Marches on Rome, march of ghosts

Like the specter of the “Aventino”, often evoked in the torments of the ruling Democratic Party, like the defeats of the national team that immediately become “a Caporetto”, the march on Rome is one of the great Italian ghosts. A “constant”, a recurring function, a motif that resonates in every phase of the history of the country, not only in this centenary, which is extremely trendy. There is always a bit of “march on Rome” in the chronicles of recent years. Each time readapted in ways that are more and more imaginative, carnivalesque, festive. There is that of Grillo, in a camper, with gathering on the internet and hashtag #tuttiaRoma. There is that of Salvini in Piazza del Popolo, in 2015, with CasaPound and a manifesto by the Duce displayed in plain sight (“I was waiting for you!”). There is last year’s spin-off, with the embrace between No Vax and Forza Nuova united in one ramshackle assault on the CGIL headquarters. There are the many marches on Rome threatened by Bossi in the Pontida rallies, almost always after each financial one, with Alessandra Mussolini who at the time, before the “fluid” turning point, defended the copyright on the brand (“there are too many talking about a new march on Rome, but only we missinis can boast the mark of originality and reclaim that historical legacy that today is coveted by many “). There is the “vote now, otherwise millions of us will go to Rome to ask for elections” of Cav., 2008 edition. There is the didactic-pedagogical version, in civil society share, with the fateful free trip to Rome for the under 25s heralded by Calenda during the electoral campaign. There is the variant in a “crime” sauce: the “piamose Roma” of the underworld epic of “Romanzo Criminale”. And there is the counterpoint of “Suburra”, “it was Rome”, which Mussolini would also have liked very much, as an epigraph of his enterprise, in a very spiritual transfer with the city.