Italic Institute of America

10/14/2024

Read Rosario A. Iaconis's New York Daily News article - October 14, 2024 - about Christopher Columbus and the 2024 presidential candidates.

https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/10/14/christopher-columbus-and-the-candidates/

Christopher Columbus and the candidates

AP Photo/Jim Mone

The pedestal which held the statue of explorer Christopher Columbus is shown Friday, June 12, 2020 with the Minnesota State Capitol in the background where a special session of the legislature began in St. Paul, Minn. The statue which stood in place for decades, was pulled down earlier in the week by protesters. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)The pedestal which held the statue of explorer Christopher Columbus is shown Friday, June 12, 2020 with the Minnesota State Capitol in the background where a special session of the legislature began in St. Paul, Minn. The statue which stood in place for decades, was pulled down earlier in the week by protesters. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)



By ROSARIO A. IACONIS
PUBLISHED: October 14, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.

Oval Office aspirants of 2024, unite.

On Columbus Day, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump should honor America and uphold the ideals of Western civilization by celebrating the epochal voyage of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

Ours is a proud multicultural society. But scuttling a storied national holiday and replacing it with a performative homage to Native Americans dishonors this great republic.

Moreover, it hardly advances the cause of the indigenous peoples whose ancestors were ethnically cleansed at the hands of Spanish, French, Dutch, Portuguese and English colonial overlords.

According to Robert H. Fuson, who penned an English-language translation of “The Log of Christopher Columbus“: “Those who see Columbus as the founder of slavery in the New World are grossly in error.”

Fuson explained that such a mistaken belief grew out of a misinterpretation of an earlier observation by the Admiral of the Ocean Sea regarding the docility of the Tainos.

Indeed, Fuson lauded Columbus: “His affection for the young chief in Haiti, and vice versa, is one of the most touching stories of love, trust, and understanding between men of different races and cultures to come out of this period in history.”

But Kamala Harris’ running mate — the self-described “knucklehead” Tim Walz — allowed rioters to run amok and topple a statue of Christopher Columbus in Minneapolis during the George Floyd protests. The Minnesota governor even called the 93-year old statue a “genocidal monument.”

Perhaps former school teacher Walz is in need of a remedial history lesson. The scions of Italy have endured many hardships in the land named for Amerigo Vespucci.

In 1879, while striking for better wages, five Italian-immigrant charcoal burners in Eureka, Nev., were savagely gunned down by a sheriff’s posse in the infamous Fish Creek Massacre

In 1891 — one year prior to the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage — 11 Italians in New Orleans were slaughtered in the largest mass lynching in U.S. history.

In 1941, FDR issued Presidential Executive Order 9066 that branded 600,000 Americans of Italian descent as “enemy aliens.”
Today, vile anti-Italian imagery remains a staple of Hollywood and the mainstream media. And both the intelligentsia and the hoi polloi ritually stereotype a people whose ancestors hailed from the land John Milton called “the seat of civilization.”

Tony Soprano is a loathsome fictional capo. Corey Comperatore was a bona fide superhero who died while shielding his wife and daughter from an assassin’s bullets at the Trump rally in Butler, Pa.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro exalted Comperatore: “Corey died a hero.” Shapiro also noted that “Corey was the very best of us.”

And in similarly lauding Comperatore’s bravery and heroism, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni cited the former fire chief’s Italian origins in Calabria — the birthplace of Anton Calabres, a mariner who accompanied Columbus to the New World.

Though he served the Spanish Crown, Genoa’s favorite son never shed his Italian roots. While writing from Spain, Cristoforo Colombo declared that “Though my body may be here, my heart is always there.”

The Great Navigator’s voyages of discovery joined two worlds. It’s called the Columbian Exchange, which sparked a globalization wherein two branches of humanity melded for the first time in 10,000 years.

A Spanish TV program claiming that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew is erroneous. According to geneticist Antonio Alonso: “My conclusion is that the documentary never shows Columbus’ DNA and, as scientists, we don’t know what analysis was undertaken.”

Cristoforo Colombo’s epic feat sparked the bold treks of his fellow Italian navigators: Giovanni da Verrazzano, Giovanni Caboto and Amerigo Vespucci.

This year marks the 500th anniversary of da Verrazzano’s journey to North America. The Italian explorer was the first European to sight New York and Narragansett bays.

