For Mutual Aid & Solidarity
We inform that just over a week ago comrade Alfredo was subjected to a three-month censorship of correspondence.
Updates will follow.
The address of the comrade:
Alfredo Cospito
C. C. di Terni
strada delle Campore 32
05100 Terni
Italia – Italy
[September 30, 2021].
Source: Malacoda
The following text is the intervention of fellow anarchist Alfredo Cospito, currently imprisoned in Terni, for the debate on the book What International?, held in the context of the second edition of the initiative “Land of Love and Freedom”, two days of anarchist publishing in Calabria focused on internationalism and revolutionary continuity, in Grisolia 23-24 August 2021.
Lately I have been wondering with what nerve an anarchist prisoner for ten years as I claim to express an analysis “realistic” about the present, the real movement outside these four walls. The interview with “Vetriolo” caught me still relatively soaked in reality, out of the fray of the struggle, still convinced of having a “realistic” and objective view of the world. What international? is the result of thirty years of practiced struggle, of blows inflicted and received, of affinities and friendships born and then traumatically severed by the wall of a prison. Summing up, today I can say with a certain conviction that the only moments in which I was certain of having contributed to changing things were those moments in which I clashed with the system, in which I risked my freedom and my skin. In those moments I lived, I felt more alive than ever. And the pleasure I felt was incomparable, comparable only to the love for one’s own or one’s partner in the most intense moments of passion. I remember when, as a young boy, it seemed impossible for me to intervene concretely, the level of deepening always seemed insufficient, the practical skills I had didn’t seem up to the task, I didn’t know where to start, at the beginning one feels inept, incapable… I was waiting for a suggestion, a start from my more experienced companions. Often, in exchange for my enthusiasm, I received a good dose of “realism” that dampened or risked dampening any revolutionary “ambition”, any drive to action. Incredible as it may seem, “realism” sometimes makes any action, any impetus, impossible. I came out of this sort of “dead end” only when I decided in an impish, reckless, crazy, provocative way to arm my hands. Then everything became “easy”, failure after failure, step by step, things started to work. I looked for my companions and I found them, we recognized each other by making the refusal of delegation and wait-and-see our compass. Many (perhaps too many) years have passed since that time and today I find myself on the other side, “navigated” anarchist with more “experience”. And what I feel like saying is simply to follow your instincts and not to pay too much attention to the prudence of those who from the height of their lives “lived” push for moderation. Because that popular saying “you are born an arsonist and you die a fireman” is not so far-fetched. Every day in here I fight with myself to remain what I was, and I don’t always succeed. In my words I sometimes glimpse what I’ve always fought, opportunism, paternalism, realism… “politics”. Dynamics that risk making me forget how beautiful it was to communicate only through gestures of destruction and the words that followed them. When I wasn’t in danger of becoming a “point of reference”, when I was a complete stranger. And the stupid things I happened to say remained limited, no one rightly spun them. The tragicomic thing is that the “metamorphosis” is almost painless and does not only affect us prisoners but perhaps even more those who outside these walls every day relate to a reality that tends to normalize. The “realism” drags you to a continuous decline that leads you to judge those who remain “themselves” as naive, provocative, childish, deluded. Continue reading “Italy: Intervention of Alfredo Cospito to the initiative “Land of Love and Freedom” in Grisolia (24.08.2021)”
Internationalism has always been the principle inspiring the actions and horizons of the exploited who do not accept the role that society has given them. It has always been a vaccine against 
opportunism of every kind, a guarantee that those who practice it are not the servants of their boss or a foreign boss, but are authentic enemies of all forms of exploitation and authority. Internationalism as tension, as spirit, does not change with the changing of times. But the way it becomes real in history changes. Reformists, opportunists and authoritarians have always tried to pervert internationalism towards their own interests. The question of questions, the lever get the world to rise up, is therefore the International. How, what should the International be today? Should it be a real “organization”, a federation of groups, a “world party”? Or can there be instruments or “structures” that are closer to the anarchist Idea and that are more effective in this historical period?
Like “scientific” socialism, anarchism was born to oppose a global process, capitalism and the advent of the bourgeoisie. It is more than natural that anarchists and Marxists have from the beginning pursued with alternating fortunes an international organizational dimension. In the nineteenth century, with Bakunin, anarchy abandoned the philosophical, idealist level to take its first steps in the real world. First against Mazzini’s messianic liberalism, to then clash with Marx’s state socialism, giving rise to the autonomist federalist currents within the First International.
Continue reading “Interview and dialogue with Alfredo Cospito from the prison of Ferrara [Published in anarchist paper Vetriolo, Issue 2, Autumn 2018]”
Anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito has been transferred from the Alta Sicurezza 2 (“High Security 2”) section of Ferrara prison to that of Terni. Below the new address:
Alfredo Cospito
C. C. di Terni
strada delle Campore 32
05100 Terni
Italia – Italy
The comrade has been in prison since September 14, 2012, following the repressive operation that led to his arrest and that of another comrade, both accused of having shot and wounded Roberto Adinolfi, the CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare, on May 7 of that year in Genoa. The action, claimed by the Nucleo Olga of Federazione Anarchica Informale – Fronte Rivoluzionario Internazionale (“Informal Anarchist Federation – International Revolutionary Front”), was then claimed individually by the two comrades also during the first degree trial held in Genoa. The comrade had been imprisoned in Ferrara’s AS2 since 2013.
We also recall that Alfredo, in addition to the 9 years and 5 months sentence received in the trial for the action against Adinolfi, was sentenced to 20 years in first and second instance of the Scripta Manent trial held in Turin since 2017 and derived from the arrests of September 6, 2016. Around twenty comrades were charged in the trial, with regard to the activities of the FAI (later FAI–FRI) in Italy, involving also specific charges relating to a series of actions realized between 2005 and 2016 and for some anarchist publications and websites run by comrades. In the appeal sentence of November 24, 2020, three comrades were convicted for subversive association with the purposes of terrorism and subversion of the democratic order and for “incitement to commit crimes”. Among these three comrades, Anna Beniamino and Alfredo Cospito were convicted for some actions (explosive attacks and parcel bombs) carried out between 2005 and 2007. In addition, ten other comrades were sentenced for various reasons only for “incitement to crimes”. Currently, in addition to Alfredo, Anna is imprisoned (in Messina prison), sentenced to 16 years and 6 months.
Forgetting the prisoners of the social war means forgetting the war itself: revolutionary solidarity with the imprisoned anarchists.
Some anarchists in solidarity
July 1st, 2021
[Published & translated by malacoda.noblogs.org].