Giorgio Pini Explained

Giorgio Pini (1 February 1899  - 30 March 1987) was an Italian politician and journalist.

Biography

Pini was born in 1899 in Bologna, studied law at the University of Bologna and served in World War I before joining the Bologna fascio in 1920.[1] Following the establishment of the fascist state, he became an important figure in the journalists syndicate along with the likes of Lando Ferretti and Telesio Interlandi.[1] As a journalist he made his name as an editor for il Resto del Carlino (1928–1930) and Il Gazzettino (1936) before graduating to the editorship of Il Popolo d'Italia in December 1936.[1] He retained this post until 1943, although in the Italian Social Republic Pini, who was a noted moderate, returned to the local Resto.[2] He did however serve as an undersecretary in the Ministry of the Interior in 1944.[2]

Pini was most noted in Fascist Italy for his biography of Benito Mussolini, a hagiography from which Il Duce profited financially.[3] It was translated by Luigi Villari into English as The Official Life on Benito Mussolini in 1939.[4] After the Second World War he released an updated version of this book with Duilio Susmel whilst in 1950 he published Itinerario Tragica 1943/44 which was also pro-fascist in nature.[2] His continuing justifications for fascism led him to far right politics in the post-war era and he was a founding member of the Italian Social Movement (MSI).[5] Within the MSI he was part of the 'left-wing' tendency that sought to add socialist economics to their rhetoric and when his position was not adopted he left in January 1952 to help launch the Raggruppamento Sociale Repubblicano with [oncetto Pettinato.<ref name="Rees2"/> Pini continued his career on the socialist fringes of the far right and frequently attacked the MSI in later years for forging links to regimes in [[Greece]], South Africa and Portugal that he dismissed as reactionary.[2]

Pini died aged 88 in 1987 in Bologna.

Notes and References

  1. [Philip Rees]
  2. Rees, Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right, p. 297
  3. P. Neville, Mussolini, London: Routledge, 2004, p. 231
  4. https://openlibrary.org/b/OL6395995M/official_life_of_Benito_Mussolini Book details
  5. P. Davies & D. Lynch, Routledge Companion to Fascism and the Far Right, 2002, p. 207