Today 100 years ago the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, on the day that Europe turns black

One hundred years ago Giacomo Matteotti he was kidnapped while he was going to the Chamber to prepare the speech he was supposed to give a few days later. A speech that announced a very harsh attack on Benito Mussolini and fascism, with public spending and economic choices at its centre. According to many, Matteotti would have denounced the malfeasance surrounding the nascent regime. On May 30th he spoke by giving his famous speech denouncing the electoral fraud and the violence with which the “fascist list” had imposed itself in the elections.

The squadristi led by Amerigo Dumini they studied Matteotti’s movements for days. They know the habits and paths of the socialist leader. When he arrives on the Lungotevere they come alongside him and load him into a car. Matteotti fights, struggles, breaks the window glass with a kick and manages to throw out his deputy badge. His kidnappers react and stab him. From that moment he disappears into thin air: he will only be found in mid-August in an isolated area in the municipality of Riano Flaminio north of Rome, his body broken and bent to force him into a grave a few centimeters deep.

Today, on the centenary of Matteotti’s assassination, the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella went to the Lungotevere Arnaldo Da Brescia to lay a wreath of flowers. After the commemoration of the speech in parliament on May 30th, today the anniversary has taken a bit of a backseat. The right-wing government, after the celebration in parliament where the prime minister Giorgia Meloni did not speakhowever releasing a short note to the press (“Today we are here to commemorate a free and courageous man killed by fascist squad members for his ideas”), she was careful not to say just one sentence so far, given how the media coverage of the European elections overshadowed the anniversary.

Even on the left there are not many expressions of interest in the centenary of the assassination, which in fact represents the beginning of the fascist regime with the end of the illusion of the so-called “legalitarian” two-year period. Only among those elected to the European Parliament Cecilia Strada he quoted him: “Today is the anniversary of the kidnapping of Giacomo Matteotti. His love for the truth against fascism and freedom are an authentic example for those like me who are now starting to fulfill their duty as an MEP”.

And indeed the coincidence is quite impressive: on the centenary of Matteotti’s assassination, Europe finds itself more to the right than ever. Not only the success of Fratelli d’Italia and Giorgia Meloni, but the triumph of the Rassemblement National in France and the result of Alternative für Deutschland in Germany where it is second party.

What does Giacomo Matteotti have to tell us then? If we ask about his monument or commemorative plaques, not much. If instead we make the effort to tell and discover his life many things, if we are not satisfied with the holy card and the occasional phrases to remember him.

Matteott has many things to tell usthe inflexible opponent of the war; the city councilor and the mayor who fought not to waste public money on invest them in schools and in improving services for farmers; the indefatigable organizer of farmers and labourers of the very poor Polesine, who believed in the emancipation of the working class. And obviously the politician who first and clearly understood the nature of fascismwho implacably denounced the violence, simply telling things as they were, without having the illusion of a possible “normalization”.

Rigor, study, passion, politics as a means to achieve the emancipation of the least. A lesson to remember, today more than ever.