s Lega play a key role in the absorption of the traditional
regionalist elements of the party, which are, for now, being held in abeyance.
The concluding chapter of the book re-iterates its key arguments,
reinforcing the argument that a more nuanced analysis of both continuities
and discontinuities between the MRAs and the Lega allows for a
reappraisal of the roots of leghismo while raising awareness, in general, of
the relationship between political movements and the context in which
they are active. This chapter will also outline some tentative and non-
prescriptive ‘rules of engagement’ in terms of studying the latent nature of
populist regionalist, nationalist, and far-right ideology.

Notes
1 As an amalgamation of autonomist regionalist ‘leagues’ in 1991, the original
party name was Lega Nord (Northern League), and from 1996 onwards, ‘Lega
Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania (Northern League for the Independence of
Padania)’. In 2018, the party rebranded as the Lega, which includes sister orga-
nisations Lega per Salvini Premier and Noi con Salvini. As of 3 August 2020, Lega
per Salvini Premier has superseded all other denominations. For convenience, this
book refers to the party of both the Bossi and Salvini eras as ‘the Lega’.
2 Franco Zappetini and Marzia Maccaferri, ‘Euroscepticism between Populism
and Technocracy: The Case of Italian Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle’, Journal
of Contemporary European Research 17, no.2 (2021): 239–257.
3 Gianluca Passarelli and Dario Tuorto, Lega & Padania. Storie e luoghi delle
camicie verdi (Bologna: il Mulino, 2015) 33.
4 Margaret Canovan, ‘Two Strategies for the Study of Populism’, Political
Studies 30, no.4 (1982): 544–552.
Idem, ‘Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy’,
Political Studies 2, no.16 (1999): 2–16.
Idem, ‘Populism for Political Theorists’, Journal of Political Ideologies 9,
no.3 (2004): 241–252.
 Introduction 11

5 Giuseppe Sangiorgio, ‘Il MARP degli anni 50 Padre della Lega’, La Stampa (12
April 1994).
6 Roberto Biorcio and Tomasso Vitale, ‘Culture, Values and Social Basis of
Northern Italian Centrifugal Regionalism: A Contextual Political Analysis of
the Lega Nord’ in Contemporary Centrifugal Regionalism: Comparing
Flanders ad Northern Italy, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for the Science
and the Arts Press, 2011, pp. 171–199, (172).
7 Anna Cento Bull and Mark Gilbert, The Lega Nord and the Northern
Question in Italian Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2001) 59.
Ilvo Diamanti, La Lega: Geografia, Storia e Sociologia Di Un Nuovo
Soggetto Politico, Saggi (Roma: Donzelli, 1993).
Idem, Il Male Del Nord: Lega, Localismo, Secessione, Interventi 33
(Roma: Donzelli, 1996).
Renato Mannheimer, La Lega Lombarda, 1. ed. in “Idee”, Idee/Feltrinelli
(Milano: Feltrinelli, 1991).
Luciano Constantini, Dentro La Lega. Come nasce, come cresce, come
comunica (Roma: Koine Edizioni, 1994).
8 For analyses of precursors to the Lega, by two Lega ideologues, please see:
Beppe Burzio, ‘Da “La Permanente al M.A.R.P”: Breve viaggio nell’auto-
nomismo piemontese’, Quaderni Padani 6, no.32 (November–December
2000): 5–12.
and
Gilberto Oneto, Polentoni o Padani? Apologia Di Un Popolo Di Egoisti,
Xenofobi, Ignoranti Ed Evasori: In Difesa Della Comunità Più Diffamata
Della Storia, Quaderni Padani 101–102 (maggio-agosto 2012) (Rimini: Il
cerchio, 2012) 22.
9 Abeyance as a sociological theory will be examined in greater detail in chapters
1 and 3 of this book; however, for now, it is worth noting that it broadly refers
to a pattern of temporary activity or suspension. Common synonyms include
cold storage, deep freeze, doldrums, dormancy, cessation, holding pattern,
moratorium, and suspended animation. For more detail, see:
David. A Snow and Colin Bernatsky, ‘The Conterminous Rise of Right-
Wing Populism and Superfluous Populations’ in Populism and the Crisis of
Democracy Volume 1, Concepts and Theory., eds. Gregor Fitzi, Juergen
Mackert, and Bryan Turner (London and New York: Routledge, 2019)
130–146.
10 Gerard Delanty and Engin. F. Isin, ‘Introduction: Reorienting Historical
Sociology’ Handbook of Historical Sociology ed.s Idem (London: Sage)
1–9 (2).
Richard Lachmann, What Is Historical Sociology? (Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press, 2013).
Gurminder K. Bhambra, ‘Comparative Historical Sociology and the State:
Problems of Method’, Cultural Sociology 10, no.3 (September 2016): 335–351,
https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975516639085. Richard Saull, Alexander Anievas,
Neil Davidson, Adam Fabry (eds). The Longue Durèe of the Far-Right: An
International Historical Sociology (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015).
11 Delanty and Isin, ‘Introduction: Reorienting Historical Sociology’, 2.
12 Ibid.
12 Introduction

