President Meloni’s letter to the Corriere della Sera newspaper on Liberation Day

Dear editor,
today, Italy celebrates the anniversary of its Liberation. I will be doing the same by attending the traditional wreath-laying ceremony with President of the Republic Mattarella at the Altare della Patria memorial, while Government ministers will be taking part in the other institutional celebrations planned.
On my first 25th April as President of the Council of Ministers, I wish to entrust some reflections to the Corriere’s columns which I hope can contribute to making this anniversary a moment of rediscovered national harmony, in which the celebration of our regained freedom may help us understand and strengthen Italy’s role in the world as an essential bastion of democracy. I am doing so with the serenity of someone who saw these reflections fully mature within the ranks of their own political side 30 years ago, without ever moving away from them during these long years of political and institutional commitment. In fact, as any honest observer will acknowledge, the right-wing parties in Parliament have declared their incompatibility with any nostalgia for fascism.
25th April 1945 clearly marks a watershed for Italy: the end of the Second World War, of Nazi occupation, of twenty years of fascist rule, of anti-Jewish persecution, of the bombings and the many other losses and hardships that long plagued our national community. Unfortunately, the same date did not also mark the end of the bloody civil war that had torn the Italian people apart, continuing in some areas and even dividing individual families, who became engulfed in a spiral of hatred that led to summary executions even several months after the end of the conflict. We must also remember that, while millions of Italians tasted freedom again that day, hundreds of thousands of our compatriots in Istria, Rijeka and Dalmatia instead began to experience a second wave of massacres and a dramatic exodus from their lands. However, the fundamental fruit of 25th April was, and undoubtedly remains, the affirmation of democratic values, which fascism had trampled upon and which we find enshrined in the Republic’s Constitution.
Those patient negotiations, aimed at defining the principles and rules for our emerging liberal democracy (an outcome not unanimously desired by all members of the Resistance), resulted in a text that set out to unite and not to divide, as Professor Galli della Loggia pointed out well in this newspaper a few days ago.
Managing that difficult transition, after the already significant step of the amnesty initiated by the then Minister of Justice Togliatti, those writing the constitution therefore entrusted the very strength of democracy and of its implementation over the years with the task of including within the new context also those who had fought among the defeated as well as that majority of Italians who had had a ‘passive’ attitude towards fascism. Likewise, those who were excluded from the constitutional process for obvious historical reasons undertook to lead millions of Italians into the new parliamentary republic, shaping the democratic right wing. A family that has been able to expand over the years, involving among its ranks also representatives of political cultures, such as the Catholic or liberal culture, who had opposed the fascist regime.
This is how a great democracy was born, solid, mature and strong despite its many contradictions, and able to resist both internal and external threats during the long post-war period, making Italy a leading player in European, western and multilateral integration processes. A democracy in which no one would be willing to give up the freedoms earned, i.e., where freedom and democracy are a heritage for all, whether those who wish that were not the case like it or not. This is not only our nation’s greatest achievement, but also the only true antidote to any risk of authoritarianism.
Hence I cannot understand why, in Italy, precisely among those who consider themselves to be the ‘custodians’ of this achievement there are some who, at the same time, deny its effectiveness, narrating a kind of imaginary division between fully democratic Italians and others (presumably the majority judging by the election results), who apparently, despite not declaring it, secretly dream of a return to that past lack of freedoms.
I do, on the other hand, understand the objective of those who, in preparation for this anniversary and its ceremonies, draw up a list of who can and cannot take part, based on ‘points’ that have nothing to do with history but a lot to do with politics. This is using the category of fascism as a way to delegitimise any political opponent: a kind of weapon of mass exclusion, as Augusto Del Noce taught us, which for decades has allowed people, associations and parties to be excluded from all spheres of discussion or simply from being heard. This approach is so instrumental that, over the years, during celebrations, it has even led to unacceptable episodes of intolerance, such as those too often perpetrated against the Jewish Brigade by extremist groups; shameful episodes we hope never to see again.
I wonder if these people realise how much, by doing this, they weaken the values they say they want to defend. It was probably this awareness that prompted Luciano Violante, in his memorable inauguration speech as President of the Chamber of Deputies almost thirty years ago, to identify a certain ‘proprietary view’ of the Liberation struggle as being one of the factors that prevented it from becoming a heritage shared by all Italians. Silvio Berlusconi echoed this concept in 2009 (when he was Head of a Government in which I also held office) during another famous speech, when he was in Onna to celebrate the anniversary of Italy’s Liberation among the rubble of the earthquake and called for 25 April to be ‘Freedom Day’, in order to overcome past divisions.
Not only do I share that wish, but I also want to renew it today, precisely because, 78 years on, love of democracy and freedom remains the only real antidote to all forms of totalitarianism, in Italy as well as in Europe. This awareness led the European Parliament to unequivocally and definitively condemn all 20th century regimes, without exception, with a resolution in September 2019 that I completely identify with and that the Fratelli d’Italia group, along with all the family of European Conservatives and the entire centre-right, voted for without any hesitation (unlike others, unfortunately). In the current context, that resolution has even greater value, in light of the Ukrainian people’s heroic resistance in defence of their freedom and independence from the Russian invasion.
All over the world, autocracies are trying to gain ground on democracies and are becoming increasingly aggressive and threatening, and there is unfortunately a real risk of a bond being formed that may lead to an overturning of the international order that liberal democracies guided and built after the end of the Second World War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In this new bipolarity, Italy has chosen its side, and its choice is clear. We are on the side of freedom and democracy, no ifs or buts, and this is the best way to modernise the message of 25th April because, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our freedom is once again in real danger. 
I further strengthened this firm belief after meeting an extraordinary woman called Paola Del Din. During the Resistance, she fought with the Osoppo Brigades, groups of secular, socialist, monarchist and catholic inspiration. She was the first Italian woman to parachute in wartime. Her bravery earned her a Gold Medal for Military Valour, which she still wears on her chest today, almost seventy years after receiving it, with moving pride. With regard to the Resistance, she says: “Time has renamed us Partisans, but we were Patriots, I always have been one and still am”. In republican Italy, she taught literature and, despite the fact she is almost 100 years old, she continues to accept invitations to speak in schools about Italy and the value of freedom. 
I dedicate this day to her, mother of four children and grandmother of just as many grandchildren, but also, ideally, of all Italians who put the love for their homeland before any ideological contrast.

[Courtesy translation]