Niccolò Giani

Niccolò Giani was an Italian philosopher and journalist. After attending the Dante Alighieri high school in Trieste, he moved to Milan, where in 1928 he enrolled in the Faculty of Law in Milan and then in the Fascist University Groups (GUF), graduating in 1931. He was the founder of Fascist mysticism and the director of the Sandro Italico Mussolini School of Fascist Mysticism, established in Milan in 1930. Its primary goal was to train the future leaders of Italy's National Fascist Party. The school curriculum promoted Fascist mysticism based on the philosophy of Fideism, the belief that faith and reason were incompatible; Fascist mythology was to be accepted as a "metareality". Giani collaborated with various newspapers such as Il Popolo d'Italia and Gerarchia. In 1934 he obtained the free teaching position in labor law and then the chair of history and doctrine of fascism at the University of Pavia, but in 1935, after marrying Maria Rosa Sampietro, he left as a volunteer for the Ethiopian war enlisting in the Voluntary Militia for National Security (MVSN). From the pages of the Varese newspaper Cronaca prealpina he took part, in 1939, in the anti-Jewish campaign based on his beliefs of "spiritual racism", which had led him to sign, in 1938, the Manifesto of Race. In 1940, like most of the "mystics", he again participated as a volunteer in the World War II. Framed in the 11th Alpine regiment, he took part in the battle of the Western Alps against France and was decorated with the Silver Medal of Military Valor. He also worked as a war correspondent for Il Popolo d'Italia, Cronaca prealpina and L'Illustrazione Italiana in the departments of the Regia Aeronautica and also made various photographic services. Alongside his activity as a journalist he joined that of a soldier, taking part in some actions and obtaining the Bronze Medal for Military Valor. On 14 March 1941 he volunteered to lead an attack aimed at capturing the northern tip of Mali i Shëndëllisë, a mountain in Albania held by the Greeks; his squad succeeded in capturing the Greek outpost, but was then driven back by a Greek counterattack, in which Giani was killed in hand-to-hand combat. He was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor.