A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #27-26 - Racists at heart. Social exclusion: from normalization to open advocacy (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The coarsening of political debate-in Italy and across the globe-mirrors 
the glaring cultural regression sweeping through our societies. We are 
living through a particularly critical phase, marked by tensions that 
erode social bonds day by day. More than thirty years of neoliberal 
globalization and turbo-capitalism have progressively impoverished a 
large portion of the world's population. War and terrorism have become 
part of the daily reality for millions, forming an existential backdrop 
that most of us perceive as all but inevitable. The exponential growth 
of technology has served as a powerful springboard for the deployment of 
increasingly sophisticated military, surveillance, and repressive 
systems. The brutal exploitation of the Earth and its resources is 
driving us straight toward climate catastrophe. Vast swathes of the 
planet are becoming increasingly uninhabitable-a key factor behind the 
growing scale of migration. The Internet, social media, and artificial 
intelligence have become the primary battleground for a manipulative, 
intrusive economic and political power-a "techno-fascism" that has 
constructed a dystopian reality defined by its own Newspeak, its 
distorted values, and its "world turned upside down."

Indeed: a world turned upside down. It has been three years since 
Roberto Vannacci published his booklet under that very title-a catchy 
phrase, like all populist rhetoric designed to appeal to our basest 
instincts-to put his aberrant views in writing. And it has already been 
four years since Italy saw the installation of the most fascist 
government in its republican history. A government of fascists that is, 
among other things, the longest-serving in history and is preparing to 
complete its term virtually unchallenged.

It is quite evident that the rise to power of such an unsavory ruling 
class has gone hand in hand with the progressive degradation of public 
discourse. This degradation has been accompanied by a decline in the 
quality of political figures across the spectrum-from right to left, 
with no exceptions-and by a staggering qualitative impoverishment of the 
information landscape.

And so, faced with its own inadequacy, the government has once again 
played the well-worn card of mass distraction: shifting attention away 
from the root causes of our problems. Once again, the finger is pointed 
at foreigners, immigrants, and "undesirables," stoking a racism that has 
long simmered in the soft underbelly of Italian society.

Italian racism stems from the fact that this country has never truly 
reckoned with its own history. This was the case with Fascism, for 
instance, as well as with colonialism. The "bad guys" were always 
others: the Nazis with their concentration camps, or the British and 
Americans with the slave trade and segregation. Meanwhile, we-the "good 
Italians"-supposedly never did any of that. "We aren't racist," we 
always told ourselves. But in fact, we most certainly are.

This sort of self-absolution, which took hold over the years, held firm 
until Italy-a country historically composed mostly of emigrants-became a 
destination for immigration itself, all while lagging conspicuously 
behind other European societies (and beyond). This relatively recent 
process has been addressed by Italy's ruling class with a strictly 
utilitarian and repressive approach that has objectively slowed down-if 
not outright hindered-coexistence and integration. An immigrant's 
economic productivity or potential threat level have been the sole 
criteria shaping a framework of laws and regulations that continue to 
stifle the lives of thousands, forcing them into undocumented status, 
social marginalization, or deviance. This is the result of a 
criminogenic bureaucracy-at once cynical and absurd-that, while claiming 
to solve problems, consistently creates new ones. Over the years, these 
policies have been accompanied by public discourse rooted essentially in 
alarmism, a sense of crisis, or even mere suspicion. In Italy, the 
immigrant has always been viewed as an "other," an alien, a foreign 
body-first labeled *vucumprà*, and later *extracomunitario*.

While the Right-in the course of its usual business-has always fanned 
the flames of hatred, the so-called Left has abandoned any progressive 
vision, instead becoming the architect of anti-working-class and 
exclusionary policies, invariably masked by a smokescreen of rhetoric 
and hypocrisy. Amidst all this, year after year, Italian society has 
crumbled under the blows of triumphant capitalism: anomie, the 
dissolution of social bonds, the disappearance of class solidarity, 
individualism, a lack of prospects, and fear. This created the ideal 
breeding ground for a form of racism that was first legitimized and then 
openly embraced. In recent years, the wellsprings of public debate have 
been deliberately poisoned through the introduction and normalization of 
concepts that, until recently, were simply unspeakable.

When figures like Vannacci, Marsella, or Salvini speak of "remigration" 
today as if it were a normal matter, it signals that a point of no 
return has been reached. When Giorgia Meloni-in a desperate bid to avoid 
being outflanked on the Right by the Vannacci camp-proposes a cap on the 
number of "foreign" students in classrooms, it means that the logic of 
racial laws has firmly entered the political agenda.

As history teaches us, this rightward radicalization of public discourse 
is symptomatic of the system's failure to provide adequate responses to 
the needs of an increasingly impoverished and disoriented society. War, 
nationalism, and repression are the classic tools those in power use to 
perpetuate their rule, locking in support for authoritarian agendas and 
hollow values like identity and tradition. They construct an enemy onto 
whom they can offload the blame for everything going wrong, all to 
safeguard the interests of the few who hold the reins of our lives: 
millionaires, bosses, and politicians.

For years, the anarchist movement-and others-has sounded the alarm about 
these dangers. We did so long before the current crisis, during 
mobilizations against borders and immigrant detention centers. We did so 
by attempting to deconstruct racist propaganda and exposing the 
dysfunction of the laws and the inherent criminality of a system that 
deliberately pits us against one another-Italians against foreigners. 
Clearly, that was not enough.

The dangerous path we are currently on compels us to renew our 
commitment to fighting this barbarism with all the intelligence and 
determination we can muster. We are called upon to respond blow for 
blow, dismantling and neutralizing racist rhetoric by 
demonstrating-clearly and understandably-just how absurd and baseless it 
is. It is vitally important to speak with everyone, everywhere-in both 
physical and virtual spaces-seizing every opportunity and creating new 
ones to clarify that our true enemy is certainly not those beneath us, 
but rather those situated far higher up the social pyramid. It is not 
the fault of immigrants (or their children, who attend school alongside 
ours) that the world is burning amidst wars and climate catastrophes; 
that wages have stagnated for years while inflation eats away at our 
lives; that funds for public services are never to be found (while 
resources for weaponry always are); that cities are filled with empty 
homes and homeless people; that young people cannot envision a future; 
or that existence has been reduced to a daily struggle to scrape 
together the crumbs of a system that secures vast fortunes for a handful 
of criminals and their lackeys. Those truly responsible for this 
disaster do not sit on the boats crossing the Mediterranean, but rather 
in the seats of government and parliament, and in corporate boardrooms.

This must be reiterated clearly and without delay. If fascists are 
thriving in the murky waters of public support and the political 
legitimacy that democracy itself has granted them for years, our task is 
to drain those waters-once and for all.

Alberto La Via

https://umanitanova.org/razzisti-dentro-esclusione-sociale-dallo-sdoganamento-alla-rivendicazione/
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