2023-05-03 12:26:35
Time.news – Is it possible to bring right and left together in memory of the years following the Second World War, the birth of the Republic and the Constitution? The theme is at the center of the essay by Giovanni Di Rosa, entitled the “Red and Black – Four-year period 1919-1922. Socialism and Fascism. Looking for a shared memory“, published by Armando Siciliano, Messina. The volume traces i social and political conflicts and the clash between the socialist movement and nascent fascism, which characterized the four-year period 1919-1922 in the district of Modica, in the province of Syracuse, in Sicily and in Italy.
The analysis extends to the Italian and European socialist movement during and after the First World War by investigating the reasons that led to the affirmation of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and of fascism in Italy in 1922, with the march on Rome, the conclusions of the Second War world, the Yalta agreements of 1945. A volume that can be of great help to school students for a different and innovative approach to major current issues. Themes that today could actually be reviewed with a view to a shared memory on the history of Italy and the new geopolitical balances also due to the war Russian-Ukrainian.
“The idea of writing this essay – he explains to Time.news John DiRosa – arises from the need to contrast and nip a historiographical drift pursued by some academic and amateur historians, tending to explain the social and political conflicts and the fascist violence that occurred in the province of Syracuse and in the district of Modica, with the theory of opposite extremisms. That is, by placing, on the same level, the legitimate claiming actions of the peasants and the socialist movement and the violent and armed counter-actions carried out by a dull and selfish agrarian bourgeoisie, unwilling to favor any improvement in the conditions of the workers of the land and of the urban proletariat”.
Modica, explains the expert, “is a city of 60,000 inhabitants which in May 1921 was the scene of a massacre perpetrated by squad snipers in cahoots with the police, in which 6 laborers who were marching in a peaceful procession towards the Starting from the need to clarify that massacre and placing it in the historical context of the events that characterized the advent of fascism in the four-year period 1919-1922, the essay widens its gaze to national and world history, analyzing the most decisive passages that led to the defeat of the socialist and Catholic movement, of the liberal left and to the triumph of the fascist dictatorship, with references also to the present world”.
The essay “aims to sprinkle our memory and to provide the new generations with a critical conscience and civic awareness to understand our past and be able to build a more just world”. Why Modica as a representative model of a confrontation between left and right? “The district of the city – explains Di Rosa – corresponds to the territory of the current province of Ragusa, established by the fascist government in 1927 and then part of the province of Syracuse. In fact, the essay deals with the events of the province of Syracuse and Sicily , with particular reference to those in the district of Modica, because in that district the political, social and class clash was particularly harsh and the reaction of the fascist squads was more brutal, armed by the rural and urban bourgeoisie, always with the cover and complicity blatant of the state organs.
“The level of political violence, attacks and fires against the socialist organizations in the Modica district, in the province of Syracuse and in south-eastern Sicily – he adds – is comparable to the violence of the punitive expeditions against the offices, organizations and managers of the socialist and catholic movement of Apulia, Emilia, Tuscany, the Po valley.While in western Sicily, with a predominantly feudal economy, the peasant movement was crushed with the killing of its leaders by the mafia hired directly by the owners landowners”.
This is why, continues the author, “the province of Syracuse and the district of Modica become the emblem of a crucial passage in the history of Italy and Europe and of the crisis of socialism in the 1920s. The essay is the testimony that great history also passes through the peripheral territories”. A political clash that recalls patricians and plebeians in the history of Rome… could answer this question in the affirmative. Because the character of the struggle between social classes, between rich and poor, between those who live on the upper floors and those who lie on the ground or in the basements, has never changed”.
“Even today it is like this. Even today, without wanting to conceive, patricians, plebeians and slaves of our time face each other. Those who hold wealth, economic and financial power are not willing to cede anything, unless forced by the laws of the State which , verily he is always kind to them.”
How topical is an essay like this regarding the debate on April 25 and the risk of resurgence of Fascism?
“The narration develops topical themes, such as the one on the imperative need for a shared memory on the history of the first and in particular of the second Risorgimento of Italy, that is, on the end of the Second World War, on the struggle for liberation from Nazi-fascism, on the Resistance , the birth of the Republic and the anti-fascist Constitution.On this subject – continues the writer – the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella said clear, clear and definitive words, hopefully, in his speech in Cuneo last April 25, in the face of prevarications and stomach ache of some exponents of the current majority”.
“It is from here that we must start to fight the resurgence of neo-fascism and authoritarianism”. The essay, Red and Black therefore, in the intentions of the author, “strives to bring this theme to the attention of culture and politics, namely that the nostalgic heirs of yesterday’s vanquished must understand and come to terms with what then, in Liberation struggle, also supported by the Allies, the anti-fascism forces won, fortunately for all Italians, who freed Italy from Nazi-fascism, restored freedom and democracy, established the Republic, wrote the Constitution for all and for all Italians , including the vanquished who had fought on the wrong side of history.”
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