In much of Western Europe, the documentation of colonial history, including territorial and socio-economic ambitions, the consequences of imperialism, and the crimes committed by nation-states that emerged directly or indirectly from colonial empires and continue to grapple with these pasts today, is widely integrated into cultural, educational, and civil society discourse.
Today’s countries such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, and France have, to varying degrees, confronted their imperial legacies, however incomplete or contested these reckonings may be. In Southern Europe, by contrast, the systematic engagement with uncomfortable aspects of recent history has been far more tentative, often avoided or circumvented altogether. Nowhere on the European continent is this more evident than in Italy’s unresolved reckoning with its colonial past, particularly the fascist era and its enduring legacy. The brutal crimes committed on the African continent remain denied mainly, downplayed, omitted from school curricula, and collectively erased from public consciousness. Today, as nationalism surges across Europe, the Italian government is actively reshaping its historical narrative, reviving or better reinventing old tropes of national-popular grandeur to serve new geopolitical experiments. One of the most extreme and costly of these experiments is currently unfolding in northern Albania, which Italy is increasingly treating as a testing ground for contemporary neocolonial practices. These policies, rooted in border externalisation strategies and the consolidation of exclusive power structures dominated by Western elites fixated on migration control, expose a glaring paradox. While these same elites impose ever-stricter migration restrictions, they simultaneously rely on cheap, precarious labour from abroad. Italy is exploiting this contradiction to position itself as a self-proclaimed enforcer of exclusionary power dynamics within the European Union, pushing for even more overtly colonial and repressive measures, particularly when explicitly targeting people on the move.
In doing so, the current government is also exporting some of the most egregious instruments of modern state control, such as detention centres and camps, i.e. mechanisms of repression that have been tested for various purposes since Italy’s unification, and in some cases, even earlier. This manoeuvre reflects a broader act of desperation by the former ‘State without a Nation’, which, since its unification less than two centuries ago, has struggled to assert true geopolitical relevance. To compensate, Italy has leaned heavily on the folkloristic myth of «Italiani, brava gente» (literally, «Italians, good people»), a post-war folkloristic construct that has shaped both public and institutional discourse. This myth, reinforced by a judicial paradigm that distorts the historical narrative of the Second World War, is routinely exploited by populist Italian media and politicians to suggest that those coming from Italy were inherently and supposedly “better” or less brutal compared to other colonial powers such as the British, French, and Belgian empires. Yet this cliché, devoid of any scientific basis, stands in stark contrast to the well-documented history of Italian colonial and war crimes, from the Horn of Africa and Libya to Albania, Greece, Croatia, and Slovenia, among others, and further hinders the urgent need for a critical approach to the past.
From the Myth of ‘Italiani, Brava Gente’ to the Struggle for Decolonial Memory: Confronting Italy’s Colonial Past in Public Spaces
For several years now, the month of February has symbolised the culmination of initiatives dedicated to the victims of Italian colonialism and the recovery of the memory of the crimes committed by the fascist regime, which had the support and even the pride of much of the population at the time. This year, once again, associations, movements, activist groups, individual academics, and institutions such as universities and libraries within the “Yekatit 12 -19 febbraio” network have curated an intense and diverse programme of events aimed at promoting knowledge and raising awareness of the past. Their goal is to ensure that, even in Italy, the memory of colonialism and the crimes perpetrated by the Kingdom of Italy, especially in the Horn of Africa, become accessible and central to the work of deconstructing fascist rhetoric and the myth of the «Italiani, brava gente». This myth, which remains deeply entrenched, continues to influence not only Italian society but also other European languages and the associated imagery that falsely associates benevolence with war criminals responsible for heinous massacres, including one of the first genocides in contemporary history: the “Libyan genocide” (1929–1934). Known in Libya as ‘Shar’ (in Arabic: شر or ‘devil’), this systematic extermination targeted the Arab population and Libyan culture, with estimates suggesting that between 20,000 and 100,000 people were killed by Italian colonial authorities under Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. Approximately half of the population of Cyrenaica was deported to concentration camps. While colonial imagery was largely relegated to oblivion in public discourse after the Second World War, only in recent decades has historiography begun to reclaim it. In the streets of Italian cities, however, clear traces of this past remain in a controversial way to celebrate the glory of colonialism. Statues, plaques, several monuments, and notably the names of streets and entire neighbourhoods often erase the war crimes or alter their memory through the omission or distortion of captions and celebration of colonialism.
