| dc.description.abstract | 10th June 1924: the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti was
murdered by a fascist group. After his famous speech in
the Parliament, where he denounced Mussolini’s regime
machinations, he was kidnapped, killed and his body hidden
for two months. Even though previous cases of opposition
to the regime took to the other murders such as the one
of Don Minzoni, the name of Giacomo Matteotti became
soon a symbol of resistance. A standardized photo of his
face, the place of his kidnapping, and some of his supposed
last words were sacralised. His end caused friction even
within the fascist government, while the strong emotional
support of the people, who went to the famous Arnaldo da
Brescia embankment in Rome, where Matteotti was kidnapped, was strongly prevented by the fascists. Matteotti
was able to start the anti-fascist mythopoiesis, to shape
it, at the very moment when the parallel fascist mythopoiesis was getting stronger. His myth got so widespread
that he became the prototype of the anti-fascist martyr:
even the communist Palmiro Togliatti had to admit it in
1928. During the Resistance war, 19 years after his murder,
some partisan formations took on his name. Following
the way of his myth, after the liberation in 1945, how
was he honoured in the public sphere? Who is Giacomo
Matteotti today, besides being the name of many squares
and streets? What is said about him now on the web, in
particular on Wikipedia, ChatGPT and Bard (now named
Gemini) and social media? Where are most of the places
named after him? How did Italy’s capital, Rome, honour
him? What is and what was the public and the political use
of his story? Thanks to digital tools and analysis, a profile
of who Giacomo Matteotti is today can be reconstructed.
The history of the present time can help historians explain
what Matteotti’s myth means in the public sphere and, in
particular, in public place(s). | it_IT |
