A case is brewing that may spell the end for one of Italy’s most prominent and dangerous fascist organizations. On February 13, 12 members of CasaPound, or CPItalia, were found guilty of attempting to reconstitute the banned Italian “Fascist Party.”
An organization whose members have been connected to numerous instances of violence, CasaPound is a collective of far-right activists who have been networking with eminent white supremacists around Europe and North America, appearing alongside neo-Nazi groups like the US-based Patriot Front and the pan-Scandinavian Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) while engaging in activism and far-right political advocacy at home. CasaPound has positioned itself as a leading ambassador of contemporary Italian fascism within broader European far-right networks.
Read our report on far-right and fascist groups in Italy.
Seventeen members of CasaPound were charged under Italy’s 1952 Scelba law, named after the minister who proposed it, which defines and criminalizes “reorganization” of the Fascist Party as any association, movement, or group with at least five members that pursues the same anti-democratic policies as the Fascist Party, glorifies its leadership, or carries out external manifestations of a fascist nature.
Of the CasaPound defendants, five were sentenced to 18 months in prison, exclusively on reorganization charges. Seven others received two years and six months for an additional conviction relating to their role in a separate assault in Bari against anti-fascist demonstrators in September 2018. Five additional defendants were acquitted on the reorganization charges.
The court cited violations of Articles 1 and 5 of Scelba, which prohibits the reorganization of the dissolved Fascist Party and bans fascist demonstrations.
The perpetrators’ defense attorneys said they intend to appeal the ruling.
CasaPound has long openly embraced fascist ideology and symbolism. There have been calls for its dissolution before, but this is the first time Italian courts have recognized CasaPound as a fascist organization.
Fascist Ambassadors
CasaPound’s leadership and spokespeople have embarked on a years-long campaign to proselytize for their movement on the national and international stage. As such, their media appearances and outreach are extensive. CasaPound members are often guests at far-right international conferences, appear on sympathetic live streams and podcasts, create original content for social media, and stage protests and activism in Italy and abroad.
Conferences
In one recent appearance, in January 2026, a member of CasaPound’s national board, Alberto Palladino, spoke at an event for the far-right German political party “Der Dritte Weg” (The Third Way), also written Der III.Weg.
A neo-Nazi political party, Der Dritte Weg was founded in 2013, and as of 2023, has about 700 members. “The Third Way” is characterized by its willingness to engage in violence and incite others to violence, often targeting refugees as a perceived enemy. As early as 2015, the party publicly advertised locations of asylum shelters, fueling protests and violence against refugees. The party’s actions include participating in citizens’ meetings, distributing inflammatory materials, and organizing protests against refugee homes.
In 2023, a Munich High Court sentenced the party’s deputy national chairman for incitement and death threats to a fine of 8,400 euros. The subject of the proceedings was a 2021 campaign the party had in Bavaria and Saxony that featured campaign posters with the slogan “Hang The Greens!”
CasaPound representative Alberto Palladino at the February 2026 Pen and Sword Winter Seminar held by Der Dritte Weg. (Source: Der Dritte Weg).
During the February 2026 “Pen and Sword Winter Seminar,” organized by Der Dritte Weg, Palladino gave a talk titled “The Fascists of the 21st Century – CasaPound as a Movement” to a gathered crowd of nationalists. The conference also featured a video-call speech from Thomas Rousseau, leader of Patriot Front, a white supremacist U.S. group that has engaged in extremely visible protests in major cities like Boston and Washington, D.C. In past seminars, Der Dritte Weg has posted the videos of some of the speakers onto its website, though this is not the case by the time of publishing.
Similarly, in 2024, a CasaPound representative gave a video lecture at the annual American Renaissance (AmRen) conference. American Renaissance is one of the longest-standing white supremacist groups in the U.S., and its head, Jared Taylor, a Yale graduate, has been active within the far right for decades. Through its publication and conference of the same name, AmRen has been bringing the American and international far right together to discuss strategy and politics.
Appearing at AmRen for CasaPound was Guido Taietti, a man with a history of political violence. Taietti was sentenced in 2019 to more than seven years in prison for a brutal attack on a man, alongside fellow CasaPound adherents (the sentence was later reduced to two years and six months on appeal). The attack itself, which happened in 2015, involved beating an anti-fascist activist with a bar and kicking him several times in the head. The victim suffered serious head trauma, multiple fractures, and bilateral lung contusions.
