Militant Anarchist movement in Italy

[The Cheshire Cat]

Is there anyone that could tell us some details about the anarchist movement in Italy that (allegedly) sent some bomb-mails to three embassies? It could be a sign of a revival of revolutionairy communism and anarchism since the situation in Italy is very poor.

I don't have to much hope though. It could be nothing but some maniacs who call themselves anarchists. Besides, I don't have the idea the Italian people are anywhere near ready for a revolution, and even if they were, the surrounding countries would not allow a revolution to happen.

Now if there were militant revolutionairy movements in some of the major mediterranean countries, for instace Spaigne, Italy and Greece, it would get really interesting. But again, I do not have much hope. But neither did Lenin when the Russian Revolution started, ofcourse...

[Os Cangaceiros]

Italy has always had a pretty strong anarchist culture (in comparison to other countries). It was one of the few European countries in which anarchism was a genuine mass movement in the early 20th century.

As far as the anarchist militants of today, I'm guessing you're talking about the "Informal Anarchist Federation"? If so you probably won't see a lot of praise for what they do around here.

[The Cheshire Cat]

Italy has always had a pretty strong anarchist culture (in comparison to other countries). It was one of the few European countries in which anarchism was a genuine mass movement in the early 20th century.

True. But Italy also had a strong fascist culture, as Benito Mussolini was the first fascist ruler.


If so you probably won't see a lot of praise for what they do around here.
Why not?

[Tim Cornelis]

The Informal Anarchist Federation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_Anarchist_Federation) is responsible for such minor attacks. But they have been operating since 2001, so their recent attacks aren't a sign of renewed class consciousness, I think.

[The Cheshire Cat]

As I understand from Wiki, they had a small bombing campaign in 2002, but then the were inactive until 2010. From then, they did some actions in 2010, 2011 and 2012. So I think (hope) it could still be a sign of renewed class consciousness.

[Tim Cornelis]

Not really militant anarchism, but interesting nonetheless (ignore the stupid remarks about Ron Paul being a "neo-anarchist" and other historical ignorance):

http://crosscut.com/2012/05/03/travel/8303/may-day-anarchism-italian-style-Seattle/


May Day anarchism Italian-style

How do they celebrate May Day in the anarchist heartland of Carrara? With wreaths, wine, beans, and pride.

When I walked into my neighborhood coffeeshop late Tuesday afternoon, a guy was describing the May Day ruckus downtown to the barista, who’d been stuck behind her steam nozzle. “All it takes is a few anarchists to spoil a good demonstration,” he concluded.

The Black Bloc had struck again – according to news reports, 75 Bloc-heads, more than afflicted the 1999 WTO demonstrations. Those were, in retrospect, the first and biggest Occupy rally, when a hundred times as many non-vandal demonstrators filled the streets. This time the Bloc-heads brought heavier gear too – long bars for smashing windows, instead of dinky hammers. They made sure to hit American Apparel, a company that boasts of operating the largest clothing factory in the North America, and employing the best-paid garment workers in the world. Way to stand up for the 99 percenters, Bloc-heads.

Once again, “anarchist” became a word to conjure terror with. KING-5 News’s Chris Daniels did it best, in a spot-on imitation of a movie-trailer voiceover: “Tourists found a downtown transformed by fear… fear of another anarchist assault!”

All this would seem disturbing, or perhaps amusing, but surely odd to the anarchists I knew in a town that can make a fair claim to being the capital of the anarchist movement: Carrara, Italy, the marble-quarrying mecca where Michelangelo, Bernini, and a legion of other sculptors have gone for their stone. The connection is not coincidental: Perhaps because they are so dangerous and strenuous, quarrying and mining have long been seedbeds of organized labor and radical movements.

I spent seven or eight months in Carrara, working on a book about its storied quarries, Michelangelo Buonarroti’s times there, and the mysteries of marble. I even joined in its anarchist march on primo maggio, May 1st, the biggest day on the local calendar. Quando a Carrara, fa com’i carrarini.

The anarchist movement played a big part in Carrara’s story over the past 110 years. And it has much older roots there, in the ancient Romans’ grinding oppression of the slaves who worked the quarries and, in later centuries, the way the hardheaded quarrymen joined to protect their interests. Michelangelo could attest to that; they nearly rioted, trapping him in his quarters, when his Medici patrons told him to stiff the Carraresi and get marble from other quarries to the south.

In 1912 Carrara, with about one-thousandth of Italy’s population, held a tenth of the members of the Italian Syndicalist Union. They organized a bitterly resisted but remarkably successful strike, winning better wages, safer conditions, and, reflecting the rigors of the quarry work, a six-and-a-half-hour workday.

