A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #15-26 - Words Like Bullets (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

It's not my intention to advertise anything, but the data reported in 
the Atlas of Wars and Conflicts in the World, published by the 46th 
Parallel Ets association and distributed by Valori, are important and 
significant on several fronts. ---- As of November 2025, there were 
thirty-two ongoing wars worldwide, as well as twenty-two crisis areas on 
the brink of armed conflict. This means that approximately half the 
world's population lives in a climate of war, whether open or creeping.

War therefore dominates our current imagination, fuels it, shapes it. It 
changes our way of thinking and, obviously, has a significant impact on 
our way of communicating, on the words we use-essentially, on our language.

The media and social networks play a key role in all of this, selecting 
images, phrases, speeches, and arguments, using a bellicose, aggressive 
vocabulary. This contributes to the spread of anxiety and fear, while 
also fostering the adoption of words with a distinctly military origin 
in everyday speech. Front line, trench, deterrence, surgical strike, 
retaliation, campaign, special operation, collateral damage, drone, 
(water) bomb, etc. are now words on everyone's lips. Not to mention 
"weapon," which is used in every possible way.

This is the language employed by the small group of tyrants and powerful 
figures who govern the world, to convince us that war is the only 
solution to finding a new balance, but in reality, to divide it up and 
seize social wealth and energy sources. A language that makes the 
unacceptable acceptable, the undrinkable drinkable, and yet useful for 
creating an enemy. Little by little, social consciousness is becoming 
accustomed to considering inevitable what is instead entirely avoidable, 
if only we wanted it to be.

But there's more than just warfare directed at external warfare, the war 
fought beyond state borders. There's also a warfare directed at internal 
warfare, the war waged against immigrants, the refractory, the 
antagonistic, those unwilling to put their necks in the hangman's noose, 
and the anarchists among them.

To support the government's approval of one "security" decree after 
another-obviously worsening in progression-ministers, parliamentarians, 
and influencers of every ilk have raged and continue to rage across the 
media, social media, and elsewhere, using terrifying and terrorizing 
language. The militant anti-fascist and the anarchist are the enemies to 
be fought, not so much for what they do, but for what they represent, 
with their legacy of ideas, proposals, and practices.

A slogan from one of the most famous 19th-century anarchist songs (Addio 
Lugano bella) was used on the walls, sung at every demonstration, 
including union demonstrations, to inaugurate that firm, preventive 
gesture of fascist remembrance for ninety-one comrades intending to lay 
flowers at the site of the deaths of Sara Ardizzone and Alessandro 
Mercogliano. While the fascists, undisturbed, can display their strength 
and discipline by marching in military formation and saluting their 
comrades with outstretched arms, anarchists must be allowed nothing. But 
this is right: the former are integral to economic and political power, 
as they always have been. We, on the other hand, firmly oppose this 
power, a source of injustice, oppression, and exploitation for a vast 
portion of the population, by proposing new forms of social 
organization. The militaristic language so abundantly employed by hacks 
in newspapers serves entirely to perpetually marginalize anarchist 
discourse from political and social debate, reducing it to a mere 
criminal act: even the simplest expressions of dissent and denunciation 
become "assaults," if not "devastations" if a shop window accidentally 
falls, an expression of terrorism that is no longer latent but real. The 
League also introduced a bill in Parliament in March 2026 to classify 
anarchists and militant anti-fascists into a single terrorist 
organization, in the wake of the September 2025 US decree defining 
Antifa as "the number one terrorist group in the United States and as a 
militarist and anarchist enterprise that explicitly promotes the 
overthrow of the government, the police, and the legal system."
In this context, the significance of Alfredo Cospito's heavy sentence 
and lengthy prison sentence under the 41-bis regime is clear. He was 
simply labeled a terrorist for an ineffective demonstration attack, and 
not only is he being held accountable for the publicity and political 
consequences of his hunger strike, but above all, he intends to use it, 
at a time of declining credibility for institutions and the government, 
to undermine, through blackmail, any significant mobilization against 
the government. A right-wing rag, both in name and in practice, 
headlined on Monday, April 20, "Anarchist assaults. A single mastermind 
from Rome to Milan. Alert rising: a hybrid conflict already underway in 
the name of Cospito and Hezbollah." On April 28, the same rag wrote on 
its front page: "Fear for May Day. The CARC and the Cospito plan: enlist 
the 'baby' Red Brigades. Praise for Ramelli's killers; anarchists and 
opponents prepare for the clash."

A hodgepodge whose sole purpose is to pave the way for further 
repressive measures. There are probably some who think this is a way to 
celebrate the centenary of the "Fascist Laws" promulgated by Mussolini 
in 1926, which established the dictatorship in Italy.

While in much of the world, amid media indifference, hundreds of 
thousands of people are being massacred in wars for profit and millions 
are forced to abandon their homes and lands, while environmental 
destruction and devastation add to human and non-human suffering-also 
with the contribution of the arms industry and Italian political and 
economic support-there are those who glorify their own misery in an 
attempt to criminalize a movement that has always championed freedom and 
social justice. We are not surprised: those who want to lead us into 
external war must first win the internal one. And words, too, are 
weapons to achieve this goal.

Massimo Varengo

https://umanitanova.org/parole-come-pallottole/
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