Why Every Country Must Acknowledge Its Uncomfortable Past
Otherwise, it ends up with a distorted present, heading for a dystopian future — I’m looking at you, Italy (France, please feel included)
“Don’t mistake me for a pedophile. Twelve-year-old girls there are considered women. As a young man, I needed a woman, you know. I bought one together with a horse and a gun for five hundred lire. She was a docile little creature. When I left, I gave her to General Pirzio Biroli, an old colonist used to having his own harem.”
These are the words of Indro Montanelli, Italian journalist, historian, and writer, one of the fifty World Press Freedom Heroes according to the International Press Institute, and probably the most esteemed Italian journalist of the past century.
At twenty-four, he had joined fascist troops in Eritrea and commanded a group of Ascari, African soldiers hired by the Italians. There he bought himself a bride, a 12-year-old girl. You can watch the short video here.
I imagine that as a 24-year-old man, born and raised into a fascist regime, he must have considered these acts as normal — most Italians in Africa did so after all, he might have thought.
But, what entitles a mature man, 30-odd years after the facts, to act as if nothing had changed, as if he had learnt absolutely nothing from it? Showing no signs of remorse whatsoever.
He learnt nothing about the abuse.
He learnt nothing about racism.
He learnt nothing about women.
Why?
He was entitled to do so.
In the interview, when confronted by Elvira Banotti, he refuses to acknowledge that the presence of violence is fundamental to these relationships, born within colonial and racial hierarchies. He turns a blind eye and tries to underestimate his deeds.
Italian public was not harsh with Montanelli later. He remained as celebrated and revered as before. Several years after his death, some Italian activists poured red paint over his sculpture, writing rapist and racist.
Most politicians and journalists defended his memory. They mentioned phrases like “he was a man of his time”, and “he had a cordial relationship with this woman, so we cannot talk about violence”.
What they clearly missed, and what they still miss, is the complete grasp of the nature and scale of racial violence. They have just been repeating the scheme of “Italiani brava gente”(Italians good people), a narrative that, in the colonial and military context, is far from reality.
That is why Montanelli was happy to boast about his acts of masculine fervour, being even sordidly entertained.
The narrative, he was certain, would keep him pristine.
Italian colonialism in Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea reveals crucial connections between the state, kinship, and racial ideologies — connections that are absent or marginal in the debate around Montanelli and the mainstream discussions of Italian racism.
There was an effective racial regulation in which Black women of the Horn were seen as suitable for short, instrumentalist, sexual and domestic relationships, but unsuited to civic marriage and the privileges entailed.
The laws and policies regarding race during colonialism systematically established the subjugation of women in the colonized regions at a structural level. These women, depending on the historical period in question, could be bought and sold, handed over, and used, but could rarely ask for justice for systemic abuses and sexual crimes.
These forms of objectification reduced colonized women to things to be consumed.
But, let’s go back to Montanelli.
The paint all over his sculpture was an attempt to discredit him and challenge the narrative.
However, it remains a fly on an elephant’s ear.
The emphasis on the individual places racism within the realm of the mind; for example, we can speak about unconscious biases, rather than established practices and systems that create and perpetuate hierarchies based on skin colour.
By primarily focusing on Montanelli’s personality, many discussions overlooked the more important reality that many Italians have yet to acknowledge and address: the racist history of their country, as well as the lingering effects of the recent colonial past that still influence the present.
For instance, many children born in interracial relationships were abandoned in orphanages, with no rights under Italian law. To benefit from the rights guaranteed by lineage, the few children who were formally recognized by their fathers in many cases had to migrate, deny their roots, and break connections with their African mothers.
Not understanding diverse forms of racial violence in colonial contexts, ignoring the responsibility of Italian men, and covering abuses of power do not allow reflections on racism and anti-racism to become part of common national awareness.
With such a distorted narrative, there cannot be a healthy present, nor can we hope for a better future.