Such organizing is the farthest thing from the, well, anarchy we here associate with the movement. But anarchism had many forms, and an amoeba-like propensity to divide into new, sometimes hostile factions. “Anarco-syndicalism” is the labor version, a type of “social anarchism.” The opposite brand, “individualist anarchism,” became “libertarianism”: Ron Paul, neo-anarchist. Then there are anarco-pacifism, anarco-naturism (freedom from clothing), everything except anarco-authoritarianism. The unifying element in all these anarchism: the belief that government, and coercive authority generally, are pernicious and unnecessary.

That didn’t forbid organizing, and Carrara’s anarco-syndicalists sometimes showed themselves very good at it, and not just at organizing strikes. Under German occupation in 1944 and ’45, the region saw some of the bloodiest fighting and atrocities in wartime Italy; the fascist Black Brigades were so brutal they even shocked the S.S. The anarchists formed one of the most effective partisan forces against them, and even cooperated with their communist, republican, and Christian counterparts. But they knew how to cut a deal. The anarchist partisan commander (yes, “commander”) Ugo Mazzucchelli persuaded the Germans to leave Carrara peacefully, without the usual massacres and mass evacuations. After the war, he organized food banks and networks that saved the town from starvation.

The organizing went international in 1968 when Carrara hosted a conference of the French, Spanish, and Italian Anarchist Federations, plus a few Bulgarian exiles. They organized an International which continues to this day, with chapters across Europe and South America. In Carrara, the heirs to that project still published a weekly newspaper – mailed to 8,000 subscribers in dozens of countries – and operated a bookstore/archive-cum Cultural Center named after Gogliardo Fiaschi, who got caught on a quixotic mission to assassinate Spain’s General Franco in 1957. He’s buried in the in a little field called the Anarchist’s Cemetery at the entrance to town.

L’anarchia seemed the prevailing political sentiment in Carrara; I heard even wealthy quarry owners call themselves anarchists. It would have been the dominant political force as well, if it could have while continuing to be itself. But the anarchists proudly refused to vote: Non votiamo bumper stickers were everywhere, and the communists (“Mercedes Benz communists,” some sneered) controlled city hall. Disdain for government may be a reasonable response to Italy’s merry-go-round of graft and corruption. But it may also explain why Carrara had so much more graffiti on its ancient walls and dog poop on its sidewalks than nearby Pietrasanta.

Still, the town was safe and relatively crime-free. Personal responsibility is enshrined in the anarchist canon: “To live outside the law you must be honest,” Bob Dylan once sang. Given natural primate duplicity, that must be why it’s so hard to live outside the law.

Once a year, the anarchists peaceably took to the streets and took the town. On primo maggio work stopped and a couple hundred stalwarts and fellow travelers, and the odd tagalong like me, mustered under the big red and black banner: Nè servi nè padroni, “Neither servants nor masters.” The speeches were spirited and blessedly brief, with war heroes urging on the younger generation. The crowd skewed much older than Occupy rallies: Grizzled veterans of turbulent past decades, a smaller cohort of the 20ish, right down to toddlers and their neatly groomed older brothers bearing the red and black banner. Some wore ties and some scuffed jeans; some of the women, this being Italy, were in fine fashion; most wore the red and black bandana.

They all set off, behind a brass band of course, on a peregrination that can best be compared to the Stations of the Cross. A dozen or so times they stopped to watch solemnly as red poppy wreaths were hung on marble wall plaques and monuments. These memorials, placed by gli anarchici, honor martyrs to fascist and official violence – from Francisco Ferrer, a Catalan educator summarily executed in 1909, to a mother and son gunned down on a Carrara sidewalk in 1921 after he bumped shoulders with local fascists. Where the monuments stood too high, firemen in chartreuse-striped uniforms climbed ladders to hang the wreaths. Government was good for something – at the least, for protecting the city from liability for falls.

In the 1980s, when Italy was considering readmitting its exiled royal heirs, Ugo Mazzucchelli convinced Carrara’s city council to approve a monument to Gaetano Bresci, the man who assassinated King Umberto I in 1900. The president of the republic denounced the idea and the Italian Monarchist Association sued to stop it. So, one dark night the anarchists installed a slab inscribed to Bresci in the Anarchists’ Cemetery. It stands there still.

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Such dustups were now old history, and the assassinations and massacres even older. Primo maggio had the reverent, nostalgic air of Memorial Day ceremonies, only more festive. It turned into a folk festival when the march ended and everyone trooped up to a sprawling loft in an imposing old building owned by the anarchist circle. They sat on the floor, drank from bottomless jugs of good cheap red wine, munched on raw fava beans, strummed guitars, and sang stirring songs that I was sure I’d remember and of course didn’t.

