In Milan's Piazza Fontana, tattered campaign posters from the recent election flutter gently in the spring breeze. The torn image of Walter Veltroni's smiling face and strident fragments of Umberto Bossi's fist-clenching gesture of defiance flap quietly, all but ignored by the busy Milanesi hurrying past on their way back to the office after lunch. As the trams turn in the gothic shadow of the Duomo and the Vespas hurtle along in the centre of this bustling city while negotiations on the formation of the new government continue to grind slowly on, it is easy to forget that this is the locus tragicus of Italy's modern political history and the emblematic epicentre of the activities of the far-right in the post-war period. On the afternoon of Friday 12th December 1969, in the heart of Milan's commercial centre, people were hurrying past where the papery fingers of election posters are waving today. Commercialisti were frantically trying to finish the week's work before heading off home for a well-earned rest at the weekend, shoppers were walking along, weighed down by so many bags of fashionable purchases and students were gathering in groups before heading off for an aperitivo in one of the many nearby bars. They were unaware that a black bag containing seven kilograms of TNT had been hidden under a table on the ground floor of the bank overlooking the square. The explosion ripped through the building and into the street. Heavy counters were torn apart, and waves of shattered glass crashed through the atrium. With a strange smell of almonds hanging in the air, fourteen people lay dead, and the screams of those with broken bones and severed limbs echoed around as tasteless trickles of blood mingled with dust settling on the floor.

Today, the exact story behind the Piazza Fontana bombing is still unknown and the confusion which continues to reign is as much a part of the tragic tale as the actual events. Within hours, a knee-jerk reaction from the police had led to the arrest of two young Anarchists, Giuseppe Pinelli and Pietro Valpreda, although without any evidence to connect them with the bomb itself. Some time around midnight on Monday 15th December, after hours of intensive interrogation, Pinelli's body fell from the fourth floor of the police station where he was being held and thudded into the courtyard floor. At the time, the police described it as 'suicide'. It was, they claimed, a desperate act of self-accusation which only testified to his guilt. Coining a phrase which was later to be made famous by Dario Fo, the coroner termed it an 'accidental death'.

Years later, after those who had raised questions about the nature of Pinelli's 'suicide' had been hounded into silence or mysteriously killed, an exhumation revealed that his fall had been far from accidental. In the 1980s, the neo-fascist Vincenzo Vinciguerra was finally arrested and held responsible for the bomb in the Piazza Fontana. Far from being an anarchist plot to attack the heart of Milan's financial district, the tragedy was ultimately a false-flag operation which formed a part of the strategia della tensione (strategy of tension) adopted by the extreme right, designed to discredit the far left and catalyse a revolutionary situation that would allow for the return of a neo-fascist government.

Standing at the heart of the so-called anni del piombo (years of lead), the Piazza Fontana bomb and the 'accidental death' of Giuseppe Pinelli are emblematic of the darkest years of Italy's modern political history. Never fully having dealt with the heritage of Fascism, post-war Italy struggled intensely with the proliferation of extreme-right wing elements. Senior figures in Mussolini's government were integrated back into state administration and its many followers continued to keep the flame of Fascism alive in organisations such as the Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement) and the Ordine Nuovo (New Order). At the same time, there quickly arose from the spirit of resistance a series of new and vigorous left-wing movements ranging from the Communist PCI to the now infamous Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades). Tensions rose quickly and, fuelled by both populist and intellectual influences, campaigns of extreme violence involving acts of terrorism were mounted by both sides, sometimes involving false-flag operations like the Piazza Fontana bombing intended to heighten the already dangerous level of tension in the expectation of stirring potentially revolutionary action. Far from containing the violence, institutions such as the police and the legal system in many cases contributed to the persistence of the situation, while the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro by the Brigate Rosse in 1978 ended the compromesso storico (historic compromise) between the Christian Democrats and the PCI which was intended to terminate the struggles.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the anni del piombo opened the doors to a period of corruption and disorganisation which, in turn, paved the way towards a crisis of confidence in the political process. Even after the tensions which had marred the 1960s and 1970s abated, the confusion and instability created by the post-war situation in many ways facilitated the involvement of private - and sometimes nefarious - interests in political decisions. By the early 1980s, the exercise of government was hampered not merely by the crippling instability which followed the collapse of the compromesso storico, but also by the connivances of industrial figures and criminal organisations seeking to influence policy formation.