Columbus’ journey across the wide Atlantic ushered in the foundational gifts of the Italians: capitalism, modern science, accounting, the rule of law, the arts, and humanism.

Vice President Harris, a staunch advocate of women’s rights, would be wise to read “The Emancipation of Women in Ancient Rome” by Roger Vigneron and Jean-Francois Gerkens — a book detailing how the Italians of antiquity forged a polity where “the rule of juridical equality was the duty to be pursued.” According to these historians, the Romans believed men and women to be inherently equal.”

America’s Founders forged a republic of laws based on the ancient Roman model. Absent Christopher Columbus, our more perfect union — with its tripartite government, Constitution and Bill of Rights — might never have come into existence.

All the more reason for today’s presidential candidates to cherish Columbus Day.

Iaconis, chairman of the Italic Institute of America, is writing a novel about Harry S. Truman.

Oval Office aspirants of 2024, unite. On Columbus Day, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump should honor America and uphold the ideals of Western civilization by celebrating the epochal voyage of the Adm…

09/11/2024

Read Rosario A. Iaconis's evisceration of "The Sopranos" in The Wall Street Journal - September 11, 2024.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-sopranos-anti-italian-dark-appeal-f4ef7c93?mod=opinion_more_article_pos8

In enumerating the reasons for the success of “The Sopranos,” Alex Gibney misses the forest for the Pine Barrens (“The Man Behind the Mobsters on HBO” by John Anderson, Television Review, Sept. 4).

The HBO series didn’t hinge on Tony Soprano’s Oedipal rage. Nor was it a parable about the banality, corruption and racism underpinning our capitalist society. And as creators go, David Chase can hardly be called a contrarian. The conceit of a bloodthirsty capo undergoing psychotherapy wasn’t novel. In the 1999 film “Analyze This,” psychiatrist Billy Crystal psychoanalyzes a murderous mobster portrayed by Robert De Niro.

The central appeal of “The Sopranos” was the schadenfreude it engendered among viewers. Italians were depicted as the alien “other,” a group of risible yet menacing dunces and dons. It allowed both the literati and the hoi polloi to luxuriate in a safe suburban prejudice.

Watching the depredations of a criminal clan of fictional New Jersey Neanderthals gave viewers a cathartic thrill. It became fashionable to perpetuate the Big Lie about a people whose ancestors pioneered the Pax Romana, the rule of law, accounting, capitalism and modern science.

Rosario A. Iaconis

It allowed both the literati and the hoi polloi to luxuriate in a safe suburban prejudice.

08/15/2024

Italy's Ferragosto is a public holiday celebrated throughout the Magic Boot. On August 15, the entire nation begins a festive period of R & R.

Ferragosto, is a holiday originating with Rome's first emperor, Caesar Augustus. Several festivals took place during the month of August to celebrate the harvest. In 18 BC, Augustus introduced the 'Feriae Augusti' to connect them all and provide a longer period of rest after the harvest, a time of intense agricultural labor.

During the ‘Augustali’ celebrations, horse races were organized across the Roman Empire. Such ancient traditions remain almost unchanged.

07/31/2024

Roman, remember by your strength to rule Earth’s peoples – for your arts are to be these: To pacify, to impose the rule of law, To spare the conquered, battle down the proud.
Virgil, The Aeneid

06/16/2024

Remembering my Papa`---Dr. Antonio S. Iaconis---on Father Day's. He was my role model, inspiration and hero.

04/30/2024

https://www.ft.com/content/a39fe04d-44e4-44d3-9f62-a00dc8e539fa

Read Rosario A. Iaconis's commentary about the final frontier in today's Financial Times - April 30, 2024.

Letter: Advanced extraterrestrials find Voyager 1.
Just imagine

From Rosario A Iaconis, Adjunct Professor, Social Sciences Depart-ment, Suffolk County Community College, Mineola, NY, US

Centuries ago, former Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius aptly described our place in the universe: “For the entire Earth is but a point, and the place of your own habitation but a minute corner in it.” The poet Lucretius held that other worlds — populated by intelligent beings — exist elsewhere in the cosmos.

Centuries later, the Italian rationalist philosopher Giordano Bruno (a contemporary of Galileo Galilei) reasoned that if other stars are indeed suns “innumerable Earths must revolve around those suns in a manner similar to the way . . . the planets revolve around our Sun. Living beings inhabit those worlds.”