From left to right: Former Estonian MP Ruuben Kaalep, Scandza Forum founder Fróði Midjord, Danish psychologist Helmuth Nyborg, CasaPound member Guido Taietti, and Edward Dutton during a Scandza Forum event held in 2023 in Estonia. (Source: Odysee).
Taietti also attended an invite-only talk held by the white supremacist Scandza Forum, which sought to bring together the international far right at annual conferences, in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2023. Taietti appeared alongside F. Roger Devlin, a U.S.-based writer associated with the white nationalist Occidental Quarterly. Devlin is a pen name used by Christopher Moore, a former academic whose written work advocates for rolling back women’s rights and a return to “traditional” gender roles. He blames feminism for declining white birthrates in Western countries.
Others on the panel included Fróði Midjord, founder of the Scandza Forum; former far-right Estonian MP Ruuben Kaalep; prolific “race scientist” Edward Dutton; and more.
Streams, Podcasts, and Original Content
Besides conference appearances, CasaPound has a robust media arm that it uses to spread its message. Its outlets include an online radio program Radio Bandiera Nera; a news magazine, Il Primato Nazionale; and a publishing house, Altaforte. The group also releases short-form content and clips of its members at rallies and public events via the social media platform Telegram.
There are at least six CasaPound channels still active on Telegram, with many divided by region. The largest official national channel has over 11,000 subscribers. The channel has posted and shared thousands of videos pushing CasaPound’s political message as well as hundreds of videos since the channel was started in 2018.
Members also frequently appear on podcasts with figures from the international far right, including in 2025 when Taietti gave an audio interview with Counter-Currents editor-in-chief Greg Johnson. Counter-Currents is a publishing clearinghouse that attempts to provide an academic justification for white nationalism and supremacy.
During the interview, Taietti accused young people who support immigration of being “brainwashed” and explained his aspirations for “remigration,” a concept where all people of foreign origin would be removed from countries in Europe. Initially popularized by Austrian white supremacist Martin Sellner—who also spoke via video call at the 2024 AmRen conference—remigration is a rebranding of ethnic cleansing and a call for state policies that would force the deportation en masse of people of non-European or non-Christian descent. It is a key concept of European Identitarian groups who fear a “Great Replacement.” The term has exploded in popularity as it has been embraced by the political far right, including in the United States, where the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy mirrors the concept.
Despite an alignment against immigration, CasaPound sometimes positions itself against Trump, referring to America as an “imperialist” in January 2026 after the U.S. military arrested former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. In 2020, a promotion for an issue of CasaPound’s print publication, Primato Nazionale, argued Trump was the better choice for Italian nationalists.
“It’s certainly far from our ideal scenario, but if we really must choose between the two contenders, Republican America seems decidedly better than Democratic America,” an October 4, 2020, Telegram post said.
Activism, Elections, and Violence
A screen capture from a January 2022 video showing a series of multi- city protests by CasaPound throughout Italy. Pictured is Luca Marsella, a senior member and spokesman of CasaPound. (Source: YouTube).
Founded in 2003 as a social movement in Rome, Italy, CasaPound was initially built around squatting and reclaiming land in urban centers. The creation of CasaPound can be traced back to founder and leader Gianluca Iannone’s neo-fascist, punk-rock band, ZetaZeroAlfa, and their illegal occupation of a vacant government building in Rome in 2003, from which they were finally evicted in January 2019. CasaPound has typically focused on issues like housing and affordability as a means to spread and advance its fascist ideology.
Its name is derived from the words “casa,” meaning “house,” and “Pound,” after the American poet Ezra Pound, an unrepentant fascist and antisemite who collaborated with Italy during World War II. The group’s previous leader, Simone di Stefano, resigned in 2022 to form the anti-vaccination political party eXit.
The group also has a student movement, the “Blocco Studentesco” (Student Block), which was formed by CasaPound members in 2006, and continues to be present in student politics to the present day. Their flag consists of a black-and-white version of the Flash and Circle flag, symbolizing collective action.
CasaPound originally attempted to join the Fiamma Tricolore party, which is a successor to the Italian Socialist Movement (MSI), but was expelled after occupying Fiamma’s head offices in 2008. This established CasaPound’s trajectory into politics, beginning in 2011 and reorganizing in 2013, when they ran in a number of local and national elections with little success.
After a decade of unsuccessful political campaigning, Iannone announced in 2019 that CasaPound would stop standing in elections but remain a political movement.
While supportive of Italy’s fascist past, CasaPound self-identifies as “third millennium fascist” or what is more typically referred to as Third Positionist organization. Groups of this type reject aspects of both capitalism and communism, with CasaPound offering fascism as an alternative “third” way.
