Paolo Signorelli – Le idee non si uccidono
(Paolo Signorelli – You Cannot Kill Ideas)
During the 1950s, Paolo Signorelli was a branch leader of the Movimento Sociale Italiano's (Italian Social Movement, MSI) university-level youth group, the Fronte Universitario d'Azione Nazionale (National Action University Front), at Sapienza University in Rome. He was involved with the far-right magazine Imperium, which frequently published pieces by the Italian philosopher Julius Evola, whose writings inspired Europe's neo-fascist movement during the post-World War II decades. Evola's concept of the "spiritual nation" was popular in far-right circles in the 1950s and 60s, and presented the concept of the national community as being composed of shared ideals and loyalty to tradition, moving beyond the perceived limitations of the liberally-minded nation-state complex. This point of view was popular among the postwar European far right, who were comparatively unlikely to enjoy electoral success in Europe (Wolf 2019: 74).
This radical perspective on nationalism was shared by one of Signorelli's closest collaborators, Pino Rauti, whose Centro Studio Ordine Nuovo (New Order Study Center) began as a "think-tank for ideological-doctrinal discussion and dissemination of radical right doctrine" (Wolf 2019: 70). In 1956, at the MSI's fifth national congress in Milan, Signorelli, Rauti, and eighty-six others resigned from the MSI to pursue an "Ordine Nuovo" (New Order, ON). Thirteen years after the ON's founding, the neo-fascist "accelerationist" group carried out the infamous Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, which claimed the lives of seventeen people and wounded eighty-eight others.
Frustrated by the "moderate" approach of the MSI's leadership in the mid-1970s, Signorelli and Teodoro Buontempo founded Lotta Popolare (Popular Struggle), which encouraged political militancy among its supporters. In 1976, Signorelli was expelled from the MSI, which had been renamed the Movimento Sociale Italiano – Destra Nazionale (Italian Social Movement – National Right).
Signorelli was tried for several crimes during the Years of Lead (1968-82). In 1986, he was prosecuted for the 1980 assassination of Mario Amato, a prominent judge based in Rome. The following year, Signorelli was among those being prosecuted for murder, among other crimes, following the Bologna train station bombing in 1980. He was acquitted in both trials. In the 1990s, the Parliamentary Investigation into Terrorism in Italy described Signorelli as the "undisputed leader" of ON, "around whom young and very young militants" gathered (Senato e Camera 2001: 126). In 1996, he published a memoir, Defendant by Profession, which recounted his time in prison during the aforementioned trials (Signorelli 2023).
This poster depicts Signorelli as a neo-fascist patriarch. His ponderous body posture, along with the inclusion of the words "Ideas cannot be killed ... what matters is the direct line. And above us, the stars; high above, the hearts!," contribute to this image of an unapologetic, militant far-right ideologue. He, along with Rauti and others, is frequently commemorated by Italy's neo-fascist youth groups, including Blocco Studentesco (Student Bloc), Lotta Studentesca (Student Struggle), and Gioventù Nazionale (National Youth), each of which are represented by various materials in this collection.
Images