Faced with discussion of her party’s roots in historical fascism, Giorgia Meloni often dismisses their relevance — claiming that the Italian right “handed fascism over to history decades ago”. Far from simply “nostalgic” for the regime, leaders of the postfascist right have since the 1990s increasingly called for a “pacified” view of history, focused on the remembrance of victims, from Jews murdered in the Holocaust to the Italians allegedly “ethnic cleansed” by Yugoslav partisans. This relativism is itself deeply contentious, and Italy’s official “memory days” created since the 2000s have frequently been focuses of heated battles over the role of antifascism in defining the Italian Republic’s identity. Questioning any idea of a single national memory culture, this talk explores how an antifascist paradigm created after World War II, long opposed by parts of Italian society, has in recent decades been challenged by a more fragmented array of narratives about the past, closely connected to the rise of far-right forces in the country’s political institutions.
David Broder is Europe editor at Jacobin. He has contributed to discussions about the far right in Italy across the international press. His book, Mussolini’s Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy was published by Pluto Press earlier this year. It can be purchased here: https://www.plutobooks.com/
This event is presented to you by the Research Cluster: Memory, Commemoration and Uses of the Past.
Please register on Eventrbite: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/getting-over-fascism-the-italian-far-right-and-the-uses-of-the-past-tickets-732682742807?aff=oddtdtcreator
We will share the Microsoft Teams Link with registered attendees in advance of the talk.