13 For more detail on cross-disciplinary developments regarding political science

and social movement studies, see:
George Newth, ‘Populism in Abeyance: The Survival of Populist Repertoires
of Contention in North Italy’, Social Movement Studies 21, no.4 (4 July
2022): 511–529, https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2021.1928483.
Paris Aslanidis, ‘Populism and Social Movements’. In The Oxford
Handbook of Populism, eds. Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart,
Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Pierre Ostiguy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2017) 305–325.
Kenneth M. Roberts, ‘Populism, Social Movements and Popular
Subjectivity’, in The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements, eds.
Donatella Della Porta and Mario Diani (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2015) 681–695.
14 Michel Huysseune, Modernity and Secession: The Social Sciences and the
Political Discourse of the Lega Nord in Italy, Studies in Ethnopolitics, v. 5
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2006).
Anna Cento Bull, ‘Ethnicity, Racism and the Northern League’ in Italian
Regionalism, ed. Carl Levy (Oxford: Berg, 1996) 171–189.
15 Newth, ‘Populism in Abeyance’.
16 Aslanidis, ‘Populism and social movements’, 313.
Roberts, ‘Populism, social movements and popular subjectivity’, 692.
17 Federico Finchelstein, From Fascism to Populism in History (Oakland,
California: University of California Press, 2017).
Enzo Traverso and Régis Meyran, The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and
the Far Right (London; Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2019,) 21.
Marzia Maccaferri, ‘Populism and Italy: A Theoretical and
Epistemological Conundrum’, Modern Italy 27, no.1 (2022): 5–17). https://
doi.org/10.1017/mit.2021.66
18 Katy Brown, ‘When Eurosceptics Become Europhiles: Far-Right Opposition to
Turkish Involvement in the European Union’, Identities 27, no.6 (1 November
2020): 633–654, https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2019.1617530.
Bhambra, ‘Comparative Historical Sociology and the State: Problems of
Method’.
Kurt Adam Sengul, ‘Performing Islamophobia in the Australian Parliament:
The Role of Populism and Performance in Pauline Hanson’s “Burqa Stunt.”’
Media International Australia 184, no.1 (2022): 49–62. https://doi.org/
10.1177/1329878X221087733
19 Percy Allum and Ilvo Diamanti, ‘The Autonomous Leagues in the Veneto’ in
Italian Regionalism, ed. Carl Levy (Oxford: Berg, 1996) 151–171 (159).
20 Christophe Boulliaud and Lynda DeMatteo, “Autonomismo e leghismo dal
1945 ad oggi” in Culture politiche e territorioli in Italia 1945–2000, ed.
Adriana Castagnoli (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004) 32–52 (33).
21 David Hine, ‘Federalism, Regionalism and the Unitary State: Contemporary
Regional Pressures in Historical Perspective’ in Italian Regionalism, ed. Carl
Levy (Oxford: Berg, 1996) 109–130 (111).
22 George Newth, ‘The Roots of the Lega Nord’s Populist Regionalism’, Patterns
of Prejudice 53, no.4 (8 August 2019): 384–406, https://doi.org/10.1080/
0031322X.2019.1615784.
 Introduction 13