Despite the mani pulite (clean hands) investigations, intended to resolve these problems, the electorate felt distant from and let down by the politicians they had chosen to represent them. A notoriously cumbersome and frequently crooked bureaucracy, coupled with recurrent and damaging economic crises placed severe limits on the growth of Italian business and foisted financial hardship onto a large number of ordinary families. Depressed and fearful, Italians were left dissatisfied by the extremes of politics and worn down by the involvement of politicians on often extremely shady dealings. Desperate for the opportunity to live and work in a secure and transparent political environment, the bulk of Italians were by the end of the 1980s crying out for the creation of circumstances in which the country's persistent economic problems could be tackled effectively and entrepreneurship could operate untroubled by the confusing effects of a corrupt political system.

The desire for political security and for economic stability ultimately proved decisive. The formation of what is termed the 'Second Republic' from 1992 onwards was an effort to make significant changes. Having finally freed itself from the torment of the strategia della tensione, the new constitution was intended to redress the massive loss of voter confidence in the political process and usher in a new period of peace and stability conducive to reaping the best from Italian business.

Despite the questions which continue to linger about the sad events of the anni del piombo, and the persistence of some controversies the establishment of the Second Republic does indeed seem to have had a radical effect. Silvio Berlusconi was swept to power for the first time in 1994 and since then - for all their shifting identity and constant reformation - Italian parties have competed more constructively for a perceived centre ground, closing the political distance between them in many respects. In the 2008 election, it was frequently observed that on many policy issues - particularly those which concerned most ordinary Italians, such as economic policy - the choice between the parties of left (PD), headed by Walter Veltroni, and the right (PdL), led by Berlusconi meant little. For many Italian voters, even in those areas with a strong tradition of aligning themselves forcefully with a particular party or figure, there is a sense of resignation to political uniformity. Gone are the days of great political divides, it seems, and long past are the years of ideological division.

Although there is no longer the same fear of internal terrorism, and there are fewer intellectual firebrands fanning the flames of tension, however, the competition for the Italian centre ground which has arisen from the formation of the Second Republic seems to have left Italians with a sense of pessimism about their future. Whenever politics is mentioned in a café or bar, the usually lively tone of the conversation becomes hushed, heads go down and hands are thrust into pockets. Italy's current problems are profound. With debt spiralling out of control and industrial growth slowing, there is a deep sense of concern about the economic future. Rubbish is still piling up in the streets of Naples and, despite the diversion of huge sums of money intended to stimulate regeneration, the south continues to sink into a financial rut. Every day, more news stories on both RAI and Mediaset channels are devoted to the rapid rise in food prices and the cripplingly high rents demanded across the country. Issues of identity and crime continue to dominate newspaper coverage and there is a prevailing sense of uncertainty over the idea of 'Italy' and its relations with stranieri. But the hope of political solutions to such problems is weak. Even though the politics of the Second Republic has led to a broader general agreement about economic and social priorities, Italian voters view the outlook as bleak. Paradoxically, the dash for a moderate form of liberal economics has led the average voter to feel that potential responses to troubling economic and social questions are limited in range and scope.

Belying the high turnout in the country's two-day polls, a sense of distaste for the sterility of political discourse pervades Italy today. Giancelso Canova, a warm-hearted and affluent Lombard doctor recently told me that in casting his vote at the last election, he felt as if he was casting a coin into a wishing well. 'All I can do is hope,' he said, his usually cheerful face falling into an expression of melancholy. 'They're all the same, the parties. No matter which box I crossed in the booth, it's just a matter of luck whether things get any better.' This is not an untypical view, but what is particularly striking is the fact that many of those who share this perspective are increasingly looking back to the legacy of the anni del piombo as a means of understanding their predicament. A strong-minded married mother of three, Giovanna Locatelli, was not slow to point the finger when I asked her opinion in the Piazza Vecchia in Bergamo. 'After all those years of troubles, we just wanted to get on with our lives, to have a chance to live quietly and make a bit of money' she said, with a sigh. 'Now, there's no more fighting, no more politics of black and white, and that's all good. But what we're left with is only shades of grey for government: Berlusconi, Veltroni - they're just saying the same things and they'll do nothing. With things the way they are, I just don't know what's going to happen.'

