Evola, the ideologue of racism cited by Senator Menia who mocked Macron

Not just the “feminine” used to describe the French president Emmanuel Macronnot just the attack on Pope francesco guilty of asking for peace: in his highly criticized speech in the Senate, Tuesday 19 March, during the general discussion after the Prime Minister’s communications Giorgia Meloni in view of the next European Council, Roberto MeniaFdI senator, used a quote from Julius Evola passed over in silence. Or at least missed by most. This: “My homeland is where we fight for my idea”. Evola, theoretical philosopher of racism, close to fascism and national socialism, wrote it in his 1950 essay Orientamenti. Menia borrows the phrase by replacing “my idea” with “battle”. But that’s it. The Evolian maxim on the “homeland” and the “idea” was and is widely appreciated by even the extreme right. It is easily found in chat rooms in the neo-fascist galaxy and used by nationalist thinkers and ideologues. More: it is also present in a song by the Nazi-rock band The final frontier. The musical group was born in 1996 in Trieste, the same city as Menia (born Pieve di Cadore from an Istrian exile from Buie who moved to Trieste after the war), and who knows if it’s just a coincidence.

The neo-fascists Ultima Frontiera dedicate a song (The head of the Cuib) a Codreanu, founder of the anti-Semitic Romanian Iron Guard; in another piece (Berlin stays German) exalt the extreme Nazi defense from the “red tanks” that advance, “ravenous herds” against which remains the ideal that unites “the homeland, honor, loyalty”: “the swastika is high in the wind, come forward , I do not give up”. Coincidences. But it is possible that Menia – of whom a photograph is circulating in the archives and on social media portraying him while giving the Roman salute behind Gianfranco Fini – the themes and theses of Ultima Frontiera don’t displease at all. The Melonian senator (elected in Liguria) was the promoter of the law that established February 10 as “Remembrance Day” dedicated to the martyrs of the Foibe.

But let’s get back to the speech in court on Tuesday. “My homeland is where my battle is fought… we once said”. Thus Menia in the speech with which he mocks Emmanuel Macron for his “rather feminine” appearance. With that “we used to say” Menia rewinds the memories of the years of militancy in the Youth Front in Trieste. Alongside his friend and comrade and fellow citizen, also a neo-fascist militant at the time, Almerigo Grilz. “It was he (Grilz, ndr) to tell me: my homeland is where my battle is fought” Menia also said in another speech in the chamber on 27 June 2023. Grilz, therefore. The war reporter who died in 1987 in Mozambique. In May 2023 he was remembered in his city with Roman greetings in the square (controversy and indignation from the center-left and Anpi). The President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa attended a conference – Menia present – ​​to remember Grilz, after whom an award was named. FdI celebrates him as a war reporter. But in Grilz’s past there are episodes of squadrism. When, like Menia, he served in the Youth Front, he was the author of violent raids during which he loved to perform the Nazi-fascist salute. Expelled from the University of Trieste for having sent four students to hospital with blowing bottles, he was head of the punitive expedition (disguised as a rally) in the Trieste hamlet of Longera in 1983. That day – shouting “death to the s’ciavi communists” – there were also Menia, Paris Lippi (later deputy mayor of Triste) and the current municipal councilor FdI Antonio Lippolis. Forty years later, as a senator, Menia quotes Evola in the Chamber and attacks a head of state with “an unhappy expression” (words of the president of the FdI senators, Lucio Malan). The condemnation of the opposition is harsher: “There is nothing to be done: the wolf loses its hair, wears a double-breasted suit but not the fascist vice of denigrating, offending and insulting those in Europe whom it considers adversaries. Does Prime Minister Meloni have nothing to say?”, urges the Democratic senator Antonio Missionary.