Rather than viewing Voyager 1, which Nasa now says it has revived, as a relic of a bygone civilisation — the spacecraft was launched in the 1970s — we should think of this analogue-oriented craft as a robotic pioneer, humanity’s first foray into interstellar space (“Rejoice! Voyager 1 is back from the dead”, Opinion, April 27).

And if, in the far-flung future, some advanced extraterrestrials come across this strange, mechanised visitor from another planet, perhaps they will appreciate the sounds and images of our pale blue dot.

Rosario A Iaconis Adjunct Professor Social Sciences Department Suffolk County Community College Mineola, NY, US

From Ros­ario A Iaconis, Adjunct Pro­fessor, Social Sci­ences Depart­ment, Suf­folk County Com­munity Col­lege, Mineola, NY, US

04/11/2024

On April 9, 1682, Enrico Tonti---who was born in Gaeta, a coastal town near Naples,Italy---and Robert LaSalle reached the mouth of the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes. This became the basis of French claims to the Louisiana Territory, which was named in honor of King Louis XIV. Tonti spent 25 years developing this area.

In "Enrico Tonti," author Pietro Vitelli notes: "Enrico Tonti, an exceptional and tenacious explorer, endowed with an innate ability to communicate with strangers, had earned the nickname 'Iron Hand,' given to him by the Natives. (He had lost his right hand in a gr***de explosion, resulting in Tonti wearing a prosthetic hook covered with a glove.) When he received news that the French were re-establishing a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, Tonti decided to join the colony. He reached Biloxi on January 16, 1700, and settled there. He was chosen as ambassador to the Choctaw and Chickasaw native tribes by Iberville, the colony’s administrator."

With La Salle, Tonti is credited as discoverer of the mouth of the Mississippi River, reaching the Gulf of Mexico from the Great Lakes. The French canoe expedition began its journey south from Lake Ontario on Christmas Eve 1681, and arrived at the mouth of the river in the Gulf of Mexico on April 9, 1682.

04/01/2024

Read Rosario A. Iaconis's latest New York Sun column re the Italian political scene.

https://www.nysun.com/article/pax-meloniana-italys-conservative-premier-is-learning-to-flex-her-muscles-not-only-at-home-but-on-the-european-stage

Pax Meloniana: Italy’s Conservative Premier Is Learning To Flex Her Muscles Not Only at Home but on the European Stage

Since Ms. Meloni’s arrival at Palazzo Chigi, the premier has worked with legitimately elected world leaders of every stripe.

Prime Ministers Meloni of Italy, center, Sunak of Great Britain, right, and and Edy Rama of Albania at Rome December 16, 2023. Mauro Scrobogna/LaPresse via AP)



ROSARIO IACONIS

Sunday, March 31, 2024 10:18:43 am



News that Italian warplanes recently intercepted Russian aircraft straying over international waters in the Baltic Sea will serve as a warning to naysayers — both in Prime Minister Meloni’s conservative coalition and on the left.

President Putin is a menace to the West; and Moscow’s threat may be metastasizing.

Mr. Putin’s shot across the aerial bow underscores Signora Meloni’s ongoing insistence that members of the North Atlantic Treaty not go wobbly. Yet there’s a vacillating link in her center-right administration, too.

The latest polls show a slackening of support for Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s party. Forza Italia has now surpassed the Lega. Stunned by such fading electoral strength, Mr. Salvini has deviated from Signora Meloni’s pragmatic governance.

In addition to aligning himself with the French rightist Marine Le Pen in opposing a second term for the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, Mr. Matteo still nurtures a sotto voce bromance with Mr. Putin. After the Russian leader’s recent re-election victory, Mr. Salvini claimed that the people had spoken — a ludicrous notion.

Since her arrival at Palazzo Chigi, Ms. Meloni has worked with legitimately elected world leaders of every stripe. Not, though, Mr. Putin. Even before Italy’s action in the skies over the Baltic Sea, Signora Meloni had admonished Mr. Salvini for undermining the center-right’s mission on another front.

“We’re all in an electoral campaign,” Ms. Meloni allowed, in reference to the European Parliament vote, “and I fully understand electoral campaigns. But dividing us is the one favor we can give the left.” Added she: “Everyone in Italy and overseas knows that if there’s one person who has never governed and will never govern with the left it is I.”

