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'We Don’t Want You!’ – The Movement-party Dynamics of Anti-immigration Cooperation in EU Member States

Draft version prepared for the SGEU Conference

Trento 15th-18th June 2016

Please do not quote without permission of the authors

BENEDETTA CARLOTTI1

IVAN STEFANOVSKI2

1. Introduction, Main Research Questions and Case Selection

Since the creation of the European Union (EU) as a political and economic polity, both its

citizens and its institutions have not witnessed such crisis as the economic and financial turmoil

which sparkled in 2007/2008, as well as the flow of immigrants which soundly increased with

the initiation of the war conflicts in the Middle East. As southern European countries were

continuously exposed to immigration waves, facing multiple challenges to prevent a massive

humanitarian crisis, a large portion of actors in the political system capitalized on this

opportunity to penetrate the public sphere with strong anti-migrant discourse, pushing forward

ideas and policies which have little in common with basic European values. We must highlight

that the recent immigration crisis has undoubtedly flared tempers between citizens in Western

European countries. Even voters which have never previously contemplated anti-immigration

policies, began to reconsider their political preferences under the pressure of right-wing public

discourse. As every hot topic which enters the public sphere, anti-immigration discourse became

a long-term burning issue dominating the media and creating a clear cleavage between two large

camps – one aiming to alleviate the life struggles of immigrants, and the other clearly stating that

immigrants are more than unwelcome on European soil. This latter group is led dominantly by

parties and movements which play a serious part in shaping both domestic and European

politics. What was ten years ago on the margins of political life, today is fast-forwardly moving

towards the mainstream. The electoral success of Marine Le Pen’s Front National, the recent                                                                                                                          1 The co-author is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science and Sociology at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence) 2 The co-author is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science and Sociology at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence)  

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success of Golden Dawn in Greece, bolstered by the obtained votes of the True Finns in Finland

and other right wing parties in Scandinavia, send a clear message that Europe is moving to the

right of the political spectrum. The inability of European institutions to deal with issues such as

economic and fiscal instability, unemployment (especially among young people below 26),

outcries of autocracy (e.g. the Fidesz ruling represented by hard-fisted Victor Orban and the

recent electoral victory of Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Order) and a rather hectic decision-

making process, has pushed voters to reconsider support for mainstream parties. Together with

the party dynamics, citizens organized in horizontal settings also mobilized for issues which are

associated to right wing values. Just as a recent example, we will refer to 6 February, when

thousands of people associated to far-right nationalist groups marched in multiple cities around

Europe, taking the streets in Germany, France, Poland, Netherlands, Czech Republic… (Miller

2016, http://mashable.com/2016/02/06/anti-immigration-protests-europe/#tw5HQpluTsqE ).

They chanted messages against Islam, Sharia Law, the EURO and TTIP. These movement

dynamics act as catalyzer, but also as a voter and membership recruitment base for right wing

parties. Joint activities by the two types of entities can provide a win-win momentum for both

parts.

Taking into consideration what was already mentioned previously, this paper focuses on the

relationship and cooperation between far-right parties and right-wing movements in Western

European Countries. We analyze groups which favor strong anti-immigrant and anti-EU

discourse, focusing on the dynamics of similarities in the discourse between the two types of

actors in the midst of the immigration crisis in the EU. To what extent movements and parties

use similar wording while addressing anti-immigration issues? Which are the similarities

between proposed measures and policies by political parties and informal groups? How similar

are inter and intra country dynamics? These are just some of the questions whose clarification

can shed light on these intriguing dynamics.

Regarding the case selection, we focused our attention on two European countries where

immigration issues are continuously contentious in the last several years. We chose Italy due to

the fact that it is one of the countries which accommodates a vast majority of the immigrants

coming from Africa and the Middle East. Greece was also an intriguing case, but due to language

reasons we opted for the Italian case. On the other hand, we selected France thanks to large

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number of anti-immigration protests affiliated to numerous informal groups, but also the

electoral rise of Marine Le Pen’s Front National. The two cases are comparable and compatible

regarding multiple issues: both countries are highly exposed to immigration and face integration

challenges; in the two countries the anti-immigration discourse is invading the public sphere and

represents a contentious issue; both countries are Western democracies, founders and members

of the EU with similar historical, political and cultural background and foster similar European

values. In the two countries we chose one right-wing political party and one far right political

movement. We were also careful in choosing parties and movements which nursed some kind of

political cooperation on state level.

