by MICHAEL AZAR
Rome, 28th October, 1932. Benito Mussolini inaugurates the exhibition Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista as a part of the ten-year jubilee of the Fascist Party march on Rome. The absolute core of the exhibition, its most sacred room, is the so-called Sacrario dei Martiri (Sanctuary of the Martyrs). On a blood-red podium in the vaulted centre of the room stands a lone crucifix with the inscription Per la Patria Immortale (For the Immortal Fatherland), and along the walls the word Presente (Presence) is repeated thousands of times, like a mantra. The martyr is the one who cannot die, who always rises again. In the six-month period of the exhibition, four million people pass through this exhibition space, with its presentation of an intensified fascist revolutionary image of national history.
“They fell and gave their lives to all, and each one of them earned himself undimmed glory and the most illustrious of graves.” This is not Mussolini talking, but Pericles. In the year 431 BC the famous statesman held a speech honouring the Athenians who had sacrificed their lives for their country in the Peloponnesian War. In both cases what we see is a retroactive martyrisation: it really makes no difference what the dead might have felt about their actions, or even what those actions were. The memory of the dead is annexed for a particular purpose: the requirement of mimetic loyalty. It is the purpose of the living, says Pericles, to “emulate” those who fell. The martyrs, as clarified by the Mostra della Rivoluzione, are the role models of the continuing struggle. The fight against the enemy is not over, new sacrifices should be expected, the dead must not have died in vain, their final wishes must be turned into reality. A skilful politician emphasises the debt of the living to the dead: the martyrs sacrificed their lives for us, now it is our turn to pay them back.[1]
In an interview about his film The Passion of the Christ (2004),[2] the director Mel Gibson explains: “He [Jesus] died for humanity, suffered for us all. It is time to go back to this basic message.” The film illustrates in detail Jesus’ assumed suffering on the cross and the guilt of the survivors is hammered into the viewer: because Jesus died for the sake of our sins, we are all implicated in this murder.
The history of Christianity is marked by this ferocious ambivalence towards its founder: on the one hand Christendom has to throw up its hands at Jesus’ suffering, hating and somehow avenging those who caused it, on the other, admiring and yearning for the same sacrificial death. After all, it is precisely through this that God once again is reconciled with humanity, and eternal life made manifest to the believer. From the very bottom of their hearts, Christians must both love and hate the executioners who torture the Redeemer, at the same time desiring their Lord’s death while also wanting to tear him out of the grip of his tormentors.[3]
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