FIFTH COLUMN
Of Marcello Veneziani
After a year of masochistic commemorations to self-mortify, the day finally arrived when we are forced to remember the Victory and its centenary. There he is, il 4 November, On the contrary on November 4th, Fatherland Day. But you will have already heard how that anniversary is transformed into the Official Story told by presidents, ministry, media and professors: Victory disappears, the Nation as well, to the Homeland only a timid puff of powder and the fallen are spoken of as poor victims of nationalism and their leaders. The rest will be all a celebration of peace, dell’Europa, of humanity with the implication that heroes and victims of war have fallen in vain, for a bloody illusion.
The memory of the Great War is exactly reversed: it becomes the celebration of Europe and the mortification of nations identified in nationalism. But the historical truth says exactly the opposite: the First World War was the funeral of Europe and the triumph of Italy, although mutilated.
From that conflict Europe in fact emerged ruined and weakened, it was no longer the center of the world, it lost the Central Powers that were its backbone, the world began to divide between the American West and the communist East, crushing Europe in the middle or relegating it to the periphery. Communism was born from that conflict and then the reaction to it, German frustration was born which led to Nazism, fascism was born. With the Second World War, the decline of Europe started by the first reached its epilogue. The eyes of the pacifist ideology do not want to see the tragic and glorious reality of that event.
Instead, on a national level, the First World War consecrated Italy, for the first time emerged victorious from a conflict, to the rank of nation and common homeland. The Risorgimento had been an undertaking of a few, wanted by few, compared to a peasant population, Catholic, especially southern, for the most part not participating if not refractory to the unitary process. It was the First World War that sanctioned our common belonging to Italy in blood and pain. When they say that the First World War was the conquest of Trento and Trieste for us, the scope and meaning of the Conflict is reduced – with all due respect to the unredeemed lands. No, on that occasion for the first time, an entire people felt like a nation, he discovered his homeland. Compulsory military service, national education albeit in forced stages, the feeling of belonging through one's boys at the front, they led the people of the north together with the people of the south to feel truly Italian for the first time; the bourgeois and the proletariat, the intellectuals and the peasants. It would be hypocritical to deny that many of them were reluctant and the First World War was also wanted - like the Risorgimento - by a minority. Perhaps the Great War had less popular support than the Second World War, which at least initially enjoyed the fervor and support of the Italians. But the effect that the Victory produced was the strengthening of the national bond. Its consecration occurred with the proclamation of Victory, the return of fighters and veterans, the memory of the fallen, the body of the Unknown Soldier. And the consecration of the Altar of the Fatherland to him, to the unnamed Italian soldier. It was in that passage, from Funeral monument to King Vittorio Emanuele II to Altar for the Unknown Soldier, the true transition from a Kingdom to a Nation, a People.
Therefore when we talk about November IV it must be remembered together with the sacrifice of many soldiers, to the pain of their families, also the pride of calling themselves Italian, paid in blood; the pride of a feeling of national belonging.
Where does love for one's country end in official rhetoric?? It disappears, to make room for the word humanity which at least in this case is out of place, it is historically false and a liar, out of place anyway.
But not only that. We continue with self-flagellation. We have seen it on state news in recent days, which the defense minister recalled in a special ceremony not i 650 thousand Italian fallen but a few hundred Italian Jewish fallen in the First World War. To then say: they had fallen for Italy and Italy then repaid them with the racial laws. In short, all conversations serve to always lead you there, to our daily Self-flagellation. Without considering that the Jews considered themselves and were considered Italians in their own right, than the Jews – for example – in Trieste, they were fervent patriots and also nationalists; and many of them also became fascists. And in any case, it is not possible to remember in a special way only a few hundred fallen in the face of hundreds of thousands of fallen... But this is functional to slide love of patriotism intoanti-fascism. Pure ideological propaganda, pure distortion. And if we talk about the soldiers of the First World War, the preference is for deserters, not heroes, towards those who were killed because they didn't want to fight (human purpose that deserves pity, not admiration) and not towards those who voluntarily gave their lives to their country. We have remained heirs of Caporetto rather than of Vittorio Veneto, we are stopped in Cadorna, we didn't get to Diaz.
For this reason it is necessary to remember that November IV was the baptism of an ancient nation in the modern era, it was the conversion of a plural identity into a common homeland, of a unitary feeling and a glorious and centuries-old language in a nation. The Italy drawn by geography finally matched the Italy drawn by history. A great foundation event. This is why we must honor the fallen without any ifs or buts, the Victory and the birth of a people who discovered themselves as a nation.
http://www.marcelloveneziani.com/articoli/come-tradire-il-iv-novembre/