Neo-Bourbonism

A revival of the neo-Bourbon ideology took place at the end of the twentieth century, a period of rising support for local independence movements throughout Italy with the success of the Lega Lombarda. In Southern Italy this birthed numerous local associations, historical groups, publishing, websites and blogs. These groups systematically reproduced, rewrote and exaggerated Bourbon propaganda. The movement reached its peak with the opposition to the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy, coming to propose a neo-Bourbon mythology based on a "nineteenth-century nationalist canon with its obsession with violated communities, the blood of martyrs, the honor of heroes and heroines, the impiety of traitors and the cruelty of enemies". The rhetoric being identical in form to the old pro-unification propaganda but working towards the opposite ends.

In these years false histories appeared in publication, among the various falsities it was claimed that the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was at the forefront of technology and economics in Europe, attributing to it a long list of discoveries, inventions and primates in every field of human knowledge[2] and that the repression of brigandage had led to a genocide with figures close to one million dead[3] with the establishment of extermination camps such as the Fenestrelle Fort.

These arguments have been highlighted by historians as false.[4][5] The historian Alessandro Barbero, who called the story of Fenestrelle "a historiographical and media invention", consulting the original documents of the time, verified how the prisoners of the former Bourbon army actually detained in the fort only numbered just over a thousand, of which 4 died during captivity. Similarly, the arguments on genocide have been denied by every professional magazine in the field.[6]