Regarding Italy, we chose Lega Nord as the largest political party which continuously fosters a

strong anti-immigration discourse, and proposes policies which are aimed at “protecting Italians”

from the “others”. From the side of the movements, we opted for CasaPound, as one of the most

visible far right movements which has a very similar tradition with Lega Nord. Later in the text

we will also discuss the genesis and the labeling of CasaPound, in the sense whether it is a

movement, or it is moving more towards a movement party. Moving to the French case, we

decided to analyze the discourse of Front National, as the largest political party in France which

has a clear and fierce stance against immigration. Recent electoral success makes this entity even

more interesting, in the sense that it is a very colorful example of how radical (marginal) can

easily rush towards mainstream politics. Lastly, we chose a French movement named Bloc

Identitaire, which is a nationalistic, identitarian and anti-globalism movement which is

ideologically very close to the Front National.

2. Theoretical framework: Movements and Parties; Movements in Parties; Movement-

Parties – A State of the Art

During the last several decades, the literature on political parties has been dominating the

mainstream political science scene. Starting with Giovanni Sartori’s path-breaking piece Parties

and Party Systems – A Theoretical Framework (Sartori, 1976), followed by Peter Mair and

Stefano Bartolini’s Identity, Competition, and Electoral Availability: the stabilization of

European electorates 1885-1985 (Mair and Bartolini 2007) and ending with Mair’s Ruling the

Void (Mair 2013), we can fairly say that recent political science scholarship has been

overwhelmed by high-profile party politics pieces. This makes providing definitions and

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theoretical nuances about what political parties are – unnecessary. The same can be said for

social movement studies as well. Starting from the early 70s (several years after the Civil Rights

Movement) on US soil and slowly moving towards the European continent, social movement

literature has been taking a serious swing. The pieces by Tilly and Tarrow like Contentious

Politics (Tilly and Tarrow 2006), as well as multiple-authored Comparative perspectives on

social movements (McAdam, D., McCarthy, J. and Zald, M. N. 1996) represent the absolute

highlight of US social movement scholarship, while on European soil, the piece by della Porta

and Diani Social Movements: An Introduction (della Porta and Diani 2006) has been a

compulsory pillar of every social movement related research.

What really ripples the research community during the last several years are neither political

parties nor social movements, but the relationship between these two entities, as well as the

movement-parties and movements in parties as types of “hybrids”. Goldstone has noted the trend

of tight-knit collaboration between parties and movements both in the US and in Western

Europe. He lucidly concludes that in these regions “…political parties and social movements

have become overlapping, mutually dependent actors in shaping politics, to the point where even

long-established political parties welcome social movement support and often rely specifically

on their association with social movements in order to win elections…” (Goldstone 2003, p. 4).

Furthermore, authors such as Garner and Zald highlight the blurred lines between parties and

movements stating that “…movements compete with parties. Movements infiltrate parties. […]

Movements become parties…” (Garner and Zald, 1985, 137 cited in Fernandez and Portos

forthcoming).

In the cases of Lega Nord and Front National, their straight forward characteristics of political

parties are not much debatable. Lega Nord was founded in January 1991 following the

reunification of several regional parties from northern and central Italy, such as Liga Veneta,

Lega Lombarda, Piemont Autonomista Union Ligure etc. The main ideological characteristics

which the party attaches to itself are regionalism, federalism, populism, anti-immigration,

Euroscepticism and anti-globalization. Regarding its anti-immigration stances, they particularly

strengthened and started to be used strategically by the party, after the general elections in 2001,

when Lega Nord took the electoral victory forming a coalition government together with Forza

Italia and Alleanza Nazionale. As Alonso noted, “The choice of anti-immigration as the new

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issue to emphasize placed the Lega Nord in an advantageous situation with respect to the state

parties, given that it had a long tradition in anti-immigration statements and, therefore, an already

built credibility as owner of the issue.” (Alonso 2012, p. 216). During the end of the 90s of the

previous century, after the secessionist Padanian project of former Lega Nord leader Bossi

started to drown in its own narrative, the party needed a new way of identity building, looking

for ideological strands which will distinguish it from its coalition partners. This leaded towards

Bossi suggesting “…’blowing out of the water’ boats carrying immigrants to Italy and referred to

African immigrants pejoratively as ‘bingo-bongos’ (Times, April 16, 2008). The mayor of

Treviso (LN) once said that ‘we ought to dress up immigrants like hares and go bang bang bang

with a rifle’. And an LN councilman in Treviso said in a council session, ‘With immigrants, we

should use the same system the SS used, punishing 10 of them for every slight against one of our

citizens’ (Guardian, April 9, 2008)…” (Art 2011, p. 226).