23 Charles Tilly, Contentious Performances, 1st ed (Cambridge University Press,

2008).
24 Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge: Polity,
1996) 64.
25 Dalia Gavriely-Nuri, ‘Critical Discourse Studies in/of Applied Contexts’ in The
Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, eds. John Flowerdew and
John E. Richardson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018) 120 –132 (121).
26 Katy Brown and Aurelien Mondon, ‘The Role of the Media in the
Mainstreaming of the Far Right’, IPPR Progressive Review 29, no.2
(September 2022): 147–153, https://doi.org/10.1111/newe.12306.
John E. Richardson and Monica Colombo, ‘Race and Immigration in Far-
and Extreme-Right European Political Leaflets’, in Contemporary Critical
Discourse Studies. eds. Christopher Hart and Piotr Cap (London:
Bloomsbury, 2017) 521–542.
Ruth Wodak, The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses
Mean (London: SAGE Publishing, 2015).
Ruth Wodak and John E Richardson (eds.) Analysing Fascist Discourse:
European Fascism in Talk and Text (New York: Routledge, 2013).
27 Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak, ‘The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA)’,
in Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, eds. Ruth Wodak and Michael
Meyer (London: SAGE Publishing, 2009) 87–121.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Martin Reisigl, ‘The Discourse-Historical Approach’, in The Routledge
Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, eds. John Flowerdew and John. E.
Richardson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018) 44–59. (53–54).
Brown and Mondon ‘Populism, the media, and the mainstreaming of the far
right’.
31 Reisigl, ‘The discourse-historical approach’, 53.
32 Ibid., 53–54.
33 Ibid.
1 Conceptual and Theoretical
Considerations of a Dual
Approach to Leghismo

1.1 Introduction
Writing about any political party is fraught with difficulties. One of the
most significant of these is navigating conflicting interpretations of what
the party in question stands for, who it represents, and why it emerged in
the first place. When studying the history of the Lega (Nord), the situation
is, arguably, made more difficult due to the fact that the party has been
typical of the ‘chameleonic’ nature of populist parties,1 fluctuating between
federalism, secessionism, devolution, and nationalism. Furthermore, the cha-
otic context in which the Lega emerged – amidst corruption scandals and the
disappearance of the Christian Democrat-Communist polarisation in
Italian politics – and the Lega’s ability to exploit this crisis of the late
1980s/early 1990s led to an equally chaotic way of defining what the
movement was and who/what it represented. The initial interpretation of
the Lega as a protest movement was discredited as its durability saw it
ride the crest of an anti-system wave and increased vote share in the
Second Italian Republic.2 Many scholars came to see the Lega as a
regionalist populist movement or a subcultural party.3 As the party’s
policies shifted to the right, it became the focus of studies which defined
it as a far-right party.4 Diamanti’s analysis of the Lega as a political
entrepreneur allowed for an analysis of the movement’s development
into four different stages in which it changed its political appeal in line
with the changing socio-economic realities of the regions in which it was
operating.5 Meanwhile, Cento Bull and Gilbert noted the importance of
distinguishing ‘between two levels of analysis: structure and agency’ and
argued that ‘structural factors, the party’s programme and its evolving
world view, and the nature of its electorate’ all needed to be taken into
consideration when analysing the Lega.6 As observed by Cento Bull and
Gilbert in their book, after studying the various categorisations of the
movement, readers would be ‘fighting a sense of confusion’ and asking,
‘what is the Lega?’7

DOI: 10.4324/9781003297420-2
 Considerations of a Dual Approach to Leghismo 15

In terms of how this book adds to these debates there are three points
which are examined in this chapter. First, as a useful point of departure, is
whether the Lega’s programme should be viewed as wholly unprecedented
in Italian history.8 Bearing in mind the immediacy of the political challenges
to the Italian state to which the Lega contributed in the 1980s and 1990s, it
has been natural to treat leghismo as a political rather than a historical
subject and, therefore, to look to the immediate decade prior to the first
successes of the regionalist leagues in Piedmont, Lombardy, and the Veneto.
A second point relates to the extent to which 1950s’ Movements for
Regional Autonomy (MRAs) should be viewed as Fathers of the Lega.
Existing studies which examine connections between post-war regionalism
and leghismo have tended to lack nuance and eschew approaches which
encourage an examination of both change and continuity between cycles of
contention/waves of activism.9 A third and final point relates to whether the
Lega’s regionalist, populist, and far-right identities should be analysed
separately or as overlapping ideologies and discourses.10
Over the course of the following pages, I will address these three points
and, in doing so, establish the necessary conceptual and theoretical
framework to examine leghismo from a dual perspective of political sci-
ence and historical sociology. While the intention of this chapter is not to
replicate debates and discussions which have been well-established else-
where,11 the first section of this chapter will examine a cross-section of
literature which dovetails with the overarching issues raised above;
namely, the historical precedents to leghismo and the centre of gravity
between regionalism, populism, and far-right ideology. Having established
the literary context for this study, the second section will proceed to
outline the conceptual frameworks necessary to navigate the following
chapters. On the one hand, this book relies on concepts from both political
science andsociology/social movement analysis. This will enable the ex-
amination of the MRAs and the Lega as ‘populist regionalist’ and, latterly,
‘populist nationalist’. This populist regionalist/nationalist framework
emphasises how ethnic/exclusionary forms of regionalism and nationalism
overlap with racist ideology; meanwhile populism and nativism are
interpreted as discourses via which these ideologies are articulated. On the
other hand, a historical-sociological framework enables examinations of
the change and continuity between different waves of activism.12 Indeed,
‘concepts from this discipline strive to identify and explain not just passing
phenomena but also longer term patterns of social interactions’, and will
therefore play a key role in this book’s historical approach to populist
regionalism and populist nationalism.13 The concluding section sum-
marises the key contributions of this chapter in terms of conceptual and
theoretical debates, providing signposts for where each framework will be
used and/or developed throughout the book.
16 Considerations of a Dual Approach to Leghismo

