PRESS RELEASE
Tremonti-Sgarbi Launch New Party, But Leave Missing Link
Sept. 7, 2017 (EIRNS)—Former Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti has launched a new political movement called "Rinascimento" (Renaissance), together with Vittorio Sgarbi, a well-known art expert, with the idea of reviving Italian national identity and sovereignty based on the ideas of the Renaissance. They published a book Rinascimento, in which Sgarbi addresses the history and Tremonti addresses the current political part. Although the book is already out, Tremonti and Sgarbi will officially present the book and the movement on Sept. 13.
The book starts off on the right foot: Brunelleschi. From that, presented as the peak of the Renaissance idea of science and beauty, Sgarbi goes through the entire spectrum of Renaissance and post-Renaissance artists, but more as a catalogue than a task-oriented job.
As to the European Union, Tremonti calls for going back to the Treaties of Rome, in which concessions of sovereignty were described as "exceptions" and not normality, and were to be implemented only "on a parity basis." He does not call explicitly for a return to national currencies. He also does not call explicitly for Glass-Steagall. The impression is that what he does not say is more important than what he does say:
For instance, on Africa, he calls for investments as a solution to the migration crisis, but the only concrete measure he proposes is to devolve 1% of the EU value-added tax revenues as aid for Africa. After describing this, however, he acknowledges that it would not be enough, and that what we really need is great projects, but he fails to develop that any further.
On China’s role in Africa, he is more moderate than on recent occasions, when he had warned against Chinese expansion. He says that Europe must get involved with China in Africa, and not leave Africa to the Chinese alone.
This author’s impression is that the book was hastily written. For instance, a spectacular failure is that Machiavelli is totally left out. EIR asked Sgarbi about that hiatus, as we had the opportunity to speak with him at a cultural event on Sept. 2. Sgarbi, who is a narcissist but also an anti-bigot (including EU and LGBT bigotry), said "it may be" that Machiavelli is missing, because Sgarbi’s task was to take care of the figurative arts and architectural side, whereas Tremonti’s was the current political part.
This failure may have been unintentional, but it reflects the inadequacy of the book in representing an effective tool to achieve the goal its authors stated. The good side is that it will provoke a national debate in which the LaRouche movement will intervene as an authority.
Reviving Italian national identity and sovereignty means focussing on the red line going through the Renaissance giants, in order to identify the common feature of Italian identity as imago viva Dei, as Dante characterized it in his Commedia and Brunelleschi in his architectural masterpieces based on anti-empirical science. In this context, Machiavelli is the missing link as aptly described by Friedrich List in his treatise on the System of National Economy.
