On the appeal trial against the Lecce anarchists
So-called operation Nottetempo (Night Time) started in May 2005 with a massive police deployment that led to the arrests of 5 anarchists in the Lecce province (southern Italy) and to the investigation of another ten for conspiracy. The comrades had actually been actively engaged in the struggle against the Regina Pacis immigration detention centre of San Foca (Lecce) run by the clergy, which closed down before the beginning of the infamous operation Nottetempo. The tenacious struggle of the local anarchists, in fact, had unveiled the atrocities perpetrated in that prison for immigrants to such a point that the operators of the centre could no longer hide their ignominious activity. Some of them were even put on trial and eventually went abroad, where they carried on their dirty business and managed to repair their reputation.
On the contrary, two of the arrested anarchists spent two years in prison while the others were put under house arrest or subjected to various restrictions. The first grade of the trial concluded in July 2008: as it was impossible for the jury to confirm the existence of a subversive association (article 270bis on conspiracy), they turned to article 416 of the Italian penal code and accused four comrades of forming a ‘criminal association’ (organized crime). Three other comrades were accused of specific crimes and the other eight were acquitted.
Anxious about his career and longing for promotion, public prosecutor Lino Giorgio did not resign himself to the fact that his theory of an anarchist clandestine association had been rejected by the jury. For this reason, a few weeks later, he presented an appeal against this sentence in order for another jury to confirm the accusation of conspiracy against the Lecce anarchists.
The sentence of appeal was to be finally pronounced on February 10 2010, but it has once again been postponed following the decision of the jury to examine further ‘evidence’ provided by the public prosecutor. The intention to charge the anarchists
involved in this shameful story of repression with yet more serious charges is evident, and it is also clear how the local powerful are determined to silence the entire matter as well as the violence and the abuse inflicted on immigrants by the
operators of the Regina Pacis concentration camp. If the latter no longer exists, numerous others can be found all over Italy and everywhere else; but the struggle is also alive, the struggle of those who, inside and outside these concentration camps,
believe that the only fate of these places is that of being destroyed along with the fear, hatred, indifference and racism fomented by power in order to create terror and to stir up a war among the exploited.
Solidarity to the Lecce anarchists!
Destroy all prisons!
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Sunday, 7 February 2010
What are anarchists?
Who do anarchists struggle against
- Against the State seen as the centralised organisation of power in all spheres (administrative, financial, political, military, etc.)
- Against government which is the political executive organ of the State and makes all decisions concerning repression, exploitation, control, etc.
-Against Capitalism which can be considered both as the flux of productive relations in course and individual capitalists, their activity, their projects and their complicity in this form
- Against the individual parts that the State and capital are divided into. In other words the police, judiciary, the army, school, newspapers, television, trade unions, the large multinational firms, etc.
- Against the family, which forms the essential nucleus upon which the State structure is based
- Against the world of politics, therefore against political parties (all of them), Parliament which is the expression of bourgeois democracy, and the political ideology which serves to mask real social problems
- Against fascists and all the other instruments of repression used by the State and Capital
- Against religion and the Church which constitute a potent ally to repression
- Against the army which is an armed force that is used against the people
- Against prisons which institutionalise the repression of the poorest of the exploited classes
- Against asylums which repress the different
What false ideas do anarchists struggle against
- Against reformism which wants to set social problems right by using laws, political parties, parliaments, referendums, votes, etc.