An emblematic example can be found in the “Africano” (African) neighbourhood in Rome’s second district (Municipio II), which developed along Corso Trieste. This area is not named for any special multicultural character of continental appeal but for 49 street names, or ‘odonyms’, directly connected to colonial geography, turning toponymy into a powerful narrative tool that highlights the urgent need for collective re-semanticisation in the capital city and much beyond. Similarly, the “Cirenaica” area of Bologna, within the San Donato-San Vitale neighbourhood, recalls the deportation of 100,000 civilians from Libya’s Cyrenaica region to the first modern concentration camps, which later served as a model for Nazi camps.
In Parma, a statue of Vittorio Bottego, leader of the occupation of Asmara and a key figure in the darker pages of Italian colonialism, is still proudly displayed at the exit of the train station. Known to official history until today as an “explorer hero” from the provinces, this statue depicts presumed natives prostrate at his feet in a submissive position. Not far from there, in Modena, a plaque in the central Piazza Giacomo Matteotti commemorates Guglielmo Ciro Nasi, commander of the colonial troops. Despite his name appearing on the list of war criminals reported by Ethiopia to the United Nations, and numerous citizen-led petitions calling for its removal, the plaque remains in place.
Notwithstanding the visibility of these symbols in various places, the memory of Italy’s colonial past still needs to be incorporated into public consciousness and educational pathways. For this reason, in recent years, several decolonial walks organised by numerous associations, artists, and academics have gained growing interest and wide participation. This increasing involvement signals a clear need to deepen the public’s understanding and develop the critical tools to engage with entire neighbourhoods in cities, especially in northern Italy, that still bear visible marks of colonialism, and the crimes linked to conquest and repression. In some cases, such as in Somalia, these colonial operations continued even after the fall of fascism, persisting into the 1960s.
Deconstructing Colonial Glorification and Challenging Collective Amnesia through the ‘Yekatit 12 – 19 February’ Network commitment
Among the symbols and places that glorify some of those responsible for the most brutal crimes of Italian colonialism, individuals who were never tried for such atrocities, are figures like Rodolfo Graziani, known as the “butcher of Fezzan” or “the butcher of Addis Ababa”, in whose honour the Lazio Region erected a mausoleum in Affile, located about 50 kilometres east of Rome. Also widely commemorated is Pietro Badoglio, the first sole governor of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica during the genocidal campaign, whose hometown, Grazzano Monferrato in the Basso Monferrato Astigiano in Piedmont, was renamed “Grazzano Badoglio” in 1938, a toponym that remains unchanged. The town hall still displays the effigy of the “Marshal of Italy” and promotes visits to the Badoglio Historical Museum, located in the house where the fascist marshal began exhibiting relics from military campaigns before his death. Moreover, there are also seemingly less visible monuments, such as the one dedicated to the Fallen of Dogali, near Termini Station in Rome. This column, created by repurposing an Egyptian obelisk originally erected by Ramses II in Heliopolis in the 13thcentury BC and transported to Rome in the first century AD, was rediscovered in 1883 near the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, one block east the Pantheon. Rather than being valorised or restituted to Egypt, it was incorporated into the first monument built in Rome after the city became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy to honours 500 soldiers who fell in the Massawa plain in in present-day Eritrea during the Battle of Dogali (1887).
