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Title: Italy: We Partisans Author: CrimethInc. Date: May 10, 2018 Language: en Topics: Italy, anti-fascism, analysis, fascism Source: Retrieved on 16th June 2021 from https://crimethinc.com/2018/05/10/italy-we-partisans-resisting-the-wave-of-fascism-spring-2018#fnref:1
In February and March, during the run-up to the elections, Italy
experienced a period of intense conflict between fascists and
anti-fascists analogous to the period in the United States that
culminated with the struggle in Charlottesville in August 2017. In hopes
of learning from how these conflicts are playing out in different parts
of the world, we reached out to our comrades in Italy to learn about the
history of fascism on the Italian peninsula, the current state of the
autonomous movements resisting it, and the possibilities and obstacles
ahead.
---
Across the world, reactionary movements have emerged promoting
nationalist and racialist values. The global rebellions of 2011–2014
produced formidable enemies, as many hastened to defend the inequalities
and indignities that autonomous struggles were fighting to abolish.
Even today, at the nadir of the reaction, these struggles have only
continued to gain momentum. Last year, anti-fascist struggles exploded
across the United States in the wake of Trump’s electoral victory. A
protracted struggle against misogynists, the alt-right, and full-fledged
neo-Nazis brought tens of thousands of people into the street to support
confrontational tactics and anti-authoritarian values.
The same process of polarization and escalation is playing out in Italy.
On February 3, 2018, 28-year-old Luca Traini shot six African immigrants
in the small town of Macerata. Traini is an ideological fascist and
one-time politician associated with the Lega Nord, Forza Nuova, and
CasaPound. In the wake of the shooting, few organized unions and
political parties rose to condemn the murders. With elections fast
approaching, it was unclear how the public perceived even the most vile
attacks. No one from any party was prepared to condemn the killings in a
way that might jeopardize their electoral strategies.
On February 9, thousands of autonomous protesters and working class
Romans marched in the Tor Pignattara district, denouncing the fascists.
Two days later, a huge crowd marched in the small village of Macerata,
and hundreds of protesters clashed with riot police in the small
northern village of Piacenza, where fascist group CasaPound hoped to
host a celebration at their local social center on the one-year
anniversary of its opening. The images from Macerata and Piacenza spread
virally on the Internet, and footage of a carabiniere being beaten with
his own shield played on television screens in train stations and coffee
bars across the peninsula. Clashes between anti-fascist protesters and
police and the extreme right broke out in other parts of Italy,
including Pavia, Trento, Bologna, Napoli, Torino, and Rovereto.
The right-wing party Lega Nord won a plurality in the elections of March
4, 2018 and Steve Bannon was there to bear witness. Ideological fascists
and authoritarians of several stripes are concealing themselves behind
the farcical populism of Lega Nord, which officially promotes an
“Italians first” policy. Like fascists in the US, these movements hope
to gain ground in the wake of the elections.
When the stakes are this high, only those with nothing to gain from
compromising with fascists can be trusted to resist the tyrannical brand
of capitalism that is sweeping across the globe under the banners of
nationalism and supposed “anti-globalism.” Here, we take a closer look
at anti-fascism in Italy in order to gain perspective on our situation
in the US. North American fascists draw inspiration from European
fascist groups such as CasaPound, Generation Identity, the Golden Dawn,
and the Nordic Resistance Movement, not to mention PEGIDA and the
“Brexit” campaign. We would do well to continue studying our comrades’
efforts against them, to better understand our own options here.
1945 – At the end of World War II, Italy is officially re-organized as a
democracy by Allied forces. The Communist and Catholic parties (PCI and
DC) are integrated into the government because both participated, in
their own ways, in the Italian Liberation War in which partisans fought
to depose fascists and drive out the German Nazi occupying armies. The
parties of the institutional left promote a moderate reading of the
Resistenza and the anti-fascist movement. For them, the end of the War
represented a moment of national unity, not a insurrectional or
revolutionary movement.
Between Italian fascism and democracy, there is a strict continuitĂ
dello stato (“continuity of the state”): every effort was made to
prevent a purge of state structures within the judiciary, law
enforcement agencies, and the army. An ad hoc commission was convened to
ensure that Italian war criminals retained impunity for their
imperialist activities in the Balkans and Africa. This process was
called the “amnistia Togliatti.” While it emptied prisons and closed
trials for the heirs of Salò, fascist-era magistrates initiated the
judicial persecution of thousands of anti-fascist partisans, chiefly
communists and anarchists, who had illegally combatted fascism for a
quarter of a century.
