WHO REALLY WANTS CANCEL CULTURE?
by ANNA DI GIANANTONIO
Francesco Fain in his article of September 4 in “Il Piccolo” recalls the proposal of Dario Stasi, and of the newspaper he directed, reborn this year, to use the Bombi gallery to create a museum of the 20th century. Pointing to the example of the Piedicastello tunnel in Trento, Stasi proposed to create panels that highlighted the salient stages of the century that we called the “long century” and not the “short century”, as the historian Hobsbawn had defined it, because the long Cold War lasted a very long time in Italy. Mayor Ettore Romoli agreed, but the project did not go through. Evidently the proposals are rejected not because they are not rational, but because they are made by subjects whose political positions do not coincide with those of the majority. The same fate befell the request to use the disused houses on the borders to make them small places for exhibition and in-depth teaching for schools (then one was used at the Rafut thanks to the commitment of the 4704 association but as a place in itself, without a general project of use and historical development).
Yet it is precisely the history of the 20th century that for the tourist, the scholar, the young person is the most interesting. The tour guides have asked the Regional Institute for the History of the Resistance and the Contemporary Age for a new course, after the one held last year, precisely to deepen the twentieth century in Gorizia, in the last edition of the festival History the young people of the Consulta have asked for an in-depth study of the history of the city in the Second World War, while the publisher Laterza also shows interest in the themes of the border, publishing volumes such as those by Raoul Pupo and Fabio Todero and a group of historians, coordinated by Carlo Greppi and Chiara Colombini, mentions the battle of Gorizia in September 1943, first mass workers’ clash against the Nazis in Italy, in the book International History of the Italian Resistance of the same publishing house. And these are just a few examples of this interest in the “eastern” border.
The occasion of the capital of culture was the right one for a reflection on the long twentieth century in Gorizia and its characteristics. It could have become a moment of discussion on how the city had arrived at this important stage, trying to learn about the period of the Cold War, which in the city had heavily and nationalistically conditioned economic development, urban structure, interventions in favor of poverty, schools, the law of protection and the construction of collective memory. Instead, another path has been taken: that of enhancing aspects such as sport, music, entertainment, the environment, food and wine.
The desire was to move forward, to put the problems of the past under track to look to the future. But is this really the case? If this were the sincere political intention, it would have its reason. Rehashing the past can be painful and divisive. But there are at least two elements that suggest rather a selective desire to face history. First of all, the failure to revoke Mussolini’s honorary citizenship, which is a symbolic gesture that does not erase the past at all but rejects the homage to the fascist dictator and his policies towards the Slovenes. The revocation would have meant a definitive repudiation of fascism and the awareness, public and legitimized by the Municipality, of what the regime had produced in this territory. Not only the impediment of the Slovene language and the repression of anti-fascists, but also the forced transfer of dozens of teachers and employees, the expropriation of the land and the confiscation of the assets of Slovenian farmers and their economic ruin, the appropriation of the credit institutions of the “aliens” and would have demonstrated the long continuity of the local ruling class first fascist and then transited into the new democratic republic. An awareness that one does not want to face.
The other important issue is the fact that no action is taken to ensure that Slovenian is taught in public schools, not even at an optional level, as is the case in Val d’Aosta for French and in Trentino for German. What consideration do we have for the language of the neighbor and for the linguistic understanding of the two parts of the city?
So how can one claim to want to overcome the past burdened by heavy and ancient ballast that one does not want to remove?