Statement filed by Francesco Rota in the course of the preliminary hearing in the Sibilla case
I would never have written this statement if I had not felt that under attack was not only a path of analysis and critical insight, thus an important portion of my life, but above all a fellow anarchist whom the state in recent years has intended to bury under a blanket of isolation aimed at annihilation, because according to the anti-terrorist organs he was representative of decades of experience in revolutionary struggle. Then again, it was clear that a transfer to 41 bis and a life sentence amounted to attempted annihilation. The international solidarity movement of the years 2022-’23, however, by the force of the actions taken, first broke the silence and later spoiled the precarious political balance on which this attempt was based.
After several years of investigations by the Milan prosecutor’s office, aimed at attempting to somehow link the defendants to actions of attack, the Perugia prosecutor’s office inherited as part of an investigation into an anarchist space those acts of investigation concerning the editing and distribution of the newspaper for which indictment is being sought today. Coming to these last years, here then appears the shameless intention to employ this proceeding as a 41 bis support function against Alfredo Cospito. This intention, together with the ongoing attack against revolutionary anarchist publications in the context of the belligerent policies of the last executives, is therefore one of the reasons why I am filing this statement today. In this sense, I again express my solidarity with Alfredo Cospito without half-measures, reconfirm what I have already stated at the review hearing on the precautionary measures on March 14, 2023, and reiterate the reasons for my visceral participation in the 2022-’23 mobilization against 41 bis and hostile life imprisonment.
How to act against the overall technological turn that has been taking place for decades by fighting it now, before it is too late? What implications in social confrontation and revolutionary struggle do the ongoing technological process and the changes that have taken place in social reality in recent decades have? And how to equip for this? What clash can take place in a society where capacities for class struggle and organization are manifesting with extreme difficulty? Who are the exploiters, the masters, today? These are some of the questions posed between the pages of the newspaper under indictment, where the prosecution instead intends to see at all costs instigation and orienting and terrorist capabilities. However, this is not what I am talking about: analyses on the terrain of revolutionary struggle are not the concern of the courts, which by their very constitution cannot comprehend the essence of anarchists’ struggles.
I have known anarchism for as long as I can remember and, amazed, without anyone having pointed me in any direction, I discovered the ideas and practice of anarchists from the words of comrades, from their example and from the writings found in that anarchist propaganda that is today being prosecuted as incitement to crime with the aggravating circumstance of the purpose of terrorism. It is therefore difficult to describe what the texts of anarchism meant to me, with their density and depth of analysis of social reality: some had the revealing ability to shed light on only apparently marginal aspects that I had never before considered, concerning the things of the world and life in their totality; others, on the other hand, shocked me in their being a slap in the face against all accommodation and compromise.
Anarchism does not only imply the existence of a movement, the anarchist movement, which only at the cost of a gross oversimplification we could call first and foremost a political movement, but it has always been something more, something profoundly different that speaks of the dream and possible realization of a different life, radically different from the one we live today. Anarchism implies the undermining of our guarantees, of many of our certainties. Fighting for anarchism therefore inevitably means entering the dimension of risk inherent in the desire for integral, authentic freedom, certainly not the artificial democratic “freedoms” of which courts, inquisitors and butlers of the state stand as champions.
This knowledge of anarchism of mine has therefore been an enormous fortune, and today I cannot help but think of the absence of an anarchist, of my father, who made this fortune possible, untying the intuitions of the heart from the strings of petty logic and bringing up that cry for freedom that cries out in our hearts.
So you will understand that I do not turn to you today to beg for something, to advance justifications, to initiate a confrontation, to deny something that for me is not only the passion of all time, but the indissoluble essence of my ideas, my very life.
Francesco Rota
Source: La Nemesi