Continuity of the state enabled figures of the fascist regime to assume
key roles in the nascent republican state in the name of anti-Communism,
with the blessing of the US government. Italy has not exorcised the
specters that linger from its fascist and colonial past. The average
Italian citizen does not know that Italy used gas on the African
population; he thinks that the racial laws of the Third Reich were
horrible but that Mussolini, by comparison, was not so bad. Thanks to
this continuity, even today, laws such as the Rocco Code remain in force
from the fascist regime.
In every significant outburst of revolt since the transition to
democracy, combative protesters, such as those who mobilized in 2001
against the G8 summit in Genova, have been charged with Fascist-era
crimes such as devestazione e sacchegio (“devastation and sacking”).
December 26, 1946 – The Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) is founded by
former exponents of the fascist regime. The party is inspired by the
Repubblica Sociale Italiana. In 1948, the MSI participated in national
political elections.
1947 – The Communist Party is expelled from the government.
July 1960 – Fernando Tambroni of the Christian Democratic Party seeks to
form a government with the participation of the MSI. This is the first
example of Left parties being openly complicit with the far right after
the war. Clashes between proletarians, police, and fascists erupt all
over Italy, especially in Genova and Rome. For the first time after the
war, the clashes were not controlled by left unions or parties.
April 27, 1966 –Paolo Rossi, a university student, is murdered by a
fascist in the first widely known politically motivated post-War
homicide of an anti-fascist.
December 12, 1969 – A bomb explodes in a bank in the Piazza Fontana,
killing many people and injuring dozens more in the northern industrial
city of Milano. Police arrest several anarchists—one of whom, Giuseppe
Pinelli, dies after “falling” from the window of the police station
during his interrogation by police Superintendent Luigi Calabresi.[1]
Years later, it came out that fascists were responsible for the bombing,
quite possibly with the collusion of state actors. Following the
massacre, a massive and radical anti-fascist movement spread throughout
Italy.
1969–1979: – Alongside the essentially national-revolutionary
organizations that hope to subvert the democratic order of the
republican state by armed struggle (such as the Nuclei Armati
Rivoluzionari, NAR), other groups take shape (including Ordine Nuovo,
Avanguardia Nazionale, and Ordine Nero) that wish to pursue similar
objectives through a strategic compromise with the right-wing and dark
sides of the state, including elements belonging to the secret services
and the secretive P2 organization. The right wing, both inside the state
and in extreme right groups and criminal syndicates, implements a
program now known as the strategy of tension, carrying out a series of
terrorist acts to create an atmosphere of tension and widespread fear in
the population. The goal is to justify a return to authoritarian state
control and send warnings to left-leaning and Communist elements.
In the 1970s, a new account of the Resistenza as a betrayed revolution
spread in extra-parliamentary groups. Historians drew the conclusion
that the resistance had been betrayed by the leaders of the Communist
party who chose not to continue the insurrection of April 25, 1945 (when
Mussolini was captured and later executed in the streets by partisans),
but preferred to form a government with the conservative forces. They
understood the final years of Fascism as a civil war.
Anti-fascism increasingly shows two souls: “institutional antifascism”
and so-called “militant anti-fascism.”
February 1977 – Clashes take place at the University of Bologna between
the fascists of the FUAN group and anti-fascist students of the
autonomous collectives. The Communist Party elaborates the theory of
opposing extremisms and the violence of anti-fascist extra-parliamentary
groups as “squadrism.” A deep rift divides left parties and autonomous
groups.
The theory of opposing extremisms has become a normal reflex in Italian
politics. It is based in a political theory that aims to group the
centrist forces in order to isolate and marginalize right and left
“extremism,” which are considered equal but opposite, two sides of the
same coin. The goal is to depoliticize the ongoing conflict, framing it
as a problem of public order. This framing is still employed today.
Media and politicians, whether right or left, always interpret murders
carried out by fascists or clashes between fascists and anti-fascists as
gang violence between opposing “squads” with no political motivation or
weight.
