A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: The republic of truncheons (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The violence in recent days against students has produced abundant 
reactions from the so-called opposition and even the president seems to 
be horrified, not as much as the singer-songwriter Vecchioni who started 
crying on live television. Many are only now realizing that something 
has changed in the reactions of the (dis)order forces in uniform, having 
not previously noticed the increase in violence against prisoners or 
migrants, who are also locked up in centers that are not officially 
prisons! For those who have been demonstrating in the streets in recent 
decades, and I am thinking of Genoa but also of the protests against the 
American bases and the MUOS, they know very well that, no matter the 
color of the government of the day, the reaction of the state has always 
been violent. In fact, the truncheons seem to have no political color, 
in fact they certainly have one: black.

But it is also true that the explicitly authoritarian ideology of this 
extreme right which has taken power in Italy, following the great 
reactionary wave advancing on the Western world, seems to come from the 
basement of history, proposing an unmediated relationship between power 
and population from filter illusions, such as the concepts of "people's 
democracy" or "human rights". The very concept of power brought into 
play owes more to Weber than to Orwell or Foucault, thus reappearing the 
naked reality of relationships, homo homini lupus, Plautus' conclusion, 
renewed in the seventeenth century by Hobbes. In fact, upon closer 
inspection, this government prefers the repressive apparatus of the 
state to the ideological ones, even if it tries to occupy the latter 
with a frenzy and vulgarity never seen before: radio, television, 
theatres, literary prizes, schools... In the latter case , the 
infiltration does not seem very successful given that, as we have seen, 
compared to ideas, this right prefers truncheons. Perhaps we should 
thank this ignorance of how people are "convinced" to be submissive, 
this lack of sophistication; not understanding, and thank goodness, that 
children need to be conditioned to obey, not repressed by hitting them 
on the head, obtaining the opposite effect. They do not know that direct 
repressive systems are not useful for maintaining power in the medium 
and long term, as Pinochet and their own Mussolini experienced first-hand.

But in their confusion between strategy and tactics, all they have to do 
is chatter, affirm one thing and then contradict themselves the next 
day, but with a common thread that links their speeches, more in form 
than in content: from their place of enunciation, the newly acquired 
power, they can say what they want, without fear of contradictions, 
since what matters is precisely the fact that they have the upper hand. 
And if other non-aligned state powers still exist, then it is necessary 
to occupy them and eliminate pockets of resistance, see the controversy 
over violent police with the head of state or the traditional struggle 
against judges; and never mind if their journalist acolytes are unable 
to justify their actions, due to inability or payment (look at how they 
babble, how their body shakes and the facial grimaces of the various 
Bocchini, Secchi or the disabled Bollori, when they blather from Gruber 
or from Floris!). Not to mention Salvini, already reduced to a speck, 
but Meloni follows him in this, and in the end they obtain a result: 
they have approved the violence, both symbolic and material, not only of 
the state to control the subordinate majority, which by the way they 
keep people poor, but also as a method to resolve conflicts between 
private individuals, see the defense of the killer jeweler who chases 
thieves in the street and kills one of them, justified by Salvini and 
his entire gang. Trump points out in this expansion of the prerogative 
of weapons from the state to the population, naturally those who love 
weapons, all men, who seem to repel women from weapons (and it would be 
necessary to reflect on this "strange" phenomenon).

But where did these people come from? When between the end of the 
sixties and the beginning of the seventies we shouted in the streets 
"You bastard fascists, go back to the sewers", we were naive and a 
little blind. Even if some got lost or emigrated to Latin America (with 
stolen money), a minority formed black subversive groups (let's not 
forget the Bologna station), while the majority disguised themselves. 
That is: the lower and middle bureaucracy remained in its place and 
politically cleaned itself up and entered the Italian Social Movement, 
while others, many, entered the DC. The conspirators formed P2, secret 
freemasonry; and the violent entered or remained in the army, where they 
continued their fascist propaganda and the co-optation of new 
generations, integrated at all levels of the military structure (even 
forming transversal secret cells). If not, where do you think Vannacci 
came from?

What will happen? By talking so much about the danger of the return of 
fascism, we forget that history, as Marx would say, presents itself the 
first time as a tragedy and the second time as a farce, which should 
reassure us, if it weren't for the fact that in the meantime suffering 
increases and decreases. more and more spaces of freedom. The way to 
imagine the outcomes of what the right is progressively operating in 
Italy passes through a fundamental distinction, which Umberto Eco had 
already indicated: we must distinguish historical fascism from 
ideological fascism, even if the latter is inspired by the former (Eco 
spoke of Ur -fascism). It seems like Columbus's egg, but it is not like 
that: in order to function, any ideology needs to index itself, that is, 
adapt itself, to the social and cultural context in which it wants to 
operate. Therefore, let's put aside the nostalgic raised arms, which are 
nothing more than cheap folklore, and instead aim at the relations of 
force, at the forms, which are already conforming in authoritarian 
terms, bringing onto the scene, for example, the movements of big 
capital (see the blackmail of Fiat); and let's think about the digital 
control of the population which prefigures that society that Foucault 
defined as "disciplined". And then, within those forms, we put the 
contents: strong, masculine-oriented local identities; contrast between 
the good "others" and the bad "others", external or internal to our own 
society, walls as borders and autarky, and so on... The Frankfurt 
School, a hundred years ago, had already introduced the concept of 
"personality" authoritarian", which constituted the fertile ground for 
the emergence of historical fascism. But the most interesting thing that 
those sociologists discovered was that this type of personality could be 
transversal, politically speaking.

I return to Pisa and to those kids who with their backpacks saw 
themselves beaten up by the police. Will they stay silent, scared, or 
will they return to the streets reinforced? And what do their parents 
say? Will they accompany them or throw them out of the house? I think 
back to Morante, with him The world saved by children: "In the meantime, 
take care to confuse every cheerful temptation of our poor minds with 
your very sad noises and thus create a basis for your good times. In the 
usual umpteenth persuasion that the system will work, this time the scam 
will succeed, your sad kingdom will finally come. Will be. But be 
careful gentlemen, watch out for surprises."

Emanuele Amodio

http://sicilialibertaria.it
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