A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #469 - Yankees Go Home - About Trump, Meloni, and Subservience (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

If Donald Trump's latest pronouncements were to be taken at face value, 
a historic opportunity would present itself in the coming days: the 
initial reduction or total elimination of the presence of American 
troops in Sicily. This does not mean simply abandoning the American 
bases, which will certainly remain the prerogative of the Italian army 
(against which a relentless campaign should be intensified, denouncing 
the undue role of control and coercion it plays in the territories). 
However, it means no longer becoming directly involved in the wars that 
the Americans, especially in this historical moment, have waged around 
the world.
The fascist Prime Minister-a fascist, not a neo- or para-fascist, as 
Tommaso Montanari's latest book, The Continuity of Evil, points out-sees 
the US army and its NATO appendage as support and a spur to the great 
power ambitions that Fascist Italy, and even before it Crispi and 
Giolitti's Italy, has always nurtured in the Mediterranean. So she 
rushed to ask the Great Ally, with the contrite face of an altar boy 
caught stealing from the honey pot, to reconsider, because 
Italy-unfortunately, we say-with the United States "has always kept all 
the commitments it signed, it always has, we have done so particularly 
within NATO. We have done so even when our direct interests were not at 
stake, we did it in Afghanistan, we did it in Iraq. And so let's say 
that I do not consider some of the things that have been said about us 
to be correct, also because at the level of the Atlantic Pact no one has 
shown up in a formal forum to ask for the allies' support for the 
choices they were making." This last sentence indicates that if Trump 
had asked "in a formal forum", not necessarily NATO, his demands would 
have been taken into consideration anyway. Forget Meloni's "Sigonella 
crisis" of October 1985, when Craxi, in a fit of pro-Garibaldian pride, 
claimed Italy's sovereignty over the Sicilian base. But this remains a 
detail, an exception that doesn't break the rule, given that it was not 
followed up by Italian governments, who, in fact, did their utmost in 
the following years to ensure (as in the bombings of Serbia-an indelible 
stain on the Italian air force-Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) their 
subservience to the US.
If Italy's independence were truly to be achieved through armed defense, 
it would certainly not be by bowing to the American emperor. To oppose a 
hypothetical invader, the "noble fathers" of the national Risorgimento 
(Garibaldi, Mazzini, Cattaneo and the Sicilian Milo Guggino) envisioned 
the grassroots mobilization of the popular masses, alerted to this (as 
was the case in Switzerland and Spain), in what was called the "armed 
nation" (the nation of Garibaldi's volunteers who "made Italy", but also 
the nation of the partisan guerrillas and the nation of the popular 
uprisings against the war, in 1917 and 1945): which the Republic, born 
after the Second World War from a Catholic-Communist agreement, and by 
joining the Atlantic Pact, totally repudiated and attempted to make 
Italians forget. Armed defense, which the republican constitution 
contradictorily praises in its articles 11 and 52, should have remained 
as a last, extreme option, to be implemented in the event of internal 
civil war, against fascist resurgences for example, or to respond to an 
armed invasion from abroad.

For the rest, Italy is and should have remained neutral, pacifist, and 
peaceful. There was and should be no reason to alarm the population, to 
arm young conscripts, or, worse still, to fund highly specialized troops 
under the guise of internal defense. Instead, as has happened, Italy has 
imposed its presence, an "international prestige" intended as a prelude 
to colonization in distant and problematic scenarios, a source of 
potential dependence on other powers, even disguised under the aegis of 
the UN, and of involvement in local and supranational conflicts. 
Unarmed, nonviolent, grassroots defense, which is what we have always 
hoped for and dreamed of, is becoming increasingly probable and concrete 
today, through automation, the internet, hackers, AI, social media, 
etc.: tools we should and could appropriate, which we should learn to 
use and not abandon to the criminal logic of states. Already, cutting 
cables and jamming telecommunications with relatively simple means is 
enough to disrupt an imperial army, identify flaws in its weapons 
systems to render them harmless, penetrate its internal security 
mechanisms to dismantle an enemy state, and even allow the unfair and 
self-destructive mechanisms that regulate markets to jeopardize its 
capital. Conversely, it would be necessary to equip ourselves with 
self-sufficient water and energy systems, accumulate and preserve food 
and financial reserves, empower and network local communities and 
decision-making centers, and even base the activation of any future 
pockets of resistance on territorial knowledge.
Warmongers are well aware of, and fear, the use of tools they call 
"hybrid warfare," based on the human, technological, and natural 
resources of the resisting country. The frequent use of drones in recent 
wars teaches us that it is also possible to counter large military 
apparatuses-in the event of a feared invasion-with pseudo-homemade, 
inexpensive, creative, and easily maneuverable tools. These-grassroots 
mobilization, active nonviolence (which does not exclude sabotage and 
violence against property), and the courage and will of the affected 
communities-could make up for the enormous disproportionate resources 
possessed by a superpower, against which no army, even the best trained 
and equipped, could otherwise resist.
The grassroots demonstration in Italy of strong neutrality and equally 
strong opposition to any external or internal armed intervention, 
supported by horizontal relations between peoples and nations, could 
contribute to formulating new rules of international coexistence, ending 
armed conflicts, rejecting imperial policies based on force, and giving 
rise to a new supranational body with a clear popular, solidarity-based, 
and nonviolent program.

N.M.

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/2026/06/15/yankee-go-home/
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