A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #16-25 - Against all fascism. Towards a new libertarian resistance (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Summary of the speech "The libertarian resistance" at the Cucine del 
Popolo in Massenzatico on April 25, 2025 and of the speech given in 
Piazza De André in Carrara on May 1, 2025 ---- This year we celebrate 
the eightieth anniversary of the so-called "liberation", which as we 
know was only a partial liberation, given that today's society is 
certainly not the one for which our comrades fought Nazi-fascism. They 
did not do it to see patriotic and tricolor celebrations again and they 
did not think that 80 years later there would still be the problem of 
fascism. Above all, they did not want a society still based on 
exploitation, in which even today in Carrara we must mourn yet another 
victim of work-related deaths in the quarry, Paolo Lambruschi, to whose 
family we once again extend our condolences and closeness. It is 
necessary to reiterate that deaths at work are not accidents, but crimes 
of capital, and it is not for a society in which the dignity of work and 
wages were still denied that we resisted decades ago.

However, it is necessary to better clarify what the libertarian 
resistance was. In the meantime, this resistance was not limited to the 
period 1943-45, but began in the early twenties, from the very moment in 
which the first squads began to attack union and workers' headquarters. 
This was in particular the experience of the Arditi del Popolo, who 
carried out resistance in the streets even before Mussolini took power, 
despite being disavowed by the parties of the official left who then 
chose the renunciatory path of the Aventine. Not only anarchists, but 
also dissident militants of these forces decided to defend themselves 
with direct action. Historian Marco Rossi counted 63 locations that saw 
the presence of Arditi del Popolo formations, in front of which the 
fascists retreated, from Civitavecchia to Bari, from Rome to Sestri 
Ponente passing through two famous episodes in which the black shirts 
were pushed back with a strong contribution from the libertarian side: 
the events of Sarzana in 1921 and the barricades of Parma in 1922.

Returning to that period is not a simple rhetorical exercise to boast of 
our history, because the brutality and the thousands of deaths of the 
first squadrism deny all the readings that claim that fascism would have 
been "bad" only from a certain moment (racial laws, war or other) 
endorsing its legitimization, promoted for several years also by sectors 
of the left. This story shows that there is no good fascism: fascism has 
always been criminal because it is by its nature and cannot be anything 
other than criminal.

It was from the anarchist side that the first lucid analyses of fascism 
arrived, such as the book La Controrivoluzione Preventiva by Luigi 
Fabbri, who had seen how fascism was the result of the barbarization of 
society caused by the Great War, as our comrades had already intuited by 
opposing interventionism. Above all, fascism was the response of capital 
to the revolutionary movements of the Biennio Rosso 1919-20, which saw 
the protagonism of the libertarian movement organized in the Unione 
Anarchica Italiana and the Unione Sindacale Italiana.

After the rise to power of fascism, many attempted to revive the 
centuries-old tradition of "tyrannicide", among whom we remember Gino 
Lucetti who later died in 1943 without being able to join his comrades 
in the mountains. But it was above all in exile that our comrades who 
had left since 1922 in France, Switzerland, Belgium, the United States, 
Argentina, Uruguay and wherever there was a refuge operated, 
demonstrating that anti-fascism has nothing to do with nationalism and 
patriotism also because few phenomena were more international, 
transnational and multilingual than anti-fascism itself. This gives us 
another important element for current events: yesterday as today, there 
is no justification for those who accommodate themselves to the regime 
by looking the other way because "you can't do otherwise". You can 
always do otherwise, and this dissident story proves it.

It was from exile that our comrades began to plan their return to Italy 
to overthrow fascism, starting from the Sartrouville conference in 1935. 
Then came Spain in 1936-39, which was another great example of 
international anti-fascist solidarity, but also an example of how 
freedom had to defend itself from the other totalitarianism, the 
Stalinist one, responsible for the assassination of so many anarchists, 
starting with Camillo Berneri who clearly said that in the Spanish 
Revolution anti-fascism was inseparable from the social revolution. 
Anti-fascism cannot be an end in itself, because fascism is not an 
exception or an anomaly in modern European societies: it is part of the 
mechanisms of reproduction of the state and capital, and it is not 
fought by flattening oneself on liberal concepts, but by working for the 
libertarian and egalitarian transformation of society.