1989 – Lega Nord is founded by Umberto Bossi. At the beginning, the
party openly declares itself to be regionalist and ethno-nationalist,
defending the interests of northern Italy against the rest of the
peninsula. Despite declarations of hatred towards Rome, the national
state, and the regions of southern Italy, Lega Nord participates in the
Berlusconi governments of the 1990s. The Lega combines a fanatical
right-wing populism with liberal economic and anti-federalist policies,
as well as racism against immigrants and fervent defense of “traditional
families.”
1992 – Fini, secretary of the MSI, is a candidate for mayor of Rome
supported by the businessman Berlusconi.
January 27, 1995 – The MSI is dissolved and Alleanza Nazionale is born:
a more European conservative party lacking the typical Italian extremism
and fascist dog whistles. The disappointed leave the party and form new
neo-fascist parties. This is the end of unity in the neo-fascist galaxy.
1997 – Forza Nuova is born thanks to two prominent figures of the
radical Roman right, Roberto Fiore and Massimo Morsello, who are close
to the 1970s groups Third Position and the NAR, respectively.
Shortly after the Bologna massacre in 1980, Fiore and Morsello were
accused of subversive association and took refuge in London to escape
arrest. As soon as the waters calmed, the two neo-fascists immediately
returned to Italy and put the party into action, founding it on
September 29, the day of the cult of St. Michael the Archangel,
protector of the Romanian para-fascist movement, the “Guardia di Ferro.”
The ideology of this movement is a mix of neo-fascism, nationalism,
xenophobia, homophobia, and Catholic traditionalism. Forza Nuova draws
its ranks from the young, fishing in the sea of skinheads and football
hooligans. Its platform is based on some principles of Catholicism
(anti-abortion), social policies to preserve traditional family
structures, and opposition to immigration. It is the smallest party of
the far right and the only one that has professed open support for the
shooting in Macerata.
December 27, 2003 – CasaPound is founded. Some young fascists decided to
occupy a large building at 8 Via Napoleone III in the Esquilino
neighborhood in Rome: the CasaPound. Leading the occupants was Gianluca
Iannone, leader of an alternative rock band with right-wing lyrics. The
name of the social center is in honor of Ezra Pound, the reactionary
poet who became an idol of young neo-fascists in Italy.
The political style of CasaPound is characterized by “young and new”
communication and the use of social networks. They call themselves
“fascists of the third millennium.”
2013 – The “CasaPound Italia” party is born, nominating Simone di
Stefano as their premier. The electoral talking-points include the right
to housing for Italians (the party logo is a turtle), opposition to
immigration and EU policies, and monetary sovereignty from the Euro.
2014 – The new Secretary of Lega Nord, Matteo Salvini, moves the Lega to
the right, collaborating with Fratelli d’Italia and CasaPound as well as
the French far-right group Front Nationale (FN). Later, he abandons the
alliance with CasaPound in favor of center-right parties.
2017 – Salvini explicitly defines the current line of the Lega Nord
secretariat as federalist and nationalist, without the independentist
and secessionist program, replacing the slogan “first the North,” with
“first the Italians.” The discourse of the Lega electoral campaign, like
that of the entire right wing, is based around the supposed invasion of
Italy by foreigners, the poverty of Italians compared to the supposed
“privileges” of immigrants, and the so-called “clash of civilizations”
between Italy and political Islam.
Today – CasaPound boasts six thousand members, one hundred offices, a
trade union (BLU), a youth organization (Blocco studentesco), a network
of associations (sport, environment, solidarity), a web radio (Radio
Bandiera Nera), and multiple magazines. CasaPound is the most
influential neo-fascist party in Italy and has a “European
commissioner,” Sebastian Manificat, who owns the bar “Carrè Monti” in
Rome, and has close ties with the ultranationalists of Greece, Poland,
Germany, Russia, and Ukraine (CasaPound is connected to the Azov
Battalion deployed in the Ukrainian civil war of 2014). In the
administrative elections of June 11, the Turtles made the ballot in 13
municipalities with over 15 thousand inhabitants by placing councilors
in centers such as Lucca and Todi (winning their organization 7.84% and
4.81%, respectively, and becoming the third most powerful political
party in Lucca). Presenting themselves as a new and incorruptible
political force, they managed to win 1.5% in the national elections.
In recent years, CasaPound has tried to take root in the neighborhoods
by organizing committees that conceal their fascist agenda. They make
anti-eviction pickets, distribute food to the Italian poor, and organize
patrols against violence against (Italian) women.