Dickering with Madam le Pen, an unreconstructed French rightist with a blindspot on economic liberty, and thwarting Ms. Meloni, these are the height of inanity, if not betrayal. Moreover, such a political stunt undercuts the burgeoning success story that is unfolding on Premier Meloni’s watch.

According to the Interior ministry, migrant landings in 2024 have dropped 67 percent to 6,560 compared with 2023. Such progress is due to the cooperative bond that Ms. Meloni has forged with Ms. von der Leyen. Though they lurk on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, both women are compassionate problem-solvers who operate in the rough-and-tumble of the real world.

Like President Reagan, Giorgia Meloni is principled, with an instinct as a uniter (Reagan won a second term with 49 of the 50 United States). She can reach across the cultural and political divides to achieve unexpected breakthroughs.

Ms. Meloni has even been able to team up to good effect with the prickly Emmanuel Macron. She and the French president were largely responsible for bringing Hungary’s Victor Orbán back into the allied fold regarding Ukraine. This outcome would not have transpired absent Ms. Meloni’s diplomatic persuasiveness and rock-ribbed center-right profile.

Then there’s the Financial Times’ observation that the Magic Boot’s economy is rebounding. Italy’s price growth was reported below expectations, fueling the possibility of a European Central Bank rate cut. Many believed that Meloni & Co. would usher in a populist spending spree of unparalleled proportions.

Yet, as the Financial Times notes, Ms. Meloni “has defied those expectations, as her government has pursued a path of fiscal rectitude and forged a strong working relationship with Brussels. Concerns resurfaced last autumn when the government said it would not bring the country’s budget deficit below the limit set by the EU until 2026.

“Since then,” the FT notes, “Italy’s economy has performed relatively well while the outlook for Germany has darkened and Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government has lurched from crisis to crisis.” A curious byproduct of all those misconceptions is a growing realization among friend and foe alike that the President of Italy’s Council of Ministers is a critical thinker.

Ms. Meloni’s is a form of realpolitik that methodically grapples with an unpredictable global order — an object lesson that Signor Salvini has yet to master. According to a nationwide poll in January, six out of ten Italian citizens worry that their country will be engulfed in a world war.

A smaller percentage fears that Italy could fall prey to jihadist terrorism. With the Middle East aflame and Russia regaining ground lost to Ukraine, such concerns are mounting. In attempting to ridicule Ms. Meloni’s approach to Italy’s global role La Stampa’s Flavia Perina wound up highlighting the prime minister’s steady hand. And people are starting to call it “Pax Meloniana.”

ROSARIO IACONIS

Rosario A. Iaconis is an author and educator who embraces Giuseppe Verdi’s dictum: “You may have the universe if I may have Italy.” He serves as Chairman of the Italic Institute of America.

Since Ms. Meloni’s arrival at Palazzo Chigi, the premier has worked with legitimately elected world leaders of every stripe.

03/10/2024

Read Rosario Iaconis's latest column re the ramifications of the Italian regional election in Abruzzo.

https://www.nysun.com/article/italys-left-in-regional-election-today-hopes-for-a-sardinia-effect-after-a-loss-there-for-giorgia-meloni


ROSARIO IACONIS
Sunday, March 10, 202416:18:36 pm

Beware l’effetto Sardegna. Though it sounds like the title of an old Robert Ludlum paperback, the so-called “Sardinia effect” may be the harbinger of things to come — and a significant threat to the electoral supremacy of Italy’s center-right.

After Prime Minister Meloni’s hand-picked candidate for the presidency of Sardinia, Paolo Truzzu, lost by a whisker to Alessandra Todde of the left-leaning Movimento Cinque Stelle, the Italian press began chattering — chortling might be a better word — about a supposed Sardinia effect that could mark the beginning of the end of Signora Meloni’s conservative revolution.

Or not. Yes, the prime minister suffered her first-ever political defeat since acceding to the Palazzo Chigi. However, this regional election was no landslide. While the loss highlighted continuing tensions between Signora Meloni and her deputy premier, Matteo Salvini, these politicos are still a fully functioning governmental duo.

Signore Salvini had agitated for the incumbent, Christian Solinas, of the Lega party, to run for a second term. Signora Meloni opted for Mr. Truzzu, the mayor of Cagliari and a member of her Fratelli d’Italia party. Hizzoner lost. Yet it bears noting that the results were close enough to contemplate a possible recount.

