Over the past few months, we have witnessed the emergence of a worrying reactionary wave sweeping across our country. This authoritarian turn is fuelled by racist, backward and poisonous propaganda, deliberately manufactured by the right-wing political forces, with the participation of the centre-left, as shown by the extensive media exposure given to Vannacci in an attempt to weaken the government. The polarisation around isolated news stories, cynically exploited to reinforce anti-immigrant rhetoric and foster a genuine climate of hatred, is far from accidental. Millions of euros are poured into social media campaigns and the country’s major media outlets to cultivate this political climate and shift the boundaries of acceptable public discourse further to the right, allowing the government to continue ruling through fear. We saw this clearly in the case of Abderrahim Fakir. Faced with a man in the grip of a crisis, asking for help, first beaten and sprayed with pepper spray, then crushed beneath the iron heel of the state, the racist and crude propaganda of the right revealed its ugliest face through the dehumanisation of the victim and the justification of police violence.
There are also those who turn words into deeds. This poisonous climate is dangerous because, on the one hand, it legitimises in the eyes of part of the population the adoption of genuine “special laws” that curtail democratic freedoms and pave the way for the dismantling of the very rule of law. On the other hand, it emboldens the most backward and reactionary elements in the country, making actions that would have been openly condemned until recently appear justifiable to part of public opinion. This was the case with the despicable assault on an immigrant in San Benedetto del Tronto by a member of Futuro Nazionale.
One particularly serious incident, which the government-friendly media have chosen to ignore in favour of other manufactured controversies, is the recent attack against our own organisations in Parma. Over the past few nights, our provincial branch was targeted in two separate intimidation attempts by hooded individuals who sought to set it on fire. These attacks came after a shameful public smear campaign orchestrated by the local right, following the prominent role played by our organisations in the mobilisation in solidarity with the family of Abderrahim Fakir and in exposing what had happened. The Communist Front of Italy and the Communist Youth Front condemn these despicable acts and call on the working class and the people to remain vigilant and mobilise against every attempt to intimidate those who fight to overthrow a system that is now rotting from within.
This atmosphere is being deliberately fostered by the government and the right-wing political forces. Unable to offer any solution to the real problems facing the working class and the people, they seek to polarise public debate around selected news stories in order to increase their support and strengthen their position ahead of the next elections. This is their political responsibility, and they must be held accountable for it. At the same time, they divert attention from our country’s ever more dangerous involvement in the imperialist war. Only a few hours ago, Foreign Minister Tajani announced that the government had already “earmarked” €14.9 billion from SAFE, the first pillar of the ReArm Europe plan, to continue down the path of militarisation. These borrowed funds will be repaid through even harsher cuts to social spending, including healthcare, wages and pensions. All of this is happening while the cost of living becomes increasingly unbearable, as shown by fuel prices, which have already reached €2.73 per litre in some cities.
The reaction and authoritarian turn spreading through our country are the product of the imperialist war and of the irreconcilable contradictions generated by this system. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters“, wrote Gramsci almost a century ago. In order to push forward the warmongering and destructive plans of the real rulers of this country, the government needs to pacify social conflict at home, even pre-emptively, through laws designed to crush any potential outbreak of class struggle before it can develop. This is the proper context in which the so-called security decrees must be understood. They have nothing to do with the artificial issue of “security” hysterically promoted by the right-wing political forces. Their real aim is to repress dissent and restrict the right to strike and demonstrate. The construction of a “public enemy”, whether immigrants, the so-called maranza, the “left” or communists, serves to muddy the waters. It is useful to industrialists and bankers, allowing them to continue making billions in profits, while also catering to the demands of an increasingly desperate petty bourgeoisie.
We are not witnessing a return to fascism, although individual far-right groups and organisations seek to exploit issues such as the crusade against immigrants in order to gain support and political legitimacy. In the context of the imperialist war, what we are seeing is the true nature of so-called “liberal democracy”, under which governments have no hesitation in casting aside their much-vaunted values of “freedom”, “justice” and “equality” whenever the “national interest” demands it. That so-called national interest is nothing more than the continued enrichment of this country’s real rulers at the expense of the overwhelming majority of the people. We have seen this in their complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people, where “international law only goes so far” whenever the interests of the arms industry or the monopolies are at stake. We see it every day in the normalisation of war and in the warmongering propaganda that is poisoning peoples across the globe.
We must be clear that the answer to this reactionary spiral is not unity with the centre-left or with the so-called “broad camp” in the name of a vague anti-fascism. This is true not only because those who advocate such a course have already governed on behalf of the same ruling class, with disastrous results, but also because, in practice, they merely present themselves as an “alternative” to administer the very same system of death and exploitation that is driving us towards the slippery slope of a generalised imperialist war. They are the same forces that claim to oppose rearmament while refusing to question Italy’s membership of NATO, or that advocate a European army, thereby strengthening the emergence of a European imperialist pole that would inevitably intensify the same policies of militarisation. Those who present themselves today as candidates to administer capitalism with a “human face” bear primary responsibility for delivering the country into the hands of the right and the reactionary forces, causing enormous harm to the working class and the people.
To stop reaction, repression and war, we must build and strengthen the only genuine, independent and modern alternative: the communist party. A large part of this country refuses to be deceived by the government’s propaganda and distortions. These are the same people who filled the streets in solidarity with Palestine, denouncing our country’s complicity in the genocide, and who in recent days have condemned the state killing of Abderrahim and the attempt to divide the working class, taking to the streets to make their voices heard. To all of them we say: there is an alternative to this system, which has reached the end of its historical course, and it can be built through the contribution of every one of us. To achieve this, we must organise, fight in the workplaces and in the working-class neighbourhoods, deprive the reactionary forces of their social base, and build a system that places our contemporary needs and our lives at its centre.
There can be no victory, there can be no lasting gains, without a great communist party.