Historically, Italy has been a country of emigration. Significant
immigration began only thirty years ago. There are few second- and
third-generation immigrants, because Italy never possessed vast colonial
holdings like France or England. Consequently, most foreigners recognize
themselves in the values and traditions of their communities of origin.
Many speak Italian badly, relying predominantly on the church,
television, or autonomous initiatives for classes.
Furthermore, as a country of arrival, it has a special role in the EU
reception system: the Dublin Convention, launched by the EU in 1997,
stipulates that the Member State responsible for examining the asylum
application will be the state where the asylum seeker entered the
European Union. This means that many foreigners who are headed to
different European countries are forced by law to stay in Italy pending
the bureaucratic process evaluating their request for accommodation. The
evaluation can last two or even three years. In 2002, the government
criminalized illegal immigration and identification and created
expulsion centers in which to lock up undocumented persons. Some of the
immigrants locked up in the centers are then deported to their countries
of origin.
The crisis around migration intensified in 2015. Crackdowns following
the Arab Spring, the war in Afghanistan, and the civil wars in Libya and
Syria have caused a mass flight to Europe. Right-wing Italians describe
this as an invasion. This racist discourse is completely legitimized in
Italy, while the legacy of the fascist and colonial past is concealed.
Racism is not identified with fascism: you can say you hate black people
and vote left. The fear of foreigners has found fertile ground
especially with the economic crisis that has impoverished the middle
class since 2009.
Today, the immigration issue monopolizes political discourse. A member
of the Lega said: “We must make choices: decide whether our ethnicity,
our white race, our society must continue to exist or our society must
be canceled: it is a choice.”
January 12 – Young anti-fascist stabbed while hanging posters.
January 20 – Anti-fascist demonstration in Genoa attended by several
thousand.
February 3 – Luca Traini, a member of Lega Nord, shoots blindly at a
group of African immigrants in Macerata, wounding 6. Luca Traini wanted
to go to court to kill Innocent Oseghale, a Nigerian alleged to have
murdered a girl named Pamela Mastropietro, but decided to shoot every
black person he encountered along the way. This is what Traini himself
reported in the spontaneous declarations he made to the carabinieri
after the arrest.
February 4 – Pavia: 25 fascists attack a group of 5 boys, some Italian
and some immigrants.
February 5 – Piacenza: Clashes at an anti-fascist parade against
CasaPound. Videos spread virally across the peninsula of a carabiniere
being beaten with his shield.
February 9 – Rome: Anti-fascist demonstration in Torpignattara in
solidarity with victims in Macerata. Several thousand attend.
February 9 – Trento: Anti-fascist demo against CasaPound.
February 10 – Macerata: Anti-fascist autonomous demonstration draws
25,000.
February 11 – Rovereto: Anti-fascist gathering against a speech by
Salvini.
February 16 – Bologna: Clashes as anti-fascists gather to block the
rally of Roberto Fiore (FN). Police use water cannons and tear gas.
February 17 – Livorno: Insults screamed at Meloni (Fratelli d’Italia);
her car was surrounded and kicked as she left.
February 18 – Naples: Clashes and arrests as anti-fascists disrupt
CasaPound rally.
February 21 – Palermo: A local leader of Forza Nuova is found bound with
adhesive tape in front of his office. Two anti-fascists are arrested for
attempted murder, then released. Solidarity demonstrations openly defend
the actions of the accused. Their charges are reduced to simple battery.
February 21 – Perugia: Fascists stab an activist of Potere al Popolo (a
new left party).
February 22 – Torino: Police charge an anti-fascist demonstration that
is disrupting a CasaPound demonstration.
February 23 – Brescia: The library of the social center Magazzino 47 is
set on fire by fascists.
February 23 – Pisa: Police charges and clashes at a protest against
Salvini.
March 1 – Conclusion of the election campaign. In Rome, anti-fascists
demonstrate in Argentina square.
March 3 – Pavia: Anti-fascist houses are “marked” with a sticker reading
“Here lives an anti-fascist.”
March 4 – The Lega receives a lot of votes in the elections: 17.37% in
the Chamber of Deputies (5,691,921 votes) and 17.32% in the Senate
(5,317,803).
March 6 – Florence: An Italian man shoots and kills a man from Senegal.
