Giorgio Almirante - Pre War Fascism

Pre War Fascism

Trained as a schoolteacher, Almirante instead wrote for the Rome-based fascist journal Il Tevere. A minor figure in the National Fascist Party, whose chief claim to fame was a venomous polemic with Julius Evola on how fascism was to be implemented (he maintained the materialistic view of "biological" view, while his opponent preferred a more "spiritual" take on the matter). In this respect he was influenced by the journalist Telesio Interlandi, who was his ideological mentor. A journalist by profession, Almirante wrote extensively for Interlandi's journal La difesa della razza. Almirante also helped to organise the Italian Social Republic, being appointed Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Culture in 1944. A second-tier figure at best, even in the last throes of the Italian fascist regime, Almirante was mentioned in the memoirs of an RSI veteran as "eating and talking all the way through an official dinner speaking in grandiose and cryptic terms of secret weapons and smiling to himself as he did know secrets beyond his guests' comprehension".