We are witnessing in these hours the assassination of the Ukrainian democracy, prepared in cold blood by Vladimir Putin and perpetrated with a barbaric invasion and inane justifications. Several experts have highlighted the contradiction between Putin’s stated goal of “denazifying” Ukraine and the reality of an offensive that precisely reproduces the modus operandi Hitlerian. The observation is correct. We don’t know how far the Kremlin is willing to take its revisionist reaction, but it is quite reasonable to think that all this will not be limited to Ukraine and 2022, but is an episode of a great struggle between democracies and authoritarian regimes – such as Russia, China or Iran―which will be projected in a much larger space and time. A struggle that will mark an era, and in which both international and internal dynamics will matter, both the obvious and the less perceptible. In this context, there is another historical experience that can offer interesting considerations for this dark present: fascism in Italy, whose rise to power marks a century this year.
There are considerable parallels between the first fascist phase and the Putin regime. The rise to power of a strong leader to stabilize a nascent, fragile, incomplete democracy in crisis. A leader who reaches the top substantially by co-opting the elites, not by armed assault – in the march on Rome no shots were fired, Mussolini was appointed Chief Executive by the King – nor by popular vote. A leader who champions an exalted nationalist ideology, a grossly malicious historical revisionism, stirring imperial yearnings. A leader who sets an example, observed in other countries. That little by little suffocates the fragile democracy in which he rose, with opposition leaders murdered (Matteotti, Nemtsov) or imprisoned (Gramsci, Navalni). Which has enjoyed a certain international complacency for too long. In Russia, the electoral ritual is still celebrated, but it is a staging that does not grant the status of democracy.
This is the lesson of the enormous danger that resides in democratic dysfunction, in the desire for order that it creates, in the willingness to tolerate small erosions of principles, which can be the prelude to an unceremonious authoritarian regime. It should be remembered, where democracies are weakened by putting petty partisan interests before the collective interest, where sickly obstructionism is practiced, unacceptable acts are condemned with different intensity depending on their origin and a long etcetera. Many democracies are suffering deterioration. The most exposed are the youngest and most immature, but no one is immune.
There is another parallel with the fascist experience, this time in its last phase: the partisan resistance. Russia and its potential puppets in the Ukraine may face a protracted guerrilla war after a stunningly successful operation thanks to the vast superiority of their forces. Tuesday will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the writer who best portrayed the resistance: Beppe Fenoglio. Of him and his novel a private matter (Barataria Editions), Italo Calvino wrote: “It was the loneliest of all who managed to write the novel that we had all dreamed of… The book that our generation wanted to do, now exists […] In it there is the resistance as it was, true as it had never been written, cleanly preserved by faithful memory, and with all the moral values, the stronger the more implicit, and the shock and fury.
Reading Fenoglio, who was himself partisan, first in a red grouping, then in a blue one, is to learn many anti-fascism lessons. Around the vicissitudes of its great characters, the partisans Johnny and Milton, important political and soul landscapes are x-rayed. They highlight the risks of the frightening childishness of the division and rivalry between those who oppose fascism, of the empty arrogance of those who claim to be authentic anti-fascists above others and, of course, of all those who do not clearly take sides. It is not and will not be easy to meet the challenge of Putin and others like him. The answer to dilemmas always starts from the moral values that Fenoglio portrays and Calvino highlights. Of shock and fury. Of putting them, always, to the interests. Starting at home, for the daily functioning of our democracies. The front starts there.
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