Erich Priebke process, 1996 | Unknown author,
via Wikimedia Commons
interview in September 2002 to the Israeli newspaper Ha’retz in which
he asked for forgiveness for the racial laws; finally on his trip to Israel
in November 2003, he visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and condemned
the “infamous racial laws of 1938 enacted by Fascism”, calling them an
“absolute evil” for their co- responsibility in the Holocaust.
Fini’s stance on the fascist anti-Semitism led to a rupture with
the more intransigent wing of the party, starting with the Duce’s
granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini. At the political level this change
contributed to the “democratic legitimization” of the leader of AN. He
was named Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2004 and President of the
Chamber in April 2008. Yet, at the level of public debate this has indeed
worked as a sort of “purification rite” of Fascism; it paved the way for
the rehabilitation of Mussolini’s regime by the media during the 1980s
under the influence of the revisionist currents. Considering Fascist
anti-Semitism as the only “stain” to be erased, many members of the
post-MSI right thought they had now, so to speak, a “free hand” for
promoting Fascism’s alleged historical merits – from the modernization
of the country to the fight against Mafia – obscuring or even denying
the dimension of violence and coercion of internal opponents and other
peoples invaded in the country’s forays abroad.
It is not surprising that centre-right local administrations in Italian
cities promoted the renaming of streets, squares or public buildings
to honour a large number of Fascist figures, and the “martyrs of the
foibe”: Italians captured and killed by Tito’s Communists in the regions
of Venice-Giulia and Istria after the Italian armistice in September 1943,
and especially after the end of the war in May 1945, when Yugoslavia
had annexationist designs on what at that time was Italian territory. The
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Observing Memories
ISSUE 3