March 7 – Trento: The office of CasaPound is bombed by anti-fascists.
The crowd is moving together, but slowly. Up front, locals are urging
the crowd to come to the front to join the cordoni.
In the cordoni, perhaps three or four rows of comrades about 20 abreast,
arms are linked to prevent police or fascist attacks. Most of this crowd
is masked. Behind them, perhaps ten feet of empty space. And then the
banners with many more people in masks and the larger crowd behind this
entire arrangement. The empty space between the cordoni and the banners
ensures that the crowd does not stampede in the event of clashes,
because those up front have a place to fall back without crashing into
others.
The chanting is concussive and precise. I am surrounded by hundreds of
people chanting “champagne Molotov, champagne Molotov…” at the police.
When the first cluster of carabinieri block the crowd, the cordoni push
into them without hesitation. Stones and bottles are thrown from behind,
while young people with sticks exchange blows with the police. The whole
crowd is chanting and clapping. Fireworks explode at the feet of the
carabinieri. To the side, digos[2] are filming everything. When the
fighting subsides, few have left the zone. A tense standoff ensues as
organizers from Piacenza argue with the commanding officers. They
finally reach an agreement that the entire crowd will be permitted to
pass.
Now we are winding through the cobblestone streets of this town, passing
local shops filled with confused or worried patrons. Piacenza is one of
the places in the north that did not experience widespread resistance to
fascism at the beginning of the 20^(th) century. Perhaps that explains
why it has welcomed authoritarians like CasaPound intent on opening
fascist social centers. It is not long before we reach another impasse
with the police.
On a small road near the center of the village, large police trucks are
surrounded by carabinieri and municipal police. Our crowd is absolutely
unmoved by their threats and intimidation. They begin clubbing the
cordoni, who respond in kind with sticks and PVC pipes. A gust of
stones, bricks, and glass bottles fly from behind the banners, striking
officers and police vehicles. Suddenly, a cop falls to the ground.
Together, union workers and black bloc anarchists snatch his shield and
club from him. He is kicked and beaten with the weapons he was just
using against us. His armor preserves him from injury, unlike our
hoodies and helmets, but over the following 48 hours he will become a
disgrace and laughingstock along the entire peninsula. In the cafés and
train stations from Torino to Lecce, the videos from Piacenza will play
on permanent loop.
Later, 20,000 people march in the small streets of Macerata, as several
thousand had days before in Rome and a week earlier in Genova. Something
decisive is developing.
Rome is a difficult city. It’s the only real metropolis in Italy. Its
area, about 496 square miles, represents a huge territory which can be
divided into the North side (more bourgeois) and South side (more poor),
setting aside some exceptions. It is almost impossible for an
anti-fascist movement to cover all the areas and zones, so there has
always been a struggle between different quartieri (districts).
Historically, some of them belong to fascists, while others are clearly
antifa zones. Fascist propaganda and aesthetics are usually based on the
myth of the Roman empire; Rome has always been a strong electoral base
for the far right.
Growing up in a city like this, as a young comrade or antifa, you always
have to face fascists in front of your school and in public spaces.
There have been several stabbings and one comrade murdered: Renato
Biagetti, in 2006, requiescat in pace.
In a way, the movement is responsible for not responding more
effectively from the beginning in 2003 when CasaPound opened their first
squat, their headquarters near the central train station.
We notice that every time our movement grows—for example, during the
student protests of 2008, the student riots of December 2010, or the big
riot of October 2011—the fascists are always pushed back for a while and
silenced. When our movement is at a low ebb, the fascists gain momentum.
As a small group (20 people), we decided to set our sights on a defined
territory, our neighborhood: Marranella/Torpignattara. Here, among a
mixture of immigrants (Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Chinese, Latinos) and
local proletarians (and sub-proletarians), we feel that we can build
solidarity. We have participated in building networks of mutual aid,
anti-eviction struggles, and a free food program coordinated with a
Bangladeshi association and other political groups of citizens. We
believe that this is the best way to push back the fascists, preventing
their political action whenever they show up in public, even when that
means facing repression In our zone, CasaPound was beaten strongly when
they attempted to set up a propaganda booth.