Even so, it’s a good thing such a recount did not take place. Better to concentrate on the next battleground — the regional election taking place today in Abruzzo.

“Am I afraid of the Sardinia effect in Abruzzo?” asks Signora Meloni, who voiced skepticism about such a phenomenon. Eschewing the doomsday scenario envisioned by Italy’s left-leaning commentariat, the prime minister adopted a confident tone: “Frankly, I’m quite optimistic.”

The head-to-head contest in the birthplace of the poet and adventurer Gabriele d’Annunzio pits the Gregory Peck-like Fratelli d’Italia candidate, Marco Marsilio, against the leftist independent Luciano D’Amico.

Signore Marsilio, who is the current president of the region, has a substantial record of achievement. He’s a pragmatically passionate governor who gets results for Abruzzo.

Nevertheless, owing to the closeness of the Sardinian balloting, Signora Meloni said one should not discount the possibility of some sort of electoral chicanery or a dirty trick or two in the run-up to the European Parliamentary elections in June.

“Anything can happen up through the European elections,” said the prime minister. In other words, to echo Heraclitus: “Expect the unexpected.”

The Continent’s center-left is bracing for a right-wing tsunami in those contests — making Abruzzo a priority for the likes of Elly Schlein and the former premier, Giuseppe Conte.

Signore Conte, though, whose candidate defeated the center-right opponent in Sardinia, is hoping for back-to-back victories. Such a development would allow him to claim the leadership of an on-again-off-again fusion center-left alliance with Ms. Schlein.
“It had been since 2015 since we won a region where the right governed,” she crowed post-Sardinia.

The Five Star Movement’s Alessandra Todde, the newly elected president of the island, outlined the center-left’s strategy for national preeminence: “To succeed in creating a solid project that can convince the electorate,” an alliance of the Five Stars and the left-wing Partito Democratico “is the only way.”

If the left unifies, a victory in Abruzzo could trigger an electoral domino effect, spreading from region to region — and ultimately toppling Signora Meloni’s conservative government.

For all his fervor, though, Signore Conte was less jubilant, warning of a “center-right junta” with deep financial pockets. Shades of Hillary Clinton and that “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Mud-slinging and name-calling are the sine qua non of most electoral campaigns. Thus far, Abruzzo has been lively. Even so, though they are not as ironclad — or as stubborn as facts — polls matter.

Federica Pascale reports in EURACTIV.it that, “the competition for the regional presidency appears to be extremely tight between the candidates in the race,” according to Winpoll. Signore Marsilio has 50.4 percent of the vote while Luciano D’Amico has 49.6 percent, leaving out undecideds and those who don’t plan to vote.

excluding the undecided and those who do not intend to vote.
Commenting on CorriereTV, Antonio Polito explained how Abruzzo, which he considers the Ohio of Italy, possesses a unique political duality. Whereas the mountainous interior traditionally votes for the right, the electorate in coastal Abruzzo is more volatile.

In order to achieve victory, the center-right coalition must hold the electoral line on the coast while garnering a solid vote count from the moderate Forza Italia — which acts as a counterbalance to the more incendiary Lega. That’s a formula for regional and national success.

The conservatives currently govern 14 of Italy’s 20 regions. Should the center-right lose Abruzzo, though, it could mark the beginning of a left-wing resurgence. That would mean a revival of instability, the return of revolving-door governments, and a lowering of Italy’s global profile. If the latest polls showing a tightening race are any indication, Signora Meloni should beware the Ides of Abruzzo.

ROSARIO IACONIS
Rosario A. Iaconis is an author and educator who embraces Giuseppe Verdi’s dictum: “You may have the universe if I may have Italy.” He serves as Chairman of the Italic Institute of America.

Beware the Ides of Abruzzo: the loss by a whisker of the prime minister’s candidate in Sardinia is raising hopes on the left that it could mark the…

03/09/2024

Read Rosario A. Iaconis's New York Daily News article about Enrico Fermi, the true Father of the Nuclear Age (March 9, 2024).

By ROSARIO A. IACONIS
March 9, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.

The real father of the Nuclear Age

What was Christopher Nolan thinking?

In directing “Oppenheimer,” which has garnered 13 Academy Award nominations, Nolan relegates Enrico Fermi — the true architect of the nuclear age — to a bit part.

