Echoes of an anti-fascist memory:

The radical right and the foibe in Italy

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the political uses of the memory of the foibe by the Italian radical right in the last three decades. To this end, I will analyze how the mobilization of the memory of the massacres suffered by Italians in the mountains of Trieste during the Second World War (foibe) has served to relativize the Holocaust and exempt fascism from any responsibility for war crimes committed in the Balkans. By studying the silences of the memory of the foibe in Italy, as well as the crisis of the anti-fascist paradigm in the 1990s, the aim is to understand how the narratives surrounding the massacres suffered by Italians in the Second World War have structured the normalization strategies of the radical right in the country. At the same time, the article problematizes the Italian right's constant calls for “national reconciliation” from the point of view of so-called “anti-antifascism”, which equates fascist and antifascist violence and celebrates resistance fighters and the so-called “ragazzi di Salò” as heroes of the Italian nation.