Angelo Del Boca was an Italian journalist and historian. He researched and wrote extensively about the Italian colonial past. For years, he kept asking to access the central state archives or archives of the foreign ministry but kept getting no answer until 1977, decades into the formation of the Italian Republic, and almost half a century after the colonial crimes had been committed.
He was the first historian to investigate these facts. When his book came out, it was a turmoil. Right-wing newspapers were urging people to “pay a visit” to the historian — posing a real threat to his safety, which went on for many years.
Before the publication of Del Boca’s books, Italy had deliberately concealed its colonial past, pretending to have done “good” to African populations.
This narrative was forcefully repeated, despite atrocious crimes committed by Italian soldiers, such as the Adis Abeba massacre, and Debra Libanos massacre, with thousands of people killed, and burned alive.
Italians used forbidden weapons such as gas in the war in Ethiopia and established 15 concentration camps in Libya, where about 40,000 people, mostly civilians, perished (years 1930–1931). Italians seized the land from about 100,000 inhabitants of Gebel al-Akhdar to hand it over to Italian settlers.
These 100 thousand people, mostly women, children, and the elderly, were forced to march over a thousand kilometers in the desert.
Leading soldiers in Mussolini’s army defended their wartime actions by arguing that they had ‘served the fatherland’ rather than the regime.
This was one of the excuses used by Rodolfo Graziani, responsible for massacres and genocidal policies in Libya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, as well as a ferocious figure in the repression of anti-fascist partisans in Italy after 1943. Graziani claimed that he had helped mitigate the worst aspects of Nazi repression. He was sentenced to nineteen years in prison in 1950 at a trial for ‘collaboration’ with the Nazis but served only four months before being released.
He never stood trial for his crimes in Africa.
After the war, in Italy there were thousands of asserted war criminals. The Nuremberg trials had just begun. German war criminals were being prosecuted and convicted.
And in Italy?
Nothing.
There was an advert going on worldwide, very popular on Italian TV in the 80s and 90s. It was a McCann Erickson campaign about Del Monte fruit juices, with a breath-taking scenery — a plantation heavy with ripe fruit. An elegant man wearing a white linen suit and a Panama hat would come in a helicopter or a seaplane to check if the fruit was ready, with all the workers eagerly waiting. He would then taste the fruit, in an atmosphere of total silence and expectation. Only upon his nod and a smile, the crowd would explode in cheering, and the famous slogan would start:
L’uomo Del Monte ha detto “si”. (Del Monte man said “yes”)
It became a catchy, tongue-in-cheek phrase, just to laugh a bit.
But in our story, l’uomo Del Monte is the United States of America.
And they said: “No”.
I suppose the war criminals in Italy did explode in cheering as well.
The overseas giant did what it does best: make nonsensical decisions far away from home to “combat and contrast” the spread of the communist disease.
Italy’s specific geographical position, close to the then “communist bloc”, and the anti-fascist movement that was developing, with a certain part of the population taking on left-wing ideas, plus the creation of the Italian communist party seemed too much of a threat for the USA.
Italy had to be firmly at the centre if not right-leaning.
Therefore, the amnesty was proclaimed, and hundreds if not thousands of ex-fascists were let off with very short sentences, or without punishment at all. Leading figures from the regime — such as the magistrate Gaetano Azzariti, one of the authors of the anti-Semitic race laws of the late 1930s and the head of Tribunale della razza (‘race court’), which decided if people were Jewish or not, therefore if they should be killed or deported — continued to play a role in public life.
After the war, Azzariti was even appointed president of the Constitutional Court.
Alessandro Pirzio Biroli, the same man mentioned at the beginning of this article, a ruthless Governor of Amara (Ethiopia), and later Governor of Montenegro, who had ordered the killings of hundreds of civilians, was one of the criminals on the list of the UN commission for war crimes and one of the top names of the Central Register for war crimes.
Pirzio Biroli, however, died peacefully in his house in Rome, at the age of 85.
Italy’s memory is selective and partial, and it is mostly based on attributing to the Nazis and National Socialism, all the crimes of war and against humanity.
