IN TIMES OF WAR
About the anti-anarchist raid of June 16th
Tuesday June 16th, in Rome and elsewhere, yet more raids struck the anarchist movement, with six arrest warrants for as many comrades various others under investigation, searches all over Italy and the eviction of the occupied space in Rome, Bencivenga.
As well as that, two comrades have been arrested with the new charge of “terrorismo della parola” [terrorism of the word] (270-quinquies) for possession of a number of pamphlets found during the raid.
While the information leaked by the media is scarcer and more patchy than usual, it is quite clear that the investigations concern a number of acts of sabotage of railway lines, in particular that carried out on February 14th on the Rome-Florence line, against the Cortina war Olympics in 2026.If the media’s efforts of mystification and defamation against anarchists is certainly nothing new, we cannot avoid pondering for a moment on the level reached by the propaganda of the regime this time (in particular by the ineffable TG1[main TV news]), which is particularly grotesque: “they would meet in a farmhouse like the Mafia”, “they were planning the strategy of tension”, “they were intending to carry out violent actions”, “anarchist terrorism”… It is worth pointing out to these gentlemen that for anarchists the Mafia is as bad as Authority, and that the “strategy of tension” was carried out in this country by the State, it is not difficult to see that behind these filthy words there is a precise intention: that which led, in 2015, to transforming the National Antimafia Direction (DNA) into National Antimafia and Antiterrorism Direction (DNAA). With the result that the same absolute ‘monsterisation’ and relative treatment previously reserved for real or presumed mafiosi is now being applied to anarchists (and moreover has been inflicted on the revolutionary communists for decades).
With the aggravation, for revolutionaries, of not carrying out violence for reasons of profit or power, but as a kind of end in itself for the sheer joy of destruction or who knows what death wish. As if thousands of people had not opposed the winter Olympics for very clear reasons: the presence of the military (not in uniform for the occasion), of the Israeli team, the escort of the ICE gangs of murderers, the devastation of the Alpine environment in the name of the usual “grand event” – and as if these motivations had not been claimed, unequivocally, in the communique following the sabotage. As for the usual accusation of “terrorism”, we believe that Gaza has clarified this question sufficiently – and that there can be no more doubt about who spreads the terror.
In times of war, an old poet said, the first victim is truth.
While Alfredo Cospito remains in 41-bis like a kind of scapegoat for the “sins” of the whole anarchist movement, the State has reached the point of criminalising the very intention of doing something to stop him being tortured. While we are still recovering from the shock of the death of Sara and Sandro the State is trying to use this against us.
We don’t know if those arrested and under investigation carried out the actions they are accused of. We can only repeat what we have written many times in similar cases: if they are “innocent” they have all our solidarity, if they are “guilty” they have it even more.
Solidarity to Nico, Bibi, Micol, Arnau, Stefano, Giulia, Luna, Pietro, Tony, to all those under investigation and those raided.
Alfredo out of 41-bis!
With Sara and Sandro in our hearts.
Anarchists of Trento and Rovereto
Translated by Act for freedom now!