A-Infos (en) Sicilia Libertaria 2-24: Ideas for an editorial - OUR RESOLUTIONS FOR 2024 (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

2024 is full of unknowns. On the horizon, new wars and new attempts to 
involve our country in them, the barbarism that advances everywhere and 
claims victims, the capitalist utopia that overcomes its crises thanks 
to the discoveries of digital technology, humanity that, threatened by 
the crazy climate, by pandemics and intelligent machines, slides ever 
faster towards extinction. ---- In this depressing scenario, what 
function can this small and perhaps slightly old-fashioned newspaper you 
have in your hands still have? How can it help reverse a trend towards 
unfreedom that seems to consolidate with each passing day? What 
alternative can it still represent to regime disinformation and cultural 
homologation?

On the threshold of its 48 years - a venerable age for a newspaper and 
not just an anarchist one - "Sicilia Libertaria" feels the need to 
question itself and question collaborators, readers and supporters about 
its present and above all about its near future. A reflection in this 
sense proves to be all the more necessary the more it is missing in the 
anarchist movement and among its press organs.

"Sicilia Libertaria" has always avoided transforming itself into a mere 
opinion newspaper or, even worse, into a political-cultural product to 
be consumed once a month. It has favored its being an organ of 
agitation, struggle and anarchist proposal. However, it is difficult to 
maintain this characteristic today if the positions of those who write 
to you, especially when they deal with new or controversial issues (as 
often happens in "specials"), and even when proposals for strategic 
intervention emerge, are not at all received, much less debated. within 
our own movement, and almost never take on an operational character. An 
anarchist newspaper, if it is supposed to be such, should encourage the 
widest circulation of ideas, constitute a training ground for discussion 
and even clashes (while maintaining mutual respect) between comrades, 
discuss innovations in our field and in society, discover or rediscover 
ways of struggle and alternative knowledge, supporting every aspiration 
for freedom and change from below. Certainly not to end up atrophying 
over time into stale or repetitive formulas delegated to a few elderly 
writers.

To do this, the constant commitment of those who periodically publish 
the newspaper is not enough: the contribution of the greatest number of 
comrades and readers is essential. Rather than using a tool that is at 
hand, updating it and perfecting it technologically and in terms of 
content, many of them prefer to toy instead with the media designed by 
digital technocrats to annihilate their capacity for reflection and 
critical discernment. Some take refuge in indifferentism, disengagement, 
apathy: for them the newspaper simply represents an alibi for feeling or 
continuing to feel alive. Still others, fortunately few, snub the work 
of their "journalists" comrades from the height of an alleged 
intellectual superiority which however they almost never place at the 
service of the needs of the movement or translate into broad, 
community-based and participatory political and social intervention 
projects.

The anarchist movement, as a whole, hosts numerous militants of value 
and with skills acquired in the most varied social fields. Is it 
possible that no one, or few of them (apart from the likes they send us 
from time to time), are able to express themselves on the requests - 
sometimes real provocations - that come from our newspaper? That they 
hold on to their skills, for example, only to make a career in 
universities, institutions or companies?

Unfortunately, there are many who call themselves anarchists and are 
forgetting how the intimate link between thought and action, between 
idea and project, between end and means (in our case the newspaper) 
constitutes a fundamental prerogative of anarchism. It is not possible 
to conceive of anarchist journalism disconnected from reality, from 
society, from the territories and from the struggles that develop there.

In the past, and partly still today, "Libertarian Sicily" has been 
mistaken for a "localistic" newspaper simply because in its analyzes it 
prefers to start from or anchor itself in the concreteness of a chosen 
territory, Sicily. But it is enough to scroll through the pages to 
realize that it is a mistake: from libertarian Sicily to anarchist 
internationalism the step is often immediate, as the motto on the 
magazine warns ("for social liberation and internationalism"). Those who 
protest against "Si.Lib." a "localistic" character sometimes ends up 
with the blame for taking away resources and readers from the national 
weekly and fueling a ridiculous rivalry between the two newspapers. The 
controversy is ancient (it dates back to the birth of "Umanità Nova" in 
1920) but historical research has long since debunked it, demonstrating 
that, on the contrary, the multiplication of newspapers, by stimulating 
the activity of local groups, rather benefits the diffusion of the 
national weekly. The problem is rather different. It is the existence of 
watertight compartments between the different anarchist newspapers, 
where the mutual exchange of themes, collaborators and activities - 
which should be the rule - has become residual. Instead of fueling a 
virtuous and supportive circuit, we may even witness stupid closures and 
not even incomprehensible disputes over commas.

In a world that is increasingly fiercely anti-anarchist, our newspapers, 
true lungs of freedom, should no longer ignore each other or step on 
each other's toes. If they are no longer able, as in the past, to 
"ferment spirits" or to create a sympathetic public opinion around 
anarchists, they can nevertheless return to fulfilling an indispensable 
function, that of a privileged place in which to develop critical and 
counter-current analyses, project elaborations and exchange of 
supportive relationships in a movement which, to resist and renew 
itself, must first and foremost reject the authoritarian drift and 
rampant conformism.

This is, perhaps, a first partial answer to the initial questions. To 
which we hope numerous others will be added in the current year.

Christmas Musarra

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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