Preventive class war of the Italian State

The arrests that took place in the early morning of Tuesday, 19 July on a warrant from the Piacenza public prosecutor’s office are indicative of the repressive climate in Italy and the authoritarian turn in course. Four SI Cobas trade unionists were placed under house arrest for the long cycle of struggles that inflamed logistics from 2014 to 2021. Together with them, two USB trade unionists were also placed under house arrest and two others are the recipients of other precautionary measures. The prosecutor Grazia Pradella’s accusations are of conspiracy, assault, resisting a public official, sabotage and interruption of a public service aimed at extortion in order to obtain better wage conditions for workers.

We do not think we should be shocked by this repressive operation, as is happening at the moment, but rather that we should emphasise that it is an open manifestation, a true confession, of the mentality of the bourgeoisie in this historical period: for the gentlemen of GLS, Amazon, FedEx-TNT, as well as from the arrogant statements that are uttered every day by the leaders of Confindustria, everything must be allowed, everything must be permissible for them. Even putting up a tough fight for a wage increase becomes extortion. The whole loot belongs to them by right, one must not dare ask, one must not fight. The accusation of extortion is therefore not a scandal, but rather a sign of the times.

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From Valsusa

In August 2018, an improvised explosive device struck the provincial headquarters of the [Northern] League in Villorba of Treviso, imposing a pause on Carroccio leader Salvini’s round of hate rallies. On July 9 of this year, the Court of Treviso held Juan Sorroche responsible for the attack, sentencing him in first instance to 28 years’ prison. Juan is our friend and comrade, present also here in Valsusa in the notav struggle, for which he is serving a prison sentence of over eight years for the day of struggle of July 3 2011.
Twenty-eight years. Unfortunately the enormity of such a sentence is not unique. Just three days before, on July 6, the court of Cassation requalified as “political massacre” an explosive attack against the Carabinieri barracks of Fossano (CN) of 2006 attributed to the anarchists Anna Beniamino and Alfredo Cospito, effectively sentencing them to life imprisonment. Moreover, from May 5 Alfredo joined the buried alive locked up in 41bis, a regime of total isolation and deprivation, real white torture aimed at crushing the resistance of those who, even behind bars, show that they do not intend to stop struggling.

To our knowledge, these are the highest sentences, ever imposed in Italy for similar charges. Just to get an idea, the definition of ‘massacre’, was not applied to the massacres of piazza Fontana or of Capaci. Using it to define actions that caused neither victims nor wounded is a juridical abomination, as well as semantic, which reveals all the persecutory will towards dissent and conflict, clearly less and less tolerable today. In fact, such cases can only be understood in their overall dynamic, to outline which we need only cite two other recent examples: the Turin public prosecutor’s investigation against dozens of militants of the Askatasuna social centre on charges of criminal conspiracy, and the operation against the SI Cobas and the USB of 19 July, in which the leaders of these trade unions were investigated and arrested on the incredible accusation of having wanted to ‘extort’ better working conditions and wages from the bosses… in other words, what every trade union should do!
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