The Front National dates two decades earlier than Lega Nord, being founded in 1972 by Jean-

Marie Le Pen, the father of incumbent president Marine Le Pen. In its essence, Front National is

a type of a movement party, being formed by the unification of various French nationalist

movements. Very similar to the Lega Nord, the Front National follows ideological strands such

as souverainism, conservativism, right-wing populism, national conservativism, anti-

immigration, anti-globalism protectionism and Euroscepticism. In fact, the party was fiercely

criticizing the EU since its formation in 1993. Moving to the anti-immigration positions, one

should not go further than the party manifesto, where the party clearly states its positions:

prohibition of labor immigration (apart from skilled workers not sufficient and available in

France); restricted family reunification; fighting the concept of “fake students”, limiting asylum

to not more than few hundred cases per year; expulsion of convicted foreigners; deportation of

foreigners unemployed for more than a year; tightening conditions for residence permits;

redefinition of the Schengen agreement; amendments to the French Nationality Code; zero

tolerance for illegal immigration; banning of immigrant protests; and application of “national

priority” (Front National 2016, http://www.frontnational.com/le-projet-de-marine-le-

pen/autorite-de-letat/immigration/ ) The similarities between the two respective political parties

are more than obvious.

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If the party label attached to the Lega Nord and Front national are more than apparent, the same

cannot be said about CasaPound. Officially formed in 2003, the group became visible through

typical movement activities such as squatting. Members of CasaPound squatted a state-owned

building in the neighborhood of Esquilino in Rome. From year to year, the building became

more and more inhabited, and by 2008 the squatting of houses by CasaPound members spread

throughout whole Italy. The ideological positions of the movement range from nationalization of

banks, protectionism in Europe, anti-immigration laws, right to work, common goods’

preservation, pro-life laws, energy independence, eco-fascism, to opposition to cultural

hegemony. Regarding the anti-immigration activities, CasaPound acts like Lega Nord’s younger

brother. During the last several years, movement members organized multiple activities like

marches, sit-ins and flash mobs, particularly in southern Italy, highlighting that immigrants are

not welcome on Italian soil (see CasaPound 2016,

http://www.casapounditalia.org/2016/04/brescia-casapound-ai-sindaci-pd-basta.html;

http://www.casapounditalia.org/2016/04/palermo-sit-in-di-casapound-sostegno.html ). In its

political program Una Nazione (One Nation), the movement clearly blames immigration and

immigration policies as generators of social impoverishment (Una Nazione, p. 4). What is very

intriguing about the groups is the fact that although its genesis is surely a movement one, as time

passes by, it shows aspirations for entering the electoral arena, which might place the group in a

different theoretical graph. On the local elections which took place in 2011, CasaPound

presented its candidates on civic and center-right lists, obtaining 5 seats. Does this occurrence

qualify CasaPound to be labeled as a movement party? Maybe the answer lies in the dynamic

relations between the party and the movement. Building a model based on cases in Latin

America, Ken Roberts distinguishes three types of party/movement relations: 1) Vanguard model

– with party control of social movements; 2) Electoral model – with relations only mobilized at

elections and 3) Organic model – as “distinction between the party and its constituent party

organization are deliberately blurred; indeed, the party might appear to be more of a movement

than an apparatus for electoral contestation as it is directly engaged in social struggles outside the

sphere of institutional politics, and party members and leaders are drawn directly from social

movements rather than from the ranks of a separate political cast” (Roberts 1998, p. 39 cited in

della Porta et al. forthcoming). More open to grass-roots participation, social movements tend to

dominate over parties (della Porta et al. forthcoming, pp. 17-18). Prospective observation of the

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electoral relationship between Lega Nord and CasaPound can clarify this dilemma. One must

also point out the conditions under which social movement parties are most likely to appear. In a

nutshell, Kitschelt highlighted the following environment: “(1) [where] collective interest are

intensely held by a large constituency, willing to articulate their demand through disruptive,

extra-institutional activities, (2) [where] established parties make no effort to embrace such

interests for fear of dividing their own electoral constituency and (3) [where] the formal and

informal thresholds of political representation are low” (Kitschelt 2006, p. 282). Further research

is needed in order to examine whether the Italian society creates favorable conditions for creation

of movement parties. Still, initial results point towards the success of M5S and the recent moves

by CasaPound described previously.

