2nd August is a tough date for the far-right politicians currently in power in Italy as they attempt to write dignified messages remembering 85 victims of the 1980 Bologna Station bombing without using the word "fascist".
Here's a thread looking at how they fared this year >> 1 President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa (FdI), the man whose middle name is Benito & famously boasted of having a bust of Mussolini in his home, opts for a throwaway "never forget", no mention of victims or their families let alone, God forbid, any hint of the perpetrators >> 2

Today 520k final year Italian school students sat the first written paper in their "Esame di maturità", the same paper for all. It consisted of an essay to be chosen from the 7 titles offered. Candidates had 6 hours to complete the exam. These were the 7 options [Thread] >> 1 The first option was: a textual analysis of the poem "Appendice 1" written by Pier Paolo Pasolini taken from his work "Dal Diario", published in 1954 >> 2

Today, 21 unidentified victims of a migrant boat sinking in the Ionian Sea on 16 June have been buried in a cemetery in the foothills of the Aspromonte mountains, far from media attention, as the Italian government continues to hide the tragedy from public view [Thread] >> 1 In the late evening of 16 June a French yacht in the Ionian Sea, about 120 miles SE of the Italian Coast, encounters a semi-sunken sailing boat (photo) that left Bodrum in Turkey a few days earlier. The yacht recovers 12 survivors & alerts Italian authorities >> 2

To celebrate 25 April, this is a slightly revised version of my thread from a few years ago, recounting events surrounding the flight, capture & execution of Mussolini (Photo: last known photo of Mussolini alive, as he leaves Milan on the evening of 25 April 1945) [Thread] >> 1 Around 4 p.m. on 25 April 1945, a meeting is organised between heads of the Fascist 'Repubblica Sociale Italiana" (RSI) & representatives of partisans of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN), with the Archbishop of Milan, Ildefonso Schuster (photo), as mediator >> 2

4April 1945, Italian partisan & Red Cross nurse Cecilia Deganutti (codename 'Joan of Arc') is burnt alive in the crematorium at the Risiera di San Sabba concentration camp in Trieste [Thread] >> 1 Cecilia Deganutti is a nurse working with the Red Cross in her home city of Udine. After Italy's surrender in September 1943, she is assigned to the Red Cross unit at the city's railway station >> 2

On 11 February 2004, Attilio Manca, a 34 year old urologist from Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto (Sicily), dies in his flat in Viterbo in mysterious circumstances. It is suspected he unknowingly operated Bernardo Provenzano & was killed because he recognised his patient [Thread] >> 1 Investigators have ascertained that Bernardo Provenzano underwent a prostrate operation in a private clinic near Marseilles in October 2003. In the same period Attilio Manca tells his family he is in the Marseilles area to examine a patient in preparation for surgery >> 2

18 January 1994, Democrazia Cristiana, the governing party in Italy for 50 years, is dissolved, Berlusconi founds his party Forza Italia & 'ndrangheta murders two Carabinieri on the A3 motorway, near Scilla in Calabria. These 3 events are closely tied [Thread] >> 1 Most of the information in this thread has been established in the judgment handed down by the Reggio Calabria Corte d'Assise in July 2020, sentencing Giuseppe Graviano (photo) & Rocco Santo Filippone to life imprisonment for ordering the murders & other attacks >> 2

5.20 a.m. Monday 28 December 1908, the prosperous Sicilian port city of Messina is mostly asleep. The evening before saw the inauguration of the city's new public lighting system & a Christmas performance of Verdi's "Aida" at the Vittorio Emanuele Theatre (photo) [Thread] >> 1 The port is crowded with ships, as usual, in the early morning of 28 December. Along the port stands the imposing Palazzata (photo), rebuilt after the destructive earthquake of 1783, along with most other buildings in the city >> 2

12 December 1985, at 8p.m. in the Sicilian town of Villafranca Tirrena, near Messina, 17-year-old Graziella Campagna leaves the "Regina" laundry, where she works to help support her parents & 7 siblings, to take a bus home to the village of Saponara. She never arrives [Thread] >> Investigators quickly establish that Graziella didn't board the bus, as neither the driver nor any of the passengers remember seeing her, even though she is a regular user of the service and known to many of them >> 1

Italian journalist @lorenzodago has tweeted a thread on a largely forgotten book co-authored by Giorgia Meloni in 2019. It's content is shocking due to its naked racism. The book is entitled Nigerian Mafia: origins, rituals, crimes [Thread] >> 1

https://twitter.com/lorenzodago/status/1692782467206320460?s=20

Fwiw, I suspect it was almost entirely written by Meloni's co-author Alessandro Meluzzi (check his Twitter feed to see how batshit crazy he is) & she put her name to it without bothering to read it properly. Still, she put her name to it & is equally responsible >> 2

2 August 1980, the worst terrorist attack in post-war Italian history. A bomb hidden in a suitcase explodes in the waiting room of Bologna Station, causing the partial collapse of the station structure. 85 people die & 200 are injured [Thread] >> 1





It is the first Saturday in August & Bologna Centrale Station, an important rail hub, is packed with families from all over Italy catching or changing trains as they set off on their summer holidays. It is 10.25 a.m. & the Ancona-Basel express has just arrived at Platform 1 >> 2

