What the Mussolini-Durigon case teaches
The speech by Marco Mayer, professor at the Luiss Master Cybersecurity
Guido Crosetto – founder of Fratelli d'Italia – was among the first to express his bewilderment on Twitter on August 6 at Claudio Durigon's proposal to delete the names of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino from the Latina park: "For me, even the very idea of being able to delete the names of state servants such as Falcone and Borsellino, from a street, a park, a library, deserves bewilderment and contempt. For what they have been and for what they represent ”.
At that moment the political opposition had not yet broken out and Crosetto's words interpreted common sense and national pride, a position shared by many citizens of Latina and all over Italy. It comes natural to defend the honor and memory of two great Italians who are highly appreciated all over the world for having fought the Cosa Nostra with great effectiveness.
Suffice it to say that in Washington in the FBI headquarters there is a room dedicated to Giovanni Falcone and a bust of the judge is located in the FBI Academy in Virginia.
Deleting the names of the anti-Mafia magistrates immediately appeared to many people an absurdity. In addition to everything Durigon – undersecretary at the Ministry of Economy (with responsibility for the very delicate gaming sector) was already known for his outrageous phrases to the honor of the Guardia di Finanza. Who will the Draghi method be fighting against now?
Many Italians – myself included – were unaware that Benito Mussolini had a brother. But when Durigon mentioned Arnaldo Mussolini, curiosity sparked. Who was the brother of the Duce and what role did he play during the regime? On the Reformist Tiziana Maiolo yesterday defined him as the "mild and moderate brother of the Duce". Why not get informed? Just consult the biographical dictionary of Treccani to know who he was:
"Arnaldo Mussolini gradually established himself as a staunch defender of his brother's politics: he prided himself on being" the right-hand of the most right ". From 1924 to his death, he repeatedly took positions that were anything but moderate in the phases of crisis and in the most important controversies. Mussolini's gaze and words appear as unscrupulous as those of his brother, if not more so. The role and interests, including economic ones, of Arnaldo Mussolini – in league with his brother – were not obvious and are far from being clarified. However, the link with the perpetrators of the Matteotti crime and his central role as mediator in the publishing interests (and not only) of the Mussolini family are now evident. What was the relationship between the activities carried out to strengthen the regime and the newspaper and those carried out for personal and family enrichment is difficult to know. All this, however, makes Arnaldo Mussolini a less crystalline and dull figure than what historiography has glimpsed in the past in the few moments in which it has dealt with him. Even on the personal front, however, despite the upright image of a faithful husband that fascism wanted to credit, things were more complex: it is clear that there were wealth accumulated ".
The most disturbing fact of all is his connection with the Matteotti crime. On 2 June 2014, on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the death of Giacomo Matteotti, the historian Mauro Canali presented at the Italian House Zerilli Marimò – connected to York University – a very detailed report on his research on the crime published by the Primo Levi Center .
On that occasion Canali said that until 1991 all the material relating to the judicial investigations into the Matteotti crime was classified. In that year, finally, the historian – a pupil of Franco de Felice who had begun to study the question – was able to access the documentation of the Matteotti family lawyer, Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani.
Starting from these papers, Canali came to the conclusion that the socialist deputy was killed because he came into possession of secret documents relating to the bribes paid to some fascist hierarchs (and to the Duce's brother himself) by the American giant Sinclair to obtain authorization to carry out oil research throughout the Italian territory.
We have to thank Claudio Durigon for having unintentionally turned the spotlight on a story that not only my generation, but most of the Italian citizens, never learned at school in the history books. However Durigon and not even Salvini, far from claiming this merit and / or candidly declaring that they did not know who Arnaldo Mussolini was, continue to minimize.
How to get out? In the role of Giorgia Meloni, Adolfo Urso and the other leaders of FdI, I would follow the path traced last week by Guido Crosetto. Even if the leaders of the Brothers of Italy declare their bewilderment, the undersecretary of the MEF Claudio Durigon could only draw the consequences. In this way the politicization of the case would fail. The distinctions between majority and opposition have nothing to do with: a) a murder is a murder; b) Falcone and Borsellino are a heritage of the whole nation. Defending their memory (like that of all the servants of the state who sacrificed their lives to defeat the mafias) is the duty of all political forces, none excluded.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/che-cosa-insegna-il-caso-mussolini-durigon/ on Fri, 13 Aug 2021 12:52:42 +0000.