- Against efficientism which wants to reduce man to an automat always capable of working and obeying
- Against humanitarianism which calls for peace and safety of an abstract idea of man but does not act concretely to attack class enemies
- Against nonviolence which blocks the just violence of the exploited which is their only arm of liberation
- Against patriotism which feeds the absurd idea of the homeland in preference to other nations, whereas the exploited have no homeland but are brothers of the exploited of the whole world
- Against militarism which justifies the function of armies with the swindle that their role is the defence of the homeland
- Against racism which defines a part of the human race as inferior
- Against male chauvinism which reduces women to sex objects
- Against feminism which closes itself within an asphyxiating inverted male chauvinism
- Against the delegate which separates the exploited from direct action
- Against hierarchy which educates towards social stratification
- Against obedience which represses all individuality
- Against authority which prevents the autonomous development of the individual
- Against progressivism, a modern version of evolutionism which is the ideological covering of reformism
- Against economism which puts the economics at the centre of the history of class exploitation
-Against trade unionism which is the direct product of economism and which means to limit the class struggle to claiming at the level of the workplace. Anarcho-syndicalism, with all its revolutionary declarations does not escape this reformist limitation
What anarchists want
- Abolition of the State, Government, Capitalism, the family, religion, the army, prisons, asylums and every form of power which uses the law to force others to do something. Therefore refusal also of any kind of workers’ or socialist State and of any form of dictatorship of the proletariat
- Elimination of the private property of land, the tools of labour, materials, machines, factories, the land and anything else required for the production of what is necessary in order to live
-Abolition of salaried work and reduction of work to a minimum organised by individual groups federated on the basis of their own aptitudes and sympathies as well as on the basis of their own needs
- Substitution of the traditional family with life in common based on love and reciprocal affinity and on the basis of real sexual equality
- Organisation of life, such as that of production, based on free associations differing according to the problems to be faced, interests to be defended and affinities to be developed. The whole of these organisations federated on a local basis, by groups of communes, then widening the relations to a larger federation until it reaches the maximum possible of the liberated areas of the revolution
- Education free and aimed at an awakening of individual aptitude which in a liberated society will be meaningful only in the limits in which this liberation is realised
- The spreading of atheism and anti-religious propaganda, always necessary because on these problems even the liberation that has come about cannot exercise more than a limited clarification
- Completion of the social revolution until all domination of man over man be abolished.
The means anarchists want to use
- The specific anarchist organisation which is an active minority of conscious individuals who share personal and political affinity and give themselves the aim of calling on the exploited to organise themselves with a view to revolution.
- A federation of different anarchist groups who while changing nothing of their particular specific structure, link with each other with informal, federative pacts in order to better coordinate their own action
- Propaganda to explain through books, pamphlets, newspapers, leaflets, graffiti, etc. what the intentions of the ruling structure are and the dangers facing the exploited. Also to supply indications of the anarchist struggle and show who anarchists are, or to urge the exploited to rebel, denouncing the consequences of obedience and resignation
- The struggle to claim better conditions - Although we are not reformists, the struggle to obtain improvements in one’s immediate situation (wages, habitation, health, education, occupational, etc.) sees anarchists present although they do not see these moments as ends in themselves. They push the exploited towards this form of struggle so that they can develop the elements of self-organisation and refusal of the delegate which are indispensable in order to develop direct action at all other levels
- Violent struggle to realise the social revolution along with the exploited. The attack against the class enemy (State, government, capital, church, etc.) must necessarily be violent, in the case of the contrary it would only be a sterile protest and would determine a reinforcement of class dominion. This attack could be:
a) isolated attacks against individual structures or people who are responsible for repression
b) an insurrectional attack by a specific minority
c) a mass insurrectional attack
d) a mass revolutionary attack
Each of these levels, starting from the first, may or may not create the conditions leading to the successive one to develop. Political and economic analyses can foresee this possibility within certain limits, but cannot give an absolute response: action itself is the only test for action. The moral foundation of violent struggle already exists in the fact of repression as it has been exercised by power for centuries.
from 'Revolution, Violence, anti-authoritarianism', Elephant Editions
- Against the State seen as the centralised organisation of power in all spheres (administrative, financial, political, military, etc.)
- Against government which is the political executive organ of the State and makes all decisions concerning repression, exploitation, control, etc.
-Against Capitalism which can be considered both as the flux of productive relations in course and individual capitalists, their activity, their projects and their complicity in this form
- Against the individual parts that the State and capital are divided into. In other words the police, judiciary, the army, school, newspapers, television, trade unions, the large multinational firms, etc.
- Against the family, which forms the essential nucleus upon which the State structure is based
- Against the world of politics, therefore against political parties (all of them), Parliament which is the expression of bourgeois democracy, and the political ideology which serves to mask real social problems
- Against fascists and all the other instruments of repression used by the State and Capital
- Against religion and the Church which constitute a potent ally to repression
- Against the army which is an armed force that is used against the people
- Against prisons which institutionalise the repression of the poorest of the exploited classes
- Against asylums which repress the different
What false ideas do anarchists struggle against
- Against reformism which wants to set social problems right by using laws, political parties, parliaments, referendums, votes, etc.
