WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Sicilia Libertaria 2-24: Ideas for an editorial - OUR RESOLUTIONS FOR 2024 (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

2024 is full of unknowns. On the horizon, new wars and new attempts to
involve our country in them, the barbarism that advances everywhere and
claims victims, the capitalist utopia that overcomes its crises thanks
to the discoveries of digital technology, humanity that, threatened by
the crazy climate, by pandemics and intelligent machines, slides ever
faster towards extinction. ---- In this depressing scenario, what
function can this small and perhaps slightly old-fashioned newspaper you
have in your hands still have? How can it help reverse a trend towards
unfreedom that seems to consolidate with each passing day? What
alternative can it still represent to regime disinformation and cultural
homologation?

On the threshold of its 48 years - a venerable age for a newspaper and
not just an anarchist one - "Sicilia Libertaria" feels the need to
question itself and question collaborators, readers and supporters about
its present and above all about its near future. A reflection in this
sense proves to be all the more necessary the more it is missing in the
anarchist movement and among its press organs.

"Sicilia Libertaria" has always avoided transforming itself into a mere
opinion newspaper or, even worse, into a political-cultural product to
be consumed once a month. It has favored its being an organ of
agitation, struggle and anarchist proposal. However, it is difficult to
maintain this characteristic today if the positions of those who write
to you, especially when they deal with new or controversial issues (as
often happens in "specials"), and even when proposals for strategic
intervention emerge, are not at all received, much less debated. within
our own movement, and almost never take on an operational character. An
anarchist newspaper, if it is supposed to be such, should encourage the
widest circulation of ideas, constitute a training ground for discussion
and even clashes (while maintaining mutual respect) between comrades,
discuss innovations in our field and in society, discover or rediscover
ways of struggle and alternative knowledge, supporting every aspiration
for freedom and change from below. Certainly not to end up atrophying
over time into stale or repetitive formulas delegated to a few elderly
writers.

To do this, the constant commitment of those who periodically publish
the newspaper is not enough: the contribution of the greatest number of
comrades and readers is essential. Rather than using a tool that is at
hand, updating it and perfecting it technologically and in terms of
content, many of them prefer to toy instead with the media designed by
digital technocrats to annihilate their capacity for reflection and
critical discernment. Some take refuge in indifferentism, disengagement,
apathy: for them the newspaper simply represents an alibi for feeling or
continuing to feel alive. Still others, fortunately few, snub the work
of their "journalists" comrades from the height of an alleged
intellectual superiority which however they almost never place at the
service of the needs of the movement or translate into broad,
community-based and participatory political and social intervention
projects.

The anarchist movement, as a whole, hosts numerous militants of value
and with skills acquired in the most varied social fields. Is it
possible that no one, or few of them (apart from the likes they send us
from time to time), are able to express themselves on the requests -
sometimes real provocations - that come from our newspaper? That they
hold on to their skills, for example, only to make a career in
universities, institutions or companies?

Unfortunately, there are many who call themselves anarchists and are
forgetting how the intimate link between thought and action, between
idea and project, between end and means (in our case the newspaper)
constitutes a fundamental prerogative of anarchism. It is not possible
to conceive of anarchist journalism disconnected from reality, from
society, from the territories and from the struggles that develop there.

In the past, and partly still today, "Libertarian Sicily" has been
mistaken for a "localistic" newspaper simply because in its analyzes it
prefers to start from or anchor itself in the concreteness of a chosen
territory, Sicily. But it is enough to scroll through the pages to
realize that it is a mistake: from libertarian Sicily to anarchist
internationalism the step is often immediate, as the motto on the
magazine warns ("for social liberation and internationalism"). Those who
protest against "Si.Lib." a "localistic" character sometimes ends up
with the blame for taking away resources and readers from the national
weekly and fueling a ridiculous rivalry between the two newspapers. The
controversy is ancient (it dates back to the birth of "Umanità Nova" in
1920) but historical research has long since debunked it, demonstrating
that, on the contrary, the multiplication of newspapers, by stimulating
the activity of local groups, rather benefits the diffusion of the
national weekly. The problem is rather different. It is the existence of
watertight compartments between the different anarchist newspapers,
where the mutual exchange of themes, collaborators and activities -
which should be the rule - has become residual. Instead of fueling a
virtuous and supportive circuit, we may even witness stupid closures and
not even incomprehensible disputes over commas.

In a world that is increasingly fiercely anti-anarchist, our newspapers,
true lungs of freedom, should no longer ignore each other or step on
each other's toes. If they are no longer able, as in the past, to
"ferment spirits" or to create a sympathetic public opinion around
anarchists, they can nevertheless return to fulfilling an indispensable
function, that of a privileged place in which to develop critical and
counter-current analyses, project elaborations and exchange of
supportive relationships in a movement which, to resist and renew
itself, must first and foremost reject the authoritarian drift and
rampant conformism.

This is, perhaps, a first partial answer to the initial questions. To
which we hope numerous others will be added in the current year.

Christmas Musarra

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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