Democracy’s real enemies

By Anna Foa*

Amidst so much mayhem; amidst the terrible statements of those who, already – and still – Shoah negationists, consider Nazi our country’s democratic government; amidst those asking for themselves the freedom to infect others and accusing who denies it to them of being against democracy and the Constitution… Amidst all of this, of the politicization of many people’s fear of conspiracy and desire for it leaded by neo-fascists… Well, you might forget that there have been in Italy people who actually made an attempt on democracy, wanted to erase all the post-war achievements and go back to the overthrown fascism.
I do not forget the Red Brigades, who did this as well, letting darkness fall upon our country. And I do not forget Mafia either, with its slaughters, its covert and less covert connections with sedition. But the August the 2nd brings me to the fascist sedition, the one crossing our history from the Piazza Fontana massacre on December the 12th 1969 onward: Brescia massacre in 1974, the Italicus train’s massacre that same year, and the one of which today we remember the 41st anniversary, the bloodiest of them all, Bologna massacre on August the 2nd 1980, 85 victims. While the city is commemorating the anniversary laying 85 stumbling blocks, the trial against perpetrators and instigators of the massacre is not over yet. Others, already sentenced to life imprisonment, keep on professing their innocence, while in this last trial the alibi of one of the suspected perpetrators, a neo-fascist leader, fell through.
Now, let us not forget, amidst the fantasy of an attack on democracy by our rulers, of when the same people, whose descendants now are leading street protests against vaccines and green pass, used to put bombs on our trains, in banks, in town squares, in stations.
May today help us at least remember who democracy’s real enemies are.

*Historian

Translated by Silvia Bozzo and revised by Antonella Losavio, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities.