Commemorating the Fascist Empire: The Public Memory of Rodolfo Graziani in Modern Italy

Abstract

This essay will analyze the public memory of Italy’s most prominent colonial general, Rodolfo Graziani, in light of his recent commemoration in his hometown near Rome. During Graziani’s lifetime, fascist propaganda and censorship praised him as a colonial war “hero” and omitted the countless atrocities he committed during Italy’s colonial wars in Libya and Ethiopia in the 1920s and 1930s. As the colonial campaigns proved unanimously popular in fascist Italy, Graziani’s positive reputation was only jeopardised due to his polarising role as Chief of Staff in the Republic of Salò during Italy’s Civil War between 1943 and 1945. After the war, he was tried and acquitted for Nazi collaborationism whilst his colonial crimes went completely unquestioned, sparking grave consequences for the public memory of Italian fascism and colonialism. Since his death, neofascist parties and communities have persistently rehabilitated their “heroic” remembrance of Graziani through sites of memory which resulted in a publicly funded monument in 2012. The Italian government’s continued denial of Graziani’s colonial atrocities and censorship of foreign films in recent decades demonstrate the suppression of his colonial crimes and are reflective of the lack of public awareness and mass protest to Graziani’s recent monument. Whilst Ethiopian, British and American journalists met the news with public condemnation, the Italian press barely mentioned it and the only domestic protests to the commemoration came from directly affected communities and organisations. The essay will therefore contrast Graziani’s commemoration in Italy to counter memories of Graziani in Italy and abroad in order to analye that which has been publicly commemorated, contested, ignored and suppressed in postfascist and postcolonial Italy.