The ambiguity of Meloni’s extreme right in Italy: democratic but not “anti-fascist”

Yesterday was an uncomfortable scenario of ideological pulse for the head of the transalpine Executive and hers because it is the first anniversary with Meloni at the helm of the chigi palacein the first ultra-conservative government in Italy since the end of the second world conflict.

With the aim of pleasing the most radical sectors of her electorate, the contrast between what Meloni and hers should and what they would like to do in relation to issues related to fascism is evident. The implementation of the anti-anti-fascist approaches of the Italian government right, in fact, have been reflected in the official acts of Liberation Day yesterday Tuesday: at 9 in the morning, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni well It is true that he accompanied the head of state, Sergio Mattarella -who assured that “the Italian Constitution is the daughter of the anti-fascist struggle” in another official act in the North of the country- in the traditional solemn ceremony at the Altar of the Fatherland in Rome, in front of the Unknown Soldier.

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But in a letter published yesterday in the well-known Italian newspaper Corriere della SeraOn the other hand, the head of the transalpine government is committed to renaming the Italian national day as “Freedom Festival”. Thus avoiding the term release.

To this we must add that Ignazio LaRussaco-founder of Brothers of Italy and president of the senate, the second position of the Italian State; yesterday he witnessed together with Mattarella and Meloni the official act at the Altar of the Fatherland in Rome; but he moved to Prague (Czech Republic) with the aim of paying tribute to the fight against communism.

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It is not the first time that Ignazio La Russa has unleashed a strong controversy in relation to Liberation Day, he already did so last fall, publicly assuring that he “was not” going to “celebrate April 25”, words that caused a stir to the media and where he had to clarify that he would attend the official acts, but that he would not celebrate it in any demonstration, of a traditional progressive nature. Also yesterday Tuesday, La Russa, also to deflate the controversy, has reaffirmed at all times the importance of April 25 as a symbol of the “Liberation from Nazi occupation” and the “defeat of fascism.”

The Italian left that yesterday demonstrated in the main squares of Italy asked the right to pronounce itself close to its anti-fascism: “Meloni must ensure that she is anti-fascist”, said yesterday publicly the mayor of Milan, the progressive Giuseppe Hall. Late yesterday, La Russa tried to avoid directly answering the question of whether or not she considered herself an anti-fascist, to which she finally stated that “depending on the meaning attributed to the word anti-fascist. If this is understood as a firm rejection of the dictatorship and nostalgia [del fascismo]then yes”.

In recent days, prior to the celebration of Liberation Day, the opinion of Gianfranco Fini historic leader of the National Alliance (AN), the radical right-wing party prior to the refoundation carried out by Meloni and La Russa under the name of Brothers of Italy. Fini is a highly appreciated political leader in Italy also by progressive sectors, for having been a very conciliatory political protagonist and for leading the democratization of the ultra-conservatives in the 1990s, when Silvio Berlusconi rose to power.

It was Gianfranco Fini who led the ultra-conservative right’s definitive rejection of Mussolini’s fascism, which came to define it as “absolute evil” on an official trip to Israel 20 years ago. In an interview on Italian public television this Sunday, Fini assured that Meloni and her family should stop hesitating about the word anti-fascism: “The right has already faced the past. Meloni should say, because I know she is convinced of it, that freedom and equality are democratic values, of the Constitution and anti-fascists. I do not understand the difficulty of pronouncing this adjective”. And he added: “The Brothers of Italy have to affirm that they recognize anti-fascist valuesas in the past the National Alliance did”.

To be clear, Giorgia Meloni and her party are fully and legitimately inserted in the Italian rule of law and, on several occasions, have publicly and officially renounced fascism. The issue, however, is much more subtle and no less serious: the problem is not that Meloni and his followers share the ideas of fascism, but that reject or avoid the term anti-fascism to assign it to the left, denying in practice that the transalpine magna carta of 1948 is the result where conservatives and progressives together starred in the birth of the current Italian Republic: “In the Constitution there is no reference to anti-fascism,” Ignazio La Russa pronounced a few days ago. To which Elly Schlein, leader of the socialist Democratic Party (PD), responded by assuring that “anti-fascism is our Constitution.”

The political-cultural risk that Italy runs in relation to anti-fascism is that it is exclusively linked to the country’s progressives. That the transalpine left identifies with anti-fascism is something natural: but it is a serious mistake, in democratic Italy, that anti-fascism is synonymous with the left. To give a very concrete example, the most important party in the post-war period and at the birth of the Italian Republic was precisely the Christian Democracy (DC), the political party of the transalpine popular and Catholic movement that also belonged to anti-fascism. One of its greatest protagonists was alcide degasperithe first head of the Italian government and one of the main defenders and promoters of what is now the European Union (EU).

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Liberation Day is celebrated annually in Italy to commemorate the defeat of the Nazis and fascists after World War II, taking April 25, 1945 as a symbolic day. On that date, the second world conflict did not officially end, but It was the day in which the Germans of Hitler and the followers of Mussolini they left Milan and Turinwhich were definitively liberated by the Allies and the Italian Resistance.

April 25 was celebrated for the first time in 1946, one year after the events, and the same was done in the following years until, in 1949, the anniversary was made official as a national holiday in Italy. Since then, all the Presidents of the Republic, along with the Prime Ministers, have held a solemn act at the Altar of the Fatherland in Piazza Venezia in Rome, remembering the fallen and missing from all wars.