WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY SICILY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #456 - Against the attack on the right to strike (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The fascist nature of the current government is evident in every aspect

of the management of the power it claims to assume. And all those
right-thinking people, experts in historiography, who consider it absurd
to attribute this adjective (fascist, precisely) to the governing Right,
adducing the argument that "historical fascism" is a closed episode of
the past, and that it makes no sense to use this classification because
history does not repeat itself... well, they must be reminded that
history, it is true, cannot strictly be repeated, in the sense that we
cannot go back in time; however, it is the historian's task precisely to
identify analogies in the social dynamics, present between the various
parties involved. And the only tool that one has in this discipline is
precisely the comparison and re-elaboration of events and phenomena that
occurred in the past.

There are those who believe that, especially given the speed with which
we live the present, eighty years of history are an eternity, a period
sufficient to put a chasm between us today and what the Twenty Years
were; but this is a dangerously presumptuous mechanism, because in truth
the memory is still alive, the wound is still open, and it is undeniable
that there is a part of Italy that derives directly from those who did
not accept the end of fascism. For this reason, ignoring the precise
political origin of the majority in Parliament, deluding oneself that
"certain things cannot be repeated", is foolish. And this origin lies in
the Italian Social Movement and in the various "recycling" operations
that fascism carried out to exit through the door after the monarchy and
return through the window with the Republic.

Conversely, it is also foolish to think that historical events can
repeat themselves mechanically, as if there were a veil, a fatalistic
blanket that hangs over our heads leading us inexorably towards an
eternal return. What matters is always human will, projected towards
choices that are always children of their own time, grandchildren of the
past and embodied in the dynamics of the present.

The forces of today's capitalism find effective ways to ensure their
hegemony in the present, using methods that are applied effectively in
this historical period. And the current government, which is the
sounding board of this hegemony, carries out policies that devour and
crush the oppressed class in a sneaky way. In this sense, it is
sufficient to observe, for example, the position it has taken towards
strikes.

Salvini and Meloni, astutely, carry out a whole series of rhetorical
devices aimed at discrediting the figure of the worker who strikes,
maintaining a "facade of democracy". They do not directly question the
right to strike; for now. At least, they do not risk doing so. Rather,
they try to influence the media and public opinion towards a devaluation
of the motivations and validity of the strike instrument, to justify its
injunction.

The debasement of the strike comes in various forms: they are portrayed
as senseless, uselessly numerous and long-lasting, as simple pretexts
for not going to work, as whims desired by the unions only to "spite"
the government, as merely "political" expedients against the government,
as demonstrations of which there is no real connection and urgency...
but above all the attempt to destroy class solidarity and nullify the
very meaning of the strike is clear.

It almost seems that those who strike do so, to please themselves, and
not because we are living in a disastrous situation. Wages have been
frozen for years, while speculation raises prices. It is even becoming a
nightmare to have health problems, because the first concern in many
families is moving from asking "what is the problem" to "will we be able
to get checked out and understand what the problem is". And this is just
to give two examples.

The government incites workers against other workers, and incites the
newspapers paid for by them against those who strike, so that the
presumed problem becomes those who "bring the country to its knees" with
useless strikes that stop "productivity". This, in the crude attempt to
indignant, for example, all those who go to work using public transport
against the drivers of the latter and conversely sanctifying the
strikebreakers, with pats on the back, for having represented "the Italy
that works". A nice mockery, yet another attempt to create a public
enemy ad hoc, pointing the finger at those who express their dissent,
just to avoid being held accountable for their oppressive policies.  The
main Italian newspapers do not spend a line to explain the reasons for
the strikes, their cognitive efforts are too busy identifying it as "yet
another", and making abstruse calculations to predict possible
inconveniences and blockades of the sectors involved, without taking the
slightest interest in the social meaning they express.

It is that all these characters here should be explained that the strike
must cause discomfort by its nature, and it must do so precisely to lay
bare, before their responsibilities, the government and its
institutions. They demand that dissent be annulled, in their image of
today's re-fascistization. Between injunctions obtained and others
rejected, the government is preparing to increasingly gnaw away at the
residual rights of workers.

This is a historical moment in which the indispensable internal union
and solidarity of all workers, as well as of the youngest students, is
more evident: because if that day no one goes to school, it is because
there are those who are also fighting for the workers of the future.

Alejandro Usai

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca