Craxi 21 years later and his challenge for the primacy of politics
January 19, 2021, twenty-first anniversary of the tragic death in exile of a statesman, former PSI leader Bettino Craxi
It was "a bad January 19", yesterday, 2021, the date of the twenty-first anniversary of the tragic death in exile of a statesman, former leader of the PSI. Stefania Craxi recalls: “It should have been the conclusion of all the initiatives planned for Craxi's twentieth anniversary”. However, largely prevented by the pandemic as well as Covid, for the first time, with the exception of the year of the "Jasmine revolution", it prevented the annual remembrance in Hammamet organized by the Craxi Foundation with the collaboration of the Friends of the Red Carnation by Roberto Giuliano.
Stefania, senator of Forza Italia, vice-president of the Foreign Affairs commission of Palazzo Madama, creator of the Foundation in memory of her father, chaired by Margherita Boniver, before having to go to the classroom to vote no to trust in the Conte / 2 government , also underlines that for this reason January 19, in a parliament struggling with the political crisis or semi-crisis, the figure of the father was not remembered.
And Nicola Carnovale, general director of the Craxi Foundation, extends his condolences to the Macaluso family, the former best communist, who believed in unity on the left, for the death of Emanuele, which took place on 19 January, the same day as Bettino, of 21 years later. When the randomness of history creates unity and assonances lacking in politics.
“Paris-Hammamet” (Mondadori) is the book by Craxi himself at the center of the Foundation's webinar event for the twenty-first anniversary. It is a detective story, a novel, but not too much, because too many similarities are found with the chronicle of the socialist statesman's ordeal, expelled from his own country. To comment on it there are the authors of the books on Craxi released for the twentieth anniversary of his death in 2020, by Claudio Martelli, leading protagonist of the Garofano, today director of the Avanti who wrote "L'Antipatico e la grande coalizione" (La Nave di Teseo), the journalists of the Press Fabio Martini and Marcello Sorgi, authors respectively of "Controvento, the true story of Bettino" (Rubbettino), "Presumed guilty, the last days of Craxi" (Einaudi) and the historian Andrea Spiri "L 'last Craxi, Hammamet diaries ”(Baldini-Castoldi).
At the center of the commemoration, however, is the yellow, which as such, in literary form, is destined to remain on Case C., “Paris – Hammamet”. The posthumous book by the author Craxi, where an alleged role of clips of the US deep state is also evoked in fictional form, which is very different from the US administration. An autobiographical thriller, but always a thriller, “political and also emotional”, written in his last days, Martelli defines it. But Fabio Martini, in tune with his "Controvento", underlines the drama of an all-round, prominent politician who, in order to be heard in Italy, where his faxes were regularly trashed in the newsrooms of newspapers, also resorted art with the famous vases depicting Italy crying. Martini recalls that the C case remains an uncomfortable appointment of the past with which the Democratic Party has not come to terms, just as it is not dealing with the centenary of the PCI itself, preferring in fact the path of "agnosticism".
The end of Aldo Moro and that of Bettino Craxi, or the two great Italian cases, is the parallelism, with all the historical differences, to which Sorgi resorts. It is the young historian Spiri who remembers that the crime story "Paris – Hammamet" takes its cue from the ordeal of a man, former premier and leader of the PSI, who, sick, does not find help to save the life even in the France of his friend François Mitterand. following the change of scene with the suicide of Pierre Beregovoy, where Lionel Jospin then refused to accept Craxi in need of treatment. And we are talking about a France of the European socialist family, the same as Bettino's who was also vice-president of the Socialist International, where, thanks to his pass, the same former PCI of the then PDS entered. As for the possible role of clips of the American deep state, which is different from the US administration, Spiri announces his study focused on the American Consulate in Milan, but this is based on archival scientific research and papers declassified by the US themselves.
The undersigned, that the "film" about Craxi's last years, as a reporter and also a friend at the end of the President, saw him live, can testify to the doubts that Bettino had about a certain role played in his dramatic end by clips of so-called powers strong from Italy to Europe up to overseas. Certainly sectors that did not care very much about the primacy of politics for which the socialist statesman fought until the end of his days. But Craxi was not a man who never talked nonsense and without certain proofs he never felt he could "shoot" "truth" as a convenience. Let alone the fakes, contrary to the many disclosed about him and his government, the longest-lived of the First Republic, surgically dismantled from the book "Fake news on Craxi" by the economist Nicola Scalzini and the former trade unionist Roberto Giuliano (Solfanelli ).
Craxi in his last years, when we met him in person, we remember him lucid to the end, never emotional in his analyzes. Even though the deep pain and almost the amazement at the humiliation of the exile to which he was forced was palpable. One million viewers for Gianni Amelio's film “Hammamet”, starring Pier Francesco Favino, are perhaps proof, as Martini observes, that, whatever happened, the Craxi case is still with us for the Italians. He was not buried in the small Christian cemetery of Hammamet, with the tombstone on which he wanted to write "My freedom equals my life". On that tomb, in white marble, which has the Italian and Tunisian flags at the top, this January 19th it was Bobo Craxi who brought red carnations also in the name of all those who were unable to go due to the pandemic. "A flower for my father Bettino," he tweeted.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/craxi-21-anni-dopo-e-la-sua-sfida-per-il-primato-della-politica/ on Wed, 20 Jan 2021 08:54:12 +0000.