Build the urban commune, that’s our aim: make space for solidarity,
which is the only force that could ease the pressure of surviving under
capitalism. Forget all the ideology, but spreading ideas through the
population as a part of it, we try our best to dissolve our “militant
identity,” our identity as militants, and confront the real problems of
the barrio from a horizontal perspective. Anti-fascist struggles and
anti-racist positions should avoid any moralistic point of view, any
attitude of judging from above. When we organized the February 9
demonstration in response of Macerata’s shooting, we felt this
responsibility to call a day of struggle in solidarity with the victims
as a part of our class, the exploited, while directing the blame towards
political parties and institutions (both left and right).
To be ready when the time is ripe for action, we have to maintain a
daily struggle against resignation. “Nunc est delendum” is a Latin motto
that could be translated “Now it’s time to destroy”—we too are heirs of
the roman tradition, but the tradition of the oppressed, of rebel slaves
like Spartacus and the Plebs who always shook Rome with the threat of
riots. We have to destroy all the relations of power between us and
attack the world that surrounds us, starting from our barrio poisoned by
the capitalistic way of life. Alongside this motto that forms the name
of our group, there is the sentence Punto Solidale Marranella, point of
solidarity, because in a world of empty words, the most revolutionary
act is to go straight to the point. The crowd that supports the fascist
scum is having a hard time in Marranella’s barrio.
Following the events in Macerata, Rome, and Piacenza, a whirlwind of
news articles began circulating about the new wave of militant
anti-fascism. Demonstrations were organized across the peninsula. The
clashes in Piacenza and mass militancy in Macerata demonstrated that the
movement could even take root in small villages and towns, as the
Resistenza had one hundred years ago.
Protestors began to shut down Salvini campaign events in places like
Rovereto and Livorno, just as anti-Trump protestors had done in Costa
Mesa and Chicago. Then, on February 16, clashes between anti-fascists
and carabinieri in Bologna put the movement in international headlines,
with police resorting to tear gas and water cannons in the historic
university center as they had done 40 years earlier.
In Italy, the palette for political violence is thoroughly developed on
the left and the right. In contrast to the US, violence alone is not
usually enough to discredit a movement, although it might damage its
reputation among moderates. The fact that Italian society is polarized
in this way means that neither anarchists nor fascists are forced to
appeal to the center to have mass support and influence.
Following the events in Piacenza, Bologna, and elsewhere, the intensity
of the conflict picked up. Fascists had beaten young anti-fascists in
Genoa a month earlier, but now they were stabbing activists and torching
social centers. In the chaotic southern city of Naples, hooligans and
antifascists clashing with police were viciously beaten, methodically
rounded up, and humiliated on live broadcast by being forced to their
knees in a plaza and arrested one by one.
In response, a fascist leader from Forza Nuova, the only organization to
defend and applaud the shooting in Macerata, was kidnapped outside of
his office in Palermo. He was bound with duct tape and beaten with
sticks before being left in a ditch at the side of the road. 1000 people
marched to defend the actions of the two anti-fascists accused of the
attack. The two young comrades’ charges were dropped to simple battery,
a misdemeanor unlikely to carry a prison sentence. Clashes continued to
break out in Pisa, in Torino, across the country.
When the election frenzy concluded, Lega Nord, the right party, came
away with a strong minority. CasaPound Italia won 1.5%. The protests and
actions cycled down. For now, the streets have returned to an uneasy
calm.
We meet up at our social center to organize the last minute
preparations. In a couple of hours, we will go down the streets to shout
out loud that we will not stand for the fascists’ presence in our
neighborhoods. After Macerata, a demonstration is the least we could do.
We are a bit worried and the tension is palpable. We are sure that the
comrades from the entire city will be there, but how will the
neighborhood respond? In the lead-up, we have received positive
reactions to our posters and fliers, but we are still apprehensive.
Now we are in the square. Comrades and friends arrive first and start to
help us with the practical organization of the march. Around 7 pm, the
square is full. Just a few minutes and the demonstration begins.
The speeches began to follow from the sound system positioned on the car
that opens the demo. The microphone is open and everyone can talk. We
will not be playing music this time. From the sidewalks, windows, and
balconies, we hear shouts of support; we respond with applause and
invitations to join the march. Many migrants, children, and families
from the neighborhood are at the front. Further back, young and old
follow. We are amazed. There are so many people who want to join us in
shouting no to fascism with their hearts in the silence of the city.