One of the consequences of the sense of disaffection amongst Italian voters which has sprung up in the wake of increased competition for the perceived political centre ground has been an increase in the support given to extreme right-wing parties. Although on the left, Walter Veltroni's Partito Democratico and Antonio Di Pietro's Italia dei Valori both strengthened their share of the vote, the largest rise in popular support was registered by Umberto Bossi's Lega Nord. Adopting a vigorously anti-immigration stance and making use of often controversial election materials, the Lega Nord gained 2.84% more of the vote and 34 additional seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and gained an extra 3.66% of the vote and twelve more seats in the Senate. In Lombardy, the party took no less than 21.6% of the total vote, while in the Veneto, it took a staggering 27.1% .Viewing its results as a whole, the Lega Nord's performance easily ranks as the most impressive of any individual party at the 2008 election, and with 8.3% of the total popular vote, 60 deputies and 26 senators, it is necessarily a political force to be reckoned with. Its fortunes were not, however, unique. Despite having been defeated by Walter Veltroni in 2006, the former Minister for Agriculture, Giovanni Alemanno swept to victory in the elections for the Mayor of Rome in April 2008, and as a prominent member of the Alleanza Nationale (which replaced the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano in 1995) is unquestionably a mark of the scale of the success of the Italian right. Although it failed to make the 4% threshold necessary to gain a seat in either chamber, the Fiamma Tricolore - an alliance of political groups which clung to the more extreme aspects of the Movimento Sociale Italiano after its dissolution and which has publicly stated its intention to follow the thought of Benito Mussolini and the example of Alessandro Pavolini's Black Shirts - received 885,229 votes in the election for the Chamber of Deputies and 687,211 votes in that for the Senate.

The prominence of the politics of the Lega Nord, the Alleanza Nazionale and the Fiamma Tricolore is not, however, limited to elections. Building on long-standing geographical tensions and historical ties, the far-right has for many years been an integral part of the popular culture of the so-called 'Padania' and Umberto Bossi in particular has long striven to ensure that local identity and the politics of the Lega Nord enjoy a somewhat symbiotic relationship. The association is both highly visible and disarmingly accessible. Shortly before the election, I was walking around the streets of Bergamo bassa in search of a cafe. For all of its quirks, the city has a happy feel about it. People were wandering around smiling, ready to swap stories or gossip; musicians were playing happily on the steps of some of the churches and children ran laughing around the Sentierone as their parents drank coffee nearby. As I approached the end of the via Tasso, it didn't strike me as in the least remarkable that there was a gaggle of people standing outside the Provincia (the seat of provincial government), waving flags, playing zampognari (bagpipes) and singing local songs. Fathers hoisted children onto their shoulders to see better and families were singing along gaily as old men wearing garishly green sashes handed out leaflets. Unconsciously, I started humming along to the tune myself after a moment. It was only minutes later that it became horrifyingly clear that I had inadvertently wandered into a Lega Nord rally, and that the flags being waved so avidly were Padania banners. Despite its cheerful appearance and family spirit, behind the beaming zampognari players stood unnerving placards bearing a picture of a mournful Red Indian chieftain and the provocative slogan 'Loro hanno subito l'immigrazione ora vivono nelle reserve!' ('They accepted immigration, and now they live in reserves!')

