
Last modified: 2020-07-26 by rob raeside
Keywords: italy | psi | italian unionist movement | movimento unionista italiano | 
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On October 12, 1944, Gini joined with the Calabrian activist Santi Paladino, 
and fellow-statistician Ugo Damiani to found the Italian Unionist Movement, for 
which the emblem was the Stars and Stripes, the Italian flag and a world map. 
According to the three men, the Government of the United States should annex all 
free and democratic nations worldwide, thereby transforming itself into a world 
government, and allowing Washington DC to maintain Earth in a perpetual 
condition of peace. The party existed up to 1948 but had little success and its 
aims were not supported by the United States.
Luca Peliti, 8 July 
2015
A drawing of the supposed flag can be found at
http://www.debate.org/PetersSmith/photos/album/4395/28868/. However, to me 
this flag looks very suspicious! The party existed 
from 1944-1948, but the arms in the civil ensign 
(Repubbliche Marinare) was 
introduced only in 1947; the party emblem (see
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movimento_Unionista_Italiano) combined a 
globe, the plain Italian flag and the US flag (48-star version) and this emblem 
would probably appear on the party flag in one way or the other; the US 
coat-of-arms was (and is) not known to anybody here in Europe, so it would make 
no good symbol for the US, particularly compared to the widely known stars and 
stripes.
So, I do not have much doubt that this flag drawing is a very 
recent  invention.
M. Schmöger, 9 July 2015
I'm not sure it was that far out. As I understand it, they saw the opposition of East against West coming, and were trying to find a way to side with the West. TIME had an article on this already on 15 April 1946, according to http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,886918,00.html.
However, I wonder about this flag a bit. The time frame is rather short, with 
the ensign with the arms being introduced in October 1947, and the organisation 
existing only up to 1948. But also, the version of the arms is that of the Navy, 
with the lion wielding a sword. Were these arms in use before being placed on 
the ensign, so someone who wanted to place the arms of both countries on an 
Italian flag might end up with these?
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 
8 August 2015