Anti-fascism is a sacrosanct battle, the laws that preserve democracy against the so-called “regurgitations” (what a strange expression) are the safe that protects its universality. Anti-fascism, however, must precisely be propagated and protected in the name of democracy, all of it. But it doesn’t work like that when anti-fascism becomes “militant”.
From this point of view, the enemy has historically been on the right. Since the end of the Second World War, the left has had a good time washing away its crimes and errors by dyeing only “black” the waters of human rights violations. The anti-fascist battle and the exaltation of the partisan epic have developed allowing the dream of freedom to be superimposed on that of a socialist or communist society. Anti-fascism thus lost its universality, and it was a shame.
A part of the Resistance, the Catholic one of Dossetti, Gorrieri, Tina Anselmi and the priests who fled to the mountains, was canceled by the figure of the red partisan. Furthermore, for the anti-fascist narrative the Russian victory over the Germans was mythologized despite the fact that communism showed many similarities from the beginning with right-wing totalitarianism: hypernationalism, militarism, glorification and use of violence, fetishization of youth, masculinity, the cult of the leader. , of the obedient, hierarchical and militarized mass, and also racism and anti-Semitic hatred.
The double standard has always been a feature of militant anti-fascism. The Jewish Brigade, which in a miracle of heroism, in the middle of the Holocaust, brought young Jewish “Palestinians” to fight on our soil against the Nazi-Fascists, was disavowed and vilified in the Anpi demonstrations because Israel is not welcome on the left. Weren’t they anti-fascists? And wasn’t the mufti Haj Amin Al Husseini who, together with Hitler, planned the extermination of the Jews? How many have been accused of fascism just because they are not leftists?
The work of reclaiming national unity around the Resistance was valiant, but the term anti-fascist must disregard political affiliation, because the genesis of the Italian Republic must finally become a common heritage. But how hard it is to swallow this toad when cultural roots sink into the common, acquired, politically stratified ground of socialism.
This is true for the whole of Europe, ambiguous and alluring: you say democracy, but you allude to a socialist utopia, at least longed for. Many of the difficulties of the EU, in fact, lie in the post-war palingenetic dream, when anti-fascism took on board the socialist dream instead of dealing with the subjectivity of European countries. Because even “nation” may not be a bad word, if it does not have oppressive and expansive aims. It is necessary to seriously depose the ideologies of the twentieth century in order to remain true anti-fascists. That is, lovers of democracy.
–