Lastly, Bloc Identitaire is a typical far right political movement, founded in the same year as

CasaPound – 2003, by former Unité Radicale, Front National and Action Française members.

The organization declares itself as devoted to French nationalism, ethno populism,

identitarianism, solidarism, regionalism and anti-globalism. Although anti-immigration is not

included in the official presentation, only a glance at the movement’s activities will immediately

show that anti-immigration is one of the pillars of the movement. Several years ago, Bloc

Identitaire was accused for intentional distribution of popular soups containing pork, which were

later named “identity soups”. Multiple prefectures in France, but also parts of Belgium,

prohibited these products labeling them as discriminatory and xenophobic. One of the most

famous repertoires of action of the movement was the anti-Muslim party organized at the Arc de

Triomphe, where people ate pork and drank alcohol as a direct provocation to Islamic values

(Marquand 2010 http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/0617/Facebook-draws-7-000-

to-anti-Muslim-pork-sausage-party-in-Paris ). In the following rows we describe the discursive

similarities and differences of the four described organizations.

3. Data collection and Methodology

For the purposes of this analysis we collected news-feeds from the official websites of the four

considered actors3. The data scraping was done manually using keywords4 related to the area of

                                                                                                                         3 Front national: http://www.frontnational.com/; Bloc Identitaire: http://www.bloc-identitaire.com/; Lega Nord: http://www.leganord.org/; Casapound Italia: http://www.casapounditalia.org/ 4 The keywords used in the search were the following: “Immigration”, “immigrant”, “migrant”, “asylum”, “clandestine” and “refugee” in the respective languages (French and Italian).

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immigration. Regarding the time frame, we focused on the period between May 2014 (the month

when the European elections took part) and May 2016. Unfortunately, due to time restrictions

and lack of functionality of the Lega Nord website (the website does not contain a “search tab”

which requires that the researchers open each newsfeed manually and then conduct the keyword

search), the data referring to Lega Nord is limited to almost one year, i.e. the period between July

2015 and May 2016

After the completion of the data collection process, we continued with building four different

corpora, one for each of the actors included in the analysis. Table 1 below provides a summary

of descriptive statistics concerning the number of included texts, their length (expressed in token

average5) and the minimal and maximal length of the texts which are present in the corpora.

Name Number of texts

Average length (Token average )

Maximum length

Minimum length

Total number of tokens

Front National 141 315,5 363 48 44482

Bloc Identitaire 30 728,5 3181 90 218656

Lega Nord 166 195,5 406 48 32456

Casapound 75 340 929 126 25504

Table 1: Descriptive statistics referring to the texts included in the analysis

We decided to produce four different corpora for two main reasons: Firstly, because of linguistic

barriers, we decided to split the analysis between Italian and French languages; later, we wanted

to produce a descriptive analysis aiming at understanding differences and points of contact

between the four considered actors.

Following the data collection and the corpora creation, we pre-processed the texts, according to

standard guidelines provided by the literature focusing on quantitative texts analysis (Proksch,

Slapin, Benoit: 2011; Slapin, Proksch: 2008; Slapin, Proksch: 2010; Schwarz, Traber, Benoit:

2015). We eliminated stop-words in the two languages (“empty” words like conjunctions that do

                                                                                                                         5 A token is defined as any word. This token average represents the average length of texts expressed in words.    

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not provide any substantial meaning for the purpose of the analysis), and stemmed the words in

each corpus (removing suffixes from each word), which reduced the size of the obtained corpora,

eliminating words occurring in less than 5% of the texts in each corpus. The purpose of the last

step is to avoid the influence of rare words, which potentially biases the results of the analysis.

Lastly, out of the four corpora, we created four document-features-matrices (dfm). A document-

feature matrix is a matrix presenting all the documents in the corpus in rows and all the features’

frequencies (unique words present in the texts) in columns.6

To provide an in-depth quantitative description of the obtained texts, we followed a three-step

methodology. Firstly, we observed the “texts’ production” of the four considered actors through

time (data are grouped by months). This helps us understand the increase and decrease in

production of texts related to the immigration due to some potential contextual factors or critical

junctures.

