Valditara’s letter to the students on the damage caused by communism, Anpi and Pd: “Ministry of propaganda”

“Dear girls and boys, on the evening of November 9, 1989, tens of thousands of inhabitants of East Berlin cross the Wall crossings and pour into the western part of the city: it is the symbolic event of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany and Europe. The fall of the Wall, although it does not mark the end of communism – to which the People’s Republic of China continues to refer today, among other countries – nevertheless demonstrates its dramatically bankruptcy outcome and determines its expulsion from the Old Continent. “.

Thus begins a letter addressed to Italian schools by the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara on the occasion of the Day of Freedom, established to celebrate the anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall. «Communism was one of the great protagonists of the twentieth century – writes the minister – in different times and places it has also taken profoundly different forms, and to minimize or trivialize its immense historical impact would be a serious intellectual error. It was born as a great utopia: the dream of a radical revolution that uproots humanity from its historical limits and projects it towards a future of absolute and perfect equality, freedom, happiness. In short, let him project it towards heaven on earth. But where it prevails it inevitably turns into an equally great nightmare: its concrete realization everywhere involves the annihilation of individual freedoms, persecutions, poverty, death. Indeed, for utopia to be realized it is necessary that absolute power be exercised without any mercy, and that everything – humanity, justice, freedom, truth – be subordinated to the revolutionary objective. This is how ruthless tyrannical regimes take shape, capable of reaching heights of violence and brutality among the highest that mankind has managed to touch. The way to heaven on earth is paved with millions of corpses. And the intuition that Blaise Pascal had two and a half centuries before the Russian revolution turns out to be dramatically true: ‘Man is neither angel nor beast, and it is unfortunate that whoever wants to be an angel makes a beast’. Historians have studied communism extensively and – the minister still remembers in the letter to the students – will continue to study it, trying to convey with ever greater precision all the extraordinary complexity of its events. But from a civil and cultural point of view, November 9 will remain a celebration of primary importance for Europe: the moment in which a tragic misunderstanding ends in the name of which, for decades, the continent has been divided and its eastern half suffocated by the despotism. This awareness is even more relevant today, in the face of the resurgence of aggressive nostalgia for the Soviet empire and the new threats to peace in Europe ”.

«The collapse of the Berlin Wall marks the definitive failure of the revolutionary utopia. And it can only be, then, a celebration of our liberal democracy. An imperfect political and social order, full of contradictions as it is, in need of being reinvented and rebuilt every day. And yet, the only political and social order that can give reasonable guarantees that humanity, justice, freedom, truth are never subordinated to any other purpose, be it noble or ignoble. For all this – concludes the Minister of Education and Merit – the Italian Parliament established the ‘Freedom Day’ on 9 November. On all this I invite you to reflect and discuss ».

The replica of the Anpi
“The letter removes the fact that November 9 is the world day against fascism and anti-Semitism proclaimed by the United Nations”. Thus the president of the Anpi Gianfranco Pagliarulo, comments on the letter sent by the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara to the students, in an interview on ‘Domani’. “The minister’s words are an incorrect and one-sided way to face the errors and horrors of the so-called real socialism that actually existed and which deserve much more and more objective and impartial reflection. Furthermore, given that Professor Valditara is Minister of the Italian Republic, the decisive role in the PCI in the Resistance, in the conquest of democracy, in the drafting of the Constitution is ignored “, continues the president of the Anpi who concludes:” This letter is only a learned anti-communist manifesto, but what worries is that to the extent of its repression and its tendentiousness, it becomes a de-formative element for the students ».

The opposition
«To the denomination” merit “, from today it is necessary to add” and of propaganda “». How else to define the Ministry of Education after the misplaced letter sent by Valditara to the schools with an instrumental reading of the fall of the Berlin Wall? But why doesn’t the Minister take care of school? ” So on Twitter the president of the senators of the Democratic Party Simona Malpezzi comments on the letter from Minister Valditara to the school leaders on the day of November 9th.

«The letter sent to students by the Minister of Education, Giuseppe Valditara, to celebrate the Day of Freedom, or the fall of the Berlin Wall, clearly indicates the strongly ideological approach with which he intends to fulfill his role. Celebrating the historic fall of the Berlin Wall only in an anti-Communist key, with a deliberately forced and not at all sober reading, is the most wrong thing a Minister of Education can do “, writes in a note the deputy dem Irene Manzi, head of school of the Democratic Party.