- Against efficientism which wants to reduce man to an automat always capable of working and obeying
- Against humanitarianism which calls for peace and safety of an abstract idea of man but does not act concretely to attack class enemies
- Against nonviolence which blocks the just violence of the exploited which is their only arm of liberation
- Against patriotism which feeds the absurd idea of the homeland in preference to other nations, whereas the exploited have no homeland but are brothers of the exploited of the whole world
- Against militarism which justifies the function of armies with the swindle that their role is the defence of the homeland
- Against racism which defines a part of the human race as inferior
- Against male chauvinism which reduces women to sex objects
- Against feminism which closes itself within an asphyxiating inverted male chauvinism
- Against the delegate which separates the exploited from direct action
- Against hierarchy which educates towards social stratification
- Against obedience which represses all individuality
- Against authority which prevents the autonomous development of the individual
- Against progressivism, a modern version of evolutionism which is the ideological covering of reformism
- Against economism which puts the economics at the centre of the history of class exploitation
-Against trade unionism which is the direct product of economism and which means to limit the class struggle to claiming at the level of the workplace. Anarcho-syndicalism, with all its revolutionary declarations does not escape this reformist limitation
What anarchists want
- Abolition of the State, Government, Capitalism, the family, religion, the army, prisons, asylums and every form of power which uses the law to force others to do something. Therefore refusal also of any kind of workers’ or socialist State and of any form of dictatorship of the proletariat
- Elimination of the private property of land, the tools of labour, materials, machines, factories, the land and anything else required for the production of what is necessary in order to live
-Abolition of salaried work and reduction of work to a minimum organised by individual groups federated on the basis of their own aptitudes and sympathies as well as on the basis of their own needs
- Substitution of the traditional family with life in common based on love and reciprocal affinity and on the basis of real sexual equality
- Organisation of life, such as that of production, based on free associations differing according to the problems to be faced, interests to be defended and affinities to be developed. The whole of these organisations federated on a local basis, by groups of communes, then widening the relations to a larger federation until it reaches the maximum possible of the liberated areas of the revolution
- Education free and aimed at an awakening of individual aptitude which in a liberated society will be meaningful only in the limits in which this liberation is realised
- The spreading of atheism and anti-religious propaganda, always necessary because on these problems even the liberation that has come about cannot exercise more than a limited clarification
- Completion of the social revolution until all domination of man over man be abolished.
The means anarchists want to use
- The specific anarchist organisation which is an active minority of conscious individuals who share personal and political affinity and give themselves the aim of calling on the exploited to organise themselves with a view to revolution.
- A federation of different anarchist groups who while changing nothing of their particular specific structure, link with each other with informal, federative pacts in order to better coordinate their own action
- Propaganda to explain through books, pamphlets, newspapers, leaflets, graffiti, etc. what the intentions of the ruling structure are and the dangers facing the exploited. Also to supply indications of the anarchist struggle and show who anarchists are, or to urge the exploited to rebel, denouncing the consequences of obedience and resignation
- The struggle to claim better conditions - Although we are not reformists, the struggle to obtain improvements in one’s immediate situation (wages, habitation, health, education, occupational, etc.) sees anarchists present although they do not see these moments as ends in themselves. They push the exploited towards this form of struggle so that they can develop the elements of self-organisation and refusal of the delegate which are indispensable in order to develop direct action at all other levels
- Violent struggle to realise the social revolution along with the exploited. The attack against the class enemy (State, government, capital, church, etc.) must necessarily be violent, in the case of the contrary it would only be a sterile protest and would determine a reinforcement of class dominion. This attack could be:
a) isolated attacks against individual structures or people who are responsible for repression
b) an insurrectional attack by a specific minority
c) a mass insurrectional attack
d) a mass revolutionary attack
Each of these levels, starting from the first, may or may not create the conditions leading to the successive one to develop. Political and economic analyses can foresee this possibility within certain limits, but cannot give an absolute response: action itself is the only test for action. The moral foundation of violent struggle already exists in the fact of repression as it has been exercised by power for centuries.
