WITHOUT PREJUDICE

 

What difference does it make whether a military officer is fascist, democratic or communist? None. The uniform one wears, the hierarchy one serves and the violence in which one takes part are identical. The same consideration is valid for every authority.

And yet it is noteworthy that even the councilors of the National Alliance [Italian fascist political party] participate in the commemoration of a fascist massacre, along with partisans, the military and combatant organizations. Of course, I don’t know what to make of the anti-fascism of a deputy or a general. Nonetheless, it is clear who this “national reconciliation”, as they call it, serves.

In Figline, in the vicinity of Florence, the municipal administration invited the NA to the ceremony for the anniversary of the hanging of a child and his family that happened at the hands of nazi and fascist soldiers in June 1944. Everyone united to exorcise the civil war. Everyone united in the name of democracy.

The parties of the left, without exception as everyone knows, did everything in their power to give full legitimacy back to the fascists. What occurred at the time was only the official legitimation of a process that has been going on for quite some time. But the point is precisely the official legitimation. When it is publicly affirmed that since fascism no longer exists, anti-fascism no longer make sense, it means, beyond the stupid slogans, that now there is only democracy, that conflict has no more reason to exist. Everyone from the extreme right to the extreme left can share in the civil and pluralistic political struggle.

Thus, commemorations are moments of defense of the existent, attempts to eternalize it. Outside of democracy there is only room for delirium, totalitarianism, madness. The choice of the municipality of Figline was thus not bizarre, but rather intelligent.

When all this is accepted, contrary to everything that we are told, ideology reaches its maximum expression. A massacre that meets with nothing but universal condemnation is deprived of meaning, it vanishes. When it reappears, it is only to remind us that if we keep close to the institutions, defend the constitution and obey the law, the past will not be repeated.

It is useless to preserve distinctions that no longer serve the interests of power. Authority is authority, and let’s be done with shabby prejudices – so they tell us.

In the end, they are right. We too should refuse all unjust discrimination and attack them all equally.