The Policy of Remembrance of the Beginning of World War II: Features of Media Content in Modern Italy
The article analyzes the reflection in modern Italian mass media of the information agenda dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. Based on the study of queries in the Google search engine, publications on this event were identified, as well as an analysis of political representations. An important condition for interpreting media content is the understanding that Italian memory policy for several decades refused to comprehend the fascist past, forming the myth of "honest soldiers who simply fulfilled their duty." In the context of modern pan-European memory policy, Italy, on the one hand, seeks to follow common trends (Holocaust memory), on the other hand, tries to exclude its past from the discourse of confession of guilt. In newspaper publications dedicated to the anniversary of the outbreak of war, the following trends can be distinguished: emphasizing the importance of war lessons for the future, striving to exclude Italy from the list of instigators of war, emphasizing the insufficient participation of Great Britain and France in the process of preventing World War II.