I’ve written about Guglielmo Marconi a number of times.  He was truly the father of Wi-Fi (wireless-fidelity) which made possible radio, television, cellphones, and radar.  This year is the 150th anniversary of his birth, and December 12th was the day in 1901 that he transmitted the first wireless signal across the Atlantic.

It may be surprising to learn that his homeland doesn’t universally celebrate this man of genius. Like Cristoforo Colombo, also marginalized in Italy, Marconi is a marked man.  His sin:  he lived and died a Fascist.

There was clearly a reason so many Italians embraced Fascism in the early 1920s.  After the First World War many nations that suffered through the calamity faced postwar economic and social chaos.  The Russian Revolution and civil war (1917-1923) had frightful implications for Western Europe—wholesale murders, godless Communism, and the execution of the Czar’s family.  Italy was not spared.  “Italy was on the verge of falling apart,” wrote former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in her book Fascism: A Warning.  Guglielmo Marconi joined the Fascist Party as did playwright Luigi Pirandello and other prominenti.  It didn’t take long for Pirandello to regret the act but Marconi developed a relationship with Mussolini and was even appointed to the Grand Council of Fascism.  He controversially defended the invasion of Ethiopia, but mercifully died in 1937 before Fascism’s final curtain.

Celebrated Italian journalist Riccardo Luna wants Marconi to be restored to his rightful place in Italian history, as “perhaps the most illustrious Italian citizen of the 20th Century,” regardless of his politics.  His call is resonating throughout the country as the conservative Meloni government has sponsored Marconi exhibits and RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, aired a miniseries on the inventor in May. 

According to Luna, Marconi’s founding of the Marconi Wireless Company in England when he was only 23 ranks with Steve Jobs launching Apple and Elon Musk founding Tesla.  Marconi also co-founded the BBC, and was the only Nobel laureate (1909) in Physics who didn’t have a college degree.  It was Marconi’s invention and his company telegraphers that saved lives on the Titanic (1912).  “Yet, in Italy we are almost ashamed of him,” writes Luna.  Acknowledging Luna’s lament, the leftist mayor of Marconi’s hometown Bologna adds, “The name of Guglielmo Marconi…continues the shining Italic tradition of Volta, Galvani, Ferraris, and Righi…” (Galileo Ferraris invented the electric a/c motor in 1888.  Augusto Righi was a Bolognese physicist who influenced Marconi.)

Opponents of Marconi may forgive his membership in the Fascist Party but during his term as head of Mussolini’s Royal Academy of Italy, he routinely marked Jewish candidates for this prestigious group of intellectuals with an ‘e’ for ebraio (Jew).  (Recall the treatment of Jews and Italians in the USA at the time.)  Persecution of Italian Jews didn’t begin until 1938 with the Racial Laws, one year after Marconi’s death.  It was known that Marconi helped the daughter of Jewish physicist Heinrich Hertz emigrate from Germany to England where Marconi had strong connections.

In our own context, it would be wise to consider that Dr. Wernher von Braun, the scientist who embodied NASA was a Nazi Party member and held an SS position during the war.  His V-2 factories used slave labor from nearby concentration camps.  This is a far cry from jotting an ‘e’ next to someone’s name.

Marconi’s link to Italian Americans occurred in 1927 when, as an Italian Senator, he was the honored speaker at the inauguration of La Casa Italiana at Columbia University.  It was the first and largest center for Italian civilization in America, initiated by Italian American students, funded with Italian American money, and built by Italian American sweat and muscle.  (Mussolini only donated the furniture.) It is now owned by the Italian government and operated by a multi-ethnic Board, more ‘e’ than ‘i’.

Marconi affirmed the mission of La Casa on that day, “To promote the educational and spiritual uplift of Italians in America.”  The only ‘uplift’ La Casa promotes today is for the benefit of irrelevant academics looking for a place to nest.  -JLM