Carlo Carrà, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 1910-1911 (oil on canvas, 198.7×259.1 cm, currently at the Museum of Modern Art, New York).
In the sunlight
I had thought, clumsily, that this would go on for less time. Yet, given the stubbornness with which the state wants to silence us (and quickly condemn us), I decided to take the floor again. Which is wise or not matters little. Then again, hard to say whether giving up (whether by compulsion or not) any interaction with one’s affections and struggle is wise.
Sure, there are many ploys that are surely smarter than a signed first and last name black on white. But there is one thing I can’t stop thinking is right: putting your face to it. Yes, this small but profound issue for me is very much linked to what have been (and will be) all the publishing projects or stirring moments that have involved me over the years.
It is what I have always, personally, ardently supported. To say loud and clear that I support and agree with direct action, making explicit what I think is the most congenial method of achieving the zeroing out of the “values” of bourgeois society. The insurrectional method. The attack on men and structures of the state and Capitalism.
Here, I don’t believe there are anarchists who are afraid to say these things. I think it is the essence of the revolutionary himself this obstinacy, this constant quest, to spread and bring out ideas, to create or sustain dimensions of social confrontation.
The attempt to define us as a clandestine and terrorist organization fails not so much in the actual facts, such as our membership in an extremely public anarchist circle, or for editing a newspaper that was distributed not certainly (and perhaps unfortunately) in secrecy in the locker rooms of some factory, but fails and is demolished by the simple fact that anarchists, revolutionaries all in general, spread ideas in the light of day.
We are not a sect of little boys who tell themselves about it, we are proletarians and with other proletarians we interact, spreading the ideas that seem most congenial to us for human liberation.
Depriving us of the availability, then of our books and our venues (which, moreover, are expressly and insistently OPEN to everyone except cops and bosses), would lock us into a vortex of total isolation aimed at a forced “hiding” unable then to operate effectively, alienating anarchism in the eyes of the exploited. Which, in my opinion, we have seen happen and intensify over the past two decades. Dangerous, then, closure.
Indeed, rolling up one’s sleeves and chasing one’s paws in today’s social mess is a very unappealing thing to do. More convenient, instead, to tell a select few about the evolution of a thought, such as the anarchist one, destining it to perish among the inebriated dialogues of such pure beings, setting them up as the sole gatekeepers. The others, the uncouth, the proletarians, the whores, the poor, with their filthy language, their uncorrected foibles (sic) do not deserve the attention of these self-proclaimed good people.
This is not only the death of anarchism, this is the death of all those dreams of liberation that have always accompanied human beings since the existence of authoritarian societies.
For me, “Bezmotivny” was an attempt, in this sense, to get out of the atarassic household chores and back into the mire of the street. A first attempt that waits for nothing more than to overcome its own limitations.
Obviously, however, beyond the individual ideas expressed in the articles, what weighs perhaps most heavily is the choice to publish claims of direct action in Italy but also and especially with regard to facts that have become apparent in other countries. Here again, one might say, nothing all that strange.
It is clear that a prosecutor of a certain prestige such as Mr. Manotti took advantage of the willingness of a group of comrades not to fear support for direct action to, precisely, point them out as belonging to the so-called terrorist sodality that would gravitate around the much abused by the FAI-IRF chronicle. For my own part, I have always been well aware that publishing a claim, supporting its justness, has its repercussions (and journalistic motions are false: revolutionaries have always gone to jail for papers, writings, or articles, it was never different from today, perhaps it happened a little less with the monarchy). Unfortunately for some even after (albeit a few) six months of house arrest with all the restrictions, this about me has not changed. I still think it is right to publish and spread revolutionary actions, I think it is right and when I can I will continue to publish newspapers, pamphlets, leaflets, posters.
I will continue to interact with other exploited people, trying to spread as much as possible even just the idea of the rightness of revolutionary violence.
What I just cannot understand, or at least it is not so clear to me, is what do these gentlemen think they are doing with us? The anarchists, regardless of our imprisoned status, will continue to document, to print leaflets and newspapers. And even when they are forced to flee, they will do so in the shadows. So, I feel like saying, keep us as long as you like. This will not change.
Having said that, I wholeheartedly salute all defectors around the world and all comrades fighting against the war. Long live the revolution! Long live the anarchists!
Luigi Palli
February 2024
P.S.: watch out Manotti that in prison I might dismantle a bunk and build an Offset.
PDF: Alla luce del sole
[Received by e-mail and posted at https://lanemesi.noblogs.org/post/2024/02/07/alla-luce-del-sole/]