Fosse Ardeatine, Roma | Anthony Majanlahti via Wikimedia Commons
September 1943 had taken sides with Mussolini for people on holiday to confine them”. in January
the “defence of the nation’s honour”. Underlying the 2013, on the occasion of the commemorations of the
repeated call for the construction of a “shared” or Holocaust, Berlusconi mentioned Mussolini’s alleged
“reconciled memory” independent from the Fascist/ merits, saying that his only fault was to have been
anti-Fascist dichotomy was an attempt of the right an improvised ally of Hitler and to have passed the
to achieve “parity” between the parties in the name racial laws.
of a patriotism that did not make distinctions.
Gianfranco Fini, the last secretary of the MSI
Proof of this is found in the draft laws equating the party and instigator of its transformation into
fighters of Salò with the Partisans, and the explicit Alleanza Nazionale, an alleged post-ideological
proposal, also advanced in Parliament, to abolish and anti-totalitarian modern liberal force, played
the national holiday of 25 April (the day of liberation a major role in the politics of memory promoted
from Fascism and of the victory of the Resistance) by the right-wing elites . At the time, this effort
and to replace it with a date with an anti-totalitarian carried little credibility seeing that in an interview
significance. The date proposed was 18 April 1948, with an Italian newspaper in April 1994, Fini called
the day when the Christian Democrats led by De Mussolini “the greatest statesman of the century”.
Gasperi defeated the coalition of the Communists Moreover, after introducing the category of anti-
and Socialists in the Marxist-inspired Popular Front. totalitarianism as a point of reference, the post-
Strongly supported by the Berlusconi governments, Fascist right considered the German Nazi regime and
these measures were never passed but they represent the Communist dictatorships to be totalitarian, but
relevant example of the intentions of the new not, according to historian Renzo De Felice, Italian
Italian right in relation to politics of memory). Until Fascism. For a final reckoning with the experience
2009, Berlusconi himself was conspicuously absent of the Fascist regime, it seemed enough to condemn
from the official commemorations on 25 April, only the most flagrant link between the dictatorship
conducting a constant anti-Communist polemic of Mussolini and Nazi totalitarianism: that is, anti-
(for example, by widely publicizing the Black Book Semitism and the persecution of the Jews.
of Communism) and on several occasions he has
So it was in relation to the memory of the
presented himself as a spokesman for a sugar-coated Holocaust that Fini’s journey towards democratic
vision of Fascism, in line with a widespread popular legitimization began at the end of the 1990s.
feeling. In an interview with the English newspaper After a visit to Auschwitz in 1999, and after the
“The Spectator” in August 2003, Berlusconi stated establishment of the second Berlusconi government
that “Fascism was a benign dictatorship” that sent in 2001, as Deputy Prime Minister he gave an
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