by Loris Puccio Conti

The essay's content

Going through its three phases, the flame has gradually become dimmer and dimmer until it has abandoned its original idealistic and anti-systemic afflatuses. This is the ruthless and comprehensive warning that can be gleaned from Marco Tarchi's recent interview book, Le tre età della fiamma. La destra in Italia da Giorgio Almirante a Giorgia Meloni.

As the title transpires, the essay traces the vicissitudes, criticisms, anecdotes and analyses concerning the Movimento Sociale Italiano, Alleanza Nazionale and Fratelli d'Italia with continuous bibliographical references and rigorous and profound arguments. The author's perspective is certainly "heretical" and original but, at least at times, partial and radiated with a certain emotional participation.

As is well known, in fact, Tarchi was a leading exponent of the Front of Youth in the 1970s and an absolute protagonist of the debates, at the forefront of the attempt to purge nostalgism and funerary embalming from right-wing culture. He was then expelled very early from the party and, in the following decades, devoted himself to the study of populism and sought new ideological syntheses by weaving relationships with various authors of international scope, Alain de Benoist in primis. in primis.

Le tre età della fiamma. La destra in Italia da Giorgio Almirante a Giorgia Meloni - Marco Tarchi,Antonio Carioti - copertina

Le tre età della fiamma. La destra in Italia da Giorgio Almirante a Giorgia Meloni – by Marco Tarchi with Antonio Carioti – Solferino, pages 448, € 19,50

Thus, it is not surprising, first of all, the very recurrent insistence on what Tarchi refers to as "the orphan complex," that is, that "strange consideration of itself as a persecuted people, but at the same time an elected one: a group of outcasts who nevertheless feel called to the highest destinies" (p. 163). Such emotional tension easily flows, in the author's view, into a charismatic and at times messianic conception of leadership. Thus in a world perceived as hostile, almost with an apocalypse at the gates, the figure of the leader appears as a lifeline, his directions as a panacea and any change in tactics and language as a form of duty necessary for survival. Thus, pragmatism outclasses cultural elaboration and, not surprisingly, until the 1970s the absence of any critical formulation of the Ventennio stands out, a response to the offensives of Benedetto Croce and Norberto Bobbio who reduced fascism to a mere historical parenthesis and a negation of culture, respectively. In this context Tarchi also bitterly cites the "apologies of the honest and uncultured militant" continually conducted by Almirante and the general distrust of those who preferred study to brawling.

Tarchi v. Fini

It is not surprising that the highest degree of argumentative bitterness is dedicated to Gianfranco Fini, in his youth the author's political rival and, later, "guilty" of reducing culture and publicity to vent valves, enclosures for the most romantic and revolutionary visions. Precisely the famous turn impressed by the founder of An is considered by Tarchi "an assemblage of heterogeneous materials whose purpose is to send a message to the outside world" (p. 230). This context lacks any form of self-criticism, intellectual elaboration of the original ideological heritage and, of course, a truly conscious ruling class. Thus "Fini speaks for everyone, while the others merely stand on the sidelines" (p. 230) in a short-term perspective, restricted to the tactical convenience of the moment. Emblematic, according to Tarchi, are the centralist ways in which An's national assembly was formed: out of 500 total members only fifty were assigned by free vote while the other 450 depended substantially on the will of Fini and his closest associates.

In the same vein, Tarchi dismisses the establishment of the "Atreju Generation" as the result of an initiative-namely, the parties organized under the same name-which was solely aimed at garnering media attention. Here, too, Tarchi again challenges the absence of intellectual elaborations, discussions and also a failure to strengthen the organizational action in the territories.

In the last part of the essay Tarchi discusses Fratelli d'Italia, the last age of the flame. According to the political scientist, FdI would be a party formation that basically inherits the vices of its predecessors, achieving, however, in a much more evident way, successes where they instead failed. Thus, according to the author, accessions such as those of Raffaele Fitto demonstrate the ability of Meloni's party to recruit prominent members of other parties and, more profoundly, to establish the "articulate anti-communist front" that Almirante had been vague about since the 1970s. Unlike the Msi and An, moreover, the current Flame Party can certainly exercise an unprecedented leading role by shedding the centrality of Christian Democracy and, later, Silvio Berlusconi. On these foundations lie the roots of the Meloni government.

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The end point and transcending the author's perspective

Perhaps the point of arrival of the essay can be identified in the problem of hegemony.

Specifically, according to Tarchi, recent electoral victories rest on ephemeral foundations since they do not affect the collective imagination and are limited to the occupation of leadership positions, primarily in state-dependent cultural institutions. Thus, the flame arrives in government, at the height of its success, renouncing, however, the heritage of ideas and aspirations that had "ignited" it in 1946 and "nurtured" it over the decades, in ideal opposition to the current liberal-style sociopolitical order. Tarchi thus explicitly defines, thus, the path of the three parties as a "failure," since "on that 'Idea,' which had innervated half a century of nostalgia, hopes and sacrifices [...] the interests of the small circle of professional politicians prevailed" (p. 409). Thus, in other words, the position of Fratelli d'Italia flows into "afascism," a land completely unknown to the original ideological heritage.

Tarchi's is essentially a critique that, however, can easily lead to blame, resignation, defeatism or deterministic perspectives. One must, on the contrary, bracket the author's harsh tones and emotional involvement and consider Le tre età della fiamma. La destra in Italia da Giorgio Almirante a Giorgia Meloni as a warning for a change of course that is always possible and can be formulated in a variety of ways.

Specifically, the current "failure" of the flame may also be true but certainly not irreversible. There may still be room to recover the original idealistic and anti-systemic afflatuses. Indeed, in such a rich ideological heritage it is possible to find a plurality of useful antidotes to raise a now general impatience as an engine of change. Mention can be made, in this sense, of the high rates of electoral abstentionism, the growing distrust of institutions, nostalgia for the past, the widespread distrust of apocalyptic ecologism, oico-phobic self-racism and other ideological extremes that have recently appeared in the West. In this sense, the "flame" may still be a trigger for a social powder keg waiting only for the first spark.

Although currently static and vague, the powder keg of intolerance subsists because in recent decades a broad traditionalist mindset has continued to survive despite strong wokeist pressures exerted by elites. The passage of years and the rise of single-thought propaganda can, however, thin any margin for advantage and intervention, if not actually wet the dust and render it inert.

One of Tarchi's merits is identifiable precisely within this framework, that is, in the evocation of the value of the "Idea" and the realization that armchair conquest - however correct in a Sun-Tzu-like logic - can only be ephemeral if it does not also erode the ideological atmosphere of an era with a long-term strategy.

loris puccio conti
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Journalism contributor and expert in contemporary history. Focuses, in particular, on the political ideologies of twentieth-century Italy.