As the European Observatory on Memories reports, a percentage of 12-22 per cent of Ljubljana inhabitants were interned and about up to 4,000 died just in the Rab concentration camp alone.
Italians also instituted segregation in Asmara as well as the rest of Eritrea, and there were divided bathrooms, buses and neighborhoods for Italian colonies and native Eritreans.
During the fascist invasion of Ethiopia between 1935-1936, an invasion fuelled by the desire of avenging Adua’s defeat in 1896 at the hands of King Menelik II, Italian forces used chemical gas.
The viceroy of Italian East Africa, Rodolfo Graziani, a fascist war criminal who was never prosecuted by the United Nations War Commission (also thanks to the intervention of the British Foreign Office) was the first one to ask for the use of all deadly ways to crush the Ethiopian resistance to the invasion.
Graziani, one of Mussolini’s most trusted generals, became infamous for his role in the Addis Ababa massacre; 20,000 to 30,000 Ethiopians were killed by the Italian occupying forces on 19 February 1937.
During the Spanish Civil War, Fascist Italy joined the side of Franco’s fascist troops in the Spanish Civil Wars with volunteers on the ground, but also with bombardments, like the one in Barcelona in 1938, which caused the death of 670 people.
In Libya, Omar Al Mukhtar, the leader of the resistance against the Italian colonisation of the country, was hanged before his followers in the prisoners of war camp in Suluq at the age of 73.
And let’s not forget that it was thanks to the Italian racial laws of 1938 that German troops could “legally” capture and deport Italian Jews to Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
The list is very long and Italy has never faced its fascist history, as the 1989 BBC documentary Fascist Legacy pointed out.
Journalists have also played a role in this, like Indro Montanelli, the founder of the Italian right-wing newspaper Il Giornale, who denied Italy’s use of toxic gas and boasted in a TV programme in the 60s on his “purchase” of and wedding to a 12-year-old while he was serving in the Italian army in the Horn of Africa.
Montanelli criticised the efforts of Italian historian Angelo Del Boca, whose book Italiani brava gente ( Italians, good people) summarises the fake narrative about Fascist Italy and Italian colonialism.
Fortunately, there are many who’ve debunked these narratives, such as Italian-Somali journalist and writer Igiaba Scego with her books and articles; the Wu Ming, a Bologna-based writers collective which frequently debunks apologetic narratives on fascism on Twitter as well as through books; the Italian writer Francesca Melandri with her novel Sangue Giusto (Right Blood); the Italian journalist and founder of the online magazine Equal Times, Vittorio Longhi; the directors Medhin Paolos and Alan Maglio with their documentary Asmarina, as well as the director Valerio Ciriaci with his documentary If Only I were that Warrior.
However, the work to challenge revisionism should not be left to a select few. It is time to rise up to the challenge and face Italy’s fascist legacy. When migrants, refugees and asylum seekers die in the Mediterranean or suffer in Italy, this toxic heritage can not be dismissed as a painful memory of the past; it’s current news.
