I was thinking about the 'forgotten' episode of occupation in Yugoslavia (with Italianization, work (maybe death?) camps for Serbs, and partisan massacres), so I googled around a bit and found things like a link to a Stormfront (!!!) post about it (I did not click the link), but I found this article in the Telegraph, of all places, from April 2021:
The academics in the article seem to be on much the same wavelength as you, and it seems that the political establishment in Italy has very studiously ignored them.
elm
'if we want things to stay as they are, things will shhhhhhshutupshutupshutup...'
"a kind of farcical dress rehearsal for a darker performance"
This invocation of the "preposterous, silly" aspects of Mussolini, reminded me very much of Lina Wertmuller's films, especially Love and Anarchy. You have the head of the police, Giacinto Spatoletti, appear as this boastful buffoon, but in the end you see the violence that is behind all of the boasting.
I’m wondering if this more casual and aestheticized atmosphere you perceive there regarding fascism is more reflective of decades of the vulgarity and criminal nihilism of Berlusconismo than anything else. It’s impossible to overstate not only Berlusconi’s control over popular media and television from the 90s on up, but also the degree to which he completely normalized political corruption and lawlessness. As is now developing in the US, under Berlusconi they didn’t even feel the need to hide it anymore. Trump is almost an amateur by comparison and, unbelievable as it seems, Berlusconi’s omnipresence and colonization of Italian political culture is even more salient than Trump’s.
It also put activism in the arts and culture in a bind - do we just mock him and treat him as a clown, or do we take the high road and really try to earnestly talk about the actual menace he represents? Nanni Moretti’s “Il Caimano” (2006) - a film about a film-maker trying to make a serious film about Berlusconi - is a pained and very smart attempt to grapple with this problem.
Pre-Berlusconi, the memory and contemporary threat of fascism was still very real and taken very seriously. As late as 1980, Italy had its Oklahoma City-scale atrocity (the fascist bombing of the Bologna train station), another fascist terrorist attack in 1984 in the tunnel on the Florence-Bologna train, and on the other side the CP was still the most powerful in Western Europe and kept the memory alive by regularly sponsoring public events celebrating the anti-fascist partisan struggle (basically big outdoor picnics with live entertainment by activist singer-songwriters like Francesco De Gregori and Lucio Dalla, speeches by trade unionists, etc.).
I spent most of the 1980s in Bologna and the memory of fascism was not treated lightly at all. 1987 brought another shot in the arm with the arrest in Venezuela of Stefano Delle Chiaie and his extradition to Italy to stand trial for the 1969 fascist Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan and also for his role in the Bologna massacre. It was front page news every day, and accompanied by the usual ambiguities and scandals - Bologna prosecutors wanted him brought to the city immediately, but he was inexplicably held in detention in Rome for a month on arrival in Italy, and the usual rumours swirled that he was being “prepped” by shadowy Christian Democrat operatives who may have been implicated in the bombings. Numerous prosecutors even resigned in protest. Delle Chiaie was later acquitted for lack of evidence, which further fuelled the outrage (Delle Chiaie’s fascist terrorist activities date back to the late-60s, when he was involved with a bunch of military officers under the main leadership of Valerio Borghese and Amos Spiazzi in a clownish failed coup attempt in 1970).
All this to say that, historical memory and its representations being very much a function of current preoccupations and cultural attitudes, I can’t imagine the enervating nihilism and political and cultural degeneracy of the Berlusconi decades not having a profound impact on contemporary attitudes to historical representation.
Of course, the official denazification (incomplete as it was) in Germany has not prevented the return of the far right there, despite it being outlawed for many years.
Great post John!
I was thinking about the 'forgotten' episode of occupation in Yugoslavia (with Italianization, work (maybe death?) camps for Serbs, and partisan massacres), so I googled around a bit and found things like a link to a Stormfront (!!!) post about it (I did not click the link), but I found this article in the Telegraph, of all places, from April 2021:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/11/italy-faces-calls-come-terms-dark-wartime-past-80-years-invasion/
The academics in the article seem to be on much the same wavelength as you, and it seems that the political establishment in Italy has very studiously ignored them.
elm
'if we want things to stay as they are, things will shhhhhhshutupshutupshutup...'
"a kind of farcical dress rehearsal for a darker performance"
This invocation of the "preposterous, silly" aspects of Mussolini, reminded me very much of Lina Wertmuller's films, especially Love and Anarchy. You have the head of the police, Giacinto Spatoletti, appear as this boastful buffoon, but in the end you see the violence that is behind all of the boasting.
I’m wondering if this more casual and aestheticized atmosphere you perceive there regarding fascism is more reflective of decades of the vulgarity and criminal nihilism of Berlusconismo than anything else. It’s impossible to overstate not only Berlusconi’s control over popular media and television from the 90s on up, but also the degree to which he completely normalized political corruption and lawlessness. As is now developing in the US, under Berlusconi they didn’t even feel the need to hide it anymore. Trump is almost an amateur by comparison and, unbelievable as it seems, Berlusconi’s omnipresence and colonization of Italian political culture is even more salient than Trump’s.
It also put activism in the arts and culture in a bind - do we just mock him and treat him as a clown, or do we take the high road and really try to earnestly talk about the actual menace he represents? Nanni Moretti’s “Il Caimano” (2006) - a film about a film-maker trying to make a serious film about Berlusconi - is a pained and very smart attempt to grapple with this problem.
Pre-Berlusconi, the memory and contemporary threat of fascism was still very real and taken very seriously. As late as 1980, Italy had its Oklahoma City-scale atrocity (the fascist bombing of the Bologna train station), another fascist terrorist attack in 1984 in the tunnel on the Florence-Bologna train, and on the other side the CP was still the most powerful in Western Europe and kept the memory alive by regularly sponsoring public events celebrating the anti-fascist partisan struggle (basically big outdoor picnics with live entertainment by activist singer-songwriters like Francesco De Gregori and Lucio Dalla, speeches by trade unionists, etc.).
I spent most of the 1980s in Bologna and the memory of fascism was not treated lightly at all. 1987 brought another shot in the arm with the arrest in Venezuela of Stefano Delle Chiaie and his extradition to Italy to stand trial for the 1969 fascist Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan and also for his role in the Bologna massacre. It was front page news every day, and accompanied by the usual ambiguities and scandals - Bologna prosecutors wanted him brought to the city immediately, but he was inexplicably held in detention in Rome for a month on arrival in Italy, and the usual rumours swirled that he was being “prepped” by shadowy Christian Democrat operatives who may have been implicated in the bombings. Numerous prosecutors even resigned in protest. Delle Chiaie was later acquitted for lack of evidence, which further fuelled the outrage (Delle Chiaie’s fascist terrorist activities date back to the late-60s, when he was involved with a bunch of military officers under the main leadership of Valerio Borghese and Amos Spiazzi in a clownish failed coup attempt in 1970).
All this to say that, historical memory and its representations being very much a function of current preoccupations and cultural attitudes, I can’t imagine the enervating nihilism and political and cultural degeneracy of the Berlusconi decades not having a profound impact on contemporary attitudes to historical representation.
Of course, the official denazification (incomplete as it was) in Germany has not prevented the return of the far right there, despite it being outlawed for many years.