This integration into local culture also has a darker side and a violent, unpleasant dimension of the far-right is never far from the surface. In Padua, proposals for the construction of an ambitious new mosque have provided the focus for open examples of intimidation and aggression deliberately encouraged by the Lega Nord and its allies on the far-right. Despite unconvincingly rejecting the claim that her party is in any way racist, Mariella Mazetto, a Paduan councillor, led a pig to the site of the proposed mosque in an attempt to arouse tensions through outright provocation. Having massively increased its support through such measures, however, the local party has since moved on to bolder and more worrying actions. Alleging a direct connection between immigration, ethnic diversity and crime, the Lega Nord has started to establish well-equipped vigilante groups which patrol the city in groups of between four and ten, proudly displaying symbols of the Veneto on their brightly-coloured jackets, and all-too ready to assert that they are 'taking back the streets'. In Verona, where similar developments have occurred, such groups - both formal and informal - have recently been connected with a series of violent and apparently unprovoked attacks on individuals in badly-lit areas. Little or no objection has been raised by municipal authorities and the suspicion of tacit acquiescence in vigilante aggression is hard to avoid. Although black shirts have given way to reflective jackets, it is difficult not to detect the spectre of Fascism's early history haunting the streets of northern Italy.

It is common to explain the rise of the far-right as - at best - a transient, but reactionary expression of protest, and - at worst - a manifestation of the seamier prejudices of certain portions of the population. Pointing to the prominence given to immigration by the media in the wake of a series of widely-reported attacks committed by extracomunitari (a term used to describe non-EU citizens, but more frequently used with pejorative connotations to denote illegal aliens) in recent months, some commentators have speculated that in taking advantage of this issue, the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale have gained only short-term support from disgruntled and ignorant groups. It is, however, misleading to view the fortunes of the far-right in such terms. Although it would, of course, be incautious to ignore the impact of campaigns directed specifically at immigration and injudicious to discount the sometimes hysterical media coverage of recent attacks, it is not possible simply to present the gains achieved by the far-right as part of a short-term protest element centred on a single issue. A major partner in governments of the past, the Lega Nord has developed a strong and stable electoral base in the Padania which has grown steadily in the past decade. In the eighteen years since 1990, the party has never polled below 11.7% in Lombardy, and received a staggering 29.3% of the vote in the Veneto in 1996. Similarly, the Alleanza Nazionale benefited from between 8.4% and 11.5% of the vote in Emilia-Romagna and between 18.9% and 28.9% of the vote in Lazio in general elections in the period 1994-2006. Support for these parties has been highest at moments of transition between centre-left and centre-right government and vice-versa.

Although its most controversial and widely-covered policies have indeed concerned immigration, the Lega Nord has worked hard to establish itself not merely as the torch-bearer for the traditional identities of northern regions against the homogenising instincts of central government, but also as the anti-monopolist defender of individual liberty against the influence of those large corporate interests which have aroused most suspicion in the highly industrialised north and created difficulties for smaller businesses. By the same token, the Alleanza Nazionale has successfully cast itself both as a Catholic bastion of family values and, despite its not unfavourable stance on some forms of privatisation, has frequently espoused direct government intervention in matters of social welfare provision and employment. Tapping into the socio-economic concerns of small enterprises, unskilled labour and the self-employed, and directly appealing to a strongly-felt sense of regionalism fuelled by dissatisfaction at over-bureaucratised central government, the far-right have successfully transcended the unpleasant and aggressive connotations of their more controversial policies to cultivate a solid base amongst groups who feel least relationship to larger, national parties and are most affected by uncertainty over financial concerns and employment. Rather than being merely protest groups whose support is essentially negative, the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale have attracted the active backing of a significant portion of the population in certain heavily-industrialised areas. Despite the unattractiveness of such a contention, it seems that support for the far right can be viewed not as a result of misplaced apathy and woeful ignorance, but as a conscious and deliberate decision to embrace a form of politics at some distance from the ideologically-starved proposals of parties which have, in the years since the collapse of the compromesso storico, abandoned interventionist social and economic policies in favour of more laissez-faire strategies that have notably failed to improve the security and future of less fortunate socio-economic groups. In a political environment created to neutralise the unfortunate effects of the anni del piombo, the great irony is that Italian voters are returning in ever larger numbers to the extreme elements which were most closely associated with the strategia della tensione and which ultimately lay behind the Piazza Fontana bombing in December 1969.

