anti-Fascist foundations of Italian democracy. The despite the evidence presented by scholars. The
defence of the memory of the Resistance fuelled a criticism of the stereotype of an Italian colonialism
vigorous protest movement at the street level. The “with a human face” was led by the historian and
celebrations of 25 April became an occasion for great journalist Angelo Del Boca, who inspired the 2006
popular demonstrations, starting with the 1994 legislative proposal by the Italian Communist Party
protest in Milan against the newly elected Berlusconi to dedicate a day of remembrance for the victims of
government. This movement demonstrated the Italian Colonialism. A little later, another draft law
existence of a social memory of the Resistance with was proposed by the Communists with the aim of
very deep and vital roots, already palpable in the dedicating a day to all the victims of Fascism, but
1960s and 1970s and which now re-emerged to face the electoral defeat of the radical left in the 2008
the challenge posed by the new right of Berlusconi. elections put an end to the plan.
The media mogul’s political enterprise was actually Efforts made in defence of the anti-Fascist
seen by many sectors of the opposition as a threat to public memory and the attempts to reinforce it have
democracy. In this sense, anti-fascism can be rightly managed to contain the anti-Fascist crisis but have
seen as a mobilizing “tool” to defend the whole not reversed it, failing to construct a “regenerating
overall democratic system. reading of the Resistance paradigm”.
The late 1990s saw another mobilization of
This process was also made evident by
public opinion with the resumption of judicial numerous “migrations”, not only by politicians,
proceedings against Nazi war criminals, starting intellectuals and journalists of the old PSI but
with the trial of the former SS captain Erich also by the former members of the PCI and extra-
Priebke in Rome, followed by some twenty trials (in parliamentary left-wingers who ended up on the
absentia) against the men responsible for the worst right-wing side of the political spectrum – especially
massacres of Italians carried out by the Nazis after in Forza Italia, where they played an active role in
September 1943. the revisionist battle on memory. The famous left-
The attention to the memory of the massacres
leaning journalist Giampaolo Pansa was, without any
promoted the re-introduction of the traditional doubt, a protagonist of this battle. He did not choose
anti-Fascist narrative focused on the representation to be politically tight to the right, but with his books,
of Italians as victims of Nazi-Fascism. This which sold hundreds of thousands of copies, he
representation had favoured, albeit indirectly, the was one of the main architects of the controversy
assuaging of Italian guilt and the affirmation of the against the Resistance, which was conducted in an
self-absolving image of “good Italians”. However, increasingly acrimonious atmosphere.
this comfortable alibi started being questioned in
Alongside the two opposite poles of opposition
the second half of the 1990s when a new series and “betrayal”, the tendency to revise the anti-
of studies brought some of the darkest pages of Fascist memory has also appeared on the left, in
Fascist Italy to the attention of public opinion, the form of a willingness to compromise. Support
including colonial violence, the persecution of Jewish for an agreement with the right was manifested
rights and lives, and the crimes committed in the above all in the former Communist party, which
territories occupied by the regime during the Second first became the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS),
World War. then the Democrats of the Left (DS), and finally
Shaken by the investigations of historians’s new
merged with the Catholics of La Margherita to form
analyses , in 1996 the myth of the “good Italian” the Democratic Party (PD). With this transition,
was officially rejected by the Ministry of Defence the post-Communist leadership of the PCI was
which acknowledged the use of chemical weapons particularly responsive to the invitation issued by
by the Italians during the Ethiopian campaign – a the right wing with regard to the construction of
reality instead long denied by the conservative press a “shared memory”. In this dialogue the AN was
40
Observing Memories
ISSUE 3