Opposition leader Elly Schlein accused the prime minister of “historical revisionism” over her ambiguous language.

08/03/2023 PUBLICO / EFE (Translated by D.Breatnach)

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni completely avoided using the word ‘neofascist’ in her message marking the 43rd anniversary of the Bologna Massacre, a terrorist attack by a far-Right organization that killed 85 people.

Meloni did not go to Bologna to participate in the commemoration.

“43 years have passed but, in the heart and conscience of the nation, the violence of that terrible explosion still resonates with all its force,” said the leader of the Executive and the ultra-right party Brothers of Italy.

In her message, she asked to “get to the truth about the massacres that marked Italy in the postwar period,” an ambiguous phrase that makes no direct reference to the far-right groups that carried out the massacre on 2nd August 1980.

The absence of specific terms in Meloni’s speech to refer to the attack has prompted opposition leader Elly Schlein, a progressive, to accuse Meloni of promoting “historical revisionism.”

“We are here in Bologna together with the families of the victims of the massacre to reiterate that we do not accept any further attempts to rewrite history. The judicial evidence already makes it clear that it was a neo-fascist massacre and also with subversive intent,” Schlein said.

In the message shared by the president, Sergio Mattarella, to commemorate the date, he did refer to “the neo-fascist matrix of the massacre.” Likewise, he recalled that in the subsequent trials “ignoble deviations, in which secret associations and treasonous agents of the state apparatus participated,” came to light.

Meloni has ruled out any anti-democratic nuance of her formation, but she maintains as a symbol of the Brothers of Italy the so-called “tricolor flame”, emblem of the youth organisation of the old and post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) in which she was a member of her youth.

The Bologna Massacre

The Bologna massacre was the most serious terrorist attack in Italy after World War II, in which 85 people died and more than 200 were injured and extreme right-wing militants belonging to the organization Armed Revolucionary Nuclei were convicted for it.

Comment by D.Breatnach: However, parts of the Italian State were implicated in the bombing and/or coverup too, with elements in the Italian police, judiciary and secret service but also with suspicions of CIA/NATO involvement. It seemed that the purpose of that bombing and others in the period was to create fear and confusion in which the State could return to fascism.