25 aprile – Oggi come ieri Roma est antifascista
(April 25 – Today Just as Yesterday (East) Rome Is Anti-Fascist)
This "Liberation Day" poster appeared in the alleyways of Rome's Prenestino-Centocelle neighborhood in the early weeks of April 2019 (Fig. 1). Intended to promote a celebratory public march and subsequent left-wing gathering in Piazza delle Camelie on April 25th, the poster features the rallying slogan: "Oggi come ieri, Roma est antifascista" (Today Just as Yesterday, (East) Rome Is Anti-Fascist) (2019b).
Disseminated by Azione Antifascista Roma Est (East Rome Anti-Fascist Action, AARE), a left-wing activist group based in Prenestino-Centocelle, the red, black, and white poster was designed to visually reference a similar poster by the renowned Italian graphic designer Ettore Vitali (Heller 2022; N/D). Designed for the Italian Socialist Party in 1973, Vitali's poster featured a monochromatic red background – the symbolic color of international Socialism – with a ripped black sheet of paper in the immediate foreground (Fig. 2). Symbolizing the victory achieved by the left-wing Italian Partisans against the remnants of Benito Mussolini's Repubblica Sociale Italiana (Italian Social Republic; 1943-45) and Nazi Germany's occupying Wehrmacht forces during the final months of World War II, Vitali's poster was, and continues to be, considered a landmark in mid-century "political branding."
In the AARE's 2019 version of Ettore's 1973 poster, however, the former added two strips of tape – one green, symbolizing Matteo Salvini's La Lega (The League) party, and one yellow, standing for Giuseppe Conte's Movimento 5 Stelle (5 Star Movement). Analyzed together, the poster's message is clear: the "black veil held together with yellow and green tape," symbolizing the political coalition between the country's far-right and the center-right parties, will be shredded by a "red wave" in Italian politics (Azione Antifascista Roma Est 2019).
Beyond celebrating April 25th, the AARE's 2019 festivities were intended to highlight the organization's social activism in East Rome's largely lower-middle and working-class neighborhoods. In response to the media attention that the AARE's Liberation Day poster generated, the organization's spokesperson proclaimed: "On this April 25th, we intend to revive the historical anti-fascist procession in Centocelle." From the "resistance of the struggle for housing" to the "popular taverns that support the farmers' markets" and "local resistance networks in social and self-managed spaces," the AARE's procession through East Rome was intended to "resonate in the streets of our neighborhoods with the spirit of anti-fascist resistance" (2019a).
On April 12, 2019, Giorgia Meloni – then the President of Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy, FdI) and a member of Italy's Chamber of Deputies – issued a statement via her Facebook account, referring to the AARE's posters as "indecent" and having "trampled" upon the "memory of the martyrs of the Foibe" massacres. Taking place between 1943 and 1945, the "Foibe massacres" were a series of mass killings involving the anti-fascist Yugoslav Partisans and various security agencies working with Josip Broz Tito. While a majority of scholars have concluded that these "massacres" were little more than reprisal killings by ethnic Slavs, largely in response to two decades of repression and compulsory Italianization under Benito Mussolini's dictatorship (1922-45), those on Italy's neo-fascist right wing have tended to view "la Foibe," as it is referred to in Italian, as a state-sponsored ethnic cleansing against Italians. Although the AARE's poster makes no mention of these killings, Meloni called upon the mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, to "remove them immediately" (Meloni 2019). Later on that same day, the AARE responded to Meloni via its Facebook account. "Dear Giorgia Meloni, we respond publicly to your rambling post for [one] simple reason," the group's intentionally condescending statement explained, adding: "Where you may have seen an allusion to the Foibe remains a mystery to us" (Azione Antifascista Roma Est 2019).
The AARE's poster was complimented by a handbill, which was distributed widely throughout Rome, which is featured in this collection. In addition to the AARE's posters and handbills, a handful of both anti-fascist and far-right organizations, including the Roman division of the Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d'Italia (National Association of Italian Partisans) (Fig. 3) and CasaPound Italia (House of [Ezra] Pound Italy), distributed pro- and anti-"Liberation Day" posters, two of which are featured in this collection.
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