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The strange case of the Fascist Pasta has all the elements necessary for high drama: vitriol, hyperbole, insult and abuse. Some hair-pulling has even been reported. It may seem totally appropriate originating, as this terrible scrap has, in the spiritual home of both pasta and opera and engaging in fierce cyber-battle such famously passionate people in these intemperate, polarising, times in Europe, and I don’t mean just weather-wise.
La Molisana is one of Italy’s most devoured pre-prepared pasta manufacturers. I’ve not tasted any of it but the regard with which their products are held among the fussy Italian public’s finely-honed collective pasta palate tells me all I need to know about the stuff: it must be very good.
Always looking to innovate and re-create – as all good food manufacturers are – La Molisana introduced, in 2018, an addition to their range: a seashell-shaped pasta actually first created in the early 1930s. The little hemispheres are known together as ‘Abyssinian’ pasta, or ‘Abissene’ in a little cultural twist by which Italian food innovations are named (sometimes) after current events of the day. Just as Tripolene pasta (very twisty) was named for the fall of Tripoli in 1912, Abissene was named for the defeat of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) which fell under the thumb of Mussolini at about the same time the little crusts first took shape under the thumbs of some anonymous Italian cook. Oh, oh!
To explain the origin of the name, La Molisana includes a little flier in the packet, a typically florid little couple of paragraphs containing metaphorical flourishes to ‘colonial’ flavours and ‘lictorian’ tastes. Cheesy indeed, but innocent enough until some eighteen months after the product’s launch, just last week, in fact, when some sanctimony-suffering consumer, determined to be outraged by the product’s piffling puff-piece raised both hue and cry on social media. “This product celebrates fascism,” they said. Mussolini committed war-crimes in Addis Ababa they said. Heinous behaviours by all concerned were alleged, from Mussolini on down to Molsinara.
Don’t you realise, they shouted, the ‘lictor’ was the person who preceded the passage of the elected in the ancient Roman Senate, carrying the ‘fasces’ – that symbol of power consisting of a rolled bundle of sticks – the ‘fascists’ later took their name from?
It began but a week ago, but the screaming and public pour-on hasn’t stopped as the newly outraged among the historically-illiterate feigned shock and sore feelings. The papers piled in, politicians too – those forked-tongued masters of simultaneously talking tolerance while tribally cat-calling – demanding punishment, banishment, a purging of La Molisana from every supermarket shelf and every last kitchen.
The anti-fascist ANPI – National Association of Italian Partisans (like the RSA of the Italian resistance, famously Catholic and communist brothers-in-arms) – tried to appeal to reason: La Molisana has been a long-term contributor to causes red and pink – they are no fascists – the ANPI reasoned to Roman ears. Alas, their countrymen were not willing to lend them. Damn the politics, said the detractors; we must have our moment of outrage, our fifteen minutes of phlegm, the mob demanded as they tightened their fists and punched the keyboards of ol’ Italia in unrepentant revisionist rage.
A (very good) scribe by the name of Massimiliano Tonelli from foody-site Gambero Rosso, finally had enough and wrote an excellent piece (you’ll need Google Translate, but it’s worth it) as terse as it is in-depth on the controversy. He berated the badly-behaved social warriors and after which sage words appeared, in print and online, news of at least some measure of abuse abatement was heartily received.
Alas, it followed that within 48 hours of his initial call for cooler heads Tonelli added a post-script to his piece:
“Post scriptum: if the sadness that emerges from the article above not enough for you and you want another small dose before going to bed? Go to Nicola Bertasi’s Facebook page, do you remember? (the author of what we identified as the first post) the first speck of dust that triggered the landslide. Well you will find hundreds of people who – after reading this article – went to beat Bertasi with the same methods that this article condemns. Not arguing; not arguing, not confronting, but mocking, insulting, mocking and slandering. Bertasi had to disable comments.”
“Let’s wake up from this bad dream, before it’s too late.”
Amen.
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