Masino Paonessa
June 10, 2024 09:36
“The President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, already on previous occasions, regarding the killing of Giacomo Matteotti, underlined that the Resistance and Liberation, which have conquered and restored freedom and democracy to our country, have their roots in the testimony of personalities like Giacomo Matteotti. The values that the constitution then managed to bring into our lives were for him ideals to which he could dedicate all his efforts and energy. This makes Giacomo Matteotti an example that still speaks to young people and encourages all citizens to take care of ours Republic.
It is our task, therefore, to induce younger people to reflect on the meaning of democracy and the importance of its strenuous defense against the authoritarian tendencies that threaten its foundations. In fact, Giacomo Matteotti is not just any name in the history of democratic Italy, he paid with his life for his courage to oppose Benito Mussolini. The Duce doesn’t love Matteotti. He already doesn’t love him when both of them are in the PSI on opposing sides: Giacomo Matteotti a reformist socialist and he a revolutionary maximalist. He doesn’t love him especially when he gains power as the leader of fascism with the March on Rome in 1922 and Matteotti remains a socialist and a proud opponent of him. On 30 May 1924, Giacomo Matteotti, speaking in the Chamber of Deputies, had the courage and audacity to ask for the annulment of the political elections held on 6 April of that year, denouncing the fascists, amidst shouts, of having distorted the resulting in fraud, violence and intimidation. The Socialist deputy, aware of risking his life, says to his socialist comrades: «I have made my speech. Now you prepare the funeral speech for me.”
One hundred years like today, on 10 June 1924, a few days after that famous speech, Giacomo Matteotti was kidnapped and stabbed to death by five fascists who, loaded him into a car, stabbed him and buried him in the countryside of Riano. His body was found only on 10 August 1924. On 3 January 1925 Benito Mussolini assumed, with a speech to the Chamber of Deputies, the “political, moral and historical” responsibility for the kidnapping and killing of the Socialist Deputy. The crime shocked all national public opinion and beyond. Today, therefore, the figure of the secretary of the Unity Socialist Party must be remembered not only because from his brutal murder by the fascists came that moral shock which gave awareness of the authoritarian turn which unfortunately took the country in those years, but also because Giacomo Matteotti it unites all the values of reformism, social justice and the uncompromising defense of democracy and peace. In an excessively fragmented political framework, with resurgences of authoritarianism spreading like wildfire across the European panorama, with 2 conflicts at the gates of Europe, recovering the memory and passing on Giacomo Matteotti’s sacrifice to new generations appears more necessary than ever.
He is still today an educational example of reformism, frankness and probity, to whom we can look, in a difficult moment for our country faced with serious constitutional questions, to be faced with the right and necessary dialectical tension, elevating and promoting the debate between the different political and social parties, and not debasing it as a mere question of political-governmental stability”.
This is what the Catanzaro Italian Socialist Party Citizen Committee writes in a note.