from 'Revolution, Violence, anti-authoritarianism', Elephant Editions
Communist guerrilla against drug pushers in Italy 1978
18 June 1978, Rome: A notorious fascist belonging to the infamous Di Luia gang and boss of the heroin trade, is killed with three pistol shots. The action is claimed in a telephone call to Lotta Continua by Movimento proletaria di resistenza offensivo Nucleo Antieroina. (Anti-heroin nucleus of the Movement of Proletarian Resistance). On November
1 in Milan, Proletari Armati claim the killing of Giampiero Grandi, shopkeeper, belonging to an organisation that controls heroin traffic and the exploitation of prostitutes. Bomb at Mental Hygiene Centre in via Pancrazi, and a bar in via Degli Apuli. On November 6, still in Milan a bomb exploded in a bar in via Arsia, centre of heroin traffic in that area. On the 27th in Rome, Guerriglia comnunista ambush two heroin pushers; one is killed, the other wounded.
Here is the communique claiming the action:
WE CLAIM the execution of the heroin pusher and mafioso, Grandi Giampiero, and the bombings at the Centre for Mental Hygiene in via Pancrazi, the pushers’ lair of via Degli Apuli on 1.11.78, and the bar in via Arsia, centre of the heroin traffic in the Quarto Oggiaro area, on 6.11.78.
Communists are not generally against ‘drug addicts’ like the bourgeoisie and the forces of repression: they are against those who speculate on their skins. We know that heroin is an answer, although illusory and disgusting, to a real need for change in the quality of life. Heroin is the most beautiful of the false consumer products that capital has invented to mystify the reality of proletarian needs. To struggle against heroin pushers is for every heroin addict to struggle against those who seem to be giving him the only possibility of life and survival.
It wouldn’t be habit-forming if daily life weren’t shit. State and God, Work and Family, are deviating ideologies that serve to uphold and hide an unnatural, lousy, criminal social order which denies in all its relationships the legitimacy of the natural needs of man, and upsets his relationship with reality. Destruction of nature (Seveso is only a tiny example of capitalist criminality), destruction of man as a natural being.
What capital cannot exploit it destroys.
With the circulation of heroin and psychotropic drugs they are planning the destruction of entire generations. They destroy as the only way to evaluate the desire to live, to be well, to express the creativity which the young proletarians are the carriers of, in terms of profit.
Instead of the forced suicides of the Chilean type, capital is launching voluntary suicide on the market for common use.
Heroin in itself is a false problem: it is a consumer product invented to suffocate the real need to change the quality of life, the real problem is the existence of the capitalist social organisation, because it bends towards death and the destruction of all that is human. The drug addict becomes known and measured for the quantity of heroin he consumes, for the average number of thefts he commits, and not for being a human being who, like others, is trying to affirm his own right to existence. To speak of heroin gratuitously is useless if one doesn’t begin to organise the proletarian strength to destroy the present state of affairs at the same time. The proletarian revolution, the surpassing of the existing social order, is not a project to be defined in abstract, but begins in practice with the destruction of capitalist society.
All those who support the liberalisation of the heroin market without posing the problem of how to change the reality of proletarian life in the capitalist metropoli, are stupid opportunists.
The armed strength of the proletariat must aim to impose itself as a concrete element capable of self-determining social reality in its complexity.
Build proletarian unity in the struggle, establish and develop the political legitimacy of the revolutionaries among the proletariat, extend the space for building the real power of the proletariat armed.
The armed strength of the proletariat in struggle is the only practical instrument of liberation from capitalist dominion.
Heroin pushing, the exploitation of prostitution, the fencing of small thefts, are activities which correspond only to the law of capitalist accumulation. Communists are not against illegal activity that damages the bourgeois strata: they are against all those vile activities of proletarian exploitation. It is right to rob banks, to ransom the bourgeois strata, but enough opportunism! Whoever gets rich through the injury of other proletarians will be considered a vile traitor!
