Are we history?

This article is published in number 5 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until February 2, 2021

The apologies given by Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia for the racial laws signed eighty-two years ago by the great-grandfather Vittorio Emanuele III – not exactly timely – seem to me one of the most dignified acts of an ex-boy whom I have seen jumping from a reality show to the political carousel (with the list of Values ​​and the Future), at the Sanremo stage, in the inexhaustible search for whatever public dimension.

The apologies have been accepted more no than yes, and I have seen esteemed intellectuals pressured and, on the usual social networks, copious crowds of faceless, armed with contempt in demanding an apology also for support for the fascist dictatorship, colonialism, war. Excuses that would not be useless if in asking them one did not grasp the corroborating tendency to detach oneself from history in order to attribute to someone else the exclusive blame for sins to which no one should be stranger. That each people is the architect of their own destiny (and, perhaps, of their own government) is a truth never taken into consideration. Benito Mussolini has dominated twenty years, in the assent or surrender of the vast majority, nor do the history books report any resistance, if not residual, to the infamy of anti-Semitism, especially its daily consequences, while they report an enthusiasm perhaps of manner but collective on returning to the trenches. They are not just black and white photos or documentaries of the Istituto Luce, they are our fathers and our grandparents. And it does not escape that they have less responsibility than a King, but as long as each of us considers himself a victim rather than a protagonist of the story, the only result will be to have pre-established the alibi to be presented to conscience.

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