Although it is occasionally bolstered by approval of no-tolerance approaches to immigration and crime, the stability and rise of support for the Lega Nord, the Alleanza Nazionale and other far-right parties is ultimately based on addressing the economic worries of those most vulnerable to the whims of corporate interests and economic instability, and on responding to more widespread dissatisfaction with the notoriously cumbersome machinery of central administration. The social constituency of the far-right and its role in shaping their policies in recent years is thus interesting in that it seems to point to the narrowing of choices available to those who feel alienated from centrist economic and social policies pursued by parties such as Forza Italia and alliances such as L'Ulivo. The demographic groups from which the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale have attracted most support - the lower-income groups among the urban working class, the owners of small businesses, the self-employed and the unemployed - are precisely those which in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s had been accustomed to look to the interventionist politics of left-wing parties such as the PCI (which commanded 34.4% of the vote in 1976) for hope. However, in radically altering their outlook in favour of more liberal solutions to Italy's economic woes, and in indulging in frequent fruitless splits in the early 1990s, the left effectively squandered its connections with its primary social constituents. Paradoxical though it may seem, bereft of an obvious party capable of representing their interests effectively in unstable coalition governments, members of these socio-economic groups, seduced by the interventionist, anti-monopolist policies and the rhetoric of identity, have gradually made the transition from the left to the far-right. While the anni del piombo seem to have caused the collapse of the ideological left and the political death of those parties - like the Democratici Christiani and the PCI - which had previously defended the interests of the weaker socio-economic sections of society with more vigorous interventionist policies, it seems to have persuaded the far-right to adopt new and more effective strategies which have swept parties like the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale to the positions of political influence that had proved inaccessible through terrorism. The failure of the left in the years since the Piazza Fontana bombing has, perversely, created the condition for the resurgence of the far-right.

Italy's post-war history is, of course, unique. Yet the electoral trends which it has been experiencing lately - voter disaffection and the rise of support for far-right parties - is far from unusual in the European context. It would be unnecessary and even gratuitous to refer to the fortunes of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 French presidential election, but it is striking that in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, it is similarly possible to see a marked improvement in the electoral fortunes of parties on the extreme right. In Belgium, Vlaams Belang - with its stress on Flemish independence and strict immigration controls - won just under 799,844 votes for the Chamber of Representatives in the 2007 election and took 11.99% of the vote, becoming the third largest party. Although hard-hit by the strife which surrounded Jörg Haider's period in office, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs was nevertheless able to increase its share of the vote to 11.04% and gain three extra seats in the legislature in the 2006 Austrian elections. Similarly, seemingly untouched by accusations of racism, Pia Kjærsgaard's Dansk Folkepartei retained its position as the third largest party in the Danish parliament in elections held on 13th November 2007, gaining 13.9% of the vote and twenty-five seats. The example of British politics is, however, especially illustrative - although perhaps a little less dramatic - because of that country's limited historical experience of the far right. Since 1997, the number of votes won by the British National Party at general elections has quadrupled, regularly polling in double-digits in a number of constituencies in the north-east of England. Although its aggregate total at the 2005 election was less than that of some other minor parties - gaining as it did 189,570 votes throughout England - the smaller number of candidates fielded concentrated support in small areas. In Dewsbury, the party increased its share of the vote from 8.6% in 2001 to 13.1%, while in Barking, it polled 16.9% and moved into third place, only twenty-seven votes behind his nearest, Conservative rival. In local elections in 2006, the BNP shocked the country by taking control of the council in Dagenham, a heavily-industrialised and deprived area. More recently, on 1st May 2008, Richard Barnbrook failed in his bid to become mayor of London (coming in fourth place with 69,710 first-preference, and 128,609 second-preference votes), but was nevertheless elected to the London Assembly after the party polled 130,714 votes, or 5.42%.

