Taking the Risk – and its Afterlife. Collaboration, Seduction and Danger in Ethnography with Contemporary Neo-Fascist Movement

This article discusses the multiple difficulties an anthropologist encounters when taking the risk of engaging in ethnography with contemporary neo-fascist activists. Based on my ethnographic experience with self-declared third millennium fascist activists in Rome in 2010 and the afterlife of that ethnographic encounter (2015-2018), this article seeks to give an ethnographically driven contribution to debates about the consequences of collaborating, the dangers of encountering fascist violence, and the epistemological reflections social sciences face when agreeing to taking the risk of fieldwork encounters.