27 June 1980, at 20.08, Itavia flight IH870 to Palermo takes off from Bologna with 81 people on board. At 20.59, the DC-9 crashes into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the island of Ustica, killing everyone on board. The truth about what happened is still to be established [Thread] >> 1 Search & rescue operations find just a few pieces of floating wreckage 110km north of Ustica and only 35 bodies are recovered. Small traces of explosive are detected on some of the parts recovered, favouring the hypothesis of a bomb on board, rather than a structural failure >> 2

23 June 1945, two months after the arrest & execution of Mussolini, in which she played a key role, Italian partisan Giuseppina Tuissi (nickname "Gianna") disappears on her 22nd birthday, almost certainly murdered & thrown into Lake Como. Her body is never recovered [Thread] >> 1 This thread deals with the capture & execution of Benito Mussolini & Clara Petacchi only as regards the part played by Gianna. You can read about these events in more detail in my (long!) thread linked below >> 2

https://twitter.com/NickWhithorn/status/1254074018887598081?s=19

2 June 1946, a referendum is held in Italy to decide the form of government following the end of World War II & the fall of the fascist régime. Electors are asked to choose between maintaining the monarchy or establishing a republic. Women vote for the first time [Thread] >> 1 No quorum is set but turnout is very high at 89.08% (polls also open on morning of 3 June). On the same day, people elect members of the Constituent Assembly tasked with writing a new constitution. The result is a clear, though not overwhelming, victory for the Republic >> 2

2 April 1985 - In the seaside town of Pizzolungo, near Trapani (Sicily), Barbara Rizzo is getting her 3 children ready for school. Her 6-year-old twin sons, Giuseppe & Salvatore, are refusing to get dressed, while her daughter Margherita (11) frets about arriving late [Thread]>>1 As her husband, Nunzio Asta, has already left for work in his car repair workshop, Barbara asks a neighbour to take Margherita to school while she finishes with the twins. Finally, at about 8.30 a.m., the three of them climb into the family's Volkswagen Scirocco and set off >> 2

5.20 a.m. Monday 28 December 1908, the prosperous Sicilian port city of Messina is mostly asleep. The evening before saw the inauguration of the city's new public lighting system & a Christmas performance of Verdi's "Aida" at the Vittorio Emanuele Theatre (photo) [Thread] >> 1 The port is crowded with ships, as usual, in the early morning of 28 December. Along the port stands the imposing Palazzata (photo), rebuilt after the destructive earthquake of 1783, along with most other buildings in the city >> 2

At dawn on 28 December 1943, the 7 Cervi brothers, Gelindo (42), Antenore (37), Aldo (34), Ferdinando (32), Agostino (27), Ovidio (25) & Ettore (22), all active anti-fascist partisans, are executed by an Italian fascist firing squad in Reggio Emilia [Thread] >> 1 Throughout the war the Cervi family (including parents Alcide Cervi & Genoeffa Cocconi & two sisters Diomira & Rina Cervi) use their farmhouse in Gattatico near the town of Campegine as a refuge for anti-fascists, men fleeing to avoid conscription & escaped prisoners of war >> 2

On 26 December 1965, Franca Viola (photo), aged 17, is kidnapped from her home in Alcamo. She is raped by her ex-fiancé, who then puts pressure on her & her family to accept a "rehabilitating marriage". Franca becomes the first woman in Italy to refuse this practice [Thread] >> 1 Viola is a farmers' daughter who lives in Alcamo, Sicily. In 1963, she becomes engaged to Filippo Melodia, the nephew of a mafia boss. When Melodia is arrested for theft, Viola's father insists that she break off the engagement >> 2

Revelations regarding a far-right plot to stage a coup in Germany, with a deluded aristocrat as ringleader, have emerged exactly on the anniversary of a far-right coup led by a deluded aristocrat in Italy that almost came to fruition: the "Borghese Coup" [Thread] >> 1 Junio Valerio Scipione Ghezzo Marcantonio Maria dei principi Borghese, or Junio Valerio Borghese for short, nicknamed "Black Prince", belonged to an aristocratic family with ancestors that included four Cardinals, a Pope and Napoleon's sister. His wife was a Russian Countess >> 2

After just over a month in office, here is my report card for Ministers in Meloni's government. NOT a comment on their policies but on their general ability to communicate & implement policy. For a brief intro to Ministers, see linked thread [Thread] >> 1

https://twitter.com/NickWhithorn/status/1584633197257949184?s=19

Let's start with "il" (or "la"?) Presidente del Consiglio, Giorgia Meloni. Mixed bag. Performed well on her overseas trips to Brussels, COP27 & G20 but provoked a diplomatic crisis with France over migrants by taking a press report quoting an "unnamed source" at face value >> 2

Palermo, Monday 25 November 1985. At 1.30 p.m. the bell rings for the end of lessons at the Liceo Meli school in central Palermo and hundreds of students & teachers stream out of the building and begin to head home [Thread] >> 1 Many students who live in the northern suburbs of the city cross the busy via della Libertà to reach a bus stop. These include Maria Giuditta Milella (photo, left), aged 17, and Biagio Siciliano (photo, right), aged 14 >> 2