Camilla Locatelli (4:40)

Yeah, that's great. I mean, now you stir so much curiosity about this song. Yeah. I think what I really enjoyed about the book is that you focus very much on how this part is, which we tend to label as Eurosceptics, use actually Europe quite centrally as a way to develop their own sort of adaptation of far right ideas to current developments. And you have a very sophisticated way of like dividing this into the chapters according to different themes. But what would you say is more or less are the most important aspects that these parties focus on when thinking about Europe?

Marta Lorimer (5:35)

The biggest aspect that they focus on, and I think this is why the, to some extent, the first empirical chapter is perhaps the most important one, is really this idea of Europe as a form of identity that they want to separate from the European Union. When we think about the far right, I think a lot of the time we really forefront this idea of nationalism. So the importance of the nation and how this is fairly exclusive understanding of identity. We're not entirely wrong in doing this. Nationalism is a core part of their political identity. But I think that does tend to underplay a little bit the extent to which this nationalism is not completely exclusive of other political identities, and particularly of a European level political identity, which is something that has been present in the far right for well beyond the period that I study in the book. The book starts in the 1970s for a variety of practical reasons, but we already know that there were pan European ideas in the historical Italian fascism, that there were these ideas of nation Europe being discussed by people like Mosley in the United Kingdom, that even Hitler had an idea of a pan Europe. So there's. There is a history of thinking about Europe within the far right. It was also quite, you know, rich in the 1940s and the 1950s as these parties were being shunned at the national level. And I think that increasingly engaging with the process of European integration has led them to think even more about the European dimension of their ideas and their belonging to some form of European civilization. They tend to phrase this very often in a. In a way that is contradicting off the European Union itself. So in the book I speak a lot about how from essentially the end of the 1980s, the Raceman national in France and in particular starts drawing a stark distinction between a European civilization that they think they belong to and the political project of the European Union, which they reject. And this group, this dimension of the European identity, is still present today. You will see people like Viktor Orban present himself as the real defender of European civilization. Meloni still uses this kind of language, for example. Le Pen still says that she is very pro European. It's the European Union she hates. And in the book I also try to show why this is important to the broader process of legitimation of the far right. Because one of the biggest trends that we have noticed in the European Union in the last few decades, of course, is that the far right has gone from a fringe to political actors who have a real impact on politics, who are influencing the ideas that we talk about. And I suggest that speaking about a European identity has actually helped them in many way achieve new degrees of legitimacy because it made them look like they were less nationalist, less closed to external ideas, and potentially less dangerous precisely because it, it made them look like they were open to collaborating with others. So I think it's. That is probably off the four concepts that I discussed. It is the one that is in many ways most prominent and I think more key to their legitimation.

Camilla Locatelli (9:33)

Yeah, really, really fascinating. And I mean, in the book I also really appreciated how you, as you also enter that now as the book goes through many different decades and time and you can see both the evolution of these parties, but also the evolution of the EU at the same time, and the concept of the way they resignify Europe also in relation to the EU and this European civilization that you talk about. And I was wondering if this sort of constant rethinking of or expanding the concept of Europe for far right parties is. You see it more as sort of an opportunistic way of them, like trying to gain, as you say, more legitimacy for the projects over time, as you just talked about, or also somewhat a reaction of the transformations that also European Union went through and Europe in general as a continent with different geopolitical settings and the end of the Soviet bloc and so on and so forth. So how do you see these factors playing in this sort of dynamic role that Europe plays in the ideological projects of these parties?

Marta Lorimer (11:01)

This has been one of the, the most challenging aspects of writing this, this book to some extent, because of course, the book starts from 1978 and takes us up to today. And in that period, the European Union changes quite a bit. So these parties are not always engaging with the same construction. And I think that this is, this is quite important in, in terms of really seeing how their thinking evolves and also what new opportunities they can take from it. So I don't know that we can fully separate the more strategic thinking about the European Union from the evolution of the EU itself, because there's an extent to which a political party has to deal with a new issue when, when it comes up. And they can think about it strategically, but I think they also have to, particularly these kind of parties which at the time we're talking about initially didn't really have any realistic chances of political success. They have to think about how this makes sense in their overall ideological project. And that is the way that's the lenses through which they're going to be reading the European Union. And that will then also change over time, particularly as the EU evolves. And it's quite striking also how my two parties in a way take very different approaches to this question. Because of course, the, as the EU evolves, the National Rally becomes increasingly Eurosceptic because they feel that it is developing in a direction that doesn't really function with the project of Europe that they were specifically putting forward. This is quite different for the Italian social movement and then the Allianze Nationale after them, because instead they remain quite committed in a way to a process of European integration which they think they can still bring closer to their idea of Europe, which is very much an external looking idea of Europe as a foreign power of sorts. So they are, these parties are really, we're dealing with, with an object in movement. And that is quite visible in the way in which they change their positions. But one striking element of continuity for me, which I think was really, really fascinating, is that the concepts that they draw upon are always the same. They tend to think about the relationship between those core concepts in Europe differently, but they're always thinking about Europe in terms of this identity. For example, in the book, I also talk a lot about the idea of liberty and autonomy, which is another core concept that they draw upon in shaping their vision of Europe. And then I speak also about the notion of an existential threat and of how much the national interest guides their thinking. So that's a really interesting element of, I would say, conceptual continuity almost at the macro level, even as the smaller positions, the more specific positions, for example, on what they think about specific, specific EU policies are evolving.

