At the start of 2026, a meme dubbed the 'nihilist penguin' went viral. But populist media pages and extreme-right accounts soon began using edits of the meme to spread nationalist and exclusionary content. Federico Taddei argues that when the alt-right exploits them, even seemingly apolitical social media trends can carry serious political implications
On 6 September 2025, the Italian extreme right sealed a new pact. At a national congress, CasaPound Italia, Patriots’ Network (a Forza Nuova splinter), Veneto Skinhead Front, and Brescia to Bresciani launched the committee they call Remigration and Reconquest. Federico Taddei argues its launch could mark a turning point in Italy’s extreme-right galaxy
Linguistic precision matters, but the term 'hard right' isn’t the real threat to clarity. Federico Taddei argues that the real problem lies in how journalists and scholars misuse or oversimplify the categories political science has worked long and hard to define
PhD Candidate in Political Studies, Network for the Advancement of Social and Political Studies (NASP) Graduate School, Università degli Studi di Milano
Federico currently serves as the PhD Students’ Representative for the PhD in Political Studies in the Doctoral Students’ Council at the University of Milan.
He investigates how radical and extreme-right actors operate within democratic systems, the structural conditions that facilitate or constrain their success, and the institutional responses to their presence in the political arena (drawing on theoretical frameworks, as well as quantitative and computational methods).
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