ITALY: The Legion of Sorrow

The 600 people who met last week in Rome’s stifling little Teatro Valle were Fascists—or the closest thing to Fascists at large in Italy today. The occasion was a four-day national congress of the Movimento Sociale Italiano, which since its furtive foundation 2^ years ago has managed to make itself a minor political force in Italy. In last year’s elections, M.S.I, polled half a million votes (out of more than 26 million); it is the largest political group at the universities of Pisa, Perugia, Naples and Palermo. M.S.I, is chiefly a refuge for discontented white-collar workers and disenchanted youths.

Past Glories. Among the delegates at the congress were a few grey heads, schoolteachers and oldtime Fascist functionaries, but most were youngsters. In the red and gilt boxes sat such patrons as Marchesa Eloisa Marignoli, one of the party’s chief backers, who languidly fanned her stiff, white-powdered face.

From another box, eight plainclothesmen watched the proceedings. Italian law forbids “apologies for fascism,” and the speakers had to watch their language. Most of the time, when they meant fascism, they simply spoke of “past glories.”

Chief attraction was the leader, Giorgio Almirante, small-time journalist and propagandist formerly in Mussolini’s service, who, after the Duce’s fall, made a living as a messenger boy and traveling salesman. A ferret-like little man, he stood behind the microphone while the delegates cheered. Said he: “I stand at attention before the legion of sorrow.” He continued: “They say we are sentimentalists, that we long for a past which died with one man. But we are like the apostles who gained their faith through the martyrdom of Christ.”

The seance continued. Once it looked as though Mussolini’s own ghost had returned when one Luigi Filosa, a Fascist henchman, got up to speak; Filosa was short and bald, stood squarely with his hands on his hips and stuck out his lower lip in characteristic Mussolinian truculence. From dark corners of the auditorium drifted snatches of Fascist hymns. A philosophy professor, who shouted: “Democracy is a fraud!” was arrested by the watchful secret service men. The hysterical speakers babbled on. Yelled a woman teacher: “They come, these Americans, these ignorant bushmen, to show us—the heirs of Michaelangelo and Da Vinci—how to build!”

Future Dreams. The legion of sorrow became bored. The youngsters churned aimlessly around the lobby. Whenever the Duce’s name was mentioned, their eyes lit up. A young man with a slight lisp boasted: “We are getting bigger and stronger. Last month we beat up 400 leftist bastards and put 17 in the hospital.”

For all the impassioned oratory, the party agreed that it must proceed carefully so as not to lose its legal standing. One speaker defined the party’s task: “To dream of a perfect, serene, ideal world preceded by years of torment and contemplation of spiritual ideals.” Despite its recent gains, M.S.I, was still more notable for dreaming than action.

One observer of M.S.I.’s seance remarked indelicately: “Well, you can’t raise the dead without raising a smell.”