A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #351 - From yesterday to today, a quick look back at the emergency laws in Italy... (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Beginning in the 1960s, Italy experienced a rapid phase of economic 
expansion. Massive industrialization in the northern part of the 
peninsula led to the migration of tens of thousands of terroni (1), 
forced to abandon their rural south to crowd into the suburbs and amass 
in the heart of the factories of the Turin-Milan-Genoa triangle. The 
profound upheavals wreaking havoc on Italian society then clashed with a 
political representation monopolized by a single party, the Christian 
Democrats. While governments succeeded one another, the exercise of 
power remained for more than forty years the prerogative of this 
Atlanticist party, torn between its alliances as the influence of the 
Italian Communist Party grew on the left. The PCI, while claiming to be 
an armed resistance to fascism, collaborated in the drafting of the new 
constitution promulgated in 1948 and put an end to the popular uprisings 
that broke out in the immediate post-war period. Beginning in the 
1970s-fearing a Chilean-style scenario and suffering the fate reserved 
for Salvador Allende if his party won the elections-communist leader 
Enrico Berlinguer formulated an alliance with the Christian Democrats 
and a pact with the bosses.

Large sections of the working class, students, and intellectuals did not 
identify with this compromise sought at the highest levels of government 
with the bourgeoisie. In the factories, the combativeness of a new 
generation of workers destabilized the unions, brought the regime into 
crisis, and forced some left-wing intellectuals to undertake a 
theoretical aggiornamento (2). The working-class dynamic established 
bridges with the students mobilized in the universities and joined 
forces with the struggles of residents of working-class neighborhoods.

From this social turmoil, which lasted more than a decade, emerged a 
myriad of political groups, described at the time as 
"extra-parliamentary." Some of them led armed actions, such as the Red 
Brigades (BR), born in the Sit-Siemens and Pirelli factories in Milan. 
The BR occupied and maintained a special place in this constellation for 
having kidnapped and executed Aldo Moro, leader of the Christian 
Democrats and supporter of the historic compromise with the Italian 
Communist Party, in 1978.

The Emergency and the Exception
The execution of Aldo Moro accelerated the authoritarian policies of the 
state, which had been underway since 1974 (3). It is often forgotten 
that these measures enriched the repressive legislation put in place in 
1930 under the fascist regime by Minister of Justice Alfredo Rocco, a 
legislation that the "Republic born of resistance" would be careful not 
to reverse. A special justice system disguised as a legal norm would 
proceed to establish a permanent state of emergency. This body of laws 
would take care to deny the political nature of the facts being judged, 
systematically referring them to the register of common law. To complete 
this takeover of the state and symbolically close the parenthesis opened 
decades earlier, the architect of these special laws, Francesco Cossiga, 
became President of the Italian Republic in 1985 (4).

The period spanning the 1980s saw a decline in social movements, and 
collaboration with the justice system was encouraged. Among those who 
did not take the path of exile, some gave in to "dissociation" from the 
history in which they had been actors, others led guerrilla trials but 
without any real external support and in a context of a very 
deteriorated balance of power...

Today
Over time, depending on the interests of governments and the 
relationships maintained with the states where these ex-activists found 
refuge, they became and remained the object of bargaining and a 
tenacious desire for revenge (5). This was the case with Macron and 
Draghi, before them with Chirac, Sarkozy, and Berlusconi. Today, it's 
the turn of Milei and Meloni...

Xavier, Boulogne-sur-mer, 04/06/25

Notes
1. A pejorative term used at the time by northern Italians to refer to 
those who migrated from their native Mezzogiorno. 2. Read Mario Tronti's 
perspective on the issue: "We Operaists." Éditions de l'éclat, 2013.
3. The decree-law of April 11, 1974, and the Reale Law of 1975 expanded 
the use of firearms by the police, as well as the use of police custody 
and preventive arrests.
4. In their book "The Revolution and the State," Scalzone and 
Persichetti state: "This special justice disguised as ordinary criminal 
justice, this unmentionable exceptional nature, constitutes the 
specificity-with multiple and lasting effects-of the Italian experience."
5. As Serge Quadruppani wrote, the famous "Mitterrand doctrine" which 
allowed certain Italian activists to settle in France, initially served 
to complete a pacification essentially achieved through repression.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4473
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