Word: emilia
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...there are more Communists in Reggio Emilia than in the whole of England, it is all due to Valdo Magnani." That was how the comrades of the Red Belt felt about the up & coming secretary of their best-organized provincial federation...
Slight, sallow Valdo Magnani, 38, college-trained in economics and philosophy, had joined the party in 1936, fought in Fascist Italy's army (as an artillery captain) until Mussolini's downfall, then switched to the partisan anti-Fascist forces. In 1946 he emerged as Reggio Emilia's ace Communist organizer. Militant, tireless, persuasive, he gained 10,000 new party members for his province in the past two years, a time of dwindling ranks for Italian Communism in general. In 1948 he was handily elected to the national Chamber of Deputies...
...Interior, gripped the white steering wheel and stepped on the gas. His jet-black car shot ahead along the die-straight highway at 80 m.p.h., leaving his escort of police motorcycles and official limousines far behind. Scelba was racing into the "triangle of death," a section of Emilia in northern Italy, the notorious Red stronghold where scores of men have been killed in violent flare-ups between Communists and antiCommunists. There were plenty of Reds who would have liked to kill Minister Scelba himself...
...Scelba reached Modena, he got out of his car to look carefully at a poster. Under the caption "Scelba is in Emilia. He mustn't get out!" a cartoon showed a mouse with Scelba's face caught in a trap. Grimly Scelba climbed back into his car and drove on-still further into the trap...
Scelba did not display his courage just for the fun of it. He had a political point to make, and in several speeches during his visit to Emilia he explained the point. Said he: "Communists speculate on the fears of others . . . The Italian Communists are only a minority [but] with threats and violence they intimidate large sections of the population . . . We must kill this inferiority complex which persists where Communists are concerned...