These are excited days for Serena Bortone. While presenting his book just came out, Close to you, so sweet (Rizzoli), avoids questions about the latest episode of the show he hosts What will be… on Rai Tre. What happened? She was the journalist who read the monologue on April 25th of the Premio Strega Antonio Scurati, after reporting on Instagram that the writer’s contract had been canceled and she didn’t know the reason. A story still to be clarified which has reignited the debate on censorship and anti-fascism. In the space of a few days, Bortone’s account gained 40 thousand followers, she received hundreds of calls of solidarity, but she was also invited to resign, and received unrepeatable insults. For this interview you asked for authorization from your company, «as per practice», which granted it.
Today is April 25th: what meaning does this date, this year, have for you?
«It’s no different from other years. It is Liberation Day and also, in my memory, the story of my mother as a child who receives a piece of chocolate from the American soldiers entering Rome.”
Her mother was a Catholic catechist, she attended all Catholic schools and her father had been mayor for the DC.
«We were democratic Catholics, not conservative Catholics. My family has always been very close to the values of freedom, dignity and respect for others. To give you some examples: my grandfather Rodolfo hid a Jewish neighbor behind a fake wall. My grandmother Teresa, who lived in Piazza Bologna, remembered with disgust the image of Mussolini riding past Villa Torlonia: when she had a stroke, we kept her at home, sometimes she woke up and only one memory came back to her: Mussolini, she said , what a bad person. He only remembered the horror of the war, of discrimination. In her palace, at the time, there was also the hierarch Michelini, who every now and then threatened her, because my grandfather had never written to the fascist party.”
Do you define yourself as anti-fascist?
«Of course, my education was closely linked to the values of the Resistance, and therefore to those of the Constitution. Anti-fascism is fundamental for any Italian citizen, it is in the DNA of our common feeling.”
The president of the Senate La Russa claims that he does not define himself as “anti-fascist” because it is a “communist” word that reminds him of the horrors of Stalin.
«Everyone is free to say what they want and others can evaluate those statements and form an idea of who expresses them. And in any case let’s remember that those who declare themselves fascist or not anti-fascist – a turn of phrase incomprehensible to me – can do so precisely because 80 years ago someone understood that that regime had to be fought. However, I don’t really like this lexical attachment, this continuous attempt to make comparisons, isn’t it a bit of a lose-lose thing compared to History? Why not say something that is written in our Constitution which is founded on anti-fascism? How can you be nostalgic for Fascism? We cannot be nostalgic for a period of our history that brought deaths, oppression of free thought, racial laws. If we are liberals, children of the Enlightenment, of the French Revolution, not declaring ourselves “anti-fascists” is simply anachronistic as well as worrying.”
Are you going to a demonstration?
«I have been there many times, this time I won’t be there for practical reasons. I experience all events as something joyful, it is an occasion in which we find ourselves, we feel like a community. Anti-fascism makes us feel proud of being Italian, and I am proud to be Italian because I am anti-fascist.”
They say: April 25th is only divisive if you are a fascist.
«It’s incredible how people don’t understand that it has to do with democracy, equality and freedom, not with political colours. Those who fought fascism were communists, socialists, monarchists, Don Sturzo and Catholics… All united by the need to fight Nazi-fascism. And if today we are free it is because all these men and women fought together, overcoming personal divisions. Contemporary Italy, democracy, is born precisely on that unity, on the awareness that freedom is a unifying value in a democracy. Today we will have to come back together.”
Others say: there is no longer fascism, therefore anti-fascism no longer makes sense either.
«We know that even in our Europe there are countries whose leaders declare themselves illiberal. Illiberal democracy is not a true democracy, because if the citizen who votes is not informed by a free press, if the judiciary is not autonomous and therefore cannot, for example, condemn the corrupt, those who vote do not have the tools of choice. The risk of returning to authoritarian – therefore proto-fascist – systems is still very current.”
Are you referring to Victor Orban’s Hungary?
«But also to Putin’s Russia. History never repeats itself in the same way, but it can produce the same tragic outcomes, which is why we must always remain alert to the violation of rights.”
Speaking of freedom, you told your audience: “Be free, at any price.” Do you feel free on Rai today?
«I have always worked in comparison with those above me, and when I am not given reasons for some choices I have to defend my professionalism and my journalistic dignity. I couldn’t live and work in non-freedom.”
Fiorello is being funny Long live Radio2!: Says they’re trying to move her everywhere. How do you imagine the future?
«Escape is never a solution. I try to do my duty with honesty and loyalty, and then the company decides. I have no ulterior motives.”
She’s not a dangerous Bolshevik, in short.
«Let’s not be ridiculous, I care too much about freedom to be a Bolshevik. The heroes for me are those who formed the Resistance, I’m not Tina Anselmi! We are not ridiculous.”
Your first novel, just released, tells of love in 1987, in the days without the internet and social media: do you regret that era?
«No, because I’m not nostalgic, I’m not a traditionalist, I’m progressive at heart, which doesn’t mean accepting everything that comes but trying to interpret the historical period in which we live as much as possible to get the best out of it. I liked going back to the memory of those years because there it was thought that history was over, the Berlin Wall would soon fall, freedom seemed everywhere, there was Gorbachev’s glasnost. I was born in 1970, we were the first generation of women who knew they had to work to live. My mother always taught me financial independence as the first mission in life and therefore we felt very free.”
Serena, one of the two protagonists, is that her?
«Yes, of course, I was a little girl who didn’t know if she could love. But now I know I can do it, I’ve had three important love stories, even if I’m not someone who manages to make too many compromises, and so they end. I can’t pretend.”
The story has to do with a trans boy: what does it have to do with the LGBTQIA+ community?
«This thing happened to me, a friend of mine got engaged to that boy. But that’s not the only reason I’m talking about it: I had a very free, very welcoming upbringing. the different, in my education, was not someone to avoid but someone to learn something from. I also listen carefully to those who have different ideas from mine, and I would like there to always be reciprocity. By writing Paolo’s story I wanted to restore an identity to this boy.”
The identity is also his. The book has the dedication: «To my mother Anna Maria, because without you I wouldn’t be who I am, and I’m finally starting to like who I am quite a bit».
“Enough. There is always the judging superego… My mother was the most important person in my education, brilliant, beautiful and at the age of eight she gave me the book on the great disobedient people of history, from Jesus to Thomas More. From her I learned never to be envious, but she was unable to curb my worst flaw.”
Which?
«Anger, when I get angry I’m a fumina, I scream, I rant…».
Now she seems very controlled though…
«Look, I have a guiding star: coherence. I always do what I think is right, as I was taught. And I have already gone beyond the nun’s prediction.”
Please?
«In elementary school a nun told me: you will never have a career, you are too polemical. Here I am”.