As in Italy, it is not that voters are necessarily becoming more aggressively racist, but rather that they are turning to the far right for solutions to pressing socio-economic problems. Although immigration continues to be a major political issue in Britain, the BNP has succeeded in expanding its voter appeal at a local level by offering simple (though impracticable) solutions to the problems suffered by vulnerable social groups in depressed areas. The party's success is predicated on the effects of a process known in Britain and America as 'triangulation', in which the policies of major parties have been determined not with regard to a specific ideological stance, but in relation to what is perceived to be the centre ground of the political spectrum. The impact of this on the politics of the Labour Party has been particularly important in determining the success of the BNP. Whereas Dagenham returned one of the Labour Party's most left-wing members - John Cruddas - to parliament at the 2005 general election and its voters remain left-leaning by temperament, it is striking that the success of the BNP in the 2006 local elections was occasioned by a burgeoning feeling that mainstream political parties were simply failing to offer constructive remedies to issues such as housing and employment. Responding to the results in his constituency, John Cruddas denied that his constituents had been attracted by the BNP's racist policies and attributed the party's success to just such a political failure. In omitting to respond to the worsening problems of inner-city deprivation and eschewing more active, interventionist policies, he argued, the Labour government had created the opportunities for the BNP to reach out to its own demographic base. "In my community," Cruddas argued, "little has improved since 1997 and some things have gotten worse." Unemployment in the area had become more severe and affordable housing had become more difficult to find. In such conditions, many people in Dagenham no longer felt that Labour represented their concerns. "As working class people," Cruddas concluded, "they were never going to vote [for the Conservatives] or [for the Liberal Democrats]. They felt that the BNP was the only way to send this message." Just as with the success of the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale in Italy, the British National Party has only been able to garner new support because the party traditionally most aligned to the interests of the urban working class was perceived to have failed.

If a cause for the rise of the far right is to be found, it lies - paradoxically - with the failures of the left. Although in Britain the Labour Party's transformation has been relatively recent, in Italy, the events of 12th December 1969 remain instructive and, sitting in a café overlooking the Piazza Fontana, with the fluttering remnants of election posters just visible, it is hard not to feel as if the ghosts of that tragic day are not in some way haunting the present. Having failed to achieve the changes they sought with the strategia della tensione, the far right learned their lessons. They regrouped and thought again. They came out wearing a mask, presenting a different face to the electorate, and adopting new tactics. They have grown stronger. Despite being ushered into government after 1969, the left did not learn. It shattered and, abandoning those it had always represented, came step by step to relinquish its capacity to speak to the problems suffered by ordinary Italians. It opened the door to the Lega Nord, the Alleanza Nazionale and the vigilante groups which prowl Padua's streets today.

The growth of the extreme right is undeniably frightening and the political climate in Italy is wont to send a chill down the spine. For those who fear the resurgence of racially-motivated intolerance and the violent actions of vigilante groups, as well as for those who remember the dark days of the anni del piombo and the strategia della tensione, it is clear that something is needed to arrest the trend. Responsibility for this, however, must lie with the politics of the left. If there is hope of blocking the inroads made by the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale, the priority must be to address more effectively and directly the needs and concerns of the most vulnerable in society. After years of gradually moving towards laissez-faire economics, and being seduced into regarding the very word 'ideology' as somehow obscene, Italy's left must return to its roots, to the hopes and aspirations of the hard-working urban classes of the industrial north, to the willingness to use the transparent influence of central government to improve directly the lives of those most susceptible to the fluctuations of an uncertain market. The ideological fervour, the socialist vigour of a half-forgotten time, energised by fresh insights and adapted to the new problems faced by the weakest in society, is the one source of hope. The burning, all-consuming desire to improve the lot of those who toil without reward and suffer without complaint which - in 1969 - still shone in the active minds of the left lies waiting to be reawakened. To senators ill-at-ease with the prospect of radical change and unsettled by the possibility of forsaking the easy assurance that the invisible hand will provide, a return to the vigorous ideology of social concern may seem an unnerving electoral gamble. To students and young professionals, seduced into comfortable apathy and blinded by a cynicism bred of deceptive consumer affluence, the concept of such a return may seem alien. But in sight of the papered fingers of Bossi's printed fist rising in defiant success above the Piazza Fontana in the May sunlight, one thing at least is clear: if the darkest days of the 1960s are not to be repeated, the utopian hopes of the 1960s must themselves live again.

Alexander Lee is a co-founder of The Utopian and author, with Timothy Stanley, of The End of Politics. He teaches at the University of Bergamo.