Luigi Palli – Dark Nights

Contribution to the Internationalist Days in Prague May 20-26, 2024

First of all, I want to congratulate and salute the comrades from Třídní Válka, for their commitment and perseverance. In these last two sad years of war they have been active, including and especially in contacting revolutionary groups abroad, something that – in my opinion – few in our latitudes have done.

That said, I must point out, alas, a couple of issues. I have been invited (as has the entire editorial staff of “Bezmotivny”) to the week of international action against the war, to be held in Prague between May 20 and 26, 2024. As editor of the internationalist anarchist fortnightly “Bezmotivny,” it is fair to say that I will not be able to attend. Or at least, between now and May is a long time, but I don’t think the provisions the Italian state has imposed on us will change.

In fact, on August 8, 2023, we were all subjected to precautionary measures on charges of subversive association for the purpose of terrorism, incitement to commit a crime with the aggravating factor of the purpose of terrorism, insulting the honor or prestige of the president of the republic, and clandestine printing, for having, over a period of three years, published incessantly every fortnight the newspaper “Bezmotivny.”

The operation conducted by the District Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate of the city of Genoa involved ten anarchists for whom arrest in prison had been requested. Some still have an obligation to stay (with overnight return) in their city, others have hopped between jail and house arrest with all the restrictions (prohibition to communicate with anyone, under penalty of jail). Currently there are four of us on house arrest, five on mandatory residence, and one at large. The whole repressive operation revolves around “our” newspaper, they do not accuse us of specific facts except precisely the editing, printing and distribution of “Bezmotivny.”

It seems important to me to say all this, because the repression operating in Italy (not only the one we were involved in, but during 2023 it affected many anarchists all over Italy) is fully part of the policies of war moved by this rotten country.

I don’t want to complain about this at all, I think it is normal and deeply consistent on the part of a state to arrest any revolutionary voice, so in truth I’m fine with the way it works, rather than the fringe pretense of democratic spaces I prefer the real struggle. Rather than dissenting games good only for political stands, I prefer confrontation. Continue reading “Luigi Palli: Contribution to the Internationalist Days in Prague May 20-26, 2024” →

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. Continue reading “Italy: ‘In the sunlight’ Luigi Palli” →