Nyheter :: Klassekamp
Represjon og anarkisme i Italia
av Jonas Bals	30 nov 2005
Italienske Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) hadde bedt om at den 26. november skulle være en internasjonal dag til å uttrykke støtte til og solidaritet med anarkistbevegelsen i Italia. Årsaken er at landets regjering har iverksatt en regelrett heksejakt på mange av landets anarkister, og at mange aktive på venstresiden for øyeblikket sitter fengslet, svært ofte på grunnlag av fullkomment bisarre anklager. I København arrangerte folk med tilknytning til anarkister.dk og frihetlig.org et informasjonsmøte om situasjonen i Italia. Her ble det også tatt initiativ til en ny internasjonal solidaritetsdag den 19. januar 2006, i forbindelse med starten på en rettssak mot medlemmer av det italienske ABC, som er en støttegruppe for fanger som sitter inne på grunnlag av deres anarkistiske anskuelser eller for å ha overskredet klassekampens juridiske begrensninger. Følg med på frihetlig.org for oppdateringer om dette. For mer informasjon, se også http://www.anarkister.dk/SOLIDARITET_MED_de_faengslede_ANARKISTER_i_ITAL Understående er en av innledningene som ble holdt på møtet i København, og er ment som en historisk bakgrunn for dagens repressive klima i Berlusconis Italia. Innledningen ble, av hensyn til den internasjonale sammensetningen på møtet, holdt på engelsk.
I think the feeling among many of us four years ago, after the summer of the Gothenburg and Genova riots, was that we somehow had ‘reached a limit.’ It was clear to all that someone, somewhere, had decided that the so-called anti-globalisation movement was to be tamed. In Gothenburg, it was hard to tell where that order came from, and how far up it went. In Italy, however, no-one needed to be in doubt as to exactly who that someone was; Silvio Berlusconi had, in the weeks leading up to the meeting, boasted of his thousands of Carabinieri and his air-missile defensive systems. The shooting of the young anarchist Carlo Guiliani and the subsequent storming of the Indymedia centre, where dozens of activists were severely beaten, were both the logical outcome of the violent rhetoric of the government. So far, the events of Genova were no more special than those in Sweden one and a half month before, where the police also fired live ammunition on demonstrators, and violated all the most basic ‘democratic rights’ we were taught about in school. However, in the lead-up to Genova, something else happened too, something which I think is quite specifically Italian, and which we should be aware of as a “fact of life” for our Italian comrades. A week or so before the G8 summit, a bomb was reported to have been targeted against government officials, and anarchists were supposedly to blame. Since then, many similar “anarchist bombs” have been detected in Italy, among them one against Romani Prodi. Most of these have been signed the “Informal Anarchist Federation,” a group whose very name is a contradiction in terms, as it supposedly refers to those anarchists who see no need to engage in organising, and instead focuses on “insurrectionary acts.” Which means that they neither have anything to federate, or a desire to do so. The existence of the group has also been contested by Italian anarchists, who instead point to the very convenient fact for the police and mass media that the Informal Anarchist Federation’s initials, FAI in Italian, are identical to the initials of the Italian Anarchist Federation – giving rise to demands of suppression of the latter, and legitimatizing witch hunts for the public opinion. Italy: Unique, but for how long? The interesting thing with Italy is that it makes some things more visible. Italy is not so much different as it is clearer. I think the way politics changes there, can serve as a kind of ideal type to understand some very general trends in western capitalism as such. This is also true of the ongoing, worldwide campaign against the civil rights we thought we could take for granted only five years ago. But we also need to understand what truly is special about Italy, and what kind of game our friends down there are involved in. Not the least so because it is easy to dismiss comrades of ‘paranoia’ if they explain their situation in terms of political repression, secret plots or government terrorism. In order to avoid this, I think it can be useful to look at some of Italy’s recent history. This is necessary, of course, because the present never can be understood without a reference to its past. But, perhaps more importantly in this context, also because much of what remains hidden in the present, in regard for example to secret services and surveillance, only can be uncovered at a later point, when the people responsible no longer must answer for their actions. This is quite obvious if we turn to the late 1960s and the 70s, when Italy was shaken by a long series of social struggles. These were met by the government through a strategy that came to be known as the “Strategy of Tension,” and consisted of a whole set of tactics aimed at creating a climate of fear and uneasiness among the masses. At this point in Italian history, The Italian Communist Party was the biggest of its kind in the democratic world, and both in Italian and foreign circles, some sort of break with capitalism was genuinely thought to be a possibility. All the more so during the 1960s, when a wave of working class militancy sweeped the country, in many instances outside even of the communist party’s control. This, together with the fact that many of Italy´s neighbouring countries had seen successful, right wing military dictatorships taking power, made many among the ruling class keen on a “coup of their own.” The “Strategy of Tension” was in part integrated in plans like these. A failed coup experiment in 1964, led by the Carabinieri General Giovanni De Lorenzo, had proven that some kind of public backing had to be created if one was to succeed. De Lorenzo wasn’t just anybody – he was the former chief of SIFAR, the secret police, in the years from 1955 to 1962, and the coup he staged even had the tacit support of the Republic´s President, Antonio Segni. But, as it turned out, this was not enough. Even though the relations between centre politicians such as Segni and the right wing elements in the armed forces were denied officially, few on the left were convinced. But nothing could be proven, and nobody really knew what to expect — although many feared that worse would follow. And in this, they were right. On the 12th of December 1969, after what was known as Italy’s ‘hot autumn,’ a bomb blew up at the Banca Nazionale d´Agricoltura at Piazza Fontana in Milano, killing and wounding dozens of people. No-one claimed responsibility, but shortly after, many anarchists were rounded up, under