| rdfs:comment | - The National Republican Guard (Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana, GNR), often nicknamed Revolutionary Guard, is a branch of Italy's security forces, founded after the Proclamation of Republic, being the standing, operational and permanently armed branch of the Voluntary Militia for National Security (Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale, MVSN). Whereas the regular military defends Italy's borders and maintains internal order, and whereas the MVSN acts as support branch to the militarization of Italian people and as a support force to the Public Security, the National Republican Guard is intended to protect the country's Fascist system. It is also intended to prevent and to crush internal dissent as well as military uprisings. The GNR has roughly 130,000 military personnel including g
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| abstract | - The National Republican Guard (Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana, GNR), often nicknamed Revolutionary Guard, is a branch of Italy's security forces, founded after the Proclamation of Republic, being the standing, operational and permanently armed branch of the Voluntary Militia for National Security (Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale, MVSN). Whereas the regular military defends Italy's borders and maintains internal order, and whereas the MVSN acts as support branch to the militarization of Italian people and as a support force to the Public Security, the National Republican Guard is intended to protect the country's Fascist system. It is also intended to prevent and to crush internal dissent as well as military uprisings. The GNR has roughly 130,000 military personnel including ground, aerospace and naval forces. Since its origin as an ideologically driven militia, the National Republican Guard has taken an ever more assertive role in virtually every aspect of Italian society. The Commandant General of the National Republican Guard is Junio Marco Borghese, famed naval commander Junio Valerio Borghese's firstborn. The force's main role is in national security: it is responsible for critical internal security; GNR operations are geared towards asymmetric warfare and less traditional duties such as resistance operations. The GNR is intended to complement the more traditional role of the regular Italian military, with the two forces operating separately and focusing on different operational roles. The GNR is a combined arms force with its own ground forces, air service (for territorial control and army aviation) and special forces. Naval service is not provided directly by the MVSN assets, and intelligence is carried out by both the general MVSN and OVRA. For POW matters, the GNR is officially recognized as a component of the Italian military. However, the GNR is separate from, and parallel to, the other arms of the Italy's military: furthermore, the GNR is subordinate to the MVSN General Command, not the Defence Ministry, although war plans do include the GNR and it is under the Defence General Staff operational control in wartime. Although the Guard and regular Army were maintained as separate institutions, they had demonstrated the ability to fight effectively in the same offensive or defensive operation. It is to note that the National Republican Guard, as a branch of the MVSN, is the National Fascist Party's main and most lethal armed corps: it is an armed force belonging to the only party which is permitted, although it is charged of State security duties. The GNR was formed following the Proclamation of the Republic of 1948 in an effort to provide the new State of a new and reliable praetorian force and in order to function as a counter to the influence and power of the regular military, initially seen as a potential source of opposition and loyalty to the King. The GNR helped legitimize the Republic and gave the Regime an armed basis of support more consistent than the ordinary rank-and-file MVSN. Moreover, the establishment of the GNR served notice to both the population and the regular armed forces that the republican regime was quickly developing its own enforcement body. Although the GNR operates independently of the regular armed forces, it is often considered to be a military force in its own right due to its important role in Italian defence. The GNR consists of ground, naval, and aviation troops, which parallel the structure of the regular military. All National Republican Guard troops are motivated volunteers rather than a mixture of conscripts and career personnel. Personnel recruited into the GNR are also given some bonuses. Among the newest GNR roles, entrusted to it following the growth of the Anglo-American hostility, there is that to ensure the deterrence capability against the enemies of Italy and the Fascist Revolution, without an exclusively military role, and to provide an armed force to the indigenous peoples of the Italian Empire, who are not eligible for regular military service (which is reserved to Italian citizens). The countering of violent internal dissent, although entrusted to the Public Security and to the general MVSN, is assigned to the GNR, although it is absolutely not a decentralized force, while the persistent separation between military and GNR nowadays is functional to obstacle the infiltration of Western sedition. Thus, the mission assigned to the GNR is purely, and even uniquely, political in its essence. The GNR is defined as the “guardian of the Revolution and of its achievements” — a political as well as military mission. Although top leaders of the GNR have been always granted a seat within the Grand Council of Fascism or in party top bodies, they have never acted as a "praetorian" force in the pejorative meaning of the term. However, from an internal-oriented point of view, the GNR has rarely been a monolithic body in terms of its ideological and political outlook. As in any elite military organization, the leadership of the GNR has been adept at emphasizing uniformity measures. Within the post-coup leadership, these unifying tenets are corporatism, authoritarianism, nationalism — reinforced by revolutionary content; factional elite divisions emerge mainly about actual policies, often relatively untied to security issues. The official rhetoric of the Corps, and the propaganda that comes, is geared to heavily enhance the warrior bravado and soldiery irony, making fun of the enemy and of Death. The rhetoric also focuses on being warriors and not soldiers or even workers.
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