By Cybergeppetto
The President of the Italian Republic, Mr Giorgio Napolitano, has commemorated Mr Arrigo Boldrini, considered a hero by the communist partisans but viewed as a criminal by the relatives of the 365 victims of the “eccidio di Codevigo”, the massacre of surrendered soldiers of the Mussolini’s Repubblica Sociale together with innocent civilians in Codevigo.
Mr Napolitano has declared that Italian politics and the Italian culture have failed in explaining to friend States the “anni di piombo” (years of bullets), the decades of terrorist attacks to the democratic institutions.
I share this view, and I think I can offer the reason why this happened: ideological prejudice.
Left wing oriented politicians and historians have denied so far the responsibilities of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI), the Italian Communist Party, and the related crimes against Italy from the civil war to the Eighties.
It is quite known that Italy was about to fall in the Eastern Europe side after the war; Mr Palmiro Togliatti and his PCI worked a lot for that and from the ’43 to the ’48 were responsible for the massacres of a lot of fascists and innocent civilians. The facts on that reported by Giorgio Pisanò in the Storia della Guerra Civile in Italia (History of Civilian War in Italy) were later confirmed by a series of books by Giampaolo Pansa, a very popular reporter and writer in Italy.
It is known that there were communist covert groups after the war ready for an insurrection to join the former USSR.
The radical part of the PCI was convinced about the necessity to disrupt the so called Stato Borghese (Middle Class State) and started a process to quit the PCI to set up radical formations (e.g. Democrazia Proletaria, Partito Democratico di Unità Proletaria, Lotta Continua etc); the worst hardliners from these formations created terrorist groups that were responsible from the Sixties to the Eighties of any sort of robbery and violence.
While the Italians were warned about the risks of fascist coups, the President of the Democrazia Cristiana (DC, Christian Democracy, the most important political party), Mr Aldo Moro, was kidnapped and killed by the Brigate Rosse, the worst threat to the Italian institutions ever.
During this term sixty nine people were killed, more than one thousands were injured, over 7,866 attacks were conducted and 4,290 violence episodes occurred.
In 1979 a communist worker and local trade union leader, Mr Guido Rossa, was killed because he was against the penetration of industrial sites by the Brigate Rosse and against violences and sabotages in the production sites.
The PCI started a process of understanding that the Brigate Rosse weren’t “compagni che sbagliano” (comrades making mistakes) and finally realized the mess they created.
Nonetheless, they continued to legally assist and help their former comrades, most of them were helped to escape and were protected for ideological reasons mainly by the French left wing, Mr Cesare Battisti included. Those who couldn’t escape are now free following to a lot of clemency acts by left wing oriented presidents of the republic.
Mr Napolitano, former communist, should better consider his responsibilities in this area and avoid to commemorate people like Togliatti and Boldrini, honest people will not follow him on this path.
Cybergeppetto
p.s. A crime is always a crime, whoever committs it. The memory of unpunished crimes will never fade away.
Photo: Arrigo Boldrini, also known as Comandante Bulow during the Resistenza, is published in Giorgio Jorio’s blog Affabulazione.
