70 years after his death, the figure of the DC Prime Minister lives again in a book by Antonio Polito. Because there are many lessons to keep in mind from the “conservative politician, but who did gigantic things”
There is always something to learn from rereading history: retracing facts and events also means turning a good lens on current events. It is therefore very right to remember Enrico Berlinguer 40 years after his death, Giacomo Matteotti 100 years after his assassination and Alcide De Gasperi 70 years after his death, in truth the least celebrated. Antonio Polito, editorialist for Corriere della Sera and former founder and director of Riformista, did so in an essay that he himself admits to having secularly constructed as a hagiography, that is, like those books that tell the lives of saints: “Il costruttore” (Mondadori, 2024, 204 pages, €19), a title that already says a lot about the first Prime Minister of our Republic, a man of the opposite sign compared to today’s politicians who want to scrap, asphalt, use the bulldozer. This is why the book is above all a guide for those who govern our country, therefore for Giorgia Meloni herself.
What immediately catches the eye about this politician of humble origins (born April 3, 1881 in Pieve Tesino and died August 19, 1954 in Borgo Valsugana), who certainly did not make the revolution, but built democracy, is his uniqueness compared to today’s politicians, but also to his contemporaries, such as Amintore Fanfani, his successor at the helm of the Christian Democracy. “Two aspects make him a different man,” Polito told L’Espresso, “the first is his deep Catholic faith; he was a man of great moral and ethical strength. The second is the idea he had of a nation as a coexistence of peoples with different languages, an idea that came from his origins. He was born, in fact, in the mountains of Trentino, when that territory was still under the Habsburg Empire, where different nations coexisted; this opened his eyes to Europe.”
But why did a person like Polito, who “as a young man was an aspiring revolutionary” – it is no coincidence that he was a member of the PCI – decide to write a book about a leader who today we would define as “conservative”? “As the years went by,” he admits, “I understood that concrete action, reforms, government acts change a country much more than ideas and words. Today we are still attracted by words, while he achieved gigantic deeds. A conservative man, it is true, he was not a revolutionary. Yet he took a million hectares of land from landowners to distribute it to farmers; he invested an enormous amount of public money in the South; he brought Italy, defeated by the war, into the Atlantic Pact; he created Eni… He had the ability to change the country. His eight years of government resemble the years of the Attlee Labour government in England.”
De Gasperi had a very clear idea of democracy as anti-dictatorship, which is why he was strongly anti-fascist (he even went to prison) and anti-communist. Indeed, he risked suffering the same fate as Matteotti, when he was kidnapped by the blackshirts; he was saved only thanks to a parliamentarian who recognized him and convinced the squadristi to let him go. “At the end of July, with a group of friends we will take a walk that we have called “of the Saint and the Martyr” – says Polito – we will start from Fratta Polesine, Matteotti’s hometown, and we will arrive in Borgo Valsugana, where De Gasperi died”. A way to remember two people both animated by a strong anti-fascist sentiment.
What it means to be democratic is for Polito the first lesson of De Gasperi. He identifies four others: foreign policy as the key to domestic policy; rigor in public spending for economic growth; the importance for Italy of uplifting the South; the belief of having a truly strong prime minister only if the parties are weak and the institutions are strong, not the opposite.
“The book is an essay on current events,” he continues, “De Gasperi has drawn the playing field on which the political battle takes place: even today we discuss NATO, Europe, the South, electoral reform… We must remind Meloni within which borders one can govern: one cannot renounce international alliances, rigor, the South, a more efficient political system.”
Yet his figure has been almost forgotten (with a few exceptions, such as the beautiful show by Carmelo Rifici with a sensational Paolo Pierobon: “De Gasperi. Europe burns”). The so-called Truffa Law, “which wasn’t really a scam,” certainly fueled the removal of his political legacy, but it undoubtedly obscured his work. Of course, not everything worked out perfectly, but perhaps certain limitations can teach us something, suggests Polito. Two in particular: the first is “the weakness with which the form of government was deliberately designed in the Constitution, unbalanced in its relationship with Parliament”; the second is “that of not having succeeded in modifying the drift of our political-legislative system towards a “Republic of parties””.
When De Gasperi died, the train that was supposed to transport his body from Borgo Valsugana to Rome was greeted at every stop by a crowd of people. Will he become a saint? No, but a beatification process is underway. “Maybe he won’t be Blessed, but Venerable, yes,” says Polito. “Those who support him are counting on it.”
Source: lespresso.it
