Picture Paolo Babini
Comrade Alessandro della Malva: Dear comrades, firstly I would thank you very much for your message of solidarity, on behalf of CARC Party and Association for Proletarian Solidarity (ASP): actually, it has helped us to face bourgeoisie’s repression more strongly. The many messages we got from everywhere in Italy and by organizations and parties from abroad become a weapon we can turn against Italian government, that persecutes workers, migrants and everyone who struggle for building a different society.
1- How did the patrols appear? What was the background that led to such process?
In Italy, these patrols are born within the reactionary mobilization promoted by the bourgeoisie. Concretely, the Minister of Interior Maroni has established them by law with the “security set”. By these measures, the government wants to intervene against immigration that is the source of all evils, according to its propaganda. By these patrols, the bourgeoisie wants to mobilize the most backward parts of the popular masses against the other ones.
2- What is the opinion of democratic organisations in general? How do they evaluate the appearance of the fascist patrols? What is the plan for action in general?
The parties of the bourgeois left and the trade unions linked to them are against the patrols because they are founded upon racist principles of hate and suspicion. Anyway, today the bourgeois Left does not promote the protest against the fascist patrols. They protest only formally. The bourgeois Left considers the fascist patrols as a means of propaganda by the Right wing, that so tries to mobilize and tie to itself the most reactionary part of the country. Today the bourgeois Left do nothing but announcing that it will struggle by legal means for hampering the fascist patrols because they are not constitutional. In some zones (particularly in Northern Italy), some antagonist groups demonstrated against the patrols: these organizations denounce that these patrols are the attempt of the bourgeoisie to resort again to Fascism, as it did in the Twenties of the last century. Where it has been carried out, this kind of popular mobilization prevented the steady development of the fascist patrols and obliged the State to deploy great police forces, for protecting the patrols from being attacked by the people.
3- What is the attitude of your organisation?
The CARC Party denounces the fascist patrols as the attempt by the bourgeoisie to control the territory facing the growing people’s protest against the effects of the general crisis of capitalism. The reactionary mobilization going on with this “security set” is the way out the bourgeoisie is carrying out for saving its power. On the contrary, for us is the field on which we can develop the mobilization of the popular masses, on which we can develop the ideological autonomy from the bourgeoisie: the antifascist proletarian patrol of Massa represents an experience of self-organization of the popular masses, for controlling the territory. The antifascist proletarian patrols comes out from the conception according to which only workers and popular masses’ organizations can find solution to the problems that trouble them. Only these organizations (through a People’s Block Government) can take the direction of the country and carry out those emergency measures requested as the crisis of capitalism is going on.
On the contrary, the measures the bourgeoisie will take will do nothing but driving proletarians to desperation and war. Because of this, the proletarian patrols are mainly “for”. They are for a public order of the popular masses, for people’s security (our enemies are the fascists provokers at the service of the masters, and not the migrants), for defending the conquests of civilization and democracy wrung out during and in the decades before the Antifascist Resistance, for building a People’s Block Government thanks to the people who organizes himself and becomes protagonist.
Secondly, proletarian patrols are “against”: against rehabilitation of Fascism, against government’s reactionary measures.
4- How do you describe people’s patrols? Which methods of struggle did/should they use?
As I told above, people’s patrols are not mainly a means against fascists, against the State that supports them, against the reactionary mobilization of the popular masses that the bourgeoisie promotes as the crisis goes on. They are mainly a way of self-organization of the masses, to create the mass organizations that connecting each other will be able even to rule the country, if they only understand that this is quite possible and necessary, if they want to go towards the solutions of the troubles the crisis creates. They are a means for the revolutionary mobilization of the popular masses, for creating a People’s Block Government, for going toward socialism.
The method of struggle of the people’s patrols consists of mobilizing the masses against fascists (by meetings, demonstrations, rallies, wide spreading leaflets and so on). It consists of denouncing the fascist nature of the patrols instituted by the State, of denouncing the bourgeois institutions that do nothing against the exaltation of Fascism that the Italian Constitution prohibits, of denouncing the fake antifascism of the bourgeois leftist parties.
The people’s patrols may use any legitimate method of struggle even if they are methods the bourgeoisie declared them illegal. This is the principle according to which “what is not legal for the bourgeoisie is legitimate for the masses.”
5- What is the attitude of other political and democratic organisations to the people’s patrols? Are there any other organisations defending the same way of action?
There were two kinds of reaction regarding the first antifascist proletarian patrol at Massa. On one side the majority of the bourgeois Left put fascist and proletarian patrols on the same level. They hide behind the opposition to all “extremes” for not standing on antifascists’ side and to not express solidarity to the comrades hit by repression. On the other side, some leftist parties and many popular committees expressed solidarity and they too said that the way to follow was that of the proletarian patrols. Some popular committee opposed the fascist patrols just from the beginning: so they did in Padua, in the Venetian region, and in Prato, in the Tuscan region.
