Paolo Orano

Paolo Orano (born 15 June 1875 in Rome – died 7 April 1945 in Padula) was an Italian psychologist, politician and writer. Orano began his political career as a revolutionary syndicalist in Italian Socialist Party. He later became a leading figure within the National Fascist Party.

Orano was born in 1875 in Rome to a local father and a Sardinian mother. He learned literature and philosophy at University of Rome and graduated in 1898. In the next year he began teaching philosophy high schools, including in Siena, Senigallia and Tivoli. He also worked with various publishers.

Orano began his political career as one of a number of leading syndicalist thinkers associated with the Italian Socialist Party at the turn of the century. His estrangement from the Socialists began in 1905 when he resigned his position at the newspaper Avanti! following the dismissal of syndicalist Enrico Leone.

Along with fellow syndicalists Arturo Labriola and Robert Michels, as well as nationalist Enrico Corradini, Orano became part of a group of intellectuals who followed the ideals of Georges Sorel. To this end he founded his own weekly newspaper, La Lupa, in October 1910. It came to represent the first collaboration between syndicalists like Orano and nationalists like Enrico Corradini.Benito Mussolini would later claim that this paper was an influence on his political ideas. Orano became a strong critic of democracy, seeing it as the cause of Italy's ills and his rhetoric, along with that of fellow syndicalists such as Filippo Corridoni and Angelo Olivetti, was by 1914 very similar to that coming from the Italian Nationalist Association. Orano supported the First World War, ostensibly because he hoped that it would strengthen both the bourgeoisie and proletariat and thus hasten the process of class conflict and revolution. However his views caused considerable controversy within the syndicalist movement and helped to bring about its fragmentation as many of those associated with the movement, in particular Leone, were anti-war. By the end of the war his positions were largely indistinguishable from those of the nationalists.

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