Of Marcello Veneziani

Source: Marcello Veneziani
What would you say if we made a TV show called the Gulag Archipelago? That we went crazy, the gulag has been closed for several decades. It's an old story. And instead there is a brand new program, titled The defense of the Race, Of Gad Lerner, dedicated to a magazine and the terrible events of eighty years ago. Events evoked three times a day after meals.
The program has the obvious function to fan the flames of anti-racism and to establish an infamous bridge between the racists of the past and the centre-right press of today. Starting right from Il Tempo, to whom Lerner wanted to dedicate the incipit of the program, sticking to the fact that that infamous magazine, very read (and sometimes even written) by many who later become communists, socialists, lay people, Christian Democrats, had its headquarters in the same building as Il Tempo. If the blame also falls on the tenants of the buildings, Imagine the blame that should fall on those who participated in movements that decreed the killing, for example, of Commissioner Calabresi.
Gad Lerner was active in Lotta Continua in years much more recent than 1938 but no one today would dream of holding his militant past against him; imagine with what spirit one could reproach someone who was born many years after the fall of fascism and who never supported racist theses, some connection with the defense of the race... And instead he tried and took the front page of Il Tempo as a pretext on Mussolini man of the year for establishing an infamous bridge between racism and this newspaper. Ignoring in bad faith the obvious meaning of that page and that text, also reiterated to him by Director Chiocci: with your anti-fascism out of time and out of mind you have made Mussolini the most current character of the year.
This is to tell you that centuries pass, and even millennia, ma around the 25 April the vultures stand out punctually their flight, between carrion and carcasses. And we were wondering: what will it be like this year 25 April after last year's anti-fascist outburst, after the expulsion of her vestals and the advent of the Grillino magma and the right-wing Northern League? The tones and alarms that have visibly tired the Italians will return or they will resume anyway, despite appearing unreal to the population, sneaky and false? Lerner on Raitre makes you lose heart and gives you residual faith in common sense, in historical honesty and in the desire to move on.
About ten years ago there was an attempt to make the Liberation everyone's heritage. That was when Berlusconi the government wanted to rename it Freedom Day, implying conciliation between winners and losers and integration with the Libertas of the Crusader Shield and freedom in the Atlantic and Western sense. But the attempt did not take root, the militant left devoted itself to Urfascism and eternal anti-fascism.
When the carrion use of history stops looming over the flesh and spirit of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren?
I once thought that there could be in the name of Italy a pacification between the heirs and posterity of fascism and anti-fascism, but pacification failed and tension grew over time rather than extinguished. The master of the recreational left confirmed this, Fazio.
Then I thought that we would have digested fascism when we removed it from politics and returned it to history. Each has its own divergent historical judgments, but without any impact in the present or among those present, in politics and even in the future. But the historicization of fascism is slow to become common sense, the Precept prevails. And Damnation.
Finally I thought that oblivion would take care of it, the removal of every past in an era that does not remember but is lived in, field only of the moment. That process happens in every field and kills every memory, less than on the subject of fascism, elevated to totem and taboo. And it gets worse over the years. The vilification of corpses grows, the outrage against the dead and their damnation, discrimination between dead and dead. The funeral industry works full time. And like every funeral business, it is not aimed at memory and honorable burial but at profit. Politico.
But let's get to it 25 April. As an Italian I would have liked it that the Resistance had truly liberated Italy, driving away the invader. I would have liked the Resistance to have been the second Risorgimento in Italy. And I would have liked to that the 25 April had united a torn Italy. I would have been proud to be able to say that Italy had given itself its destiny as a sovereign nation and free homeland with its own hands.. But unfortunately I have to say that Italy was not liberated by the partisans but by the allies. The participation of the partisans was secondary. Bloody but minor. The defeat of Nazism would have happened anyway. The partisans, Then, it hurts to say it, they did not act in favor of the Italians but of a minority: there were two other Italys, one who remained fascist and the other who withdrew from the dispute and retreated neutral and frightened into private life or elsewhere. Unfortunately I have to add that at least half of the partisans did not want to return the homeland to freedom and national and popular sovereignty but wanted to establish an international communist dictatorship. Nothing but resurgence. And the purpose of uniting Italians was never part of the blood-red celebrations of 25 April. It was always a party against.
I can't forget three things. At first is that the partisan war had episodes of valor and courage but also of gratuitousness, ferocious and unpunished violence. Forgetting one or the other is an insult to the truth and to the memory of its heroes and its victims. The second is that many Italians who remained fascists until the end fought and died without being stained with any ferocity, they paid for their loyalty in person, their loyalty to an idea, to a State and a Nation; half the ruling class of the Italy of tomorrow, and even more, it was decimated by the civil war. Many of them were authentic Risorgimento members, Mazzinians and patriots. Both among the anti-fascists and the fascists there were those who thought, they believed and fought in the name of their homeland. I consider fascism dead and buried for a mountain of years, definitely. But I'm not willing to deny it, muffle or remove the truth and trample on the sacrifice of those boys. The blood of the vanquished.
In the end I consider anti-fascism a page of dignity, pride and freedom when fascism was rampant; but I don't consider anti-fascism to be the same as dead dad, that is, to fascism defeated and finished. It was courageous to oppose the fascist regime, do not swear loyalty to him, but it was not courageous to spit on his corpse and insult him. And more infamous is still doing it today, over seventy years later.
Despite everything, I believe in the Resistance a decisive page in the history of Italy but I consider the massacres of civilians infamous, the cowardly ambushes and then the killings once the war was over. It's a shame to say all this? I'm ready to sin, in the name of truth, of dignity and freedom of judgement.