Radical Catholics Going Political: Thinking the Becoming of the Italian Anti-Gender Movement

Since the first conference on “anti-gender” mobilizations organized at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2014, followed by a large number of publications in English and French, the anti-gender phenomenon has undoubtedly become a new topic for political science and especially for the sociology of social movements. However, the trajectory of anti-gender movements and their political and media successes calls for a rethinking of the forms and contents of such mobilizations, on the one hand, to integrate the central role they have played in specific electoral contexts and, on the other hand, to redefine the project that these movements are carrying out linked to neopopulist and neonationalist right and far rights forces. This paper aims at thinking, firstly, the nationalist and populist complex alliances drawing on the Italian case and, secondly, the participation of the anti-gender movements in the electoral campaign and in the context of the post-legislative elections of March 4, 2018. The analysis of the discourses of the leaders, such as Massimo Gandolfini, among others, will lead to a better understanding of how, from the debate centered around the concept of gender and summarized in the fight against "the ideology of gender", what one can see is the emergence of a new (or renewed) Catholic project that has its roots in the genealogy of Italian Catholic action and feeds on nationalist and populist alliances to implement what I propose to call a neocatholic political project. The paper seeks also to question the categories mobilized to qualify the “anti-gender” activism (conservative, neoconservative, or traditionalist catholicism) and to think the “after” of the anti-gender mobilizations, a context that goes beyond the foundation of the movement to enter in the political field and play a role of Catholic mediation between the right and far right parties and the neo-catholic people.