In a few days, the seventy-third anniversary of liberation from Nazi-fascism will take place. We will attend the usual celebrations, meaningless, with an impetuous president of the Republic engaged in filing yet another crown of flowers on the Altar of the Fatherland (symbol now empty of a national feeling once vigorous), after which he will go to the mausoleum of were ardeatine where he will pay tribute to the victims of the Nazi massacre.
We will have to take the usual interview with the politician on duty in which he reminds the populist of the values of anti-fascism (but the Fascist Party no longer exists from the 1945) and of resistance (a cosmogony used as the founding myth of the country).
The 8 September 1943 armistice, following the collapse of the fascist regime in the previous July, with the consequent flight of King Vittorio Emanuele III (with the whole political class in tow) to the south, under Allied protection, produced a rift in the country, not just geographic but above all moral. The Kingdom of Italy plunges into the bloodiest form of war, the civil one. It will be released two years later completely annihilated, both economically and politically.
With the advent of the Republic - with its Constitution - it is necessary to choose a date, as a national holiday, which symbolizes the founding act: the choice falls on the 25 April, then institutionalized with ordinary law n.260 of the 27 May 1949.
So, for almost seventy years, Italy has as a national holiday a humiliating defeat.
A national holiday should be a unifying element for a People, a reason for collective pride, or a celebration that enhances the historical identity of a nation.
Instead, the choice of the 25 April, has meant for the Italians to introduce an element of division in the social structure of the country - division that still exists after more than seven decades.
Looking beyond the Alps, we find a nation like France with a marked national identity, which even the undeniable defeat in the Second World War (as well as the tragic experience of the Vichy Republic) has been able to erode. The 14 July (Bastille Day, 14 July 1789, marks the entry of the masses in the French Revolution) is not only a national holiday but also the symbol of the transition to a new era of humanity.
On the other hand in Italy, with a marked operation of the facade, the Left - with the complicity of the Christian Democrats - wanted to make believe that the liberation of the peninsula, from the Nazi occupation, was due to the resistance, especially the partisan brigades of matrix communist and socialist. On the other hand, the contribution of the Italian Liberation Corps, formed in the Kingdom of the South after the armistice, cobelligerating of the Allies (the true architects of the Nazi defeat) was almost ignored.
Moreover, the post-war culture has always labeled the war period between the 1940 and the 1943 as a fascist war, depriving it of a national connotation, placing only its responsibility on Mussolini and the PNF.
Another operation aimed at dividing the Italian people, as on the declaration of war delivered to the ambassadors of France and the United Kingdom, the 10 June 1940, there was the signature of the King of Italy Vittorio Emanuele III of Savoy, head of state and symbol national unity.
I believe that the new Parliament should seriously consider the possibility of abolishing the April 25 as a national holiday - also using the referendum tool -, reintroducing that of the November 4, that is the victory in the First World War on the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1918, meaningful date as the process of unification of the Kingdom of Italy started with the Risorgimento.
(photo: Palazzo Chigi / web / Difesa Online)