CasaPound is clear in its support of racist and neo-fascist beliefs, and despite their attempts to publicly present themselves as a legitimate organization doing acts of community service and charity work, they are open about their hateful beliefs and support for the late Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
“It’s our point of reference, a vision of the state and the economy and the concept of sacrifice,” former club vice-president Simone di Stefano said of Mussolini in 2011.
On the social media platform X (then Twitter), when advertising a nationalist rally, they posted “sangue e suolo,” which is Italian for the Nazi slogan “Blood and Soil.” Iannone’s band previously used another fascist slogan in their song titled “nel dubbio mena” (“when in doubt, punch”). Consistent with their support of fascism, CasaPound expressed full support for the positions of the far-right Lega party leader Matteo Salvini and had Andrea Bonazza, a municipal councilor and member of CasaPound, declare his open support for fascism in 2015, saying “I’m a fascist, why not? There is nothing wrong with that.”
In July 2021, CasaPound paid homage to the X MAS division, an Italian Navy regiment during World War II that was accused of war crimes and whose leader, Junio Valerio Borghese, attempted a fascist coup in Italy in 1970.
CasaPound’s publishing house, Altaforte, owned by Francesco Polacchi, has connections with other neo-fascist publishing houses like Casaggì Passaggio al bosco and AGA Edizioni, the latter of which is owned by former convicted fascist terrorist Maurizio Murelli, a figure strongly connected to Putin’s ally and far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin. Altaforte’s alignment with fascism has landed them in trouble on numerous occasions, as publishing houses have forced them to pull out of events due to their hateful beliefs. For example, Altaforte was expelled from the nationally-renowned Turin Book Fair in May 2019 after a Holocaust survivor, who was scheduled to speak at the fair, protested Altafore’s presence.
CasaPound’s official X account has posted anti-immigration rhetoric such as “Defend Borders,” which is a slogan they used to support a campaign targeting Algerian migrants. The same account was suspended in March 2023 for incitement of hatred.
On their official YouTube channel, CasaPound publishes videos that demonstrate their stance “against illegal immigration,” goals of defending their “sacred borders,” and opposition to Italy’s proposed “ius soli” law, which would have guaranteed birthright citizenship. As of 2026, the group’s YouTube channel has over 19,000 subscribers and features videos of CasaPound’s street protests and lectures given by its members.
On May 17, 2023, CasaPound’s official Telegram channel posted anti-immigrant banners saying “Rapes and violence known origin” and “Rapes and immigration only regression” referencing their false belief that immigrants are violent rapists. Accompanying these banners was a statement saying that Rome is “oppressed by the excessive presence of immigrants” who are “endangering all citizens, who are no longer free and safe even to go home in the evening.”
CasaPound has posted anti-LGBTQ+ messages on both their YouTube and Telegram channels. On YouTube, they published a video protesting the projection of rainbows in the main square of Syracuse. In November 2022, they uploaded a poster on Telegram saying “women are just supermarkets for kids for the LGBTQ world” to protest a gender studies meeting at the University of Trento. On May 5, 2023, Casapound advertised an event run by Blocco Studentesco on their Telegram channel to discuss “LGBT rights and transfeminism that hates women.”
Image of CasaPound activists during a February 2026 protest commemorating the death of Quentin Deranque. (Source: Telegram).
In February 2026, CasaPound began to take part in street protests related to the death of nationalist activist Quentin Deranque after a confrontation with antifascist protesters in France on February 12. Deranque’s killing has inflamed and mobilized the European far right, leading to similar protests throughout Europe.
Ultra Violence
CasaPound’s extremist beliefs manifest in outright hate and acts of violence. In 2019, the Bolzano hockey club wanted to pursue charges against former CasaPound member Andrea Bonazza for comparing the club’s foundation in 1933 with Hitler’s rise to power. In April 2019, Francesco Chiricozzi, a CasaPound city councilor candidate of a minor town, was arrested for taking part in a gang rape in a CasaPound-affiliated pub in the province of Viterbo.
In response, Iannone announced that Chiricozzi was expelled from the party and would resign as councilor. Chiricozzi was subsequently sentenced in 2021 to three years in prison for his crime. One month later, former CasaPound leader Mauro Antonini led a mob in a Roman neighborhood to protest the assignment of popular housing to people with a Romani background, which led to verbal confrontations with teenagers. While dozens performed fascist salutes, the crowd chanted “those b*stards must burn” and “they must die of hunger.” In May 2019, a Romani family had to have escorts in and out of their residence because a mob led by CasaPound screamed rape and murder threats at them.
