Mussol-oni - Italy Is Normalising Its Fascist Past, And Preparing For A Fascist Future

“Citizens, workers! ..[F]or the salvation of our lands, our homes, our workshops…confront the Germans with the dilemma: surrender or perish!” 

It was with this striking radio address on the 25th of April, 80 years ago, that the Italian Resistance proclaimed a popular insurrection in all the territories of northern Italy still under Nazi occupation. 

In Milan – the nerve centre of the liberatory struggle – fighting broke out in the streets and the factories the very same morning as partisan forces announced they were assuming full political and military powers, forcing Mussolini to flee. In Turin, shortly after, partisans joined already striking workers, driving German occupation and Italian collaborationist forces out of the city within two days. 18 months after Nazi Germany had responded to the signing of an armistice between Italy and the allied powers by launching a bloody invasion of its former ally, and 23 years after the fascists had first assumed power, all of Italy was free.

The 25th of April, thereafter known as Liberation Day, would go on to become a celebration of the anti-fascist values underpinning the constitution of the new republic. Every year on this day, Italians are called on to remember the sacrifices of their fellow countrymen and women who, despite the real risk of death and in defiance of decades of fascist indoctrination, took up arms to fight for an Italy that would be more just and more humane. 

This is the foundational story of the Italian Republic. 

However, as is so often the case with narratives that are so deeply tied to a nation’s identity – especially in the case of a nation such as Italy, which has failed to comprehensively reckon with its past – the story of the liberation is contentious. After years of the far-right both external and internal to the government attempting to minimise the importance of the 25th of April in the eyes of the Italian people, the recent death of the pope gave the government the opportunity to go one step further than it had done before.

When Pope Francis died on the 21st of April, it was a moment of profound sorrow for over a billion Catholics around the world who paid homage to a man who made it his life’s mission to stand with the poor and the displaced. Yet, even in the predominantly catholic nation of Italy, it came as a surprise when Prime Minister Georgia Meloni responded to his passing by declaring a five-day period of national mourning, the longest in the history of the republic, and one extraordinarily long for a republic which is constitutionally secular. 

Surprise then turned to suspicion when journalists were informed that the commemoration of the 25th of April, which would now take place during the period of mourning, would be expected to be conducted with the “sobriety” appropriate to the occasion. What the late pontiff would have found disrespectful about the celebration of the end of fascism, however, remains an open question. The government had always squirmed at the awkward questions concerning the neo-fascist past of its leaders, and their continued refusal to declare themselves anti-fascist, that would crop up every year on this day. Now it seemed to have finally found the opportunity to quieten its detractors, by undermining a fundamental republican principle: the secularism of the state.

Soon after this announcement, restrictions on the commemoration of the 25th of April began to be imposed across the country, as certain functionaries and local authorities took it upon themselves to realise the government’s vision: all the events related to Liberation Day at the National Archive were cancelled or postponed, as were events in a number of municipalities. In an episode that made the papers, the owners of a bakery were visited twice by the police for having hung up a banner reading “25 April: good like bread, beautiful like antifascism”. In another bakery, demonstrators were stopped by the gendarmerie for singing the iconic Resistance song ‘Bella Ciao’. 

All around the country demonstrators took to the squares like they had done every year – although often in defiance of warnings from local authorities – but this year the message from the state was clear: the 25th of April is best observed in silence. 

This was not the first time that the government attempted to tone down the celebration of Liberation Day. Meloni has previously suggested making days such as the 4th of November (the anniversary of Italy’s victory in WWI) or the 17th of March (the anniversary of the foundation of the Kingdom of Italy) national holidays. This would be done with the intention to communicate the idea that these dates should be imbued with more cultural significance than Liberation Day, on the premise that they avoid the “divisiveness” of antifascism. 

The President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, proposed in turn that the scope of the 25th of April be widened to commemorate all the fallen of all wars, alongside those who died from Coronavirus. When La Russa, in his declaration, makes a point of emphasising that he wishes to remember ‘all’ the dead and ‘not only those from one side’, he should be understood to be referring to both the fascist and the anti-fascist dead, whose sacrifices are painted as alike in nobility. Whilst the dominant party, whose leaders largely had their formal training in politics within the ranks of a notorious neo-fascist party, has now largely swapped out the traditional language and symbols of fascism for more innocuous substitutes (that is, for the most part), with ministers even going as far as to pay lip service to the fight against fascism, the Italian far-right retain the same aversion to the celebration of antifascism as their predecessors. 

Yet there is some truth to the government’s criticisms. Liberation Day is divisive: it separates those who retain some sympathy for fascism to those who wholeheartedly oppose it, and instead trust in the values outlined in the constitution. As Sandro Pertini, a resistance fighter who went onto become President, once noted, the 25th of April is not simply a time to honour the sacrifices made in the past, but to “reaffirm the current and perennial vitality of the ideals that animated our struggle”, for “there can be no real freedom without social justice”. It was the failure of a society based on these ideals of social and economic justice to come into being that allowed the far-right to regain popularity, and it is this call for republican values that the government sees as a threat. 

As of today, the Italian government has continued to attack the sovereignty of the courts, and tried to push through a major reform that would give the Prime Minister powers not seen since the fall of fascism. It has axed the universal basic income which saved one million people a year from abject poverty; financed the torture of migrants and refugees in Libya and crimes against humanity in Israel; and it has made a point of undermining the rights of LGBT people and migrants within the country, who are painted as a threat to the integrity of the state. 

At the same time, the memory of the Liberation is under attack from those who attempt to rewrite history, claiming that partisans were violent criminals who had no role to play in the Liberation of Italy – a feat which was rather accomplished entirely by Anglo-American forces. In reality the Resistance, understood in the broadest sense, numbered around 4 million people at its peak, and Resistance fighters were able to liberate 125 cities prior to the arrival of the allied troops. 

In this context, celebrating the 25th of April is as important as ever.

Image: Flickr/duncan cumming

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