1.1.1 Debates and Definitions

The taxonomy of the Lega since the 1980s has helped our understanding
of a constantly changing and evolving political organisation.14 The fol-
lowing section examines a cross-section of this literature to identify the
dominant themes to which this book offers a contribution. It then con-
cludes by reflecting on the limitations of existing historical analyses of the
Lega in particular, the lack of attention paid to how 1950s North Italian
regionalism evolved into far-right ideology.

1.1.1.1 Historical Approaches to the Lega

Central to this book is the contention that there have been two separate
waves of populist regionalist activism in North Italy in two distinct
periods of Italian history. The following paragraphs therefore highlight
accounts of the Lega which have taken a historical approach to this party
to tease out the gap in the literature which this book seeks to address.15
While early scholarly work presented the regionalism proposed by the
Lega as a new political offer, it was often contextualised in long-standing
issues affecting Italy. In particular, the historic North-South divide in Italy
has been seen as a key contributing factor to the rise of leghismo.16
Others, providing a brief history of the socio-economic conditions in Italy
from the 1960s to the 1980s, have rooted the rise of leghismo in the
history and subculture of north-eastern industrial districts.17 Meanwhile,
diachronic perspectives on the crisis enveloping the Italian Republic in the
late 1980s and early 1990s viewed the emergence of leghismo as part of a
series of turning points (svolte) in Italian history and the latest of a series
of failed attempts to ‘make Italians’.18 In addition to studying the Lega as
a party of Italian history, there have also been histories of the Lega itself
which examine the development of the party and its political message.
Several accounts have examined leghismo in four different stages, ana-
lysing how the party evolved and adapted in line with the changing socio-
economic realities of the regions in which it was operating.19 Indeed, more
recent histories have adopted this approach, taking advantage of the fact
that (at the time of writing) more than four decades have passed since the
emergence of the first regionalist leagues. For instance, Barcella’s history
of the party is part of a burgeoning literature examining change and
continuity between the Bossi and Salvini era, albeit one which does not
look comprehensively beyond the 1980s in terms of historical context.20
The fact that much of the emerging literature on Salvini’s Lega has made
use of the term populism and/or populist radical right to define the dif-
ference between the Bossi era, widely understood as ‘regionalist populist,’
raises an important point with regards to the Lega as part of the wider
history of Italian populism.
 Considerations of a Dual Approach to Leghismo 17

While terminological debates surrounding the Lega’s populist and/or

far-right identity are covered in greater detail in the following text, it is
worth examining here how the Lega has often been interpreted as part of
Italy’s history as a ‘promised land of populism’.21 Bossi’s protest against
the partitocrazia (partyocracy) which sought to sow division between
Italy’s parties and the ‘common people’, invited scholarly comparisons
with the 1950s populist movement, Uomo Qualunque (UQ), led by
Guglielmo Giannini.22 However, the same could also be said of Bossi’s
Lega and Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, with the latter drawing on
similar populist articulation of the people vs the elites. It is certainly useful
to note that ‘in the history of the Italian Republic, the populist mentality
has, with different levels of intensity and greater or lesser persistence, left
deep and visible traces’;23 however, historical analyses which focus solely
on populism are insufficient as they overlook the main ideological differ-
ences between these populist movements. Indeed, the UQ had lacked a
vital element of regionalism and federalism, and not only were the Lega’s
and the UQ’s electoral strongholds completely different but also, in con-
trast to the Lega’s federalist programme, UQ ‘was against the introduction
of the regions: worried that they would damage the unity of the
country’.24 Unlike UQ, the presence of both populist discourse and
regionalist ideology in the transition between the First and Second Italian
Republic saw the re-emergence of debates as old as the unified Italian state
itself, centring most prominently around an age-old fracture between the
North and South.
In 1995, the history of this fracture reached a new stage as Bossi
changed the focus of the Lega from federalism to secessionism and now
campaigned for the independence of ‘Padania,’ an ‘imagined nation’ with
vaguely defined borders above the river Po. This secessionist turn opened
up avenues for historical approaches, which were examinations of how the
Lega itself framed historical events to suit its political project, how the
geography of Padania was delineated,25 and the Lega’s nation-building
methods.26 The Lega treated history as a ‘wardrobe to be plundered for
whatever symbols split Italy in a convenient way and achieved the
appropriate resonance with the public’.27 This involved ‘reframing’ and
‘articulating long-standing arguments surrounding regional autonomy in
terms of a new and politically more contentious Northern question’.28 The
idea of ‘reframing’ raises a further important point regarding historical
approaches to the Lega.29 As noted by Biorcio and Vitale ‘The Northern
Question was “invented” by the Lega and embedded in a well-defined
frame: that of the dispute of the labouring North against an inefficient,
inefficacious, and ineffective (good-for-nothing) political centre’.30
Diani, for instance, has previously explained the success of the Lega
Nord’s populist discourse in the early 1990s by linking ‘the congruence
18 Considerations of a Dual Approach to Leghismo

