Ideologies and narratives of Italian foreign fighters in the Russian-Ukrainian war

Abstract

ABSTRACT The phenomenon of Italian foreign fighters who currently fight in the Russia-Ukraine conflict presents elements of high ideological complexity. The presence of different groups of highly ideologized far-right fighters fighting on opposite sides of the front emerges. Foreign fighters of the extreme right shoot each other at the front and some of them have as comrades foreign fighters of the extreme left. The main sources of this research are texts published in social media by foreign fighters and have been collected through online ethnography. The analysis of the collected texts is conducted with a qualitative thematic analysis with an inductive method. Particular attention has been paid to the phenomenon of Red-Brownism also called ‘Brown-Red cocktail’ that in the context of the Ukrainian conflict seems to cast doubt on whether the extreme right and the extreme left should always be considered opposing extremisms.