Fuller, Mia, “Italy: Beyond the Clichés that Obscure Unacceptable Histories”

In the article “Italy: Beyond the Clichés that Obscure Unacceptable Histories”,  historian Mia Fuller investigates how Italy has confronted the violence of the Fascist period. She pays attention to the post-war whitewashing that was facilitated by the transition from the monarchy to the Republic. She pinpoints the fundamental fragmentation of the national narratives, i.e. the rightist, the leftist and the populist narratives. These factors, coupled with a widespread ignorance about past crimes, and the productive creation of myths such as the “Italians, good fellows” narrative, have allowed the avoidance of a public and national recognition of Fascist crimes, especially the atrocities committed during colonialism.
Moreover, according to Fuller, the ambiguous behavior of rightist politicians, especially Berlusconi, has enabled a rehabilitation and new tolerance towards Fascism. Fuller explains how historians and journalists, such as Giorgio Rochat and Angelo Del Boca, have tried to challenge the misinformation and forgetfulness promoted by the government. Rochat has been the first to use the term genocide to describe the brutalities committed by Italian Fascist in Cyrenaica, in Libya. He reconstructed war crimes, such as the use of mustard gas, the construction of concentration camps, and bombardments, by analyzing letters that Rodolfo Graziani exchanged with Badoglio and Mussolini. Moreover, he explicitly thematizes the problem of the inaccessibility of archives to conduct this research.

Other events that have until recently been denied by Italian historiography were the massacres perpetrated in Ethiopia. Del Boca’s work has been fundamental in this context but, as Fuller shows, he has faced significant resistance and denial. In the 1960s, through the analysis of Mussolini’s telegrams, for example, he proved the use of mustard gas by Badoglio and Graziani, ordered by Mussolini. Despite this clear evidence, Del Boca’s research was denied, and he himself was subject to threats and harassment. Nevertheless, Del Boca’s work has had an impact on the historical narrative.

Fuller shows how the violence and the brutality of the Italian Fascist crimes in Ethiopia challenge the post-war myth of Italian victimization. As she affirms, it has been impossible to address the question of responsibility in Italy’s “divided memory”.  This is aggravated, according to Fuller, because Italy also lacked a fundamental legal reckoning with the past. No equivalent of the Nuremberg trials has taken place, and the 1946 amnesty officially pardoned both Fascists and Partisans, making it more difficult to reconstruct and properly document the past.

Fuller shows how, in this irreconcilable memory landscape, it is younger generations who are challenging the narratives of perpetration and victimhood. Moreover, there is a growing body of scholarship regarding the complicity of Italy in the Holocaust, as well as on Italian colonial crimes. This article is a good resource for scholars interested in recent historiography on the crimes of Italian Fascism, as it provides a concise overview of existing work.

Author of this entry: Chiara Ausiello.

Fuller, Mia. “Italy: Beyond the Clichés that Obscure Unacceptable Histories.” Journal of Genocide Research, 2022, 24.2, p. 298-307.