6- How did the event in July happen? Could you share this experience with us?
The proletarian patrol was announced to mass media already some days before, and this roused a mobilization about the matter, most of all because in Massa it had been organized a fascist patrol called SSS (clearly referred to the Nazi criminals). The proletarian patrol started from the park where CARC Party and ASP held their National Feasts. It was more than a patrol: it was a demonstration of 60/70 people who ran through the main street near the coast. When the demonstration arrived at the bar where usually some notorious local fascists used to meet, there was the police ranked to protect that scum. The fascists, feeling sure that police were protecting them, began to provoke, with fascist songs and Nazi hails, and when comrades approach them, they throw them chairs. The comrades reacted and accused the police to be there just for supporting the provocation. Then the comrades closed the demonstration going back to the park where they started. Nevertheless, fascists continued to provoke, going around near the park, some with sticks. So two comrades came back for seeing what was happening where we found the police ranked one hour and a half before. There they have been held by the political police and by its chief Valentini. The comrades warned the police about fascists’ threatening attitude, but the police did not care of it. On the contrary, they asked the comrades to show their papers (even if they know them very well). The comrades did not do it, as they understood that they were plotting something for hitting us, and called the other comrades for telling what was happening. We arrived quickly protesting for such a fascist behaviour by the police. The result has been four comrades dragged in police headquarters, kicks, and blows by batons.
However, at the headquarters the police realized that it would not be easy at all to keep us quiet: we protested because they did no let enter an ambulance for a comrade blown at the head with a baton and outside as well there were the comrades immediately come for protesting. All night long, the demonstrators stayed out of the headquarters hitting the gate. The police was very troubled by what was happening at Massa and in other cities (Naples and Pistoia). P-CARC and ASP promoted railways blocks in Massa and Naples and a sit-in in Massa asking for liberating the comrades. Seven hours after two comrades were liberated and two stayed under arrest: the mobilization went on and police’s switchboard became clogged by people calling to protest and to ask for news about the arrested.
Within the head quarters, the policemen showed friendship: they realized that outside thing could get worse and that the mobilization could grow.
The mobilization continued the day before at the tribunal. There the judge decided restrictive measures for the two comrades (to sign every day in carabineer’s barracks until the day of the trial fixed on 9 October), but did not dare to confirm the arrest, thanks to the mobilization of the comrades who have been continuously to the attack and turned the repression against the police itself.
7- What kind of mistreatment did you face with under police custody? How was your attitude?
Firstly the police tried to use rough tactics, beating us on the road and trying to frighten us in the barracks, even stopping the aid for the wounded comrade, but when they realized that this could have been used against them they changed their attitude. Ad I told before, in front of us who were in the cell, hearing shouting and slogans by the comrades outside) the attitude was aimed to keep low the level of the clash: many of them told that they were on our side, that they knew we were not criminals. All of them were astonished by the mobilization so quickly aroused.
8- Has there been any change in the state’s policies concerning the fascist patrols?
After the proletarian patrol of Massa there were stands also by members of the Government. Minister Maroni could not withdraw, as its party, the Lega Nord, has fighting migrants and patrols as warhorse, but Bossi, the leader of the Lega, had to justify himself. Berlusconi itself admitted that patrol are an act of mistrust for the Government, the members of the main leftist parties go so far as declaring that the Government is carrying out a wicked politics that creates further tensions, instead of giving security to the citizens. The leftist Major of Massa, who until then had condemned the SSS patrol very softly, decided to stand firmly and established a sanction of 400 Euros to be paid by who organizes patrols.
9- What will be the future of the antifascist struggle? Is this question still on the agenda of democratic forces?
As regards us, we shall use repression as an opportunity for creating mobilization: the trial against the arrested of Massa will be an opportunity to create mobilization. It has to become in the trial against the measures the Government adopted for facing the crisis and for security. We shall bring the Minister Maroni, fascists, and racists of this government in the box of the accused. Our struggle will be a concrete step for developing the self-organization of popular masses, The masse be the protagonist of building a People’s Block Government that will open the way to socialism, the only way out of this rotten system.
The rank and file members of the parties of the bourgeois left sympathize with the experience of the proletarian patrols. Many people by now cannot stand any longer the fake antifascism of the corrupted leaders of their parties: facing the popular antifascism, those leaders unmask their true will and many of them will be obliged to follow us in our field.
Alessandro Della Malva
Secretary of Tuscan Federation for the CARC Party
Party of the committies to Support Resistance-For Communism (CARC)-Italy
Via Tanaro, 7-20128 Milano
Tel/Fax 02.26306454
e-mail: resistenza@carc.it
Website: www.carc.it
National Direction – International Relations Departmentstrong
Tel. +39 0226306454
e-mail: carc.ri@libero.it
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