WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, UCADI #196: APRIL 25 (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

 If we then talk about massacres, don't we have authoritative examples?

All over the world, increasingly perfect devices are being manufactured
for the mass extermination of people, and how many innocent women and
children have been killed without mercy, and perhaps in a more
scientific way! ---- Well, as an exterminator I am a miserable amateur,
in comparison ---- Chiarlie Chaplin, "Monsieur Verdoux" ---- EVEN THE
RICH CRY ---- Periodizing dates, with the passing of time, get lost in
myth, in the nebula of a distant past, their urgency weakens, the
protagonists disappear and with them the passion. ---- But, there are
cases in which these dates represent such important caesuras that they
do not lose their incandescence over the years.
Among these, certainly, there are revolutions, or the violent
overturning of the social order, which remain like open wounds. If, on
the one hand, they are claimed by their supporters and exegetes, their
"permanence" almost always occurs paradoxically because the ruling
classes shine a dazzling spotlight on those events, demonstrating that
the word "terror" is more than a revolutionary method, it is precisely
the sentiment of the ousted ruling classes.
Therefore, where these classes have remained in power or where they have
regained it, their hegemony in directing "common sense" transforms the
memory of the revolution into a dark trail of blood.
Let's be clear, revolutions have shed blood. But, in history, violence
has been (and has been) a sure and constant presence. After all, from
the first grades of elementary school, wars and battles that "make
history" are studied and the "De Bello Gallico" is the basis for
learning Latin through war seen from the side of those who were
responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings.
But the blood that flows during revolutions always appears more abundant
than that of the "normal" war that runs through the history of humanity.
The revolutionary is always in the dock, guilty of having mercilessly
killed even the "poor children" of the Tsar or of having beheaded the
"innocent" Marie Antoinette.

A CLASS CHOICE

The unprecedented fact in the history of Italy, that of a class of young
people, even very young, born and raised under the fascist "mass
reactionary regime" who, instead of waiting for the not disinterested
Anglo-American liberators, takes up arms and, beyond any legal
certification, decides to shoot directly at Nazis and Fascists, remains
difficult to digest for the "masters of the steam".
Masters who, with the removal of Mussolini, hoped for a regime without
the Duce (who would certainly have been well-liked overseas and across
the Channel), have never accepted this choice and for 80 years the
Resistance has been in the spotlight.

LOW VOLTAGE RESISTANCE

If in the immediate post-war period, after the removal of the communists
from the government following the US diktat implemented by the obedient
De Gasperi, it remained the prerogative of the left, after the 1960s,
and the first clear attempts to bring fascism back into the field as an
anti-popular option, it began to be inserted into the broader context.
To do this, it was necessary to smooth out the edges, cut the nails of
social subversion, make it, in short, acceptable.
Now, it is clear that the Resistance was a complex phenomenon. No one
doubts it. And the three wars that Claudio Pavone placed at the center
of his fundamental study 35 years ago are and remain a fundamental element.

A CLASSLESS CHOICE

But of those three wars: Civil War (because that was the case as it was
a war between the components of the same country), Patriotic War
(because they wanted to build an idea of homeland completely different
from the fascist one) and Class War (because fascism had represented a
peculiar form in the history of capitalism, but it had always been born
and developed within that context) the latter seems to have disappeared
from the radar, not only and not so much in official celebrations but
even in the research of young historians, often sponsored by the heirs
of the Italian Communist Party.
And yet, without even much interpretative effort, it seems evident that
if we eliminate one component from that triad, the other two appear, not
by chance, devoid of political sense.
Civil war has always been a characteristic of revolutions. Who should
the subaltern classes fight against if not against their own oppressors?
The patriotic war, too, was one of the fundamental elements for colonial
liberation.
Without class warfare, fascism and its extension of the RSI risk
becoming, as has been happening for decades, a kind of state bullying, a
regime that took away "freedom", a gang of violent, criminals.
All right, all correct. But if you take away the class reaction from
fascism, you cannot grasp its profound and evident nature.

POPULAR FASCISM?

As soon as they were born as a confused movement, in Milan, the Fasci di
Combattimento attacked the Avanti! Beyond the "advanced" proclamations
and the term "fascio" itself that was characteristic of the left of the
time (and of the history of Benito Mussolini itself), fascism was
created with the workers' and peasants' movement as its enemy. The fact
that some personal stories have brought together left-wing personalities
(anarchists, socialists and communists) within it only demonstrates the
confusion created by fascism itself, while the personal confusion of
single individuals has always been a component to be taken into account
in every phase of the class conflict.

A CLOSE-KNEEDED ALLIANCE

To respond to such a system, which with the RSI showed its most
bloodthirsty but also ambiguous facade (the "socializations" and the
"republican spirit"), it was obvious that the Resistance was born and
developed in a complex and articulated way. It was obvious that it was
necessary to ally itself also with those who would become the
adversaries of the day after.
And it should be quite obvious that today that diversity and complexity
should be fully reclaimed.
But to do so, the presence of a political subject that had knowledge of
the facts and ideological awareness would be necessary.

THE PINK LEFT

The real "revision" came not from the right, where hatred for the
Resistance has remained unchanged over the decades (and it is indeed a
merit) but from the former left, which, in its appropriation of the
partisan history, has continually smoothed the edges at every step it
took towards the supine acceptance of the capitalist system. A real
dismantling chain has contributed to downgrading the Resistance to a
memorial, heroic, epochal, Risorgimento event. But where the social
conflict, the idea of a socialist Italy that was an integral part of
that phenomenon has been literally buried.
Buried under the parades of the "Jewish Brigade" a hoax that is
resurfacing at a time when the State of Israel is committing genocide in
Gaza. In the speeches on the "Salò boys" and on the attack on the
Italian Constitution, precisely in the points of greatest social
significance (Renzi's failed reform which however managed to sink the
workers' statute, which was the direct offspring of that Constitution).

DIVIDED MEMORY

In these last 30 years some words have entered common parlance. They are
words that reflect concepts as old as history: "Bipartisan", "divisive",
"shared memory". They all have the same meaning, that is, the idea of an
interclass society without social conflict.
In these days of celebrations for the 80th anniversary of the
liberation, we hear those words again: "April 25th belongs to everyone".
We should stop it once and for all and claim the deeply conflictual
nature of that page of history. Claim its divisiveness as a positive
concept.
Shared memory is a meaningless word that has, in recent years, muddied
the waters and confused minds.
Fascism "is not a disease" (as Manfredi sang) but a choice, a political
decision. In "pacified" Italy, it may even be okay to walk on the same
road. But the paths taken by the partisans started and led to the
opposite side.

Andrea Bellucci

https://www.ucadi.org/2025/04/28/25-aprile/
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