Today we take back our roads. This is what is shouted into the
microphone, among other things. We say no to fascism with our daily
choices, with the solidarity we express in our actions, with the way of
living that we have chosen. And apparently we are not the only ones who
feel this way.
The procession winds through the streets that we cross every day,
filling them with life, which is always the irreducible enemy of every
form of abuse. The procession proclaims a non-fascist form of life that
expresses itself daily in dozens of initiatives that create bonds and
solidarity in the neighborhood.
It is 9 pm and the procession is about to end. The police deployment is
impressive, but today there will be no confrontations. We have a
different goal. This is not the moment to repay the enemy with the
violence that has been inflicted on every one of us. Today, it’s time to
scare him. To show him that we are many. The faces of everyone, comrades
and others, remain sad for the memory of what has happened but also
serene because today we have experienced that in this neighborhood,
there is a solidarity that could turn into a very powerful weapon.
Macerata represents a point of no return. It changes the narrative of
what is going on in Italy.
We were raised in a country in which fascism and racism have gained more
legitimacy that they had in the last half century. Anti-fascism was a
kind of minimum common denominator of all the politcal forces in all the
years following the Second World War. During the so-called anni di
piombo,[3] we were always on the edge of a fascist coup (as well as at
the beginning of a communist insurrection) and any political force had
to prove their formal adhesion to democratic principles—with the
exception of the fascists, of course.
Over the past 20 years, this has changed. Xenophobia, increased desire
for security, the reduction of everything to an economic function—all of
these have created a sitution in which fascism is a more acceptable
possibility than it has been in living memory. For this reason, we have
to understand this moment as a critical point. For sure, the neo-fascist
groups have gained power and legitimacy. They work in the neighborhoods,
give free food to the poorest Italians, fight evictions, form local
patrols against “criminality,” and so on. But on a broader level, the
general discourse surrounding the so-called “migrant crisis” is creating
a culture of explicit racism, security solutions, and the desire for a
strong national-ethnic identity and politics among both the left and the
right.
The left parties especially seem to be experiencing the strongest crisis
now in terms of identity and legitimacy. This phenomenon isn’t just
Italian; it seems global. The poorest and the working class have
abandoned these parties in mass to support the most radical right-wing
parties. From one side, the left has led the neoliberal process that has
abolished the rights of workers, social protections, and the welfare
state; on the other hand, they have adopted the policing agenda of the
far right in order to gain political favor. Matteo Renzi, the former
leader of Partito Democratico, confirmed this when he supported the
campaign to block incoming refugees from Libya, saying “we need to help
them in their home,” a kind of neo-colonialist motto very popular in the
right movements.
The end of the left is both an opportunity and a problem. Right now,
those who are open to anti-racist and anti-fascist slogans are for the
most part middle-class students and liberals. “Institutional”
anti-fascism condemns both racist attacks and antifa struggles in the
neighborhoods; this perspective defines all violence as a problem, even
when it takes place in defense against the vilest attacks. Meanwhile,
millions of workers are supporting reactionary solutions. During the
electoral campaign, the leading candidate of the right coalition for
regional presidency in Lombardia even claimed that “the white race is in
danger of being destroyed by blacks.” He is considered a moderate.
Autonomous groups and movements, both anarchist and communist, have
always been anti-fascist. They have overcome political differences when
the need has been urgent to make a strong response to fascist attacks.
After Macerata, it is likely that many people will join our movements in
order to fight fascism. For the moment, though, it is difficult to say
whether there will be a new anti-fascist movement on a larger scale or
if this will remain a short sequence of events in reaction to the
shooting. But it is clear that a decisive polarization is taking place
between those who openly advocate for fascism and everyone else.
---
In every city, the walls of the zone popolari are decorated with
graffiti. Amid the colorful fills and hand styles of the graffiti crews,
you can still see the slogans from the past. “Tutto il potere della
classe operaia!”—signed Lotta Continua, 1976. The legacy of the
revolutionary struggles is present everywhere. Autonomists, anarchists,
anti-fascists, and even some communist organizations squat with all of
the other workers in the peripheries of the cities; they open mechanic
shops, they develop anti-eviction networks, they maintain self-organized
“popular gyms.” There are neighborhoods in Rome, Milan, and Naples in
which tens of thousands of people are squatting their apartments. In
many neighborhoods and areas, the poor join the comrades on the basis of
shared needs, and also because their parents or their grandparents were
communists once. And this is also why CasaPound feeds the hungry
Italians, adorns the walls of the universities with their well-designed
posters, and organizes music nights and movie screenings. The decisive
factors in recruitment go far beyond simple discourse and propaganda.
