Italy: Meloni calls for unity on Liberation Day

anniversary

Rome: Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday called for unity among political forces in celebrating the anniversary of the liberation from the Nazis and their Fascist allies on April 25, 1945.

Meloni, whose hard-right Brother of Italy party traces its roots to the wreckage of Italian fascism at the end of World War Two, firmly rejected accusations of fascism nostalgia within the party.

In an open letter to Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera, Meloni wrote she hoped that the celebrations could be an occasion of “renewed national concord,” strengthening Italy’s role in the world as “essential stronghold of democracy.”

Allies and aides of the 46-year-old premier have been accused in several occasions of downplaying atrocities carried out by the Nazis and Fascists, or distorting historical facts concerning the partisan movement that fought to liberate the country.

Six months after she took office, Meloni’s presence at the official remembrance event at Rome’s Altar of the Fatherland on Tuesday morning, alongside Italian President Sergio Mattarella, was seen by many observers as a turning point.

Meloni herself used the word “watershed” to remember April 25, 1945 in her letter, defining it a crucial moment in Italian history, as it paved the way to the victory of those “democratic values, that Fascism had crushed and that we find carved into the Italian Republic’s constitution.”