J. Robert Oppenheimer served as the director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory during the development of the atomic bomb, but he did not usher in humanity’s new technological epoch.

Fermi was the Nobel Prize-winning Italian physicist whose pioneering experiments with uranium caught the attention of Albert Einstein as the winds of war were enveloping Europe.

Ultimately, Fermi created the world’s first nuclear reactor, which led to the advent of nuclear energy and made the Little Man and Fat Boy atomic bombs a reality.

On Dec. 2, 1942, in a converted squash court beneath the stands of the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field, Fermi successfully set off the world’s first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, a controlled flow of energy derived from a source other than the sun.

Without Fermi, the Manhattan Project would have failed. And no amount of scene-chewing theatrics by Matt Damon as Col. Leslie Groves — nor the enchanting presence of Emily Blunt as the conflicted Mrs. Oppenheimer — can make up for Nolan’s dereliction of filmic duty.

Though the movie depicts Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer warmly greeting Fermi in Italian, Danny Deferrari’s Fermi comes across as a not-ready-for prime-time paesano.

In his Aug. 2, 1939, missive to FDR, Albert Einstein wrote: “Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future.”

One of the elements whose atom Enrico split was uranium. This work led to his innovative experimentation with neutrons, which led to nuclear fission.

Yet all this is missing from Nolan’s oeuvre. The director also omits any mention of Fermi’s name when referencing Einstein’s famous letter to FDR.

Fermi had been an integral part of the Italian scientific firmament in the 1920s and the 1930s.

In 1933, he developed the pivotal theory of beta decay, which involved the proton, neutron, electron and the “neutrino” — coining the term in Italian as the “little neutral one” and unifying Wolfgang Pauli’s work with Paul Dirac’s positron and Werner Heisenberg’s neutron-proton model.

Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 “for his work with artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons, and for nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons.”

Fermi was a Roman Catholic. His wife, Laura Capon, came from a well-respected Jewish family in Rome. Her father Augusto Capon was an admiral in the Italian navy.

According to David N. Schwartz, author of “The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age”: “cultural or political antisemitism was virtually unknown in Italy.” Even the odious racial laws, which were promulgated in 1938 under German pressure, never dimmed the inherent philo-Semitism of the Italian people.

And as Schwartz noted: “True, the fascist regime was repugnant, but the regime never meddled with her husband’s work; indeed, it celebrated that work.”

Moreover, the author revealed that “in deference perhaps to his own ambivalence, Mussolini incorporated an opt-out provision in the racial laws.”

And “Laura’s father, Admiral Capon, applied on behalf of his whole family and his application was accepted in early 1939, meaning that Laura could have returned to Italy at any time during the Mussolini years without endangering herself or her family.”

But things changed “when Mussolini fell in 1943 and the Germans effectively took direct control over much of Italy.” Augusto Capon was later murdered by the Germans in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

After accepting the Nobel Prize in Stockholm on Dec. 10, 1938, Enrico Fermi and his family later boarded the RMS Franconia in Southampton — and sailed to freedom, arriving in New York on Jan. 2, 1939.

But Enrico had to endure the bigotry of a benighted desk officer who announced the Italian physicist’s presence to U.S. Admiral S.C. Hooper in 1939: “There’s a w*p outside.”

Three years later, that same “w*p” changed the course of history in a converted squash court in Chicago.

This time, the coded message announcing Fermi (to James B. Conant, head of the National Defense Research Committee) was decidedly different: “The Italian navigator has just landed in the new world.”

As Schwartz averred: “The nuclear age is a broader concept than just simply the nuclear bomb. The nuclear age is, in my view, the moment when man was able to master the process of releasing energy from the nucleus of the atom. Fermi was certainly the father of that.”

In directing “Oppenheimer,” which has garnered 13 Academy Award nominations, Nolan relegates Enrico Fermi — the true architect of the nuclear age — to a bit part.

02/27/2024

Read Rosario Iaconis's latest New York Sun column re the Italian political scene.

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni Wants for a Coalition Partner
Why is her deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, roiling the political waters at every turn, risking the stability of the governing conservative coalition?