full media coverage. Anarchists were supposedly to blame, and they should pay. A few days after the Piazza Fontana massacre, the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli “accidentally” died during interrogations at the police headquarters in Milano, an incident that later was to be immortalized in Dario Fo’s play “The Accidental Death of an Anarchist.” As it were, the bomb at Piazza Fontana would only be the first of many that were to follow. And it was of course only later – too late, one might add – that it was revealed that it was neo-fascist groups, connected with the Italian State itself, that was to blame for the massacre. The man most likely to have been the perpetrator, Delfo Zorzi, was a terrorist from the Padova-based L’Ordine Nuovo, The New Order, which was connected to the police through the agent and journalist Guido Giamettini – a man that conveniently has disappeared into thin air. And far, far later – only in 1990 – it started appearing documents revealing that the network behind the bomb at Piazza Fontana was part of a yet much bigger operation; an operation with clear connections to the CIA and NATO. “Gladio” was the name given to this operation, a name that was first used by the internal bulletin of Mussolini’s armed forces during the so-called Social Republic of Salò 1944-45. The name is Roman, and means a double edged sword; an irony, perhaps, and maybe also proof of the morbid sense of humour that tends to develop within secret services. It is worth noting that operations like this wasn’t genuinely ‘Italian.’ Many NATO member countries at this time had plans for similar so-called “STAY BEHIND”-operations, that were to be put into practice in case of future “communist,” “Soviet” or revolutionary takeovers. In Norway, for example, it has been revealed that the secret police had concrete plans for internment camps for revolutionaries, and that they had established a network of weapon arsenals around the country. But what was specific for Italy, was that it became practice. The Gladio, which was officially put to rest more than 15 years ago, on the 27th of November 1990, was activated in Italy: Both US government officials and members of the Italian ruling class considered the threat from the left as real, and therefore decided to act on it. They chose a so-called “differentiated strategy,” that included both passive supporters in the government structures, more active elements within the armed forces, and finally the “special units,” that were organised in order to “perform contra terror” and to provoke shifts in the delicately balanced political situation. How far up this went, one will probably never know. But it is an established fact that the US Army chief of staff, Westmoreland, in 1970 signed an instruction manual called Field Manual 30-31. Here, it was stated that it could be necessary to engage in “particular operations” that would convince western, liberal governments that they were threatened by the left wing, and it talked of “the necessity of actions to counter them.” It defined terrorism as “particularly suited to gain control of the population,” and described two different set of tactics: A “selective” one, aimed at individuals, and “terror in general,” aimed at crowds. It also proposed to infiltrate the organisations of the far left. Later attacks, such as the bomb against the Milano police station in 1973, against the Italicus train in 1974, and at the Bologna train station in 1980, succeeded extremely well in establishing the wanted atmosphere of tension and fear. It is a sad fact that parts of the left itself, especially its maoist tendencies, contributed actively to this tension by themselves taking up arms. Parts of this can probably be explained by infiltration and agents, but much of it can’t. It can at best be explained as foolishness. And what it cannot and should not be explained as, is as a viable revolutionary answer to government violence. Fortunately, we have no reason to believe that Italian comrades are prone to repeating mistakes of the past. Since the early twentieth century, most anarchists have clearly opposed terrorist attacks as a method for emancipation. The Italian anarchist Luigi Fabbri noted a long time ago, that one can never blow up a social relationship. In order to transform society, he argued, it is necessary to organise, educate and agitate; there are no short cuts by means of spectacularly violent attacks on state or capitalist institutions. The background for Fabbri’s comment might be a good place to stop this little introduction. The reason for his warning was that strands of the anarchist movement before the turn of the last century had chosen the blind alley of “propaganda by the deed,” interpreted by many as “propaganda by daggers, dynamite and guns.” In countries like the US, Italy and Spain, the 1890s were extremely violent. Violence was not something one chose, but something one had to deal with, as self defence. The violence of the state was primarily directed at the early worker’s movement, of which the anarchists played a vital part. In retaliation for vicious attacks, on individuals as well as crowds, some of these workers – some of them anarchists, many of them not – decided to blow back at the tyrants. Their acts were exalted, sometimes even rightly so, by parts of the anarchist press, that interpreted their acts as signs of a burgeoining general social upheaval against the injustices of capitalism. And, quite often, they found it necessary to defend the ‘terrorists’ as men and women of dignity and honour, against the general hysteria against these people as mad dogs and wild beasts. Where it went wrong, was when the anarchist newspapers started defending the acts themselves as revolutionary actions. Some anarchists, like Johann Most, even provided the public with recepees for bombs, poison and arms manufacturing. Small anarchist ‘terror cells,’ often established by police agents, would in the years to come taint anarchism with a reputation it has since strived to rid itself of. The direct consequenses of the era of bombs are fairly easy to establish. First of all, they secured a public panic wide enough to isolate anarchism for many years to come, reducing it from an integral part of the worker’s movement to a marginal phenomenon. Secondly, it facilitated the start of what later was to become Interpol, through several international Anti-Anarchist Conferences (the first one was held in Rome in November-December 1898), with participation from all European states and even some of the American ones. Thirdly, and this is where I would like to conclude this talk, it made anarchism synonymous with plots and bombs, a connection the Italian police to this very day know how to make use of.

Nettsted mot stat, kapital og lønnsarbeid