Camilla Locatelli (14:18)

Yeah, really, really interesting. I mean, maybe it would be interesting to also talk about why choosing these two cases. So why Italy and France? I mean, they're often compared for various reasons, I guess, in European comparative politics. But why specifically these two far right parties? What drove it to this?

Marta Lorimer (14:46)

Yeah, there's a, as with always with research, there's always two reasons. The really practical ones and then the theoretical ones. In terms of the really practical ones, I happen to be Italian and to speak fluent French. So that was really important to me in the context of doing a qualitative study that looked at something over time from a more theoretical perspective. Though I think these are two excellent cases because they allowed me to do this long term investigation, which was something really important to me, this being able to capture the, the time dimension of positions on Europe. So here we're talking about two of the oldest far right parties in the European Union, because the Italian Social Movement was founded in 1946 and the National Rally in 1972. So they enabled me to have this long time span. And theoretically they also captured to some extent the. The far right as a whole. Because when we do research on the far right, usually one of the most popular distinctions is between the far right, the radical right and the extreme right, where the extreme right is a form of the right, that of the far right, that rejects democracy and the democratic system in particular, whereas the radical right agrees to play by the rules of democracy, although not necessarily embracing liberal democracy. And the Italian social movement is an example of the more traditional extreme right because it's a party that never fully solved its relationship with with the Italian democratic system until they transition into the national alliance in between 1994 and 1995. It's a long, drawn out process. Whereas the National Rally never fully rejected the democratic system. It had neo fascists in its midst, it had more extreme actors in it, and still today it it does. But for the most part it accepted to play by the rules of the demographic game and didn't question the notion of democracy as a whole. So that's another reason why these were they they gave me a broader depth of cases to study. So there's the final argument that one can make about these parties is that because they were the first ones, they very much functioned as inspiration for the ones that followed. And also one of them became more legitimate than the other quite quickly. So this is particularly the case for the Italian social movement once it transitioned from being a neo fascist party to a so called post fascist one chronic

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Camilla Locatelli (19:53)

Yeah, thanks. I found the comparison really, really powerful, and I think the reasons that you just explained also make more clear why we should look at these cases. But I must admit that while I was reading at some point I was wondering exactly about this difference that you also somewhat mentioned, that the two countries have also a different past in which far right politics or neo fascist politics in Italy was or at least has a different impact due to the legacy of fascism than Italy might have had on France. And I was wondering if that you think like to what extent, except the one you already mentioned about sort of them rejecting effective democracy or so played a role in how they approached Europe as a way to somehow distance themselves from the more fascist past.

Marta Lorimer (20:58)

I think it's a really interesting question because I do think that the national context really shapes a lot of the way in which they think about Europe and the way in which they think about Europe differently, perhaps not necessarily in its relationship to to democracy itself, but for example, for the Italian social movement, attachment to NATO was a big, big part of their support for the European Union and also a big part of their legitimation strategy when they were trying to, well, to essentially have some kind of weight in Italian politics. And that's, I think, why their relationship to the European Community also comes into it. Because of course we know that those tend to be quite closely linked with one another. But what I think is also really important is that because the Italian social movement was working in the context of a public opinion that was generally significantly more favorable to European integration, this also shaped the extent to which they were willing to embrace the project more openly than, for example, the national rally did from the 90s onwards. For the National Rally, you also see very much a national tradition coming into their way of thinking of Europe, particularly in terms of the idea of France leading Europe and the European Union. But then they, in the 90s, they switch because they are dealing with quite a different kind of public opinion. So they can be a bit more strategic in terms of how they are opposing it. Again, they're doing this by saying, we love the Europe, we love Europe. It's the EU that we have a problem with. But that probably explains a bit more the shift in a different direction in terms of how they're placing themselves towards the eu.