From left, the Dutch Party for Freedom's Geert Wilders, Italy's Matteo Salvini, the Alternative For Germany party's Jörg Meuthen, and France's Marine Le Pen at Milan in 2019. AP/Luca Bruno, file

ROSARIO IACONISTuesday, February 27, 202406:53:54 am

Who is Italy’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini? Is he the astute politico who transformed the once separatist Lega Nord into the nationalist party that advocates on behalf of the Mezzogiorno’s ambitious infrastructure proposal, the Ponte sullo Stretto project?

Or is Matteo the secret secessionist who longs to unseat Giorgia Meloni at Palazzo Chigi? And why has he continued to roil the political waters at every turn, risking the stability of the governing conservative coalition?

On the day after the fiaccolata, or torchlight procession, at Rome honoring the murdered Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, Mr. Salvini refused to blame Vladimir Putin for the crime.

If it’s difficult to know everything that happens in Italy, Mr. Salvini said, “how can I then judge something occurring on the other side of the world?”

Such linguistic drivel contrasts sharply with the public denunciations of Mr. Putin by both Prime Minister Meloni and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.

Nevertheless, the deputy prime minister persisted, declaring that it will be up to Russian doctors and judges to determine what caused Navalny’s death.

The center-left leader of the Azione party, Carlo Calenda, has threatened to call for a no-confidence vote against Mr. Salvini unless he disentangles the Lega from any connections with Mr. Putin.

Not to be outdone, the reigning doyenne of the Partito Democratico, Elly Schlein, chimed in: “It’s unacceptable that Salvini won’t be clear about their relations with Russia.”

Though she can be a tad histrionic in her attacks on the Meloni government, Ms. Schlein is on the right side of history when it comes to this existential issue: “Salvini is a minister today and there can’t be any ambiguities of any kind on what happened, on the Russian regime’s clear responsibility on the death of Navalny who was in custody.”

And though Mr. Salvini helped put the migration issue on the map — as it were — his theatrics undercut his message. He tends to come across as more of a rabble rouser than a statesman. Plus, his cozying up to Russia’s autocratic leader is as obsequious as it is bizarre.

Which is why the former premier, Matteo Renzi, who is now the centrist leader of the Italia Viva party, excoriated Mr. Salvini after the death of Navalny, noting that “there is a glaring and indisputable responsibility on the part of the Kremlin, and denying that means denying reality.”

Furthermore, Mr. Renzi detailed Mr. Salvini’s prior idolatry of Mr. Putin: “You can’t cancel the t-shirt with Putin’s face at the European Parliament, you can’t cancel the stroll in Red Square with the electoral placard saying ‘no to Renzi’s referendum’, and you can’t cancel the ‘give me half Putin in exchange for two Mattarellas’ or ‘I prefer Putin to Renzi.'”

In many ways, Mr. Salvini is a disruptor. He shocked the global intelligentsia when his Lega gained 34 percent of the vote in the European Parliamentary elections five years ago. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

Flashing forward to the present, however, the Lega’s electoral prospects have dimmed considerably. Pollsters are predicting that Signore Salvini’s party may not even attain 9 percent of the vote in the June European Parliamentary elections.

Should such a scenario come to pass, Mr. Salvini’s days as the leader of the Lega party could come to an end. Yet he continues to lurch to extremes, affiliating the Lega with the rightist Alternative for Germany and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National group in France.

Whereas Signora Meloni has established her credentials as an effective center-right leader who is able to bridge the divide between the EU’s moderates and hardliners, Mr. Salvini continues to disrupt his own government’s agenda.

The premier has forged a strong working relationship with the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who is up for re-election.

Mr. Salvini went out of his way to publicly embarrass Signora Meloni, though, as reported in Reuters. “I wouldn’t vote for Ursula von der Leyen,” Mr. Salvini said last month, just after the president had visited Rome to endorse publicly an African cooperation pact that is a cornerstone of Signora Meloni’s foreign policy.

Rather than spewing such vitriol, Matteo should point to his pivotal role in bringing about the construction of the longest single-span bridge in the world, linking Sicily with the mainland.

Railway Gazette International reports that the “final design for the rail and road bridge to link Sicily with the mainland has been approved by the board of project company, Stretto di Messina.” Ben fatto, Matteo.

ROSARIO IACONIS
Rosario A. Iaconis is an author and educator who embraces Giuseppe Verdi’s dictum: “You may have the universe if I may have Italy.” He serves as Chairman of the Italic Institute of America.

Why is her deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, roiling the political waters at every turn, risking the stability of the governing conservative…