In December 2022, 13 CasaPound members were banned from all sporting events for a brutal assault on Moroccan fans in Verona celebrating their country’s achievements in the 2022 World Cup. Just one month later, swastikas, fasces, and racist slogans appeared in Bolzano.
The graffiti was signed by Bolzano hockey hooligans. This hooligan group features among its members Andrea Bonazza, a local CasaPound leader and a former member of the Bolzano city council. He is known for having shown appreciation for Hitler and Mussolini on a radio show after his election. Bonazza also presented himself at the Bolzano city council wearing a shirt depicting the Charlemagne division of the Waffen SS, a French Nazi volunteer corps known for being the last to defend Hitler’s bunker toward the end of World War II.
In 2024, a court charged four members of CasaPound for allegedly assaulting Italian journalist Andrea Joly outside a Turin bar associated with the club. Joly was filming a party held by the group on his cell phone when he reports being confronted and beaten by the men. Among the CasaPound members arrested was Igor Bosonin, a former mayoral candidate in Turin.
Political Involvement
Despite no longer running candidates for office, CasaPound remains active in Italy’s politics, strongly allying with Matteo Salvini’s far-right Lega Party. In the 2014 European parliamentary elections, the group helped to elect Lega candidate Mario Borghezio. In 2015, CasaPound and Lega combined forces to hold a protest against the government, attended by Salvini. In fact, Salvini’s support for CasaPound can also be seen when he published photos of himself wearing Pivert clothing, which is CasaPound’s clothing brand. Support is often reciprocated by CasaPound, as Altaforte published a book-interview with Salvini.
CasaPound members were listed as Lega candidates in both the 2021 Rome municipal elections and the 2023 Lazio regional elections.
Inside Italy, CasaPound maintains relationships with political parties such as Italexit, a eurosceptic party founded by Gianluigi Paragone, who was expelled from M5S for voting against party interests in January 2020. The online newspaper Fanpage claims the bridge between the two parties was formed by Fiumicino Senator and Lega member William De Vecchis. In Italexit’s electoral lists, a number of individuals associated with CasaPound can be found, including Carlotta Chiaraluce and Massimo Cristiano. During a local election run-off in Lucca in June 2022, the center-right coalition allied with CasaPound, leading to Democratic Party member and former Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini decrying the alliance as “coming to terms with the ‘fascists of the new millennium’” and a “disturbing choice.” Following the election, which the center-right won, Fabio Barsanti, a former CasaPound city councilor, became secretary of sport in the Lucca City Council. Some ramifications of this election included the city of Lucca endorsing a CasaPound event and, in December 2022, removing the requirement to proclaim oneself as anti-fascist in order to secure public spaces and funds for events.
In the May 2023 municipal election, CasaPound supported a candidate together with mainstream right-wing parties. A politician from the list was asked to make the Nazi salute to show his allegiance, which he promptly did at a rally.
In 2025, a former CasaPound mayoral candidate, Maurizio Puglisi Ghizzi, ran for city council (consigliere comunale) in Bolzano in May 2025 under the center-right party “Lega Corrarati Sindaco.”
Moving Forward
The convictions in Bari for attempting to revive the Fascist Party represent a potential turning point in the treatment of CasaPound by Italian courts. There has long been resistance to officially banning the group, though there have been multiple calls for its dissolution before. The finding of the court that CasaPound is attempting to organize a fascist party and legal recognition that the group is fascist represents a potential threat to the group’s continued advocacy and established reputation among the far right.
Outside of Italy, numerous countries are grappling with how to deal with far-right and anti-democratic movements that operate within democratic systems. In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has ascended in the country’s eastern states and become the second-largest political party in the country. In France, the far-right National Assembly is expected to take the presidency in the upcoming 2027 election. The anti-immigration Reform Party is maintaining a lead in polling in the United Kingdom. And in the United States, the second year of the Trump Presidency continues to see unabated attacks against American democratic norms and protections.
There remain 90 days for the court to deliver its written decision on CasaPound’s attempts at reorganizing fascism in Italy, and an appeal process that the group has already indicated it will be engaging with. In the event the group is dissolved, there is little reason to think that its members will turn away from far-right activism and politics. Even if the group is dissolved, the networks of connections and influence established over two decades of action will withstand many attempts at dismantling.
CasaPound has built a reputation through its various chapters as a violent local organization, but through its international outreach, it has grown into something much more. These transnational connections have further solidified its role as the torchbearer of fascism in the country where the ideology first arose.