Secondly, we produced word-clouds for each of the considered dfms. This instrument provides a

visual representation of text data. Tags are single words7 represented in the cloud. The

importance of each word is symbolized by its colour and its font size. This technique enables us

to determine which are the most prominent terms used by the four actors included in the analysis,

highlighting potential differences and commonalities between them.

Thirdly, we apply cosine similarity to detect the extent to which texts are close to each other.

This methodology represents texts as vectors and measures the “degree of similarity” of two

documents as a correlation between their corresponding vectors starting from the origin of an “x-

y space”, which can be further qualified as the cosine of the angle between two vectors. Cosine

similarity can have values ranging between 0 and 1, where 1 corresponds to absolute

equivalence, while 0 signifies no similarity at all. This method is chosen because it is extremely

flexible and it works independently of the differences in length of texts considered in each dfm8.

We applied this tool in order to detect similarities and differences between the two French and

the two Italian actors. For this reason we built two different corpora, and consequently two

                                                                                                                         6 The pre-processing and analysis of texts was done in R. We used mainly “quanteda” as the main package for the analysis. For further information about the package consult https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/quanteda/quanteda.pdf 7 In this analysis we see the stemmed version of each single word. 8 As we saw in Table 1, texts presented in the four corpora are different in terms of length.    

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different dfms, (one for the French and one for the Italian case) computing cosine similarity

across the actors involved.

4. Results of the Analysis

We begin be presenting the results of the analysis regarding the average length of texts trough

time. As we may see from Figure 1, which shows the graphical representation of the average text

length by month for the French corpus, there are four main peaks of activity, both by the Front

National and the Bloc Identitaire. The first one is in May 2014, which could be linked to the last

European Parliament elections9. The second one is in November 2014. We may associate the

increase in production of news-feed by the two considered actors as related to the beginning of

the so-called “Operation Triton”, a border security operation conducted by Frontex (EU’s border

security agency). This operation, under Italian control, began in November 2014 and involves

voluntary contributions from 16 EU Nations, among which France as well10. The third peak of

activity is in January 2015, in correspondence with the Charlie Hebdo shooting that happened on

the 7 of January 201511. Last peak of activity is to be found in November 2015. This could be

potentially related to the Paris Terrorist attacks which happened on the 13 of November 2015.

                                                                                                                         9 French mass-media reported also the support to vote for the Front National in the European election coming from the Bloc Identitaire. For further information see: http://www.leparisien.fr/elections-europeennes/europeennes-le-bloc-identitaire-appelle-a-voter-pour-les-listes-bleu-marine-23-05-2014-3865619.php 10 For further information about the operation consult the Frontex webpage at: http://frontex.europa.eu/news/frontex-launches-joint-operation-triton-JSYpL7 11 For an example of the reaction to the Charlie Hebdo shooting from the Front National and Bloc Identitaire see: http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2015/01/08/pour-le-fn-la-guerre-est-ouverte-contre-l-islam-radical_4551642_823448.html

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Figure 1: Distribution of average text length by month for the French corpus encompassing texts form both Front National and Bloc Identitaire

Figure 2 below shows the activity of both Italians actors. We can note three main peaks of

activity of the two considered actors: the first in July 2015; the second in September 2015 (these

two can be potentially connected to the “Mafia Capitale investigation”12) and a third in April

2016.

                                                                                                                         12  The Mafia Capitale investigation is the name given to a scandal involving the government of the city of Rome, in which alleged crime syndicates misappropriated money destined for city services. Starting from mid-June 2015 mass media in Italy revealed the first connections between mafia associations and the government of the city of Rome in the management of immigrants shelter centre in Italy.  

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Figure 2: Distribution of average text length by month for the Italian corpus encompassing texts form both Lega Nord and CasaPound

The results for the second part of the analysis propose a description of the word-clouds for both

French and Italian texts. Figure 3 shows the word-cloud for the French Front National corpus13.

The most frequently used word is “France”, followed by “migrant” and “immigration”. We then

have words like “clandestine”, “country” and “border”. What is interesting to notice is that

frequently used words are both related to the European Union (“European Union”, “Europe”,

“euro”, “Schengen”) and to national politics (“Sarkozy”, “Government” and “UMP”). We should

also note the presence of words like “people”, “state” and “right”.

