Fronted by CasaPound Italia (House of [Ezra] Pound Italy, CPI) leader Gianluca Iannone, Zetazeroalfa (ZZA) is a rock 'n roll band deeply rooted in neo-fascist political culture. Founded before CPI itself in the late 1990s, the group serves as an integral part of CPI's cultural network, and its concerts provide an opportunity for the recruitment and socialization of CPI members. After its founding, ZZA quickly became an important part of Rome's extreme right-wing subculture, and is closely linked to the Cutty Sark bar in the city's Monti neighborhood. To this end, ZZA serves as a major contributor to CPI's recruitment and socialization programs (Froio et al. 2020: 27-28).
This poster was produced to promote a concert in Milan on March 23, 2019 featuring ZZA and a handful of other Italian neo-fascist rock 'n roll bands (see also Fig. 1). At the top of the poster the text reads: "20 anni" (20 years), suggesting that the purpose of the concert was to celebrate ZZA's twentieth anniversary. However, upon a closer examination an alternative motivation emerges. March 23, 2019 was the centennial of the founding of Benito Mussolini's Fasci italiani di combattimento (Italian Fighting Squads) movement in Milan's Piazza San Sepolcro, which marked the beginning of Fascism's march to power in post-World War I Italy.
Beneath ZZA's logo are the logos of the six other neo-fascist rock 'n roll groups which also performed at the March 23, 2019 concert, including Ultima Frontiera (Final Frontier), a Trieste-based band with a number of explicitly anti-communist lyrics, and Dodicesima Disposizione Transitoria (Twelfth Transitory Provision, DDT), a Milan-based group whose name provocatively references Article XII of the "Transitory and Final Provisions" of the Italian Republic's constitution, which prohibits the "reorganization, in any form, of the dissolved fascist party" (1947).
On March 14, Milan's provincial committee for security and order ruled that the CPI-organized demonstration scheduled for March 23 could not include any initiatives in public space, nor could the demonstration include any element of a "commemorative character," for "obvious and serious reasons of public order and security" (2019). Nevertheless, more than 2,000 people attended the concert, which included fans from all over Italy as well as from neighboring countries (Fig. 3). According to Italian media reports, the doors to the concert venue opened at 7:19pm, the same time Mussolini's Italian Fighting Squads were established (Berizzi 2019). Throughout the evening, attendees reportedly performed the Roman salute and chanted the slogan "Abbiamo cento anni, ma ce ne sentiamo venti" (We're one hundred years old, but we only feel twenty) (Figs. 4 and 5). On the day of the concert, counter-demonstrators, including members of the Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d'Italia (National Association of Italian Partisans, ANPI), occupied Piazza San Sepolcro in a demonstration of collective opposition against the revival and spread of Fascism in Milan and, indeed, Italy.
ZZA's concert in Milan, however, was not the only way in which CPI and Italy's other neo-fascist organizations celebrated the centennial of the founding of Mussolini's Italian Fighting Squads. CPI's neo-fascist youth group – Blocco Studentesco (Student Bloc) – also produced a commemorative poster, which is featured in this collection (see also Figs. 6 and 7).
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