On Tuesday, April 25, communist parties and various other anti-fascist youth-student groups and trade unions organized events to mark the Liberation Day in Italy, commemorating the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the country from fascism and the victory of the resistance against Nazi Germany during World War II.
On Monday and Tuesday, progressive groups marched in various cities to pay tribute to the fallen heroes of the Italian resistance. They also denounced the anti-worker and pro-imperialist policies of the incumbent right-wing government led by Giorgia Meloni.
On Monday evening, working class sections in Turin took out a procession in the city, which was met with force from the police. Anti-fascist sections in Turin protested the police repression. They also countered people trying to march with NATO flags to support Italy’s participation in the war in Ukraine.
The Communist Youth Front (FGC) had organized a three-day ‘March of Partisan Youth’ from April 22-24, which traced the historic routes used by the 145th Garibaldi Brigade during World War II in Ligonchio in Reggio Emilia where they fought the fascists and the Nazis.
April 25 has been chosen as the Liberation Day in Italy as on this date in 1945, the National Liberation Committee officially proclaimed the insurgency against the German puppet state and the fascist collaborators in Northern Italy. In the same radio announcement, they declared the death sentence for all fascist leaders including Benito Mussolini. On April 28, 1945, Mussolini was executed by the Italian partisans.
Potere al Popolo (Power to the People) stated on Tuesday, “The partisans fought for a free country: free from the horrors of dictatorship, free from race theories that justified the extermination of millions of men and women, free from the yoke of world powers that had led to the slaughter of millions of men, and destroyed millions of lives in two world wars, free from exploitation and authoritarianism that raged under the fascist dictatorship. Their work is not simply something to commemorate, but an invitation to fight. Never like today is it necessary to update the values of the Resistance.”
Potere al Popolo also denounced the Meloni government as the most right-wing in Republican history and criticized it for attacking workers and wages, encouraging racism and discrimination against migrants by eliminating special protection, financing ‘Libyan lagers’ [concentration camps], and declaring war on refugees and rescues, pushing forward a cultural and ideological model totally reactionary towards women’s rights and the LGBTQ+ community, continuing to finance the war in Ukraine and increasing military spending in general, and endorsing predatory policies by big companies and multinationals that destroy humanity and the planet.
People across Italy and Europe have been experiencing a crisis brought on by the austerity-ridden, EU-dictated social and economic policies pushed by neo-liberal governments. Right-wing populist groups are also consolidating further by raising concerns about the ‘refugee crisis’.
Italy, battered by decades-long political crisis and the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, saw the election of a right-wing coalition government under Meloni in September 2022, marking the return of the far-right to power. Meloni’s party, the Brothers of Italy (FdI), has its roots in the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, which champions conservatism, nationalism, and opposition to immigration.
Communist and working class sections in the country continue to resist the anti-worker, anti-refugee, and misogynist policies of the ruling coalition and have been protesting its imperialist actions and ideology. However, communists currently do not have representation in the Italian parliament.
On April 25, prior to the Liberation Day parade in Milan, Maurizio Acerbo from the leadership of the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC) and the People’s Union (UP) stated that Meloni and right-wing groups in Italy are the heirs of the traitors who collaborated with Mussolini and Hitler, and they have no right to cherish the liberation of the country that was yielded by the resistance led by Italian partisans.