between the leagues’ message and the master frame that characterised the
political opportunity structure of the early 1990s in Italy’.31 Building on
Giordano’s observation that ‘political regionalism is not a new phenom-
enon in Italy,’ Basile highlighted how Bossi’s Lega ‘reframed’ long-
standing themes and arguments surrounding regional autonomy such as
‘hostility’ against the ‘wasteful’ Southern Italy and a harsh critique of the
inefficiency of the central State,32 and ‘articulate them in terms of a new
and politically more contentious Northern question’.33 This is particularly
important when considering the connections between the ideas of the
MRAs and the Lega as such themes were not only previously present in the
1970s, but had roots in the 1950s and 1960s.34
This relates to a further historical perspective on leghismo, the Northern
Question, and Padania, which interpret the Lega ‘in many ways a long
tradition of movements that have attempted to devolve power from the
central state in Italy’.35 On the one hand, studies on the growth of ‘ethno-
nationalist’ mobilisation during the 1960s36 claim that there are ‘two dis-
tinct groups of autonomist movements’ in Italy – Historic groups and
the Lega.37 The ‘historic groups’ highlighted in these studies, however, are
not the 1950s movements such as the Piedmontese Regional Autonomy
Movement (MARP) and the Bergamascan Autonomy Movement (MAB),
but instead ethno-regionalist groups such as the Sardinian Action Party, the
Union Valdotaine (UV), and the South Tyrol People’s Party (SVP).38 On
the other hand, studies have argued how Padania holds roots in the
European ‘ethnic’ wave of the 1970s which resulted both in the diffusion
of new ideas about the recognition of national minorities and the mul-
tiplication of efforts to mobilise and organise regionally based ‘political
parties’.39 A sharp distinction between ‘historic groups’ and the Lega
accounts neither for the links that early forms of leghismo held with
Bruno Salvadori’s UV nor the connections between the SVP and former
members of the MAB . Neither the MRAs nor the Lega can, therefore, be
considered a completely distinct entity from historic ethno-regionalist
movements. This raises the question of how and to what extent the
1950s’ movements examined in this book have been considered pre-
cursors to leghismo.
Some scholarly work has paid lip service to the 1950s movements without
examining any extensive connections with leghismo. These have included
1950s’ autonomists in Piedmont,40 the Veneto,41 Bergamo,42 and even in
Friuli-Venezia Giulia.43 While some of these studies also contain significant
imprecisions in terms of the MRAs’ ideology, discourse, and chronology,44
others have focused solely on the anti-southernism of both the MARP and
the MAB.45 While anti-southernism certainly formed a key element of the
MRAs, focusing solely on this aspect overlooks the wider raison d’être,
which was to activate the regional statutes of Italy’s Constitution.
 Considerations of a Dual Approach to Leghismo 19

