To preface the post: I don’t have anything against the song itself. It’s a beautiful and historically significant song about Italian antifascist partisans.
My point is that it’s been marketed by fucking Netflix show Money Heist, it’s been emptied and hollowed of all its meaning, and EVEN if it hadn’t, it’s again glorifying the role of western antifascists instead of those who won the fucking war: the Soviets.
It was NOT Italian Partisans who SAVED EUROPE from fascism. It was the Bolsheviks. I do not want a world where Bella Ciao isn’t sung, I want a world in which for every time we sing Bella Ciao, we sing 10 times Katyuscha, the Soviet Anthem, Svyaschyonnaya Voyna, or Krasnaya Armiya Vsyekh Sil’nyey. The Soviets were the only country that sold fucking weapons and sent trained soldiers, tank drivers and pilots to Republican Spain (the country where Money Heist was made), and yet we’re commercializing songs about the Italian partisans. FUCK ME SIDEWAYS.
It’s the musical version of capitalists exploiting and defanging revolutionary symbolism, similar to those Che Guevara T-shirts.
Feels exactly the same as that Pepsi ad where the protesters and cops share a cold glass of Pepsi
Or that GE “coal mining is cool” ad with sixteen tons
it’s been emptied and hollowed of all its meaning
yeah 100% it sucks. although in a lot of countries (including Italy, right now) the meaning is still well-understood and it was sung plenty last Friday at the general strike in Italy for Palestine.
it’s again glorifying the role of western antifascists instead of those who won the fucking war
what the hell are you talking about, way to shit all over the Italians communists and allied fighters who deposed and hung Mussolini. We should celebrate the Red Army alongside the partisans and not draw a distinction between their struggle against fascism. You know the Red Army Choir sung Bella Ciao too, in solidarity with their Italian comrades?
I think celebrating Italian antifascists is cool and good, and a lot of them were communists, too. I don’t see why it needs to be a competition even if I do wish the Red Army got more credit than it does.
Yea I would just take the W and use it as a means to encourage people to look into some of those other songs and histories. Basically that xkcd comic about being happy to teach someone something new, even if you think they should already know by now.
Chumbawumba covered it in the 90s, so i think you’re a little late to the party, it is annoying seeing younger people enjoy anything though lol
not as bad as dudebros singing the soviet anthem, i wish anyone would learn the international
The international makes me cringe every time though, I don’t expect people to enjoy singing something that starts by calling them “famished pariahs” lmao
There are versions with updated, easier text.
One may dye their hair green and wear their grandma’s coat all they want. Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead.
Also don’t pay attention to the ludicrous amounts of time, money and violence that I put into making sure those critiques only stay as critiques.
It’s an excuse for me to blast the red army choir’s without too many people looking at me weird after starting out with “the historical version of Bella ciao”
Hell it’s a great opportunity to educate about its anti-fascist communist history
red army chair’s
Under gommunism, everyone will share one chair.
Gommunism is when musical chair, but losers get shot.
Oh that’s a good idea for the 21st century version of the “SS guy being forced to piano watching berlin get liberated by the red army”
Boo
Also in much of Europe, at least the part where I’m from, the song hasn’t lost its meaning, people do still know it’s an anti-fascist song. Not everybody is uneducated about history as the yanks are (although we’re getting there, the education system is going to shit)
You’re being culturally colonized by America, do not resist your burgerification.
I just watched a video today about how the majority of the Holocaust didn’t happen in Germany, but in central and eastern Europe. Was glad to hear some actual informed takes from social media… then he says “…and in the Soviet Union.” I did like a triple take because the guy seemed knowledgeable in the first half. Turns out he was referring to people killed by the Germans in territory lost by the Soviet forces. Extremely sloppy language and I just know it was intentional to imply that the Soviets were involved in carrying out the Holocaust rather than the opposite, saving people from it. Really disappointing the state of social media.
dumb take
partisans were very important in the struggle against fascism
I addressed this in my post, both in the preface and in saying I want people to sing it. I just want people to sing more other stuff that is historically more relevant and completely ignored or, worse, vilified
Also, according to an older Italian man I met, most Italian partisans preferred Fischia il vento
Modena City Ramblers have covered both, actually.
Bonus, there’s also Bandiera Rossa, which got a bunch of people clapping for a communist anthem during COVID
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
and yet we’re commercializing songs about the Italian partisans.
You’re commercializing songs about the Italian partisans. I’m doing agitprop.
Resources for Radicalizing Money Heist Fans: Anarquismo Expropiador
You’re more patient than I am and I commend you for it
What we need to do is make a big budget Hollywood movie about Italian antifascists that starts at the end of the war and shows how they were systematically crushed by America to prevent them from sweeping into power with the restoration of Italian elections.
Someone call James Cameron. We can make the Italian antifascists blue if that’s what he wants.
I disagree that we need to make a big budget hollywood movie about that. I think we need to make ten, in order to make up for the years and years of propaganda. Thanks for the idea, that’s pretty cool.
Naturally, I’m pretty sure I first heard “Bella Ciao” because it was covered by Astemir Apanasov from Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria, Russia, and I thought when I heard Apanasov’s cover, “Oh, this is a very cool, energetic and catchy Circassian folk dance thing! But I wonder why the song’s partially in Italian, and why these guys are wearing Salvador Dalí masks?” — “…Oh, so this was originally an Italian antifascist song, and this Circassian cover was made as a result of a globally popular TV show from Spain using it? Huh. Wack.”
So yeah, it would appear that even in the former Soviet Union that “Bella Ciao” has come to be more associated with Money Heist than Italian antifascism. C’est la vie !
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
:old man yells at cloud:
Wait is Italy not part of the west?
Italian liberation from fascism can’t be decoupled from the Soviet war effort. Obviously singing Bella Ciao in Italy is different from singing it anywhere else in the world though.
I love how many different versions of it are out there with wildly different lyrics… but yeah, on the point that Soviet songs are way better, sorry Western antifascists, I gotta agree with you. Though that’s probably my personal biases at play, I love Soviet war songs (and the pre/during revolution era Bolshevik stuff’s good in a very “shows its age” way).
Byelaya armiya, chyornyi Baron (the White Army and the Black Baron)
snova gotovyat nam tsarskii tron! (are preparing for us again the throne of the Tzar)
I think it frames very well what was at stake during the Russian Revolution: a fucking return to monarchic absolutism!
Oh yeah, the messaging of pretty much all of them is great, I just mean some of the traditional melodies don’t really sound quite like we expect from “commie war songs” today, or like later Soviet revolutionary songs.