                                                                                                                         13 It is to be noted that the word-clouds present stemmed version of the words. See the methodological section for further information.

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Figure 3: Word-cloud for the corpus based on text by Front National

Similarly to the previous word-cloud, also the Bloc Identitaire shows “France” as the most

frequently used word in the analysed texts. The second most recurrent words are “immigration”

and “Re-migration”. This concept refers to the return to the country of origin not only of new

migrants (the contemporary ones) but also of migrants already integrated in the (French) national

context and of their descendants14.

Furthermore we have words like “replacement”, “country” and “politics”. “Replacement”,

remplacement in French, is a word associated with a conspiracy theory claiming the existence of

a process of substitution of French population with non-European people coming mainly from

Sub-Saharan regions of Africa and Maghreb (le grand remplacement). Similarly to the Front

National, also the Bloc Identitaire uses words referring to Europe (“European” and “Europe”)

and to the concept of “right”. Nevertheless, it is to be noted that fairly frequently words like

“war” and “Islam”, also appear in the corpus of the analysed texts.

                                                                                                                         14 For further information consult the article by Le Figaro at the following link: http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/coulisses/2014/11/16/25006-20141116ARTFIG00081-au-bloc-identitaire-l-apologie-de-la-remigration.php

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Figure 4: Word-cloud for the corpus based on text by Bloc Identitaire

Moving to Figure 5, we have a word-cloud representation of the Lega Nord’s corpus. As we may

observe, the most frequently used word in these texts is “immigration”, followed than by

“clandestine”. At the third place we have words referring to Italian politics, especially “Renzi”

and “Alfano” the leaders of the two “major” governing parties at the moment in Italy (the

Democratic Party and the New Centre Right Party), which are usually the main targets of critique

coming from Lega Nord. We should also stress the presence of words like “country”, “migrants”,

“refugee”, “shelter” and “house”. It is interesting to notice that no “frequent” word is associated

to the European Union.

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Figure 5: Word-cloud for the corpus based on text by Lega Nord

The last word-cloud, presented in Figure 6, provides a visual description of CasaPound’s

analysed texts. As we may observe, the most frequently used word is “immigration”, similar to

Lega Nord. The second most used word is “Italian”, while the third most recurrent one is

“citizens”. We then have words like “shelter” and “politics”. It is interesting to notice that,

differently from Lega Nord, frequently used words by CasaPound are also “protest”,

“stronghold”, “city”, “square”, “manifestation” and “militant”, which can be explained with the

movement genesis of the entity. A word fairly recurrent and used by both the Lega Nord and

CasaPound is “House”. The element of the “right to the house to the Italian people”, is usually

used by both the two considered actors in their anti-immigration and nationalist propaganda.

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Figure 6: Word-cloud for the corpus based on text by CasaPound

The last step of the analysis reports the results obtained applying cosine similarity on the French

and the Italian corpus. Starting from the French one, Figure 7 reports the cosine similarity

between the longest Front National text in the corpus and all the other texts. Specifically, the text

taken as “baseline” is produced by the Front National in November 2015. What we may observe

here is that generally texts produced by the French Front National during the period between

December 2015 and May 2016 are the most similar to the “baseline”, differently from texts

produced by the same actor in the period before. Moreover, texts produced by the Bloc

Identitaire tend to be more distant from the Front National’s one. The first “more close” texts for

the Bloc Identitaire show a value of cosine similarity way below 0,60.

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Figure 7: Cosine similarity of the French corpus

Lastly, Figure 8 reports the values for cosine similarity for the Italian corpus. Cosine similarity is

here calculated taking as baseline the longest text from Lega Nord’s corpus. It is a text produced

in April 2016. In the Italian case, the distinction between the two actors, in terms of cosine

similarity, seems to be even stronger than in the French case. While texts produced by the Lega

Nord tend to cluster closer to the baseline, CasaPound’s texts tend to cluster on the opposite side,

with the only exception of a text produced in December 2014. The latter shows, nevertheless, a

value of cosine similarity close to 0,50. It is to be noted that this analysis is uncompleted due to

the lack of data as explained in the previous section of the paper.

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Figure 8: Cosine similarity for the Italian corpus.

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References:

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