[13][14] On that occasion a small minority, led by Pino Rauti, disagreed with the new course and formed Social Movement Tricolour Flame (MSFT) instead.

[22] It also drew from elements of the anti-communist and anti-establishment stance of the short-lived postwar populist Common Man's Front protest party, and many of its original backers would find a home in the MSI after its dissolution in 1949.

[25][26][27] Due to the anti-fascist consensus embodied by the post-war Constitution of Italy and agreements with the Allied forces, advocating a return to fascism had to be done discreetly.

[25][18] Although the MSI adapted itself into the constraints of the democratic environment, its manifest ideology was clearly antagonistic and antithetical to liberal democracy,[27] and it was consequently excluded from the Constitutional Arch, the circles of parties that had taken part in the drafting and approval of the Italian Constitution and which persisted as a loose coalition on certain policymaking issues, and from the parties deemed legitimate to govern.

[18] The MSI won financial support from wealthy businessmen and landowners who feared a possible communist regime seizing power in Italy,[25] either coming from a domestic revolution or a takeover by Soviet forces.

[28] But the MSI soon witnessed growing internal conflicts between conservatives, who sought involvement in NATO and political alliances with Monarchists and Christian Democrats, and hardliners who wanted the party to turn into anti-American and anti-establishment platform.

[33][18] Disgruntled by the MSI's focus on parliamentarism and their attempts to establish an image of democratic respectability, the radicals broke out to create several splinter groups.

Already in the late 1940s, the Christian Democrats, somewhat reluctantly, had discreetly accepted support from the MSI to keep the Italian Communist Party (PCI) out of the Roman city council.

[35] As concerns grew over the party's expanding role in Italian politics, riots became commonplace between neo-fascist supporters and radical leftists.

[25][31] Learning that the National Congress of the MSI was about to be held in Genoa in July 1960 to celebrate the accomplishment of the inserimento strategy, militant anti-fascist protests erupted on 30 June in the city.

[35][36] Following the victory of a centre-left government in 1963, the Christian Democrats no longer needed the parliamentary support of the MSI, and the party was definitively forced back into the "political ghetto".

[38] He introduced a double strategy of hard anti-systemic discourse combined with the creation of a broader "National Right" (Destra Nazionale) coalition in 1972.

[29] Contesting the 1972 Italian general election in a joint list with Monarchists,[29] the MSI almost doubled its support up to 8.7% of the votes, its highest score ever until 1994.

[18] However, the MSI supported acts of political violence committed by young activists and the revolts in the Mezzogiorno; the party was also in contact with some sectors of terrorismo nero ("black terrorism"), involved in right-wing domestic terrorist attacks during the Years of lead.

[29] Frustrated in their aspiration to turn the MSI in a mainstream conservative party, moderates formed the short-lived National Democracy in 1976, accusing Almirate of maintaining contacts with right-wing terrorism and of being unable to follow a concrete parliamentary strategy.

[39] During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a second wave of right-wing terrorism in Italy led to political radicalisation among some MSI members, and a part of them left the party to form new splinter groups.

However, following Almirante's death the next year, Fini was left without his protector and gradually viewed as a weak leader, unable to turn around the decline and isolation of the party.

[25][29][45][46] In the Tangentopoli scandals of the early 1990s, a pool of judges discovered a widespread system of corruption in all of the mainstream Italian parties, and many key politicians were brought on trial.

[33] Although it was for a long time preoccupied with the debate of fascism and anti-fascism, the party started to distance itself from this in the early 1970s to rather focus on contemporary Italian issues.

In contrast to other far-right parties in Europe which increased their power in the late 1980s, the MSI chose not to campaign against immigration, because Italy was less concerned about the topic at the time versus other European countries.

[48] The MSI included a large variety of currents, which ranged from republicans to monarchists, Catholics to anti-clericals, conservative capitalists to radical anticapitalists, and revolutionaries to corporatists.

As the Italian Social Republic (RSI) had not existed in the South, and there thus had been no civil war, the southern MSI-supporters and notables were by contrast largely moderate-conservatives, less interested in ideology.

[62] The conference in Malmö was attended by around one hundred delegates from French, British, German, Austrian, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, and Swedish neo-fascist groups, with some notable figures including Maurice Bardèche, Karl-Heinz Priester, Oswald Mosley, and Per Engdahl.

Due to the MSI's support for continued Italian control of South Tyrol, German-speaking delegates eventually left the NEO.

The party's popular support came mostly from the southern underclass and the rural oligarchy until the 1960s, and later from the urban middle classes, especially in Rome, Naples, Bari, and the other cities of the Centre-South.

At a time when Lega Nord was booming in the North, several voters south of the Po River liked the MSI's appeals to Italian identity and unity.