The current prime minister of Italy has close connections to the neo-fascist groups that continued to remain active post World War II and were rooted in the political legacy of Mussolini.
Giorgia Meloni and her supporters often assert a narrative that portrays Italians as victims and places blame on others, such as Tito’s Yugoslav partisans, for the violence inflicted. Meloni strategically selects historical events to emphasize Italian suffering while downplaying Italy’s invasions of other countries. She tends to portray all Italians, including fascists, as victims of the Second World War and her party has even drawn comparisons between reprisals against fascists in northeast Italy 1943–45 and the Holocaust.
Just for the record, in Yugoslavia, the repressions were terrible and harsh, and they included the resident population. These repressions were carried out according to the policy of “burnt ground” — destruction of villages, hostage-taking, and retaliatory shootings.
In addition to this, concentration camps appeared — the most famous being the one on the island of Rab, mostly for civilians, where the mortality rates were higher than in the Buchenwald camp. About 100,000 people were interned.
During a memorial event for the victims of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre in Rome in March 1944, where 335 men were shot by the Nazis, Meloni stated that they died because they were Italian. However, nine of them were not Italian, others were targeted because they were Jewish, while several others were partisans who were held in prison in Rome at the time.
Meloni seems to be attempting to portray the war as a universal tragedy, downplaying the role of her political predecessors in causing the disaster, and emphasizing a division between good Italians versus bad Germans and communists. Her discussions about the country’s liberation from fascism and Nazism on 25 April 1945 are also carefully crafted, as she avoids mentioning fascist crimes, except in general terms about the “death of democracy” and condemning the 1938 anti-Semitic laws.
This strategy is supported by media manipulation and subtle propaganda due to her party’s influence over state media.
All things considered, we are most probably marching towards a dystopian future.
Is there a way to avoid that?
First, it would be crucial to recognise the crimes committed during colonialism, and in general, those committed by the Italian army during the fascist era.
Recognising and condemning these crimes would permit an immediate distancing from Italy’s past dictatorship governments. The country would be able to find its true identity and reiterate its difference from that regime of the past.
Another symbolic but extremely important thing would be to do something radical with the Mussolini’s burial crypt in Predappio, a place of absolute worship and a nostalgic glorious past for many Italians. Also, the trade of fascist and Nazi-themed merchandise that abound in various shops around town should become illegal.
To my mind, democracy isn’t a “do what you want” thing (of course, because that would be anarchy). There is fine balance to be found between the individual right to expression and the higher common good, which should somehow show and preserve the divide from right and wrong.
The next steps would regard schools, schoolbook revision and a carefully placed focus on certain topics, so to establish and reinforce the true narrative.
Introducing all these measures is a matter of courage. I have yet to see a government as bold as to proceed with these decisions, aware that shaking the narrative could cause havoc (without mentioning the foreseeable loss of political support of the right-leaning part of the population).
So, Italy, where are you going?
It would be high time to stop and take a good look at the mirror.
Even if it hurts.
“Yet the essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common, and also that they have forgotten many things.”
Ernest Renan
A big thank you to Sara Relli and NatalieSugabelle for igniting my curiosity about this issue.
https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2019/autumn/not-one-less-igiaba-scego
https://www.fondazionemontanelli.it/sito/pagina.php?IDarticolo=260
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n10/john-foot/captain-corelli-s-machine-gun
Carcangiu, B. M. (2007). SOMALILAND. PRIMA E SECONDA INDIPENDENZA. Africa: Rivista Trimestrale Di Studi e Documentazione Dell’Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 62(4), 495–532. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25734469
Spadaro, B. (2010). Intrepide massaie: Genere, imperialismo e totalitarismo nella preparazione coloniale femminile durante il fascismo (1937–1943). Contemporanea, 13(1), 27–52. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24653276
Melfa, D. (2007). [Review of Colonia per maschi. Italiani in Africa Orientale: una storia di genere, by G. Stefani]. Africa: Rivista Trimestrale Di Studi e Documentazione Dell’Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 62(3), 490–491. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25734462
