Previously, ''
L'Ordine Nuovo'' ("The New Order") had been the name of a radical left-wing paper edited by
Antonio Gramsci in the early 1920s, with Gramsci's followers being nicknamed "ordinovisti". However, later on the term—in
Italian and various other languages—
was appropriated by
Fascists and
Nazis, its original left-wing predecessors forgotten. The extreme right-wing organization here referred to, whose members were also nicknamed
ordinovisti, though being the political opposite of the earlier ones, was born from an internal current and then a schism in the
Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI). In 1954
Arturo Michelini, a moderate seeking an alliance with the
Italian Monarchic Party, and possibly with the
Christian Democracy, became general secretary of the MSI. This led to the schism of the most intransigent and spiritualist,
Evolian current (
Nazism was also a reference), led by
Pino Rauti, Lello Graziani and Sergio Baldassini. They refused any compromise that brought the party apart from aristocratic principles. The intransigent and spiritualist Ordine Nuovo was then founded in Rome, but still a part of the MSI. The real break with MSI happened at the MSI congress in
Milan in 1956. Pino Rauti declared that, being disappointed with the moderate drift of the MSI, his movement would abandon the political scene, creating the "Centro Studi Ordine Nuovo", an association dedicated to "political studies and analysis". This wanted to be a literal application of the ideology of
Julius Evola, that is, an aristocratic refusal of modern, materialist society. One Ordine Nuovo publication stated, "The work of Ordine Nuovo from 1953 to the present has been nothing but an effort to transfer J. Evola's teachings to the political level." Evola in turn endorsed the Ordine Nuovo as "the only group that has held fast in its doctrine, without stooping to compromise." ON's publications valorized the defeated Axis powers and prewar Fascist movements, as well as the
Organisation armée secrète and the militaries of South Africa and
Rhodesia, among others. ON rejected all the characteristic institutions of modernity—capitalism, socialism, parliamentary democracy, etc. It was also strongly anti-Semitic. Ordine Nuovo, nonetheless, had a capillary and hierarchical organization on the Italian territory, and often behaved more like an extra-parliamentary political organization than a simple "scholarship center". Ordine Nuovo had around ten thousand members in the mid-1960s. Ordine Nuovo had an aboveground existence as a political activist group, but its members also engaged in street-fighting (
squadrismo) and became involved in several coup attempts and terrorist attacks. Ordine Nuovo had links with other neofascist groups outside Italy, including the
New European Order and
Jeune Europe It also had links with Italian intelligence agencies (
SIFAR and its successor agency SID), which were a source of funding. == Splinter group ==