Meanwhile, other scholars have drawn direct continuities between the

MRAs and leghismo at the expense of analysing the significant dis-
continuities. This includes claims by DeMatteo and Boulliaud that Umberto
Bossi’s Lega Lombarda was ‘nothing more than the latest manifestation of
an autonomist current rooted in the Catholic subculture in Bergamo’.46 This
claim that leghismo was ‘an old political programme, new only in appear-
ance,’47 neglects the broader ideas of the post-war autonomists pertaining to
national unity which over the pages of this book, will emerge as a key ele-
ment of discontinuity between the two waves of activism. Indeed, such an
approach, which insists too strongly on continuities, risks overlapping –
albeit unintentionally – with a discursive strategy adopted by Lega activists
and ideologues, including Bossi himself, who seized on the existence of the
MARP and the MAB as historical legitimisation for the Lega.48 The Lega
leader’s simplistic representation of both the MRAs in his semi-
autobiographical history of the Lega in 1999 as movements which fought
for ‘freedom for the North against Roman oppression’, indeed, builds on his
previous statement that the MARP was the ‘Father of the Lega’.49
While existing studies have contributed greatly to our understanding of
why the Lega enjoyed the success it did in the 1980s and 1990s, none of
these interpretations take a nuanced consideration of the change and con-
tinuity from a history which included the MRAs in Piedmont and Lombardy
in the 1950s. The above-mentioned literature has dealt predominantly with
the first issue raised in the introduction to this chapter vis-à-vis the extent to
which the Lega should be considered as a second wave of post-war
regionalism. What has not been examined to any significant measure are
the ways in which the Lega’s ideology and discourse have been interpreted
and how this relates to an intersection between its far right and regionalist
identities. It is to this issue that the chapter now turns.

1.1.1.2 ‘Regionalist Populist,’ ‘Radical Right Populist,’ ‘Populist Radical

Right,’ ‘New Right,’ or ‘Extreme Right’?
A further key theme of this book relates to a search for a centre of gravity
between the Lega’s two dominant ideologies: regionalism and the far right.
The Lega has been subject to definitional debates which have focused
largely on the party’s use of populist discourse as well as its regionalist
demands. This has seen a proliferation of conceptual paradigms applied to
the Lega, ranging from regionalist populist to radical right populist, as
well as populist radical right, new right, and extreme right. Space does not
permit a full examination of these terms and how/the extent to which they
have been applied; nevertheless, the following paragraphs will highlight
some of the dominant paradigms which have been used and the debates
which have accompanied them.
20 Considerations of a Dual Approach to Leghismo

Debates surrounding far-right terminology have been well documented

elsewhere, with Mudde referring to a ‘terminological chaos’ which ‘is not
the result of fundamental differences of opinion over the correct definition.’
Rather, it is ‘largely the consequence of a lack of clear definitions’.50 Mudde
notes that ‘it is not exceptional to see one author use three or more different
terms to describe the same party or group of parties in one article, if not on a
single page’.51 Passarelli and Tuorto’s examination of Matteo Salvini’s Lega
provides an illuminating example of this and a useful point of departure for
examining the application of terminology to this party. Although the au-
thors build on their previous own work to define the Lega predominantly as
‘extreme right,’52 they go on to use no less than six other terms throughout
their book to describe the party family to which the Lega belongs. Amongst
these terms are, ‘New Extreme Right,’ ‘National Neo-Fascists,’ ‘New Right,’
‘New European Right,’ ‘Radical Right,’ and ‘Populist’.53 This is by no
means a new issue, with numerous studies having previously attributed
various ‘far-right’ labels to Bossi’s Lega Nord.
On the one hand, some scholars viewed Bossi’s Lega as an embodying the
ideals of the intellectual new right, radical right populism, or the populist
radical right. Regarding the ‘new right’ (Nouvelle Droite), this term refers to
the ideas of philosophers such as Alain De Benoist which influenced (and to
an extent continue to influence) Lega policy. In particular, the idea of ‘cul-
tural differentialism,’ i.e. that ‘certain cultural differences simply cannot be
overcome,’ became a key justification used by Lega politicians and ideologues
for the party’s racist politics.54 Moreover, the Lega’s early belief that ‘a new
Europe should be divided into macro-regions, which could establish the basis
for a new type of federal Europe,’ overlapped with the new right’s focus on
ethno-regionalism.55 This led some scholars to argue that leghismo and the
new right were ‘different, but complementary faces of [...] sophisticated right-
wing ethno-regionalist ideology’.56 Meanwhile, Zaslove drew on Betz’ par-
adigm of radical right populist parties to group the Lega Nord as part of the
‘third wave’ of right-wing extremism that had begun to emerge in the early
1970s.57 Zaslove defined the Lega as ‘radical right populist’ due to Bossi’s
stance against a ‘multi-racial and multi-ethnic’ society, his ‘opposition to the
social integration of marginalised groups, and […] appeal to xenophobia, if
not overt racism’.58 At the same time, Mudde included the Lega in his
analysis of populist radical right parties (PRRPs), despite the party’s region-
alism, which he viewed as anathema to far right politics. This separation of
regionalism and far/radical right politics was predicated on viewing nativism
as deriving solely from nationalism. Indeed, Mudde ‘exclude[d] regionalism
from the core feature of’ the radical right ‘party family’.59 This perceived
incompatibility between regionalist and far right ideology has been at the root
of many of the debates surrounding the Lega’s far-right identity, at least when
considering its early stages (1979–1996).60
Another random document with
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 Fig. 2 Fig. 4
Fig. 3 Fig. 5 Fig. 1

