Remembering... to continue the struggle

anti-fascist aperitif

saturday 26 January 2008

Fano, at the premises of

in via serravalle, at 6.00pm

War, political and social oppression, intolerance, racism, the extermination of enemies and "inferior races". Millions of people - Jews, political opponents, Communists, Anarchists, Socialists, homosexuals, gypsies and ethnic minorities - arrived at the gates of the concentration, extermination camps created by the Nazi and Fascist dictatorships, never to leave except as ashes to the wind.

Remembering the past evils of power must serve to open our eyes to the horrors and errors of today. Racial hatred, homophobia, male chauvinism and nationalism are unfortunately still alive today. Groups of Nazi-skins like Forza Nuova are the most obvious example and, as we have seen in this part of the country, they are always trying to sneak into local political and social life. We would not be at all surprised if the local Fano municipal right-wing alliance were to leave some door ajar into their dull little world of power and find a way to allow some fine young shaven-headed specimen with Celtic-cross tattoos to appear one day on their list of local-election candidates.

But fascist, racist politics do not only exist in the tiny Nazi groups allowed to form - they also exist within institutional politics, clear examples being the "special" anti-immigrant laws, the different legal policies according to one's pocket and one's passport, the clerical-fascist attacks on women's right to choose to have access to abortion without putting their lives at risk, the walls that separate the good from the bad in cities such as Padua, the wars in the name of the dollar, the increasingly fashionable nationalism and patriotism, the increasingly servile attitude to the armed forces, not to mention the increasingly total control over the private lives of people.

Today's capitalism is a more savage capitalism, one that makes men and women into slaves with unbearable living and working conditions: precariousness, mobbing, starvation wages, 14-hour work shifts leading to death on building sites, death in factories and death on the streets.

As soon as we lower our guard and the struggles decrease, we see an increase in fascism and intolerance of all sorts - which are used by the powers to manipulate information and people's minds. The system and capitalism itself feed on the diffidence of the poor and the wars between the poor, as we can see all too often today between Italian and immigrant workers.

But the memory of the past and the horrors of the present just need to give birth to the will to rebel, to change things, to build a world that is not only better but totally different. A world based on class solidarity, on the equality of rights irrespective of sex or nationality, a society with no more bosses, either at work or in our private lives.

Our memory today, more than ever before, must be a common memory, one that generates ideas of freedom, one that moves on from being just a commemoration to permanent anti-fascist action.

Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici
"Nestor Makhno" Branch, Fano/Pesaro