So wait a hundred years and the anarchist bogey will turn mellow and respectable. Perhaps we could speed the process by declaring ourselves all anarchists and inviting the Black Bloc-heads to the party.

X0lQN9Q3xHs

[aty]

Did a quick google translate from a comrade with very god insight in the italian anarchist movement:
"It seems to be aroudn the anarcho-insurrectional environment with a background in Rovereto and Como. Organized around the site http://www.informa-azione.info/ . Centers in northern Italy on the border of Switzerland, and they consequently have a close cooperation with the Swiss anarchists. Several of the activists have moved to Bologna (Fuoriluogo) and Milan. The group has a pretty good international contacts.

One of the approximately eight permanent opposition camps for the No Tav in Val di Susa has become a gathering place for those Italian, Spanish, French, Swiss and Greek anarchists. (The other camps is closer to autonomous movements, especially social center Askatasuna).

No matter what groups or organizations you speak to in Italy - anarchists, communists or autonomous. No one wants to take in these people even with pliers. The anger is also high among the activists after the fire attack this gang carried out against common property under the protection of the great demo in Rome October 15 last year."

[The Cheshire Cat]

Thank you. So if they do not repects common property under the protection of the great demo in Rome October 15 last year, does that mean they are ruthless/careless, or just not anarchists?

[Os Cangaceiros]

True. But Italy also had a strong fascist culture, as Benito Mussolini was the first fascist ruler.

Yes, but that happened later, after the disasterous suicidal defeat of the Italian left during the early 1920's.


Why not?

Most people on this particular website frown upon "illegalism" and so forth.

[bcbm]

It was one of the few European countries in which anarchism was a genuine mass movement in the early 20th century.

according to hobsbawm, quoted in 'blame flame,' anarchism/syndicalism were the dominant revolutionary currents pretty much until 1917

[The Cheshire Cat]

Most people on this particular website frown upon "illegalism" and so forth.

With illegalism you mean groups without a permission to protest or something else?

[Sasha]

No, illigalism was a specific anarchist tendency, wiki it..

[Positivist]

I can't imagine that these bombing attempts are resonating with the Italian public, and I would believe that on the contrary they set up negative associations of anarchism with violence.

[Os Cangaceiros]

according to hobsbawm, quoted in 'blame flame,' anarchism/syndicalism were the dominant revolutionary currents pretty much until 1917

That is true, I remember reading that. I think that Spain, France and Italy were the three countries in which anarchism/revolutionary syndicalism had the strongest pull, though.

[StalinFanboy]

I can't imagine that these bombing attempts are resonating with the Italian public, and I would believe that on the contrary they set up negative associations of anarchism with violence.

I'm not so sure (about 99-100%) that these particular anarchists are all that interested in "resonating with the Italian public," but rather attacking the people and institutions they feel need to be attacked.

But of course what does the "italian public" even mean? I imagine that within this, there are people who resonate with these actions and people who don't.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I can't imagine that these bombing attempts are resonating with the Italian public, and I would believe that on the contrary they set up negative associations of anarchism with violence.

Assuming the alleged attacks aren't just some government black flag shit, I still don't see how that would inherently alienate the proletariat/people; I don't really get the logic behind that considering, virtually everyone knows the system is fucked, thus I don't think strong attacks on the system would be viewed negatively provided they target strictly politico-economic targets.

[NoOneIsIllegal]

anarchism/syndicalism were the dominant revolutionary currents pretty much until 1917
While primarily true, revolutionary syndicalism/anarchism still had a massive influence in certain areas. The Italian Factory Occupations of 1920 was a sign of that. If the tension hadn't cooled down, (Northern) Italy was heading towards a revolutionary scenario. The enormous growth of the anarcho-syndicalist USI (80,000 in 1912; 800,000 in 1920) also shows anarchists still had a strong presence in the country where I would argue the anarchist movement first began.

I think that Spain, France and Italy were the three countries in which anarchism/revolutionary syndicalism had the strongest pull, though.
You're forgetting the always-overshadowed country of Portugal. People often forget Portugal simply because it didn't have a massive revolutionary situation (Spain: Civil War), or had important founding organizations (France's CGT being the first syndicalist union, etc.)
Portugal had one of the largest anarcho-syndicalist organizations of all time, in terms of comparison in population. At its peak, the revolutionary CGT had over 40% of organized-labor in Portugal. Anarchist-thought and activity was more prevalent throughout the entire country, and was very common among your average workers life, compared to it being only popular in certain parts of Spain, such as Catalonia.
There's also the South American countries of Chile, Argentina, Peru, and Brazil. Major anarchist influence in the militant working-class movements from the 1880s to the 1920s. In some countries like Chile, syndicalists were the majority in the country's main labor-union federation.