Mario Caligiuri

Mario Caligiuri, born in Calabria in 1960, was the youngest mayor in Italy in 1985. He is a pedagogue, university professor (teaching Communication Pedagogy and Theory and Techniques of Public Communication), humanist, expert on southern Italian affairs, journalist, commentator, president of the Italian Society of Intelligence and lecturer at the Republic’s top academic institutions.
In 2003, he successfully made his town, Soveria Mannelli in Catanzaro province, the most digitally advanced municipality in the country. Passionate about culture and the younger generations, he is above all a great visionary. Pietrangelo Buttafuoco wrote about him: “Only visionaries can be mayors, because they have the clearest sense of reality. The most realistic of all is Mario Caligiuri, who transformed Soveria Mannelli into an enchanted place, much like Ragueneau’s shop — the pastry chef who was a friend of the Muses and protected by Cyrano de Bergerac”.
A civic provocateur, he appointed Giordano Bruno Guerri as Councillor for the Dissolution of the Obvious. Together with Vittorio Sgarbi, he proclaimed the Republic of Magna Graecia in 1996 as a counterpart to the Republic of Padania. He once proposed hosting Saddam Hussein in an attempt to prevent the Second Gulf War. He also installed voicemail messages by comedian Piero Chiambretti at the municipal office and launched a creative street naming campaign, including Piazza Amélie Poulain, Largo del Poeta Ignoto, Via col Vento and Salita-Discesa Marcello Marchesi.
He strives to renew democracy by focusing on innovation and culture, and on recovering Southern history and forgotten knowledge.
In his 2010 book History of Western Political Thought, Giorgio Galli listed Aristotle as the first author and Caligiuri as the last. Perhaps a coincidence — but a significant one.
In 2012, Caligiuri theorised the concept of the ‘Disinformation Society’, writing the book Introduction to the Disinformation Society: Towards a Pedagogy of Communication (2018), and Like Fish in Water: Immersed in Disinformation, with a foreword by Luciano Floridi (2019).
He pioneered the academic study of Intelligence in Italian universities, prompted by Francesco Cossiga. Lucio Caracciolo said of him: “Mario Caligiuri certainly didn’t invent intelligence studies, but he made them acceptable — which is even more important — by turning them into a subject of public debate. This is a credit to him, as it expands our cultural horizons”.
He wrote the entry on ‘Intelligence’ for the Treccani Italian Encyclopedia. His story — contagious and unstoppable, capable of tearing down walls and borders to create new opportunities — embodies the best of what we can achieve.

Signed by Cecilia Sandroni