Nobody knows what to do next, but comrades are organizing in every area
of the country.
In the United States, a large-scale militant resistance to Donald
Trump’s presidential campaign and electoral victory was followed by a
widely-supported movement to oppose his most dedicated followers on the
far right. After a year of organizing, clashes, and doxxing, the
alt-right is now in shambles, consolidating itself into a few
organizations and a smattering of spree shootings and terrorist attacks.
These forces will continue to be a problem for many years, as they have
carried out a large-scale and protracted intervention in rural white
enclaves for decades uncontested, but it may be the case that their
current moment in the spotlight as a massive street-ready movement has
reached its end.
Similarly, after success in the Greek elections of 2012, Golden Dawn
members and ranking officers overextended themselves by murdering
anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas. This killing simultaneously initiated
a wave of anarchist-initiated riots and attacks and bogged down their
party in a criminal investigation. For the Greeks, this was their
“Charlottesville moment.”
In Brazil, the right-wing reaction succeeded in overthrowing the
left-wing Workers Party, but the resulting conflicts have brought
millions into the streets. The tyrannical regime of Turkish PM Tayyip
Erdogan has already helped to spark two insurrections in five years, in
both Istanbul and then in Kurdistan. More and more, the far right is
coming to be associated with the rich and powerful, just as the left has
become associated with corruption, neoliberalism, and the failures of
social democracy.
As ecological catastrophes increase in frequency and the maneuvers of
the wealthy plunge billions deeper into poverty and alienation, new
revolts are bound to break out. These revolts will adopt the means and
discourses available to them. Millions of people do not often flood the
streets in the service of abstract ideals, but they will gladly
appropriate discourses as a tool for understanding their suffering and
the struggles they find themselves in. Anti-authoritarians need to
participate in the movements to come to connect with the increasingly
diverse constellations of actors in these movements, to learn from them
and to offer our unique methods and convictions in the context of the
movements: not just so that others can employ them, but so that we can
test them together. As the world continues to fracture, more and more
people will be compelled to join the fray. We should be right there with
them, offering different solutions, rather than criticizing them from
afar or abstaining from involvement because these movements have not yet
discovered our brand of politics.
To give a single example—if in United States, the statist left is able
to resuscitate itself in the movement against school shootings, the
countervailing forces in the far right will be perfectly positioned to
overcome their temporary disorganization by addressing everyone who sees
the contradiction in appealing to the arms of the state to defend us
against gun violence. We have to be present in these movements, offering
a point of departure for a more thoroughgoing critique and more radical
solutions.
The interventions of the coming period will have to accomplish many
things. Above all, they must reveal the complicity of the far right with
the powerful architects of the present order, on the one hand, and on
the other, the fundamental failure of the left to address the complex
problems of the world rather than reducing them to mere recruitment
opportunities. If we are unable to accomplish those tasks, we may find
ourselves in the same situation that anarchists and militant
anti-fascists face in many former Soviet bloc countries, where the
aftermath of the USSR has created a tremendous momentum towards fascist
solutions while the institutional forces of the right and left mutually
collude to block the emergence of alternative methods of
self-organization and autonomy.
[1] The police murder of Pinelli is explored in Dario Fo’s classic play,
Accidental Death of an Anarchist. The judicial apparatus of the Italian
state repeatedly found that no one was responsible for Pinelli’s murder.
Happily, Luigi Calabresi was shot and killed on his way to work on May
17, 1972, as Alfredo Bonanno discusses in his text, “I know who killed
Chief Superintendent Luigi Calabresi.”
[2] Digos refers to Divisione Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni
Speciali: a special police force dedicated solely to investigating
terrorism, organized crime, and political extremism. Unlike the FBI, the
DIGOS are well-known local officers who are constantly engaging radicals
of various ideologies—harassing them at home, at work, and in public,
frequently addressing their targets by nicknames and seeking to learn
their intimate life details in order to disrupt movements and groups.
[3] The “years of lead,” the period of open class conflict and violent
struggle in Italy from the end of the 1960s to the beginning of the
1980s.