The Boy Who Makes a Star Kite of This Type will Have a Construction
Different from the Common Run of Kites, Especially If He Decorates It in an
Attractive Manner

The flags are tied on, and the tassels are easily made of cord. The
outside streamers are at least 6 ft. long, and balanced carefully.
Ribbons, or dark-colored lining cambric, are used for them. The
funnel-shaped ends balance the kite. They are shown in detail in
Figs. 2, 3, and 4, and have 1-in. openings at the bottom, through
which the air passes, causing a pull that steadies the kite. They are
of dark blue, and the cloth fringe is of light blue. A thin reed, or fine
wire, is used for the hoop which stiffens the top. Heavy wrapping or
cover paper is used to cover the hoops. It is cut as shown in Fig. 4
and rolled into shape.
A four-string bridle is fastened to the frame at I, J, K, and L, as
shown. The upper strings are each 18 in., and the lower ones 32 in.
long, to the point where they come together, and must be adjusted
after the kite line is fastened at M.
 Second Handle on Hoe or Rake Saves Stooping

Much of the Tiring Labor in Using a Hoe or Rake is Overcome by This

Simple Homemade Attachment

Anyone who has used a hoe or rake for days at a time will
appreciate the labor saved by the attachment for the handle shown
in the illustration. It is adjustable to various-sized persons by means
of the holes at the front end of the horizontal piece. The two parts
are each made of strips joined at the middle portions, and arranged
to clamp on the handle of the hoe or rake. In hoeing around shrubs
and large plants, the handle may be set to one side.—A. S. Thomas,
Amherstburg, Ont., Canada.
 Photo-Copying Lens Increases Angle of Camera
Trying to take some indoor pictures I found the angle of my
ordinary lens was insufficient to “get in” the various objects I desired.
Not having a wide angle lens, I decreased the focal length of the lens
by using a copying attachment. The results were quite pleasing and
while there is some distortion and less of the plate is covered than
usual, there is a remarkable increase in the angle of view. To obtain
definition, it is necessary to stop the lens down, but the pictures are
very clear.—Samuel L. Pickett, Denver, Colo.
 Belt for Sprocket Drive Made of Brass Strips

Being unable to purchase a small driving chain for sprockets made

by cutting out every other tooth in gears taken from a clockwork, I
used a brass strip, properly punched, and found it satisfactory. The
strip was .005 in. thick and the points where the holes were to be
punched out were indicated by dividers set from the gears. I made a
punch from a nail leaving a small center on it as shown and grinding
the end to an oblong shape. I used a piece of sheet lead as a die, on
which to punch the strips. The marks made by the dividers provided
spots on which to set the center of the punch, making the result quite
accurate.—Edward M. Davis, Philadelphia, Pa.
 Rain Alarm with Drop-of-Water Contact

A Drop of Rain Water Completes the Bell Circuit, Thus Giving Warning of the
Rain

An annunciating device, which awakens a person sleeping in a

room with the window open and warns him that it is raining, so that
he may close the window, is an interesting bit of electrical
construction. On the outside of the house, as detailed, is a funnel
fixed to the wall. At its small end, two separate wires have their
terminals. The wires enter the room at the frame of the window, and
connect to an electric bell, and a dry cell. A drop of water entering
the funnel, flows down to the small end, falling on the terminals of
the wires, and acting as a conductor, completes the circuit, ringing
the bell. A switch inside cuts out the circuit, stopping the bell’s
ringing.—John M. Chabot, Lauzon, Quebec, Can.
Coaster Steering Gear Made from Cream-Freezer
Drive

A Steering Rig That Works Almost Like That on an Automobile was Made Out
of the Driving Parts of an Old Ice-Cream Freezer

