The homeland of Beccaria? A homeland of gravediggers
So many people are digging for a corpse, but no one takes the responsibility of being the executioner. At the same time, it’s full of gravediggers ready to throw shovels of mud preparing the grave for the anarchist. A confused and dishevelled ballet around the gallows with many bit players: ‘zero tolerance’, institutional blame-game, audience depending changes of course, the spectre of anarchy that keeps the government, or rather the state, ‘under checkmate’, and then the ‘mass-murdering’ anarchists colluding with the mass-murdering mafiosi, with the appearance on stage of the PD [Partito Democratico, “Democratic Party”].
A poorly written and poorly acted theater, a scramble of ignorant ‘experts’, of professional and compulsive liars, of low journalism, sloth and cowardice that does nothing but reveal what is the potential of an individual waging a struggle alone against the state moloch. A moloch, by the way, that by its own makers claim must be very fragile if a few writings on the walls, broken shop windows and a few burnt cars are enough to put it in ‘danger’.
Whichever way you look at it, the struggle of an anarchist thrown into a torture regime has broken the prevailing narrative. Despite the ridiculous attempt to credit him as colluding with (or, even worse, directed by…) the Mafia, despite the ridiculous attempt to misrepresent his acts and words, it would seem that a little critical sense prevails, and that the attempt to undermine his credibility and integrity achieves the opposite effect of bringing out the linear coherence of anti-authoritarians and revolutionaries who continue to defend their ideas and practices without being distracted by the fireworks of post-modern media politics. And that unite, whereas repression would divide.
Shifting the focus away from the smokescreen that has been raised, which forces one to respond to low-grade rubbish, it would suffice to sustain oneself on the cornerstones of anti-authoritarian thinking: to talk of a weld between anarchists and the Mafia (and its corollary: that antagonism in the streets supports the ‘mafiosi’) is an oxymoron, just as it would be to speak of a weld between anarchists and the State for who, in case anyone had forgotten, has always made the rejection of political delegation a bulwark against the representative drift and the trafficking that underlies it. Exactly why opposing imprisonment and torture does not mean sanctifying the people inside, who are often enslaved subservients (and/or also applying) the same political and authoritarian dynamics.
Anarchism is guilty of having been swept aside and mistreated by official historiography or swallowed up in the vortex of inculture of 21st century digital illiteracy, yet its contribution to the development of the tensions and revolutionary path of the last two centuries has been fundamental, although often overexposed to the risk of instrumentalisation, internal purges or self-dissolution, unable to make the results obtained bear fruit in the long term.
However, anarchism has the virtue of being a mala erba, tenacious and difficult to uproot, which relapses more powerfully if one tries to eradicate it. That is what we are experiencing. Its mercurial ability to unite and divide, its fluidity and unpredictability have given it the ability to raise one of the thorniest, most censored and misrepresented issues: prison and torture regimes.
So much needs to be discussed, in the immediate term and in perspective. Now there is a man to support, all the way to the end, since too many are playing without restraint on his very life.
Anna
February 5th, 2023
Translator’s note: Cesare Beccaria was a Lombard enlightened man of the 18th century who was particularly concerned with the punitive system. He is considered advanced because, among other things, he opposed the death penalty.
[Translation received via e-mail and published at https://lanemesi.noblogs.org/post/2023/02/20/the-homeland-of-beccaria-a-homeland-of-gravediggers/]
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(IT) La patria di Beccaria? Una patria di becchini
(EN) The homeland of Beccaria? A homeland of gravediggers
(ES) ¿La patria de Beccaria? Una patria de sepultureros