A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #31-25 - Knowledge and Practices Between Self-Management and Resistance. Territorial Struggles and Major Projects (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

This outline summarizes the presentation given during the session 
"Anarchism and New Movements" at the Carrara Conference (October 11-12, 
2025) on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the FAI - Anarchism. A 
Global and Italian History 1945-2025. Illustrating the relationship 
between social movements and major projects means first of all linking 
the term "major projects" to the more honest concept of "major 
projects." And what are major projects? Projects and achievements 
(generally) characterized by: extensive temporal scope, spatial 
vastness, administrative plurality, project complexity, significant 
public financial commitment, and significant socio-environmental impact. 
Moreover, major projects are considered, more than just infrastructure, 
as accelerators of developmental modernity and the procedures that 
govern civil-law decisions, stressors of the law, that is, 
unconventional territorial governance mechanisms.

Large-scale projects rhyme first and foremost with major events (large 
events?), with which they share several key characteristics. However, 
these events are not taking place in the infrastructure sector (not to 
mention the national nuclear waste repository) but rather in the sports 
and exhibition sectors, playing the cards of tourist attraction and 
internationalization. Beyond the scope of the stated objectives, we can 
recognize other evidence that cuts across the two policies, including 
the tactical nature of the haste/delay blackmail, the impossible escape 
from the exceptionalist phase, and the recourse (never supported by an 
ex-post assessment) to the discursive level of the economy of promise.

Another way to approach the topic takes its cue from two dashboards 
published respectively by the Ministry of Infrastructure 
(osservacantieri.mit.gov.it) and by the Società Infrastrutture Milano 
Cortina 2026 (simico.it). The first portal summarizes the costs and 
types of projects surveyed in a few "muscular" figures: 112 public works 
for a total investment of EUR133 billion, of which are under special 
administration: 38 railways, 32 roads, 22 state construction, 12 water, 
5 ports, and 3 light rail. Perhaps more interesting is the open data, 
also institutional, presented in the 2026 Winter Olympics Project Plan: 
98 projects monitored for EUR3.4 billion in investments (just over half 
of the entire Olympic Games), including 31 projects directly related to 
the event, and 67 purely legacy projects, with construction sites 
scheduled for completion (as of today) by spring 2033. Half of the 
construction sites and costs are allocated to Lombardy alone, with an 
imbalance between the works actually required for the Games and the 
legacy of fossil fuel infrastructure, the ratio of which is more than 
one to ten.

It is not my intention to delve into the intricacies of legality, 
transparency, and criminality, always placed before any further, purely 
political considerations. Legal, transparent, and accountable Winter 
Olympics is, moreover, the motto of some critics of the Milan-Cortina 
2026 ticket, who are otherwise engaged in highly valuable initiatives, 
such as the Open Olympics dossiers. These are, in my opinion, fragile 
and slippery keywords, criteria used to wage wars and manage pandemics. 
An irreducible point of attack within this perimeter is: who decides and 
with what objectives. Even better: who is excluded and who therefore 
pays the socio-environmental consequences of imposed choices. These 
questions are crucial to avoiding the semantic trap of "public service," 
which persistently hinges on the rhetoric that seeks to equate unlikely 
bridges and gas utilities with aqueducts and subways.

Many large-scale projects are wrong because they are unnecessary, 
harmful, oversized, and imposed (such as the TAV, Expo, highways, and 
TAP, among others). More importantly, they aren't conceived with a 
temporal perspective beyond the political trajectory of decision-makers, 
and they undermine (rather than implement) other ordinary projects such 
as rail, road, and energy supply, raising the economic threshold for 
access to services. Social movements approach the issue first by 
performing a purely cognitive task (knowing, understanding, and 
interpreting) and immediately face the challenge of ennobling the 
NO-which in public discourse always risks being relegated to the NIMBY 
category if not accused of conservatism-as an essential step forward to 
restore communities' time for understanding, speaking out, and 
transformative action. Thus, secondly, comes the active phase of 
counter-narrative and the communicative and practical toolkit of 
protest, including breaking the blackmail of alternatives. In the case 
of the Winter Olympics, countless alternatives were proposed throughout 
the twentieth century: reducing the size of the Games, reducing their 
temporal density, holding them in the same location, even to the zero 
option of simply not holding them at all. Alternatives are such when 
they call into question the project itself, not when they legitimize it 
through minor adjustments that avoid answering questions about the 
initiative's utility, consensus, and contemporary relevance.

Territorial struggles are the preferred terrain for protesting 
large-scale projects. In this field, the shift from criticism to 
resistance offers a doubly transformative opportunity. On the one hand, 
the project at issue is transformed (through counter-information, 
denunciation, boycotting, sabotage, etc.), and on the other, in the 
possible convergence of sensibilities and political cultures, the 
subjectivities participating evolve, producing and sharing knowledge, 
techniques, and experiences of struggle. The entire history of the 
country is a history of major works: from Fréjus in 1870 to Venaus in 
2005, through the first strikes to the Simplon Tunnel in 1905.

But there are obstacles that must be kept in mind at the very least. The 
specter of the dark ages, in a country with an unresolved problem with 
political violence. The capture mechanisms (old and new), among which it 
is worth mentioning, at a glance, the crimes of association, the fascist 
legacy of the crime of devastation and looting, the growing recourse to 
administrative offenses, the Security Decree, the Piantedosi Directive 
against self-managed social spaces, expulsion orders, red zones, and 
urban DASPOs. The variable of intergenerational time, which can 
sometimes be an ally but always remains, also, an enemy. 
Acceptability-this is a theme that particularly questions libertarian 
elements-of the use of legal and administrative instruments in an 
attempt to jam the mega-machine. The transdisciplinarity of things to 
know. The belated evidence of speculative initiative, sometimes visible 
only in the "terminal" phase of construction. In recent years, social 
and territorial movements have also been affected by a new school of 
climate activists, closer to scientific demands, to practices of civil 
disobedience, to the imagining of institutional instruments (such as 
reparation funds) and characterized by strong recourse to the media. 
These movements have opened a debate on the forms of opposition that is 
not always comfortable for those who remain firmly anchored to a 
libertarian trajectory, yet certainly stimulating. Perhaps it is time 
for a new pact of mutual support, and not just relief, because we 
desperately need victories that instill confidence, to settle and learn, 
to build legal resistance, to transform certain ineffective liturgies. 
It must not be forgotten that the present we inhabit, even when it 
appears unrecognizable in comparison with our needs and aspirations, is 
the expression of a perpetual negotiation between dissent and the 
voracity of capital, of liberticidal legality, of the interests of the 
few at the expense of the many. It doesn't resemble us, but conversely, 
it doesn't resemble what it would have looked like without this 
transformative obstinacy.

Alberto (abo) Di Monte

bibliotecaria.noblogs.org

https://umanitanova.org/saperi-e-pratiche-tra-autogestione-e-resistenza-lotte-territoriali-e-grandi-opere/
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