«Let’s rewrite history too, but with a common ground of democracy and anti-fascism»- Corriere.it

Walter Verini, senator of the Democratic Party, has the time come for national reconciliation?

Yes, let’s rewrite history and do it as a rejection of violence and hatred. We have a duty to recall that season of political deaths of the 1970s and 1980s and state clearly that one cannot be killed because one has different ideas.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni cited you for this, recalling the Primavalle fire. You, the only one in the opposition, defined it as a horrible massacre and said it was a duty to remember the two Mattei brothers killed fifty years ago because they were the sons of a secretary of a MSI section.

I was the only one at this stage to talk about appeasement. But in 2008 it was Walter Veltroni who opened this path with his famous embrace at the Palalottomatica.

Which hug are you talking about?

The one between Valerio Verbano’s mother, Carla Zappelli, and Gianpaolo Mattei, brother of Stefano and Virgilio. It was a historical event, I would say, an exciting one.

Valerio Verbano, student of Autonomia Operaia killed by an action claimed by the Nar; the murder of Stefano and Virgilio Mattei instead claimed by Potere Operaio. Those were terrible years…

They were years in which many young people lost their lives dramatically. Let us recall a few: Paolo Di Nella, Walter Rossi, Luigi Di Rosa. Of both political parties. We must say enough to hate, but we must also do so by speaking of the hatred that exists today towards those who are different. A hatred that is amplified by those carriers of violence that are social media.

Yesterday the president of the Senate Ignazio La Russa also quoted you, recalling the words you pronounced last Thursday in the Senate about the Mattei brothers. He too hoped for peace.

Sure agree. But peacemaking is certainly not an indistinct let’s love each other.

What do you mean?

I have already said it and I repeat it: reconciliation is necessary to erase hatred. But to do that you must have common ground. And that common ground is called resistance, anti-fascism, democracy. It’s called April 25th.

Are you inviting the government and institutions to participate in the celebrations of Liberation Day?

I am inviting you to distance yourself clearly from fascism, as Gianfranco Fini did some time ago.

Meloni has repeatedly said that she has never felt sympathy for fascism, that it is over and that she was born in the mid-seventies.

And what does it have to do with it? Not that the story begins from the moment you are born. Now we need to distance ourselves from fascism without the handbrake on, without embarrassment. Without proudly displaying the busts of Mussolini. Prime Minister Meloni must remember that if she is where she is now she owes it to the liberation from fascism.

So how should the government and institutions behave on April 25th? Where should they celebrate it?

It’s not the where that matters, but the how. I remember that in 2009, after the earthquake in L’Aquila, Berlusconi – whom I have always considered an opponent – went to Onna on April 25 to make a beautiful speech with the handkerchief of the Maiella Brigade around his neck, that of President Ciampi.