Camilla Locatelli (22:52)

Yeah, really, really interesting and I think a very important lesson for scholars looking at EU integration and our domestic context sort of influence the way also different parties think about this kind of problems and issues. And I guess the question that I think it's mostly burning on my tongue in this moment is how do you think this has changed since you finished the book? I was rereading the conclusions of the book while preparing and I think you mentioned that you finish the research for the book around 2019. And from that some of the, the destiny of some of these parties have changed quite dramatically. I mean, in Italy, one of these parties now in government and seem to be very successful in maintaining sort of popular support. But also they have shifted also their positions about Europe, about NATO, about many, many of these issues. And yeah, how does that fit in a way in your story or what did you see the challenges of the present to the story that you try to tell?

Marta Lorimer (24:21)

I think that the good thing about telling a long durated type of story, where I'm looking at sort of a longer time period, is that it insulated me a lot from those considerations throughout, particularly while I was writing the PhD and the first few stages of the book. But of course I did have to deal with the implications of, well, of the rise of brothers of Italy in particular in Italy around the end and think about, okay, first of all, is Europe still this kind of ideological resource that political parties can appeal to, to try and legitimize themselves? And are there any other issues that they could use in a similar way? And in the conclusion, I argue that the way it, that Europe can still function as this legitimizing device for these parties and the fact that we still see them use a lot of the same language again, not just in Italy and France, but also beyond, really suggests that they're still using Europe to project a certain image of themselves as to some extent in nationally inclined but internationally minded as well, actors as proponents of freedom, and particularly in the form of sovereignty and defending sovereignty, and also still speaking a lot about how Europeans need to unite in front of foreign threats. So I think a lot of the language that they use is still very much the same, which means that the theoretical mechanisms that I. That I identify in the book for legitimation are still at play. And Melony has been in many ways a really striking example of this, and particularly of how she has used her behavior on the European scene to legitimize her own politics. Because when she came to power in 2022, there was a lot of international concern about what she was going to do, particularly with her relationship in the European Union. And she has demonstrated that she was not going to be rocking the boat in the eu, but that she was going to be basically sticking to the commitments of her predecessors, albeit saying that she understands or bans reasons for doing things. What I think has really changed, and this is perhaps even more striking now, is that the far right doesn't have to do a lot of work to legitimize itself, because others are doing its work for it. We're really seeing this right now in the eu, particularly if you look at the latest bits of policies on migration that the European Parliament has passed, where we've seen the, you know, the. The center right working very openly with the. With the various far right groupings to get legislation through. And this is something that was unthinkable until a few decades ago. You just would not have collaborated openly with the far right. There was a cordon sanitaire, and we're just. That cordon sanitaire is now gone. It's all but gone. So I think that in many ways the book is tracing what the far right can do or what the far right has done to legitimize itself. It's not looking at how the mainstream has been complicit in a lot of these activities. But I think that that is really one of the bigger questions and one of the bigger challenges that we are going to face going forward. Because the far right doesn't just become successful by itself. It becomes successful because there are others that are enabling it in various ways.

Camilla Locatelli (28:14)

Yeah, this kind of interesting point to think about, maybe not the most reassuring, but I was also trying to think about whether maybe also in the last years, the emergence of defense as a new sort of policy priority at the EU level have also somehow helped in strengthening the relationship between Europe and the far right, as defense being maybe one of the more sector, maybe closer to the far right's interest and ideological projects and the whole sort of militarization plays into sort of this nationalist characters and don'ts. And how do you see that as having maybe impacted or being a new dimension added to the relationship of Europe and the far right?

Marta Lorimer (29:12)

What I think is interesting is that it's absolutely not a new one. One of the aspects that I do look into in the book is really how much the national rally and the Italian social movement insisted on the importance of having a European defense. So they were, particularly in the 1980s, they had a very strong sense that Europe was declining as a continent and that it was deeply endangered by the Soviet Union in particular. And this is why they thought that the European Union shouldn't just be a market, which is really one of the main critiques that they moved against it, but that it should have some form of common defense and a common foreign policy that would enable it to retrieve some of its influence on the international stage. What I think is different right now is that of course far right parties might find some kind of interest in collaborating on U defense, but they are dealing with a fairly different European Union again. So in the 1980s, when these parties were making these grand speeches about the importance of a European defense, the European Union was still not necessarily a project and it was a project in the making, which it still is today. But it was perhaps a little bit less fixed. And the trans. The supranational institutions were, I would argue, less prominent than they are today. Which I think is why some far right parties today are still willing to say, yes, let's have more European coordination in terms of defense. Let's get some money from the European Union for these things. But at the same time, they would be quite reluctant, I suspect, to go much further in terms of their engagement because they realize that this is really the way it would work would really lead them to give up a lot of their sort of core state powers to use the expression of Genshin books.

