Giorgia Meloni

Right-wing politicians like new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have been using the issue of the World War II 'foibe' mass killings of Italians by the leftist ...

The topic was relatively insignificant in Italian political discourse until the 1990s because – among other reasons – of the ties that the Italian Communist Party – the biggest in Europe at the time – had with the Yugoslav Communist party. This relationship and the strong influence that the Italian Communist Party had over Italian politics meant the topic was discussed only in the Venezia Giulia area and ignored in the rest of Italy, just like in Yugoslavia where it remained mostly of local interest. Historian Raoul Pupo says his opinion of the Remembrance Day commemoration is “generally positive, but with many critical issues”. After receiving a phone call the same day from Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, Tajani issued a statement during the next day’s session of the European Parliament saying he was not claiming these territories, but was referring to the Italian population that lived there. The day after, in a letter to his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella, Slovenian President Borut Pahor accused the two men of historical revisionism. Pupo says that “as we know, of course in practice things may differ, but the [Yugoslav] guidelines were very clear”. By comparison, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, 2022, Salvini wrote five posts in total about it, and Meloni two. But then things moved in the complete opposite direction.” The Partisans perpetrated mass executions and various other acts of violence against fascists and alleged fascists. Two main waves of massacres are encompassed by the term foibe. But according to historians, most of what she has said has been politically motivated and plagued with inaccuracies. Because the issue is so divisive, it never fails to get public and media attention, spark public debate and energise right-wing parties’ voters.