‘If I see a black dot, I shoot it on sight!’: Italian rap between anti- and neo-fascisms

Abstract

This article explores the connections between anti-fascism and hip hop in Italy between the 1990s and today. In the first part, I look at how several bands affiliated with the posse movement of the early 1990s relied on the network of students and of young people hanging out in the centri sociali (squatted centres) to spread their political messages. Picking up the baton from the militant singer-songwriters of the 1970s, Italian posses often mixed rap with other foreign musical influences such as reggae and punk, frequently rapping about the lack of anti-fascist activism among the youth and denouncing the gradual abandonment of anti-fascist ideals by members of the parliamentary Left. In the second part of the article, I discuss how, in the late 2000s, a new generation of anti-fascist hip hop artists emerged, with rappers such as Kento and Murubutu being among the most influential representatives of a subgenre known as ‘letteraturap’ (literature-rap). Kento and Murubutu’s narrative skills show their opposition to Fascism through the use of fictional characters, using short stories that are rich of metaphors to illustrate the importance of resisting to contemporary forms of fascism. Lastly, this article explores the gradual appropriation of hip hop culture by neo-fascist groups such as CasaPound. Understanding hip hop’s potentialities to recruit large numbers of young people, CasaPound organized street art conventions on graffiti, and promoted the emergence of hip hop crews like Rome’s Drittarcore. I conclude the article by analysing the efficacy of anti-fascist rap in earlier decades and considering CasaPound’s attempt to appropriate some of hip hop culture’s disciplines, ultimately showing not only a general crisis in political ideologies and cultural values, but also the power of neo-fascist movements to manipulate and reinvent subcultural formations to influence the youth.