The “Little Black Shirts” of
the Fratelli Youth

(Above) The summer camps (above, at Lago di Garda in July 2023) of the Fratelli d'Italia's Gioventù Nazionale and Azione Studentesca youth groups imitate the agoge of Sparta in ancient Greece, paramilitary training camps to prepare warriors for combat,  now with fascist indoctrination and physical tests of strength. (Below) Beating at Liceo Michelangiolo in Florence on 8 February 2023 when two young leftists were ambushed by an Azione Stutentesca squad.   (Above: La Repubblica)

This article is translated from L'internazionalista No. 8, May 2025.

The Fratelli d’Italia youth of Gioventù Nazionale has a national membership estimated at some 50,000 (8,000 in Rome), while its high school group, Azione Studentesca, reportedly has upwards of 50 groups across Italy. Every year they hold “training camps” they call agoge, after the ἀγωγή camps of Sparta in ancient Greece, dedicated to training warriors for the Spartan armies. The GN/AS version emphasizes “discipline, obedience, loyalty to the group, exercises and tests of strength,” along with indoctrination of the “baby patrioti of the Melonian right” (as journalist Paolo Berizzi calls them) in identitarian politics by the most virulent Fd’I spokesmen.¹

The Fd’I’s junior-league black shirts decorate their camp with portraits of leading fascists and pro-fascists including Gabriele D’Anunzio, Italo Balbo (one of the quadrumvirate that led the March on Rome), Julius Evola (a photo of Mussolini would be too provocative); there are books on White Guilt: Racism Against White People in the Age of Multiethnic Society; music from top bands of the Italian fascist rock scene. This is not some tiny Nazi sect but a gathering of several hundred members of the high school and university youth organizations of the fascist leading party of the right-wing coalition government of an imperialist power.

“We train hard here, not like those wimps on the left who get stoned and play African drums,” says one. And they don’t just train. On 18 February 2023 in front of the Liceo Michelangelo, a leading secondary school, in Florence, two members of a leftist student group were arguing with a couple of members of Azione Studentesca who were postering near the front door of the school. Suddenly a squad of half a dozen A.S. members, including several adults, fell on the leftist students, kicking and punching them on the ground. This came a few days after A.S. members threatened students at another local school, the Instituto Pascoli.

Pisa, February 23, 2024: Police in riot gear bludgeon demonstrators to prevent them from reaching the assembly point of a protest against the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

There have been other reported incidents of attacks by youth of the Fd’I. But if we don’t see bands of black-shirted squadristi roaming the streets, it’s because now that Fratelli are the government they can look to the official organs of state repression. So on 23 and 24 February 2024, as rank-and-file unions called strikes in solidarity with the people of Gaza under genocidal attack, cops in riot gear brutally beat defenseless protesters with truncheons in Pisa, while in Florence police, blocked a march, again beating protesters. Meloni’s response was to denounce the pro-Palestinian demonstrators and to “thank the forces of order for their precious work.”

Trade union activists from SI Cobas, CALP (Autonomous Collective of Port Workers)
and other “rank-and-file” unions block the port of Genova on 23-24 February 2024, preventing the
loading/unloading of an Israeli ship on the Zim line.   (Photo: SI Cobas)

So castor oil may be passé, but the times of police carrying out orders of fascist authorities by beating demonstrators with batons are hardly long gone. This underlines a point made by Leon Trotsky on the nature of fascism: while initially based on bands of shock troops, “[h]aving arrived in power, the fascist chiefs are forced to muzzle the masses who follow them by means of the state apparatus,” which it uses with even more fury against the opposition. Trotsky distinguished “bonapartism” – a transitional “government which raises itself above the nation,” basing itself on the police/military apparatus – from a fascist dictatorship. And he added that, once it holds the reins of power, “fascism is regenerated into Bonapartism.”²

Meanwhile, the fascists are busily embedding themselves in the state apparatus. There are by now countless numbers of junior ministers, state secretaries and others in the decision-making echelon of the bureaucracy who are graduates of the MSI/AN/Fd’I youth. And the youth themselves also are going on the government payroll. A FanPage video last year showed a rising star of the Gioventù Nazionale telling GN members that they will soon have a new source of income, as the state will pay 500 € a month for youths enrolling as “volunteers” in the civilian service program, for which they have to do nothing.³

After the Fanpage video came out, the youth leader was told to resign, as she had said too much. But the footage also shows a band concert at the GN offices in Colle Oppio – the most “identitarian” sector of Fratelli and home base of Meloni and her team – with youth singing “we are Mussolini’s legionaires,” shouting “Sieg heil!” and “Duce,” grooving on throwing fascist salutes. And there is a shot where “the guys” complain that they are not supposed to beat people up now. Multiple videos of the Fd’I youth from the inside leave no doubt: these are militants of an ideologically fascist movement.  ■

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