"Twittare allo specchio?" Analisi delle reazioni su Twitter della Destra radicale Italiana intorno a un crimine d'odio

This paper explores the nascent inextricable link between linguistics, humour and radical political movements, specifically in the digital spaces. Language, as it evolves online, is deeply entrenched into values, emotions and goals of political communities. This is the inception of what can be defined as a convergence between the digital and the material world. Italian radical right is at the forefront of this process with three main actors: Northern League, Casa Pound and Forza Nuova. While the first assumes unseen before values for a conservative party, the latter two are renewing the media strategies of the radical right. In this paper, collecting a notable sample of tweets in the week around the hate crime committed by Luca Traini in Macerata, I will examine if the communicational phases, in their linguistic and emotional facets, of the Northern League, on one side, and Casa Pound and Forza Nuova, on the other, are interconnected. Specifically, a reflection on humour as a moral occurrence, expanding on the works of Christie Davies as well as applying recent findings on disgust, can offer new insights on overlooked cultural and humour-based aspects of linguistic processes online.