In Search of Italy’s Glory Days

ROME, Italy — Last week, I was walking to the Fontana di Trevi when a street vendor’s wares caught my eye. No, it wasn’t the Sexy Roman Priests 2010 Calendar (though tempting)—I found myself staring at a different calendar entirely, labeled Il Duce. “This has to be a joke,” I thought to myself. But as I wearily flipped through it, I saw pictures that portrayed a strong Italian leader. The Benito Mussolini of this calendar was no buffoon.

I looked for the street vendor; he was a harmless looking middle-aged Pakistani gentleman. “Someone should tell him,” I thought. “Someone should tell him this is not okay.” It’s embarrassing; it should be tucked behind dozens of Roman Holiday calendars. Let’s sell the tourists black-and-white photos of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck eating gelato, not images of Mussolini inspiring false and dangerous notions of Italian greatness through racism.

I didn’t say anything, though. I kept walking through the beautiful streets of Rome, a knot in my stomach. I suppose I didn’t want to cause a scene and I was struggling to accept a greater and more disquieting truth: If the vendor had put the calendar in front, it was probably a popular item. People are buying these souvenirs and putting them in their kitchens. They might be marking birthdays, dinner parties, or play-dates under Il Duce’s watchful eye.

At work, I mentioned the calendar to one of my colleagues. She wasn’t the least bit surprised, mentioning that some of her friends thought Mussolini wasn’t half bad (she, of course, completely disagreed with them). She reminded me of something Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said in 2003. In an interview with English magazine The Spectator, he was quoted as calling Il Duce a “benign” dictator, saying “Mussolini never killed anyone” and “Mussolini just sent people on holiday to confine them.”

Of course, many Italian politicians responded with outrage. They pointed out that Nazi concentration camps were no vacation spot. Yet, the leader of Italy’s Jewish community, Amos Luzzato, said he was “not surprised, just saddened” by the Prime Minister’s remarks.

My response to the calendar was, perhaps, naive. My second week in Italy, I got into a fight with a friend at a dinner party over his description of European Jews.

“They always live in the best neighborhoods,” he said. “They inherit all their wealth and then they don’t have to work.”

That was a remark I couldn’t let go; keeping my calm, I gave my host a lecture on European history. Perhaps Rome’s Jewish ghetto is a fashionable neighborhood now, but that wasn’t the case in 1943. Did he, by any chance, remember Italy’s racial laws under Mussolini?

He admitted that his was view narrow-minded, but probably still has no idea that he made a faux-pas. He was surprised when I didn’t call him for two weeks after the party. For me it was an incident; for him it was a conversation.

All of this makes me overwhelmingly sad. I love this country; I spent almost every summer, and many winter and spring breaks visiting my grandmother in Rome. Sitting at my kitchen table, overlooking the roofs of the city, I cannot help but think that it is the most beautiful place in the world. Yet, the current political trends here turn my stomach.

I believe Italians can do better. They can do better than Silvio Berlusconi, better than the Lega Nord (a xenophobic political party that is currently part of the coalition that forms the government), and better than the new anti-immigration laws, which criminalize illegal immigration, allow citizen brigades to comb the streets for illegals, and harshly penalize renting a room to an undocumented individual. They can certainly do better than a tasteless calendar of Il Duce, a celebration of one of Italy’s darkest moments. The question is: will they?

Italy does not need to look for its glory days in its fascist past. It does not even need to look longingly at the Renaissance and the Roman Empire (though, unlike the fascist period, it would do well to take these moments as inspiration). Italy has always been a country marked by the enormous creativity of its citizens. I truly hope young Italians will embrace this aspect of their history and make it central to the nation’s future.


Sofia E. Groopman’12 is a Crimson news writer in Currier House.