The Italian Prime Minister does not want to be reminded of fascism. The writer Antonio Scurati has felt it now.

Meloni likes to appear on national television. Is it just supposed to be yours? Photo: Tania/Contrasto/laif

Shortly after 8 p.m. last Saturday night, Antonio Scurati appears on camera and delivers his brief monologue about April 25, “Liberation Day,” on which each year Italy celebrates the uprising of the partisans , the final defeat of the German Nazi occupiers and their fascist accomplices under Benito Mussolini in 1945.

That's how it was planned. But no, Scurati did not appear on camera in the political talk “Che sarà”, which is broadcast on the third channel of the state broadcaster Rai. His invitation was unceremoniously withdrawn and his words on fascism were no longer sought: the words of the best-selling author of the “M.” trilogy, in which he traces the arc from the rise of Mussolini in the early 1920s to the entry of Italy in World War II. World War.

Also on Saturday Scurati wanted to once again draw a dividing line between Mussolini's fascism and the current government of the post-fascist Giorgia Meloni. Its text begins with the murder of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti by henchmen of the Duce in Rome, in 1924, exactly 100 years ago, and continues with the memory of the massacre of March 1944, in which 335 civilians were victims in Rome, perpetrated by the Nazis in revenge for a partisan attack that had cost the lives of 33 German soldiers.

It was just one of the numerous massacres carried out by German hands, but with the help of Italian fascists, that took place on Italian soil in 1944. Always, says Scurati, from his early years to his last years, Mussolini's fascism was “throughout its history an incurable phenomenon of systematic murderous political violence.”

“Culture of neo-fascist origin”

The writer wanted to follow this statement with a question that probably cost him his appearance on Saturday's show: “Do the heirs of that story finally want to recognize this and then go to court with Prime Minister Meloni, who is trying to do it? ”. “rewrite history”, which remains faithful to “its neo-fascist culture of origin”.

Meloni only distanced himself from “the simply indefensible acts of horror (the persecution of the Jews)”, otherwise he would blame all the atrocities on the German Nazis instead of also talking about the complicity of Italian fascism. And he simply failed to use the word “anti-fascism” even once, not even on April 25.

Scurati strikes at the core of the politics of remembrance, or rather amnesia, of Meloni and his Fratelli d'Italia party. In her inaugural speech as Prime Minister in October 2022, just three days before the centenary of Mussolini's March on Rome, which she did not mention at all, she criticized the racial laws of 1938; But neither then nor on other occasions did she manage to draw the banal conclusion that a crime also requires a criminal: Meloni never said a bad word about Mussolini.

The “activist” needs to speak

But the fact that Scurati now wanted to go on air with bad words about the Duce obviously made some Meloni loyalists in Rai's management very excited. It was not until Saturday afternoon that the moderator of the political talk, Serena Bortone, learned that the guest she had invited would not be coming. Bortone immediately made the incident public with a post on Instagram, and she added that she had not received any plausible reason from management to cancel the invitation.

This came, although not particularly plausible, from Paolo Corsini, responsible for programming information programmes. Corsini attracted attention last December, not only because he appeared as a moderator at the Meloni party's main “Atreyu” event, but because he spoke insightfully about “our party” and about himself as its “activist.”

The “activist” now had to say that Scurati had demanded too high a fee of 1,800 euros. It is a pity that Rai has reached an agreement with the writer on a fee of 1,500 euros, a salary that had previously been paid to other authors appearing on the program. It's also stupid that an internal Rai email indicates that Scurati was canceled “for editorial reasons.”

“Silence my thoughts”

A storm of outrage broke out in Italy on Saturday afternoon, almost in real time. Numerous websites published Scurati's text, and not only host Bortone read it on television; The text was also recited in another program on the private television channel La7.

And even Giorgia Meloni posted it personally on Facebook to emphasize that she was completely opposed to censorship. But as a practiced post-fascist, she simply did not want to give up the frontal attack against the left and Scurati in the usual victim form. The left, says the head of government, “exaggerates a case today too”, “to which Rai responds that he simply refused to pay 1,800 euros (the monthly salary of many employees) for a minute of monologue.”

Scurati immediately responded that this post by Meloni was also a “slanderous attack” because they did not withdraw the invitation because of the money, but because it was about “silencing my thoughts about fascism and post-fascism.”

At least this objective was not achieved by Meloni's squires in Rai. The act of censorship became the main news in all the media and Scurati's monologue was published hundreds of times.