In recent years, however, this site has become a place of collective remembrance and denunciation during “የካቲት ፲፪ Yekatit 12”, which in the Coptic and Ethiopian calendar corresponds to February 19, marking the anniversary of the Addis Ababa massacre of 1937, in which Italian civilians, soldiers, and fascist squads killed at least 20,000 Ethiopian civilians between February 19 and 21. The commemorations organised in recent years under the obelisk were inspired by the need to expand the memory of the 500 victims of Dogali to include the estimated 500,000 victims of Italian colonialism, fascism, and imperialism in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, and Somalia. There have also been also civil society calls to rename “Piazza dei Cinquecento” to “Square of the Five Thousand Victims of Italian Colonialism in Africa”, picking up the thread of a proposed law from 2006, re-presented in 2023. This legal draft initiative aimed to shift focus away from the glorification of the segregation imposed by Italian fascism in the Horn of Africa, which later served as the model for the 1938 racial laws and Nazi concentration camps and could be replicated elsewhere even today, if not seriously condemned and acknowledged as a criminal practice.
In addition to the Battle of Dogali (1887), the Adua massacre (1896), the use of chemical gases (including mustard gas, in violation of international conventions) in Ethiopia (1935-1936), the Debre Libanos massacre(1937), the extermination operations against the Oromo and Amhara populations, and the repression of the Wadi al-Shati revolt (1930), Yekatit 12 is considered one of the most violent crimes of Italian colonialism. However, it is also part of an imperialist past that has been consistently downplayed and, in many cases, almost entirely erased from public discourse in Italy, including from school textbooks and even from encyclopaedic entries.
The choice of the month of February, particularly February 19, holds significant meaning. It is still a day of national mourning in Ethiopia and the name of the square in Addis Ababa where an obelisk commemorates the massacre. Today, it is also the name of the “Yekatit 12 – 19 February” network, composed of dozens of individuals and associations committed to dealing with the erasure of Italian colonialism and its crimes from collective memory. Furthermore, the network addresses contemporary issues such as institutional racism, xenophobia, and the multiple forms of discrimination that people of African descent continue to face today.
In addition to advocating for the inclusion of all Italian colonial victims in the collective memory, especially those from Ethiopia and Eritrea, civil society organisations, particularly those linked to the Yekatit 12 – 19 February network, have organised numerous initiatives throughout February 2025. These activities span venues ranging from the “Guglielmo Marconi” Library in Rome to the GRIOT Bookshop, the “Lelio Basso” School of Journalism, universities departments, several city halls and Institutes for Memory and History in various Italian municipalities. Alongside decolonial walks, these venues are hosting roundtables, book presentations, exhibitions, concerts, and public screenings, including the one of the documentary “Pagine nascoste” by Sabrina Varani on Italy’s collective amnesia about its colonial adventurism, promoted by the Municipality of Ravenna as part of its “Festival delle Culture 2025”.
Since 2023, the Yekatit 12 – 19 February network has also backed the introduction of a new bill aimed at establishing a “Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Italian Colonialism” following a previous attempt that remained inactive since 2006. The bill proposes that the Italian Republic recognise February 19, marking the start of the 1937 massacre of Addis Ababa’s civilian population, as a day of public institutional commemoration for all victims of Italian colonialism in Africa. Although the proposal has yet to gain concrete support at the national level, it has received backing from several decentralised local authorities, including the Municipality of Turin, which in 2024, through its city council, called on the Italian Parliament to consider the bill.
The ongoing commemorations and the efforts to pass the bill, beyond their celebratory purpose, aim to raise public awareness about Italy’s colonial crimes by seeking to encourage reflection on the discriminatory and xenophobic tendencies that continue to permeate Italian society and politics, despite efforts to deny or downplay the past and prolong the so-called historical amnesia.
From this perspective, the initiatives surrounding February 19, or የካቲት ፲፪ (Yekatit 12), represent a significant moment of “Aufarbeitung”, a German term often used to describe the act of confronting and processing hard to digest history. This notion of “elaboration” a concept drawn from Paolo Jedlowski’s writings on historical memory, refers to a form of remembrance that counters the processes of oblivion, those mechanisms that either discard troubling memories or deliberately erase them for political reasons. Instead, it calls for a conscious engagement with the most painful aspects of the past, paving the way for a process that can lead to accepting responsibility for historical facts and crimes, especially the parts that have been hidden or protected from present-day judgment.