1.10pm – Thursday 25 April 2024
(The following text is taken entirely from the press note sent to the Opinione Agency) –
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Mayor’s speech. My warm welcome to the townspeople and citizens, to the Bella ciao choir that manages to excite us every year, to all the Authorities
and in particular to Government Commissioner Filippo Santarelli who will leave his post in a few days: our heartfelt thanks go to him for always being close to the City.
For me and perhaps for many of you, April 25th is the most beautiful holiday in our civil calendar. Because it is not a celebration with vague and abstract meanings, but rather it is the day in which we remind ourselves of the objectives of a Liberation which, due to its ambitious radicality, cannot yet be said to be complete. April 25th is the end of a bloody war, it is popular enthusiasm, it is the victory of democratic values kept clandestinely for over twenty years first by the opponents of fascism, then by the Resistance. That legacy is important not only from a historical point of view, but also for its ability to act as a guide in the present and as a compass in a future full of unknowns. Therefore, for us, April 25th is a current program and militant manifesto, not an archaeological find to be dusted off every spring.
To clear the field of misunderstandings, it is also good to focus on what April 25th freed us from, that is, on that fascism which today, in some segments of public opinion, seems to have become a pop phenomenon, with the busts with strong jaws put on display in the living room, memorabilia to look at with sympathy and nostalgia, Roman greetings reduced to joking. We could also smile at this de-ideologized fascism, if normalization, if the trivialization of the regime did not seem in many cases to be a way to rehabilitate not only a historical period, but antidemocratic impulses from which Italy has never completely freed itself.
Piero Gobetti already wrote that fascism is “the autobiography of the nation”, the expression of a dark, almost atavistic background made up of rhetoric, courtliness, demagogy, transformism. After the war, with his ironic and sharp prose, Ennio Flaiano identified fascism with the most inferior traits of Italianness and defined it as “demagogic but masterful, rhetorical, xenophobic, hater of cultures, despiser of freedom and justice, oppressor of the weak , servant of the strong, always ready to point out in others the causes of his impotence or defeat”. Fascism is therefore not just an ideology, but a servile and at the same time prevaricating attitude to be kept at bay, from which to distance oneself every time it tries to gain the upper hand, legitimized by the connivance or more often by the apolitical indifference of those who prefer not to take part nor party.
On this day, we cannot therefore avoid saying that April 25th is the holiday of anti-fascism. If there wasn’t this reason for being, the day would have no meaning. April 25 is the date on which we publicly reiterate our condemnation of the racial laws, of the chemical weapons that massacred the Ethiopians, of the hangings of partisans in the square, of systematic violence. April 25th is the celebration of the ideas of Giacomo Matteotti, killed on June 10th 100 years ago by Mussolini’s gangs for daring to denounce the fraud and violence of recent elections in Parliament. Described by Piero Gobetti, Matteotti is the Italian who “does not get along with the winner, who fights in broad daylight, who does not give in to collective hallucinations, who does not need to call his firm moral conscience heroism”.
The Liberation of 25 April was also achieved thanks to intransigent opponents such as Matteotti and Gobetti who were not even for a moment enchanted by the fascist rhetoric. Who fought with all their strength every restriction on freedom: of voting, of the press, of expression, of association, of dissent thanks to a moral and political sensitivity that still leaves us speechless today. Because in the 1920s, moral and political sensitivity was not free, but was paid for with death.
The mandate of April 25th is clear: to monitor our democracy, to prevent the spaces for discussion from being reduced, from freedom becoming a boring habit to be exchanged for the presumed charisma of an authoritarian figure. But freedom is not enough: as Sandro Pertini stated in a historic speech, “there cannot be true freedom without social justice and there will never be true social justice without freedom” because “freedom without social justice is a fragile achievement, which for many it results in the freedom to starve.” Still extremely relevant today, these words must also inspire our precious Autonomy, called to the responsibility of experimenting with advanced and inclusive social models to guarantee human dignity, opportunities and well-being for everyone, even the most fragile.
Allow me to close this speech with a thought for those peoples who are still fighting for their freedom from invaders, tyrants, usurpers. Freedom from autocracies, from the barbarity of terrorism and from violence, which seems to have forcefully returned to take back the scene and claim a toll of human lives that we consider truly intolerable. It is worth remembering that our Constitution repudiates war as a method of resolving disputes: not surprisingly, given that fascism has been militaristic, aggressive, colonialist since its origins. Democratic Europe, in which we all recognize ourselves, has the duty to work against the escalation of conflicts that can lead to the destruction of humanity.
In this regard I want to recall the words spoken by the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman when, in 1950, he proposed the creation of a European Coal and Steel Community to permanently defuse the conflicts between Germany and France: “World peace does not it can only be safeguarded with creative efforts, proportional to the dangers that threaten it”, stated Schuman, considered today among the fathers of Europe together with our Alcide Degasperi, Altiero Spinelli, Jean Monnet and Konrad Adenauer. Given that the dangers that threaten us are enormous, the efforts and creativity necessary to achieve a just and lasting peace will have to be immeasurable and absolutely a priority. There is also this in the mandate that April 25th left to all of us, staunchly anti-fascist Italians.
Happy Liberation Day to everyone
