Acca Larenzia
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The materials in this collection were created by the caretakers of the Movimento Sociale Italiano's (Italian Social Movement, MSI) former social center on Via Acca Larenzia in Rome. On January 7, 1978, five members of the MSI's youth group, the Fronte della Gioventù (Youth Front, FdG), were ambushed by five Lotta Continua (Ongoing Struggle) militants in front of the MSI's social center. Franco Bigonzetti was shot dead at the scene, and Francesco Ciavatta died in an ambulance shortly afterwards. Later on that day, a large demonstration in the courtyard outside of the neighborhood headquarters quickly turned violent. Following a confrontation between Roman police officers and a number of far-right demonstrators, shots were fired into the crowd. A third young man, Stefano Recchioni, was struck by a police bullet. He died two days later.
Bigonzetti, Ciavatta and Recchioni are still commemorated as "martyrs" by Italy's neo-fascist community. Every year on January 7, Rome's neo-fascists commemorate the deaths of Bigonzetti, Ciavatta, and Recchioni. Informally organized by CasaPound Italia (House of [Ezra] Pound Italy, CPI), this annual ceremony involves a procession through the surrounding neighborhood's streets and culminates in the gathering of participants on Via Acca Larenzia. Typically, the leader of the ceremony stands in front of participants, who are organized in tight military-style rows, and shouts out the names of Bigonzetti, Ciavatta, and Recchioni. Participants respond with the cry "Presente!" (Present!) – a common mnemonic device deployed during Benito Mussolini's twenty years in power which signified the imagined eternality of the Blackshirt militiamen who were killed in clashes with left-wingers in Italy during the Red Biennium uprisings (1919-20) or during the regime's various military conquests during the 1930s.
In addition to the CPI-led ceremony, members of Forza Nuova (New Force, FN) and Comunità Politica di Avanguardia (Vanguard Political Community) gather annually in Rome's Verano Cemetery to honor Italy's various far-right martyrs. Similar to the Via Acca Larenzia commemoration, this ceremony involves a procession through the cemetery, stopping to honor those deemed as part of Italy's right-wing heritage, including the Risorgimento-era patriot, poet, and writer of Italy's national anthem, Gofredo Mameli (2024), neo-fascist victims of the Years of Lead (1968-82), and the 1933 Chapel of Fascist Martyrs, where the commemorative procession ends.
Beyond Italy's openly neo-fascist community, a number of the country's prominent politicians regularly commemorate the Acca Larenzia massacre. Indeed, every year Giorgia Meloni (Meloni 2021), along with her party, Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy), circulate Internet graphics and physical posters in Italy honoring the "fallen" at Via Acca Larenzia, placing Meloni and her party firmly within the commemorative practices of Italy's far-right community.
The Acca Larenzia group is active on social media. Many of its posts are dedicated to Rome's far-right victims of the Years of Lead, including Stefano and Virgilio Mattei, Mikis Mantakas, and Alberto Giaquinto. The group also uses its online presence to publicize various cultural events, including the launch of a book about Dominque Venner, a French historian and far-right European nationalist, and to share images of neo-fascist graffiti and murals. For example, the group once posted an image of a public mural dedicated to the memory of the Japanese ultra-nationalist Yukio Mishima, which proclaimed: "Loyalty is stronger than fire" (Acca Larenzia 2022). These types of posts highlight the way in which Italy's neo-fascist organizations, including the semi-anonymous caretakers of Acca Larenzia, situate themselves within a transnational far-right community and movement.
As the posters in this collection make clear, the iconography of the Acca Larenzia martyrs draws upon the aesthetic codes of fascist notions of sacrifice, which were established under Benito Mussolini's twenty-year dictatorship (1922-45). Two design elements – flames and a symbolic evocation of upward motion – appear across many of these materials, presenting death as an act of personal sacrifice which leads to national rebirth – a key element of fascist political culture. These posters, along with the broader activities of the Acca Larenzia social center, underscore the ways in which the contemporary Italian far right situates the commemoration of their "martyred" comrades as a continuity with the ideological struggles of their interwar predecessors.
