If this was an acceptable world, in which information was not a dangerous weapon, meant – as it is – for mass destruction, deprived of whatsoever care for civilians, the news that someone had set fire to some waste-boxes and than sent a few books stuffed with fireworks by mail, would have its honourable collocation in second-rate news.
In facts, the echo aroused by media about some fireworks sent to Romano Prodi, to ECB’s chairman, to Eurojust and some euro-deputies, some days after the arson of a pair of waste-boxes in the centre of Bologna, allegedly became the pretext to rise to top-levels the “terrorism alert” that Berlusconi and Bush in the past weeks prognosticated. From one shore to the other of the Atlantic ocean, the announces bounced together with the further militarising of flights and land. With similar measures, preventive and long-lasting war is meant to reach two main targets – on the one side it feeds fear, due to insecurity brought about by an external enemy always in ambush; on the other it keeps in check all subjects involved in the collapse of social, political and economical order, in this process requiring criminalisation, expulsion and violent elimination of all those that don’t stick to the rules of the game. In the era of total war to terrorism, a rise of tension is needed now and again, otherwise there is the risk that the stink of the corpses of children killed in Afghanistan or the news of Iraqi prisoners beaten to death, might result intolerable even for the tough stomachs of the subjects of our capitalist and warmongering North.
On the other hand, in Italy, since months the Ministry of Interior and the media agitate the ghost of terrorism, pointing to anarchists as a foremost danger. Some obscene police notes went as far as suggesting an anarchist hand behind the dismal fashion of poisoning bottles of drinking water. In an era when governments promote privatisation of all water resources, condemning to thirst individuals by billions all over the planet, in an era when the filth produced by capitalism poisons water wells, nothing better than throwing mud precisely on those that oppose this havoc, is conceived.
But, if anarchists are the favourite target of government and the press, the concern of these gentlemen has had a wider reach. Net operations and searches in the houses and in town districts where immigrants live have been on schedule all the past year around. Immigrated have been treated as a whole as potential criminals, to the point of granting them expulsions based on the mere suspicion of collusion with the terrorist organisations. To say nothing of transport workers, that have been pointed out as dangerous rascals just for trying to grasp a handful of euro of rise of wages by refusing to work outside the frames imposed by a legislation that has reduced the right to strike to a joke. And, before them, it was the turn of the millions that demonstrated against war, against militarism, against the neo-colonial policy of the Italian government. On the domestic scenery of Italy, preventive war imposes to neutralise at birth any effort towards social self-organisation, that might escape to the stammering mechanisms of institutional recuperation and integration brought forward by political parties and state syndicalism.
In conclusion, whoever is critical to the executive’s deeds ends up by being under suspect of terrorism [...]
By the end of 2003, as a praiseworthy conclusion of a whole year in which every form of un-submitting has been promptly criminalised, these packets punctually arrived. Harmless for the beneficiaries but cleverly utilised on the way to realising on the local plan the global police State.
Immediately, the discussion referred to special laws that will go to join the heap of repressive acts of the last thirty years, during which every new “emergency” has been used to reduce the already few, fought-for, liberties. Against the lower classes, a study is already at hand to extend the “association crime” – a fascist inheritance that renders vain, as ever, the liberal truism asserting individual responsibility before a court.
The alarm raised by such Christmas mail finally gave a most sparkling push to the slow and tiresome process of setting up a European police – besides all existing species of national, military, regional, local police we will soon see the Eurocop!
To say nothing of the cloud of dust that has confined to the backstage the institutional clash about information, the growing difficulties inside the majority, or items like retirement, and the conflicting liberties of sacking and striking. During these very same days the team headed by cavalier Berlusconi, right after solving their own and their class problems with “special” laws, are preparing to wipe away all that survives of the Welfare State and launch once more an assault to the residual warranties granted by the “Workers’ Statute”.
If ever an action had to be judged on the basis of its results, we could have no doubts about the senders of the smoky mailing. And, to say it outright, in our concern it makes little difference if the authors be directly on the pay-book of the Ministry of Interior or perform generous voluntary tasks. Gratuitous or for wages, theirs is a dirty job.
In fact, with the packets, a vindication of authorship arrived, with the name of a newly-born informal gathering whose acronym “FAI” is identical to the one of the Italian Anarchist Federation. Evident is the scornful intent, and maybe less evident but very weighty is the will to put in trouble anarchists committed to a hard, daily struggle towards the construction of a society of free and equals.
But such a society cannot be an imposition. Anarchists know that freedom is a collective practice, needing a steady engagement to root in the consciences and in daily deeds of everyone, assuming features in joint action and social struggle. The upsurge against oppression becomes a sterile blaze if, at the same time, it is unable to build, if it doesn’t infect the surrounding environment – soon burning out in isolation.
Bakunin maintained that freedom of everyone enhances liberties for all – here is living and fed the deep kernel of social anarchism – a body or revolutionary projecting, pushed towards a transformation, with the oppressed and exploited as first actors.
Anarchists’ action materialises inside the social movements, in the paths autonomous from any institution, in the capacity to give life to specific and mass organisations moulded on the principles of self-management and federalism. An Anarchist Federation is a place where relations and live confrontation are realised, between men and women that compose it, sharing a libertarian method and a program of radical social change. An Anarchist Federation in its doings foreshadows the social sphere in which we aim to live, where relationship is direct, face to face confrontation and even clash of different options is heading towards a possible synthesis, respectful of individual paths and choices. In its formal existence lies the guarantee of freedom, because the associating pact on which it is based is founded on the autonomy of groups and individuals.
Militants of the Anarchist Federation are accustomed – in spite of their wish – to face repression. Our involvement in the streets, in workshops, against racism, militarism, war, capitalist and State oppression only during this last year, was paid with several prosecutions. To say nothing of beatings, searches, and the steady work of misinformation brought about by the media.
We were in the demonstrations against capitalist globalisation, by the gates of the security camps for immigrated and prisons, in struggles against death factories, nuclear dumps, incinerators, we participated in strikes and picketing, are active in fights for housing and social spaces, wherever self-organisation, direct action, rejection of representation and self-participation are practised – from Lucania where a revolt against nuclear dump took place, to the transport strikes.
The government and the press may carry on with the association of anarchists and bombs, terrorism and anarchy – we will not be intimidated, today as in 1969. […] Those that know us have grown to be quite a few, and they know very well who are the terrorists that every day drop bombs, poison, oppress, take advantage of, kill, harass, put in jail those that have no power and are exploited. These seat in the benches of governments, in the hierarchies of all the churches, in the board of directors of corporations and banks, in the rows of parliaments, in the headquarters of all armies. To beat them, solidarity and commitment of the oppressed and the exploited is needed –the only means capable to put an end to oppression, hierarchy, the State.

The national meeting of the Italian Anarchist Federation (FAI)
Milan 2004, 01, 10-11.