And then there was the Resistance of 1943-45: returning from exile and 
confinement, the anarchist component was among the most important 
numerically and played important roles in the liberation of major cities 
such as Milan and Genoa, and obviously also here in Carrara with the 
"Lucetti", the "Schirru" and the various libertarian formations. The 
case of Carrara is particularly important because here the anarchist 
movement participated in the resumption of civil life with initiatives 
such as the Cooperativa del Partigiano and with material work of which 
examples remain such as the bridge over the Carrione rebuilt by the FAI 
in 1945, still remembered by a plaque, to demonstrate that it is with 
the constructive work of the workers' movement that fascism is defeated.

Then fascism returned, in various forms, first of all violence and 
intimidation against migrants, militants and people with nonconformist 
behavior. But it is important to underline that fascism is not 
identified only with the political right or with autocratic regimes. 
There are many daily behaviors that prepare fascism, from xenophobia to 
homophobia to the claim of domination over others that leads to 
patriarchy and the crimes of patriarchy. In short, there is a great 
social and cultural work to be done to remove the ground from under 
fascism's feet. Starting from the defense of freedom. For April 25th we 
were advised to be "sobriety": while it is not the ladies and gentlemen 
who sit in this government who tell us what we have to do, these 
freedoms are defended by taking them, and we celebrated April 25th 
everywhere, from the anti-fascist cappelletti in Reggio to the various 
squares that saw our presence.

Speaking of this government, it was amusing to note how a few weeks ago, 
realizing the existence of a document called the "Ventotene Manifesto", 
they also realized that even in the legal foundations of bourgeois 
society there are reminiscences of those struggles. If in Ventotene 
there were many libertarians, in contact with Ernesto Rossi, that 
document, although not of anarchist inspiration as the UN has recently 
discussed,[1]gives us the opportunity to note that the European Union 
has always had very little to do with certain of its principles, such as 
the idea that in order to avoid wars, States must question their 
territorial sovereignty. The current warmongering policy of the EU is 
certainly not consistent with those principles, which wants to rearm 
itself at the expense of social spending by inventing dangers of 
imminent attack with tones that recall those of the Cold War, which is 
unfortunately dramatically hot in the several dozen conflicts that are 
currently being fought in the world, many of which are forgotten because 
the further the dead are from Europe and the Global North the less they 
impress their right-thinking public opinions.

If Albert Camus said that there is no good cause that justifies the 
death of a single innocent civilian, our strategy is equally clear: 
always be on the side of those who refuse to fight, of those who object, 
of those who desert, whatever the uniform and flag for which they did 
not want to die; be on the side of those who oppose the arms trade and 
the production of death, for the general strike against war and for a 
general awareness that allows us to put an end to all wars, from the 
massacres in Ukraine to the horrible genocide that is underway in Gaza.

No one should ever die to plant a flag on a border, but it is precisely 
these borders that remind us that fascism is also racism and fear of the 
Other, closing oneself behind imaginary lines that decide who enjoys 
human rights and who does not, depending on the piece of paper you carry 
in your pocket. There is first of all an anti-colonial resistance to 
support, the one our comrades in Brazil and Latin America carry out 
alongside indigenous and Afro-descendant populations, or in Sudan to 
survive massacres that are less mediatized but no less brutal than 
others. There is also a human resistance to be made against the shame of 
rejections, massacres at sea, deportations to Albania. Let us remember 
that without borders no one is an illegal immigrant, without stupid 
borders no one is a foreigner.

We then recall the internal war against the dominated classes, which 
sees the umpteenth shame of that "security" decree on which even public 
law experts have raised the alarm for its illiberal aspects, aimed at 
limiting the freedom of expression of dissent, even non-violent. Here 
too, our idea is clear: in the face of those who want to prevent you 
from exercising the right to dissent, the only response is to practice 
this right. Fascism is fought first in the head and heart of each 
person, spreading practices of solidarity and other ways of thinking and 
acting. For equality and for freedom.

Happy May Day.

Federico Ferretti - FAI Reggiana

[1]A. La Via, Torn Posters, the controversy over Ventotene, Umanità Nova 
n. 9, March 30, 2025.

https://umanitanova.org/contro-ogni-fascismo-verso-una-nuova-resistenza-libertari/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en