Camilla Locatelli (31:21)

Yeah, yeah. It's true that this is a dimension that it's present in the book and you talk about how that affected the past and it's really interesting to see how many parallels there are with today. Maybe just another point that I have been wondering while reading the book is what are sort of the challenges that you came across on studying these parties in particular and their ideological basis. I guess your research is mostly based on document analysis as far as I understand. But I guess you've been also probably in contact with some of these members and how do they see academic interest towards Them and their ideological evolution. And how was your impression of this relationship between our academic narrative of these parties and how they perceive our interest in them?

Marta Lorimer (32:18)

I thought this was a really interesting dimension. I suppose I had to make the decision quite early on that I was going to rely primarily on archive rather than on interviews. And this is for extremely practical reason that a lot of the people that would have been involved in the Italian social movement in particular are just no longer with us. So that kind of oriented me immediately towards archives. I did find that the few people from these parties that I contacted were actually quite, quite willing to speak about the history of their parties. Very open minded about talking about the past. And I think to some extent this might have been. This had something to do with the fact that I spoke to people who were formerly in the parties for the most part. I did also speak to a few sort of, more sort of contemporary members, particularly for the National Rally. And those. They were a little bit harder to talk to to some extent, mostly due to timing because I tried to schedule interviews at the time of the, of the elections in 2017. So if there's one thing you should probably know about political parties is that when there is an election coming up, they will not want to talk to a researcher for an hour. They will be much happier speaking to a journalist. And so I think that there was this very practical, practical aspect to it. But one thing that I noticed was that they, apart from the sort of the time issue, they were actually again, quite interested in talking about themselves and talking about their ideas specifically, because I think that's not necessarily something that they always get asked a lot about. So I found them, the few people that I spoke to, to be quite open about things. I also found the, the people at the archive at the Fondazione Ugo Spirito in Italy, which holds a lot of the material that I used for the Italian social movement to be actually sort of quite interested in the fact that someone was using this information study, specifically a European question. And we know from other. I know also from other researchers that the far right, which used to be really, really difficult to approach, they really did not like to speak to academics, is becoming increasingly open to do so. And again, partially because they realize that this is another channel through which they can kind of signal a level of legitimacy by saying, well, look, of course we'll speak to academics and they will see that we're not actually Nazis, which is sometimes the critique that will be moved against them.

Camilla Locatelli (35:12)

Yeah, really interesting. I mean, also for our listeners, they might want to do research on this topic. It's good to know that they are more willing to talk than in the past. Yeah, maybe one last question before we close, which is a bit unfair because it's about something you have not written about, but maybe if you were to write a similar book now or do similar research on another of the far right parties in Europe, which one would you choose and why? What is the other case that you think would help us understand the relationship between the far right and Europe and how that impacts more or less EU integration?

Marta Lorimer (36:04)

I think one of my greatest regrets at this stage in my life is that at the beginning of my undergrad I had the choice between studying Polish, Czech or Hungarian. And I picked Czech rather than Hungarian because I think to me the, the one, the one party I really would like to be able to study is Feliz and particularly Viktor Orban because I think it's just such a. It's just such a prominent case in Europe today. It's an. It's a really fascinating case over the time dimension as well. And I think it's always. I realize I'm guilty of this as well, but I think it's always a pity that we tend to give Central and Eastern European countries a little bit less attention than we do to Western European countries. And in my case it's by and large because I believe my Czech isn't really at the level of my French and my Italian to be able to study the Czech far right in the same way. But it would really add this important comparative aspect and, and really help us understand how Orban is in many ways shaping the way in which these parties think about Europe today. Yeah, great.

Camilla Locatelli (37:20)

Well, we hope that you find some Hungarian co author in order to do this work or something like this. I guess that's it for today. Thank you very much, Marta. It was such a pleasant conversation and yeah, I recommend all the listeners to take a look at the book. I think it's a very important reading in European politics and you should not miss it. Thank you very much. Thank you.