by Elena Coatti
Anti-fascism does not need rhetoric. Nor heroes. It is the stories of ordinary people that make us understand what a terrible period fascism was for everyone. So two companions (literally) of a lifetime, Max Collini, voice of Offlaga Disco Pax first and then of Spartiti, and Arturo Bertoldi, president of Istoreco Reggio Emilia, have collected them in “Stories of anti-fascism without rhetoric”.
There history of stories with the two authors and Gianluca Morozzi, musician, radio host and author of essays, stories and graphic novels, kicked off the evening of Tuesday 25 June Emergency Days at the Parco social center. “Short and dense stories because they are small events – explains Morozzi -, most inspired by real events and others more imaginative”. A book that came out at a particular moment for the country, which finds itself with a “right-right” government, and which through a “different language from what we find in history books”, says Collini, is today in its fourth reprint in just four months.
But how did this collaboration come about? “Max Collini and I have known and been dating since the last century – says Arturo Bertoldi – and the book was born from an idea of his. Max decides to make a show with the same title that goes much better than we imagined, with a series of stories, some written by me and others by him.” This show goes so well that Giuseppe Civati contacts them and suggests turning it into a book. “We are two steely communist militants – continues Bertoldi – and we dedicated the book to our mothers”.
“They are all stories that we have filled with background – Collini intervenes -. Some are Offlaga Disco Pax songs with some anecdotes or why they were written. Sometimes the explanations or side notes are more interesting than the story itself.” The narrator of “Pocket Socialism” describes himself as a lazy procrastinator and states that “if Arturo Bertoldi had not existed I would never have written the things I have written”. “I started writing thanks to a story by him entitled ‘The Little Consumer’ which, in a shorter edited version, became one of the workhorses of Offlaga, namely Cinnamon”.
“This book contains personal stories that can also be collective. There are many reasons why we continued to collaborate because we did many things together – continues Collini -, starting from when we were young and militants of a party that has no longer existed for thirty years”. A party which, Bertoldi is keen to point out ironically, was not the Liberal Party or even the Christian Democrats. The presentation continues interspersed with the reading of some stories taken from the book, some harsher such as the excerpt from the text on the Piazza Fontana massacre by Giorgio Boatti and others decidedly hilarious such as “Sendero luminous”, when Max and Arturo wrote a joking document in 1986 and provocative on the occasion of the national assembly of the Italian Communist Youth Federation.
Among the twenty-three stories in the book, there is one that particularly struck Bertoldi. It is the story of Ida and Augusta, two German women who moved to the small village of Gombio in Reggio Emilia and who, thanks to an omelette, managed to avoid having their village razed to the ground by the German battalion. “About sixty people live in Gombio and, if you happen to go there, you will find a beautiful stone house, very green, a bell tower, a church, some chickens, an Arci club. It’s a beautiful story”.