Vile is the pusher who earns his living through the deaths of others. Vile is the pimp who uses womens’ bodies as an instrument for his own profit. Vile is the fence who exploits the sweat labour of young proletarians when they are constrained to steal a stereo or spare tyres. All those, especially at a big level, are friends of the police and the carabinieri and enemies of the proletariat. They buy the freedom to continue their vile activities in exchange for tip-offs and prison for other proletarians. The carabinieri use them as informers and they use the carabinieri to get rid of those who are in their way. So the operations of the drug squad against the pushers are in the end nothing other than operations controlling the market to the benefit of those who really centralise the heroin commerce.
Whoever breaks proletarian unity, exploits and robs from the proletariat themselves, must the considered vile enemy and traitor: no solidarity in their divisions for subversive work among all the proletarians, for the destruction of capitalist society.
Expel the enemies of the proletariat, the spies and traitors, whether they be heroin pushers or trade union bosses, to build the unity of the proletariat in struggle.
Heroin is an instrument of social control that suits power. Alongside the pushers, and the forces of repression there exists another hierarchy of control over the proletariat: the medico-psychiatric one. The sanitary decentralisation, the opening of centres for hygiene and mental health in every area, are the new instruments which capital is using to keep the contradictions of the capitalist metropolis under control, to render stupid and to drug the forces of the proletarian revolution. Whoever goes beyond the rule of State, of Work, of Family, is ‘mad’, can be labelled as deviant from childhood. As such, capital assigns his ghetto; will give him more heroin free, will stuff him with psychotropic drugs from the beginning, so that he doesn’t disturb the regular functioning of the social order.
Doctors and psychiatrists who administer such rubbish, especially to young people and women, are mad criminals, labelling antagonism and proletarian rebellion as ‘social deviance’. Neurotic and psychopathic subjects only because they cannot support the disgust of capitalist society. What does a psychiatrist who has been able to study without lifting a finger until he gets his degree know of proletarian life in the ghettos?
What we are fighting for is the fundamental right to self-determination of the proletariat. It must be the proletariat themselves to decide how, where and why they want to live. The psychiatrists, the criminologists, the priests, the trade union bosses, in their positions as social controllers of the proletariat are enemies, and as such should be struck down.
Attack the forces of repression, carabinieri and police. Expel and strike their friends, the traitors, the informers, the spies, from the factories, from the proletarian areas.
Attack the hierarchy of medico-psychiatric control.
Break up the internal hierarchy of control within the proletariat, the pushers and the shit fences.
Build the power of the armed proletariat.
(Nov. ’78)
from 'Armed Struggle in Italy 1976-78' Elephant Editions
1 in Milan, Proletari Armati claim the killing of Giampiero Grandi, shopkeeper, belonging to an organisation that controls heroin traffic and the exploitation of prostitutes. Bomb at Mental Hygiene Centre in via Pancrazi, and a bar in via Degli Apuli. On November 6, still in Milan a bomb exploded in a bar in via Arsia, centre of heroin traffic in that area. On the 27th in Rome, Guerriglia comnunista ambush two heroin pushers; one is killed, the other wounded.
Here is the communique claiming the action:
WE CLAIM the execution of the heroin pusher and mafioso, Grandi Giampiero, and the bombings at the Centre for Mental Hygiene in via Pancrazi, the pushers’ lair of via Degli Apuli on 1.11.78, and the bar in via Arsia, centre of the heroin traffic in the Quarto Oggiaro area, on 6.11.78.
Communists are not generally against ‘drug addicts’ like the bourgeoisie and the forces of repression: they are against those who speculate on their skins. We know that heroin is an answer, although illusory and disgusting, to a real need for change in the quality of life. Heroin is the most beautiful of the false consumer products that capital has invented to mystify the reality of proletarian needs. To struggle against heroin pushers is for every heroin addict to struggle against those who seem to be giving him the only possibility of life and survival.
It wouldn’t be habit-forming if daily life weren’t shit. State and God, Work and Family, are deviating ideologies that serve to uphold and hide an unnatural, lousy, criminal social order which denies in all its relationships the legitimacy of the natural needs of man, and upsets his relationship with reality. Destruction of nature (Seveso is only a tiny example of capitalist criminality), destruction of man as a natural being.
What capital cannot exploit it destroys.
With the circulation of heroin and psychotropic drugs they are planning the destruction of entire generations. They destroy as the only way to evaluate the desire to live, to be well, to express the creativity which the young proletarians are the carriers of, in terms of profit.