In rebuilding a wagon into an automobile coaster, I used the

driving rod and gears from an old ice-cream freezer, and found that it
worked so well that perhaps other boys might be interested in the
job. The front of the coaster was covered with a hood, and the
steering wheel was set back of it, as shown. The center rod of the
freezer was used for the steering post F, and an old rubber-tired
wheel was made into a steering wheel. The casting from the top of
the freezer, with the gears in it, and the rod on which the turning
crank was fastened were set on a block, H, and braced, as shown.
The shaft where the crank was fastened, at B, was set through the
wagon bed. A crosspiece of iron, A, was wired to the axle D with
wires C. A heavy block was used for a turntable. The top end of the
casting was fastened to the hood with a brace, G, and the block H
steadies the rigging also.—L. Chester Bryant, El Dorado, Ark.
 Pad for Glass Vessels Made of Corks
In the kitchen, shop, laboratory, and other places where glass or
other fragile dishes or vessels are used, a convenient pad on which
to rest them can be made by stringing corks on a strong cord or wire
in the form of a ring. Several rings of corks may be used to make a
mat, or rings slightly larger in diameter than the bottle or vessel may
be made for certain sizes of containers. If desired, the corks may be
cut to fit closely on the radial joints, making the resulting ring more
secure.
A Shaving Lamp and Mirror for the Camp
 To make shaving possible in camp at night, or with little daylight, a
small mirror was provided with an electric flash light. The mirror was
set to swing free, in a wooden support. The light was fastened
slightly above and behind the mirror. and swings at its base, so that it
can be tipped upward or downward, throwing the light
correspondingly. A piece of wood, 1¹⁄₄ by 3¹⁄₂ in., and as long as the
mirror frame is wide, serves as a base. The arms will hold the mirror
far enough in front of the lamp to allow room in which to swing. The
body of the lamp is set on a block, and held between two wooden
pieces, into which a band of iron was set near the top. The uprights
move in an arc, pivoting at their lower fastening, on screws.—C. L.
Meller, Fargo, N. D.
 Automatic Electric Light on Talking-Machine
Cabinet

In many homes the phonograph is placed where little light is

available in changing the records, setting the needle etc. An electric
light which is lighted only while the cover of the phonograph is
raised, is well worth installing. A metal arm, A, supports the open
cover of the cabinet. When the cover is closed, this arm passes
through a slot and takes the position shown by the dotted line. A strip
of spring brass, B, is fastened to the inside wall of the cabinet, in the
path of the arm, so that it will be pushed down to the off position, as
indicated. When the arm releases the strip B, the latter presses
against the contact C. A small electric lamp, D, is set in the corner,
and electrical connection made to it through B and C, the plug
connections passing through the back of the cabinet. When the
cover is down, the electric circuit is open, and the moment it is
raised, connection is made at C, and the lamp lights. The backs of
most phonograph cabinets may be removed easily to make these
changes.—M. C. Ball, Kansas City, Mo.
Device for Suspending Parcels from Overhead
Hooks
 To hang small sacks or other articles out of reach overhead, so
that they may be easily taken down, I use a double-eye hook which I
made of wire. A single piece of wire is used, and twisted into two
loops as shown, and then formed into a twisted hook. I use a pole
with a nail, hooking it into the lower loop, to raise the parcel; this
leaves the upper loop free to be hooked on the nail above.—E. B.
Warren, Garnet, Mont.
 Steel Wool as Aluminum-Ware Cleaner
It takes little trouble to keep aluminium pots and pans shining if
they are cleaned frequently with steel wool, water, and a nonalkaline
soap. Use a very fine grade of the wool, and give the utensils a few
rubs frequently rather than attempt to clean them only occasionally,
when much soiled.—L. P. Langan, Denver, Colo.
 How to Make a Model Old-Four
Monoplane
By RALPH M. BROWN

Theflights,
old-four monoplane model, made famous by its wonderful
is one of the most graceful that has been built. Its large
size and slow, even glide make it a much more desirable flier than
the ordinary dartlike model. It gives one a true insight into the
phenomena of heavier-than-air flight. This machine, when complete,
should weigh 9 oz. and fly 1,200 ft., rising from the ground under its
own power and landing lightly. Its construction is simple, and with
careful reference to the sketches, an exact reproduction may be
made.
For the motor bases, A, Fig. 1, secure two spruce sticks, each 48
in. long, ³⁄₈ in. wide, and ¹⁄₄ in. thick, and fasten a wire hook on one
end of each stick with thread wound around after giving it a coat of
glue. These hooks are to hold one end of the rubber bands that act
as the motive power, and are designated by the letter B. At the
opposite ends of the sticks, at C, bearings are provided, which
consist of blocks of wood, each 1 in. long, 1 in. wide, and ³⁄₈ in. thick.
These are also bound in place with thread after gluing them. Holes