The Challenges of Public History: The Case of the “Italian Ideological Chernobyl”

This article analyses the tensions between contrasting narratives in Public History, focusing on debates surrounding the perception of the history of fascism in Italy, using as a case study the proposals for the creation of a museum of fascism in Predappio, Mussolini's birthplace. Public History refers to the process of communicating history, based on its academic study, to a wider audience, often outside academic contexts and, in this and many other cases, it clashes with an already ‘public’ communication: the contours of fascism can be disseminated through distorted, minimised or even invented narratives and certainly through politicisation. This phenomenon represents an urgent challenge for Italian historical memory and also involves opposing political ideologies. The case of Predappio mixes past and present and has been described by its mayor as ‘Italian Chernobyl [historical and ideological]’, dividing the country along the fault lines of many historical and political divisions: between fascists, post-fascists, anti-anti-fascists, anti-fascists and a-fascists (i.e. those who are not interested in opening a serious dialogue on the Italian 20th century) and reopens a ‘wound that has never healed’ in the country's history The article begins by providing an overview of the origins and evolution of the debate on the memory of authoritarian regimes.