Instead of the forced suicides of the Chilean type, capital is launching voluntary suicide on the market for common use.
Heroin in itself is a false problem: it is a consumer product invented to suffocate the real need to change the quality of life, the real problem is the existence of the capitalist social organisation, because it bends towards death and the destruction of all that is human. The drug addict becomes known and measured for the quantity of heroin he consumes, for the average number of thefts he commits, and not for being a human being who, like others, is trying to affirm his own right to existence. To speak of heroin gratuitously is useless if one doesn’t begin to organise the proletarian strength to destroy the present state of affairs at the same time. The proletarian revolution, the surpassing of the existing social order, is not a project to be defined in abstract, but begins in practice with the destruction of capitalist society.
All those who support the liberalisation of the heroin market without posing the problem of how to change the reality of proletarian life in the capitalist metropoli, are stupid opportunists.
The armed strength of the proletariat must aim to impose itself as a concrete element capable of self-determining social reality in its complexity.
Build proletarian unity in the struggle, establish and develop the political legitimacy of the revolutionaries among the proletariat, extend the space for building the real power of the proletariat armed.
The armed strength of the proletariat in struggle is the only practical instrument of liberation from capitalist dominion.
Heroin pushing, the exploitation of prostitution, the fencing of small thefts, are activities which correspond only to the law of capitalist accumulation. Communists are not against illegal activity that damages the bourgeois strata: they are against all those vile activities of proletarian exploitation. It is right to rob banks, to ransom the bourgeois strata, but enough opportunism! Whoever gets rich through the injury of other proletarians will be considered a vile traitor!
Vile is the pusher who earns his living through the deaths of others. Vile is the pimp who uses womens’ bodies as an instrument for his own profit. Vile is the fence who exploits the sweat labour of young proletarians when they are constrained to steal a stereo or spare tyres. All those, especially at a big level, are friends of the police and the carabinieri and enemies of the proletariat. They buy the freedom to continue their vile activities in exchange for tip-offs and prison for other proletarians. The carabinieri use them as informers and they use the carabinieri to get rid of those who are in their way. So the operations of the drug squad against the pushers are in the end nothing other than operations controlling the market to the benefit of those who really centralise the heroin commerce.
Whoever breaks proletarian unity, exploits and robs from the proletariat themselves, must the considered vile enemy and traitor: no solidarity in their divisions for subversive work among all the proletarians, for the destruction of capitalist society.
Expel the enemies of the proletariat, the spies and traitors, whether they be heroin pushers or trade union bosses, to build the unity of the proletariat in struggle.
Heroin is an instrument of social control that suits power. Alongside the pushers, and the forces of repression there exists another hierarchy of control over the proletariat: the medico-psychiatric one. The sanitary decentralisation, the opening of centres for hygiene and mental health in every area, are the new instruments which capital is using to keep the contradictions of the capitalist metropolis under control, to render stupid and to drug the forces of the proletarian revolution. Whoever goes beyond the rule of State, of Work, of Family, is ‘mad’, can be labelled as deviant from childhood. As such, capital assigns his ghetto; will give him more heroin free, will stuff him with psychotropic drugs from the beginning, so that he doesn’t disturb the regular functioning of the social order.
Doctors and psychiatrists who administer such rubbish, especially to young people and women, are mad criminals, labelling antagonism and proletarian rebellion as ‘social deviance’. Neurotic and psychopathic subjects only because they cannot support the disgust of capitalist society. What does a psychiatrist who has been able to study without lifting a finger until he gets his degree know of proletarian life in the ghettos?
What we are fighting for is the fundamental right to self-determination of the proletariat. It must be the proletariat themselves to decide how, where and why they want to live. The psychiatrists, the criminologists, the priests, the trade union bosses, in their positions as social controllers of the proletariat are enemies, and as such should be struck down.
Attack the forces of repression, carabinieri and police. Expel and strike their friends, the traitors, the informers, the spies, from the factories, from the proletarian areas.
Attack the hierarchy of medico-psychiatric control.
Break up the internal hierarchy of control within the proletariat, the pushers and the shit fences.
Build the power of the armed proletariat.
(Nov. ’78)
from 'Armed Struggle in Italy 1976-78' Elephant Editions
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