The writing ‘Siegh Heil’ and the drawing of Nazi symbols, including that of the SS and other runic symbols. This is what unknown people have drawn in recent days on the posters that the Ministry of Defense has put up on walls in the street in view of the anniversary of April 25th. An ignoble gesture.
An ignoble gesture that we comment on with the words of the monologue on April 25th blocked by Rai that the writer Antonio Scurati (writer, university professor, mass media scholar and contributor to various newspapers including the Corriere della Sera, International And The print) he should have read on ‘CheSarà’, the Rai program hosted by Serena Bortone.
“Giacomo Matteotti was murdered by fascist hitmen on 10 June 1924. Five of them waited for him outside his house, all squadristi from Milan, professionals of violence hired by Benito Mussolini’s closest collaborators. The Honorable Matteotti, the secretary of the Socialist Unitarian Party, the last person in Parliament who still openly opposed the fascist dictatorship, was kidnapped in the center of Rome, in broad daylight, in broad daylight. He fought to the end, as he had fought all his life. They stabbed him to death, then disfigured his body. They folded him on himself so he could stick him into a hole dug badly with a blacksmith’s file. Mussolini was immediately informed.”
“In addition to the crime, he was guilty of the infamy of swearing to the widow that he would do everything possible to bring her husband back to her. While he was sworn in, the fascist Duce kept the victim’s bloody documents in his desk drawer. In this false spring of ours, however, we are not only commemorating Matteotti’s political murder; the Nazi-fascist massacres perpetrated by the German SS, with the complicity and collaboration of the Italian fascists, in 1944 are also commemorated. Fosse Ardeatine, Sant’Anna di Stazzema, Marzabotto. These are just some of the places where Mussolini’s demonic allies massacred thousands of defenseless Italian civilians in cold blood. Among them hundreds of children and even infants. Many were even burned alive, some beheaded.”
“These two concomitant mournful anniversaries – spring of ’24, spring of ’44 – proclaim that fascism has been throughout its entire historical existence – not only at the end or occasionally – an irredeemable phenomenon of systematic murderous and massacre political violence. Will the heirs of that story recognize him once and for all? Unfortunately, everything suggests that this will not be the case.”
“The post-fascist ruling group, having won the elections in October 2022, had two paths before it: repudiate its neo-fascist past or try to rewrite history. He undoubtedly took the second path. After having avoided the topic during the electoral campaign, the Prime Minister, when forced to address it by historical anniversaries, obstinately stuck to the ideological line of her neo-fascist culture of origin: she distanced herself from the indefensible brutalities perpetrated by the regime (the persecution of the Jews) without ever repudiating the fascist experience as a whole, he blamed the massacres carried out with the complicity of the Republican fascists on the Nazis alone, and finally he ignored the fundamental role of the Resistance in the Italian rebirth (to the point of never mentioning the word “anti-fascism” on the occasion of April 25, 2023)”.
“We are once again on the eve of the anniversary of the Liberation from Nazi-fascism. The word that the Prime Minister refused to pronounce will still throb on the grateful lips of all sincere democrats, be they left, center or right. Until that word – anti-fascism – is pronounced by those who govern us, the specter of fascism will continue to haunt the house of Italian democracy”.
Antonio Scurati
