"Shared" Memory between Greek and the Italian far-right: The case of Mikis Mantakas

On 28 February 1975, the Greek medical student Mikis (Michael) Mandakas, son of Brigadier General Nikos Mandakas, who had been expelled by the military regime of 21 April 1967 that had abolished democracy in Greece, was assassinated in Rome. Mandakas was shot in the temple outside the offices of Italy's neo-fascist party, MSI, in Ottaviano Street in the Prati district, by Italians Alvaro Lojacono and Fabrizio Panzieri, as it turned out in the course of investigations. Lojacono and Panzieri were members of a far-left organisation and in the trial that followed they were acquitted in the first instance, and subsequently sentenced in absentia to 11 and 16 years in prison respectively. Mandakas was alleged to have been a member of both the MSI and the Greek far-right student organisation called Lega Greca, which sided with the Greek colonels. Although the murder of Mandakas was not a major issue on the political scene in Greece during the Third Hellenic Republic, over the years Mandakas has become a martyr of both the Italian and Greek far-right, and in recent decades commemoration ceremonies have been held in Italy and Greece. Members of the organisations hold plaques including the word 'presente', which refers to 'martyrs' of fascist ideology. It is noteworthy that in 2019 the current president of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, made a post on X, formerly Twitter, on the occasion of the 44th anniversary of Mandaka's murder, describing Mandaka as a European martyr "martire europeo". Furthermore, Nikos Michaloliakos the head of Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party of Greece, who is now in prison, was in attendance and gave speeches on his memorial day. The appropriation of Mandaka's murder remains strong to this day by Greek and Italian far-right groups and organizations, who place him in the pantheon of martyrs of far-left political violence and terrorism of the age of the "anni di piombo", some 50 years after his assassination. It is a shared moment in the history of the far-right traditions of the two countries and part of the common tradition that unites them, from the local extreme far-right to the transnational. With this proposal we aspire to explore how this common memory was constituted in the 1970s, how and if it contributes to the maintenance of strong links between the current Greek and Italian far-right scenes, highlighting the eclectic affinities between them, in accordance to the transnational theory. This proposal is an interdisciplinary approach, of Political Science and History. Archival research and the gathering and analysis of data through social media (X, former Twitter) and the Greek and Italian far-right press will be our tools.