A Country and its Amnesia
68 years after its Liberation from nazi-fascism, Italy is yet to come to terms with the ghost of its past.
Fascist souvenirs sold on the streets of Italy. Photo by Zellaby via Flickr.
The meaning of a date
April 25th marked the 68th anniversary of Italy’s Liberation from nazi-fascism. 68 years ago, on April 25th, 1945 tanks and troops from the Allies’ armies marched across the country as the insurrection against the German occupation spread across Italy’s North. That evening, Mussolini left Milan with the pretext of starting a counter-attack against Italy’s resistance movements and the Allies’ troops. He would be captured two days later, disguised as an SS soldier, on his way to the Swiss border. Identified by a group of partisans, he was shot with his wife, carried back to Milan and hung upside down from the rooftop of a petrol station, their bodies exposed to public ignominy.
It was the end of two decades of fascist rule, the end of five years of war, and the opening of a path that would lead to the establishment of Italy’s Republic and the charting of its Constitution. April 25 became Italy’s national day in 1949. It stood as the moment that marked the beginning of something novel – the creation of a space in which a whole people could re-invent itself and re-gain its lost dignity. A day which, every year, must fight hard to reassert its importance in a country that is so prone to forgetting the atrocities of its recent past.
Historical amnesia
On the eve of this year’s celebrations, Rome’s right wing gathered to mourn the loss of one of its leading figures, Teodoro Buontempo, who died of illness at the age of 67. A militant of the MSI (Italy’s Social Movement, the far-right party established in 1946 from the ashes of Mussolini’s rule), Buontempo was given the honour of resting in the Capitol by Rome’s Mayor, himself a former member of the MSI, while politicians and right-wing aficionados flocked to greet the coffin and mourn his departure. As Buontempo’s body made his way into the church, a handful of people, before the eyes of MPs and policemen alike, displayed fascist salutes and banners hailing the late politician as one of Italy’s last fighters. And nobody dared to stop them.
Publicly supporting fascism, its ideology and its violent modes of governing is to commit a crime. Italy’s Constitution forbids the exalting of fascism and its recreation as a political party. But insofar as the law touches upon the freedom of association and expression, matters get more complicated. Is raising a hand a manifestation of a political belief, whose freedom, like any others, should be a duty of the state to protect? Were the neo-fascists and their slogans at Buontempo’s funeral innocent nostalgics or potential criminals? Just how far can the whole freedom-of-expression logic stretch?
Ever since that April day, 68 years ago, Italy has postponed the moment in which it will have to come to terms with the inconvenient ghost of its fascist past. It has chosen to blur the memories of two decades of fascist horrors, and turned its back to the impossible questions that the aftermath of the 1945 Resistance pose. Were Italian fascists less Italian, whatever that may mean, than those who fought against Mussolini’s dictatorship? Were they not equally co-opted into an inhumane system? But again, why did they not all rebel, as some did?
By failing to address the unsolved questions posed by its Resistance years, by only half-heartedly acknowledging the need to teach its youngest generations the threats that two fascist decades still pose to democratic institutions, Italy is missing a great opportunity of consolidating what is still a fragmented nation. 25th April is no longer everyone’s day. It was set to mark what is possibly the most beautiful moment of Italy’s young democracy, a day in which Italians could start afresh and build, together, something new. It now stands as the emblem of a polarised country, half-blind to the terrifying images of its fascist past, trapped within a historical amnesia in which these are easily forgotten, at times downplayed, often condoned.
Crimes condoned, threats overlooked
A mourner at the tomb of Mussolini, at his birthplace of Predappio, Northern Italy. Photo by marzia bisognin, ocasaggia via Flickr.
Speaking during the Holocaust Memorial Day in January this year, former PM Silvio Berlusconi stated Mussolini had been wrong to pass anti-Jewish laws, but had been a good leader in other respects. A leading figure from former comedian Beppe Grillo’s 5 Star Movement, Roberta Lombardi (now head of the Movement in the Lower House), said Mussolini’s rule had been, prior to its degeneration, premised on a socialist-inspired view of the country and a high regard for the safeguard of the nation and family life. It remains to be seen where exactly Mrs Lombardi would draw the line between fascism’s putatively laudable years and its subsequent degeneration, or just what the other aspects of Mussolini’s regime former PM Berlusconi refers to. While both later reconsidered their statements, Italy’s fascist-nostalgia is far from rare.
Overburdened by the austerity measures implemented by a political class blamed for putatively serving the interests of outside financial oppressors, people are easily drawn toward populist narratives. What is worrying, these all too often turn into outright hatred against the democratic institutions at large. When on the day of the re-election of Italy’s President of the Republic, 5 Star Movement leader Beppe Grillo called for his supporters to “march on Rome” against the “coup d’état” perpetrated by the left and right, many realised the threats the vocabulary could pose to an already turbulent political stage. Few, however, would have imagined the threats would come to materialise so quickly.
On April 28th the inaugural ceremony of the newly formed government was interrupted by the news of a man who opened fire against the crowd waiting outside Italy’s Parliament in Rome, and later confessed to be “aiming at politicians”. A woman and two policemen were injured, and one risks life-long paralysis. The disaffection towards political institutions, which had, to various extents, fed into the early support for Mussolini’s rule, is coming to playing an increasingly greater role in Italy’s political stage – with consequences which are yet to be fully understood.
25th April today: an untimely resistance
If Resistance could only be conducted in the battlefield, if Partisan was a heroic label which could be granted only to those who’ve lived under Mussolini’s regime, and fought against it, April 25th would be meaningless. But it need not be so. Italy needs partisans in 2013 just as it needed them in 1945. Resisting no longer involves guerrilla warfare. It no longer requires days spent in hiding from nazi-fascist occupiers. Resisting today means being willing to refresh one’s memory, awake one’s historical consciousness, and come to terms with the legacy of a blackout in which Italy’s democracy was shut down. It means curing a country from its chronic historical amnesia, and the deep worries this poses to its peoples and their dignity.
