“Justice and Liberty / for this they died / for this they live”. So says the epitaph that Piero Calamandrei wrote for the tomb of Charles and Nello Rosselli, killed in France 83 years ago on the orders of the fascist government.
Roman by birth but Tuscan by adoption, the Rosselli brothers were politicians, intellectuals and journalists among the most hostile to Mussolini's regime. Carlo, as a professor of Economics, elaborated the doctrine of liberal socialism, which combined the principles of the market economy with the regulatory and planning activity of the State.
In Florence, in 1925, the two brothers gave birth to "Do not give up”, the first clandestine anti-fascist newspaper, then violently closed down by the regime. Sentenced to confinement on the island of Lipari, Carlo escaped in 1929 and took refuge in Paris, where together with Nello and other anti-fascist exiles (including his teacher, Gaetano salvemini) founded the movement “Justice and Freedom”, based on an ideological manifesto whose title was precisely “Liberal Socialism”.
In the following years, the exponents of GL organized an active opposition to Fascism and carried out a work of informing and sensitizing international public opinion, revealing the reality of fascist Italy which was hiding behind the propaganda of the regime. They were a thorn in the side of Fascism.
For these reasons, the 9 June of the 1937, in the small Norman village of Bagnoles-de-l'Orne, the Rosselli brothers were kidnapped and killed by a team from the French far-right organization”Hood”. Leading the operation was Jean Filliol, responsible for various murders and collaborator of the Germans during the Nazi occupation.
The perpetrators of the crime however, they must be sought at the top of the fascism. According to the most recent historical reconstructions, the main perpetrators were the lieutenant colonel of the Carabinieri Santo Emanuele (who was also head of the counter-espionage section), General Mario Roatta, Colonel Paolo Angioy and the Carabinieri Major Roberto Navale. The assassination was carried out with the tacit approval of Galeazzo Ciano, Foreign Minister as well as son-in-law of Mussolini, and his head of cabinet, Filippo Anfuso.
Today, faced with the rubble left by the coronavirus and the need to rebuild production systems, reflection on liberal socialism back topical. And not only in theoretical terms, but in ideal and political terms, given that - in current conditions - public intervention in the economy is necessary but on condition that it is not invasive and that it respects and enhances the market economy and the creativity of businesses, which form the backbone of the Italian system.
