LETTER FROM ROME
It all began with a sign: Two index fingers placed together to make an X. The image was taken from a campaign video shot in the run-up to the EU elections. The fingers belong to a one-of-a-kind candidate: General Roberto Vannacci. The military officer, 55, suspended by his superiors, made it into the Italian public debate last August thanks to a hugely successful self-published book. Claiming to be a man of "common sense," Vannacci makes the classic arguments of the reactionary right, from thoughts on the ethno-racial foundation of the Italian nation to imprecations against homosexuals and environmentalists.
In a bid to retain an electorate that tends to shun him, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the far-right League party Matteo Salvini has curried favor with this politically radical general and made him the party's lead candidate for the EU elections in two of Italy's five constituencies. Vannacci's gesture could have been a simple invitation to voters to mark their ballot papers with a cross next to the League's logo. Perhaps it worked: Vannacci was elected by a wide margin on Sunday, June 9, and the League saved face with 9% of the votes. In Italy, however, the sign made by Vannacci has a peculiar polysemy.
A cross can also symbolize the number ten in Roman numerals, which are often used to represent the cardinal numbers in Italian. "Fate una decima" ("Make a tenth,") says Vannacci in the video, as he makes his gesture in front of an Italian flag. With a little context, one can understand that the general is referring to the famous Decima Flottiglia MAS ("10th Assault Vehicle Flotilla"), sometimes referred to as X MAS, MAS standing for the three letters of the poet and famous nationalist Gabriele D'Annunzio's motto: "memento audere semper", "remember to always dare" in Latin.
The flotilla, which belonged to Fascist Italy, is known for its war crimes and for the loyalty it showed to what remained of the regime right up to the end of World War II, when dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was, after 1943, no more than the head of a rump state under Nazi control, the Republic of Salò (1943-1945). After this latest intrusion of the Fascist period – which has never quite been digested – into an Italy governed by the far right, where such historical echoes are frequent, the controversy was immediate. It continued into the week after the elections.
To opposition members who pointed out that being an apologist for fascism was against the law, Vannacci made unconvincing arguments similar to those he used when criticized for calling Mussolini a "statesman." "In the campaign video, a reference is made to the X MAS, a glorious division of the Royal Navy that operated until 1943," he claimed, implicitly arguing that there was a "good" MAS and a "bad" one. The flotilla in question, whose symbol is a human skull holding a rose between its teeth, did indeed begin to make a name for itself with its exploits in the Mediterranean, where its men sabotaged Allied ships. It was the heir to the pioneers of naval guerrilla warfare during World War I. Vannacci claims to be referring exclusively to this period of history.
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