#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Italy, FDCA, Contier 9 - A libertarian communist: Aldo Demi (1918-2000) - Paolo Papini (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Fiat worker, trade union organizer, anti-fascist fighter in Spain, Aldo Demi was

undoubtedly one of the most important figures of Turin anarchism between the
thirties and fifties. ---- A native of Piombino, who moved with his family to
Turin during his childhood, he approached the libertarian movement at a very
young age, frequenting some militants who also immigrated from Tuscany. In 1934
he joined Fiat Ferriere as a mechanical repairman, a strong point of anarchists
in city factories since the Red Biennium, trying with others to organize the
clandestine anti-fascist opposition in this factory and in the working-class
district of Barriera di Milano, which he saw from the early years of century a
significant libertarian presence, where he lives in the public houses of Via
Desana 24. Of this important period of political training he will remember:
"Undoubtedly my stay in the Rolling Mill department of the Fiat Ironworks (the
contact with those workers and the hard work to which we were assigned ), they
further forged my revolutionary aspiration "(1). Fired for having promoted a
strike, he illegally went to Spain in 1937 and enlisted in the XII "Garibaldi"
Brigade: "I wanted to go to Spain in the anarchist brigades[)], except that at
the border they sorted us out and took us to the International Brigades", he will
specify in his testimony (2). Wounded in the battle of the Ebro, he fights to the
end in the republican ranks. Interned in France among the anti-Franco exiles,
during the German occupation he was taken prisoner and sent to Germany, managing
to escape and regain contact with the Italian anarchist exiles in Brussels and
Paris. he illegally passed to Spain in 1937 and enlisted in the XII «Garibaldi»
Brigade: «I wanted to go to Spain in the anarchist brigades[)], except that at
the border they sorted us and took us to the International Brigades», he will
specify in his testimony (2). Wounded in the battle of the Ebro, he fights to the
end in the republican ranks. Interned in France among the anti-Franco exiles,
during the German occupation he was taken prisoner and sent to Germany, managing
to escape and regain contact with the Italian anarchist exiles in Brussels and
Paris. he illegally passed to Spain in 1937 and enlisted in the XII «Garibaldi»
Brigade: «I wanted to go to Spain in the anarchist brigades[)], except that at
the border they sorted us and took us to the International Brigades», he will
specify in his testimony (2). Wounded in the battle of the Ebro, he fights to the
end in the republican ranks. Interned in France among the anti-Franco exiles,
during the German occupation he was taken prisoner and sent to Germany, managing
to escape and regain contact with the Italian anarchist exiles in Brussels and
Paris. he fights to the end in the republican ranks. Interned in France among the
anti-Franco exiles, during the German occupation he was taken prisoner and sent
to Germany, managing to escape and regain contact with the Italian anarchist
exiles in Brussels and Paris. he fights to the end in the republican ranks.
Interned in France among the anti-Franco exiles, during the German occupation he
was taken prisoner and sent to Germany, managing to escape and regain contact
with the Italian anarchist exiles in Brussels and Paris.

Returning to Turin at the end of the war, he is again hired at Fiat Ferriere in
the Mechanics department, where he organizes the trade union activities of
FIOM-CGIL. Elected to the Internal Factory Commission and to the Executive
Committee of the Chamber of Labor, he takes part in the struggles against the
"over-exploitation" and the redundancies imposed by capitalist restructuring,
fighting for the reduction of working hours to six hours a day with equal wages.
Reconstituted the Anarchist Group "Barriera di Milano", member of the Italian
Anarchist Federation (FAI), he is among the promoters of the reactivation of the
"Francisco Ferrer" Social Studies Circle, suppressed by fascism, and collaborates
with the periodicals "Era Nuova" and "Il Libertarian ", dealing with trade union
issues and affirming the need for an organized anarchist movement rooted in the
working class. He participates in various national congresses and conferences of
the FAI, supporting and promoting the establishment of the Trade Union Defense
Committees, an anarchist current of the CGIL, and of the Corporate Anarchist
Groups, libertarian factory cells. In 1949 he was among the speakers at the
National Conference on the relations between the anarchist movement and the
workers' movement, in which he reaffirmed the priority of the commitment in the
union for the unity of workers, autonomy from parties and revolutionary
councilism. factory libertarian cells. In 1949 he was one of the speakers at the
National Conference on the relations between the anarchist movement and the
workers' movement, in which he reaffirmed the priority of the commitment in the
union for the unity of workers, autonomy from parties and revolutionary
councilism. factory libertarian cells. In 1949 he was one of the speakers at the
National Conference on the relations between the anarchist movement and the
workers' movement, in which he reaffirmed the priority of the commitment in the
union for the unity of workers, autonomy from parties and revolutionary councilism.

Contrary to the anti-organizational and aclassist turn impressed on the FAI by
the groups linked to the magazines

«Volontà», «Antistato» and «L'Adunata dei Refrattari», joins with the «Barriera
di Milano» Group

internal tendency gathered in the Initiative Group «For an Oriented and Federated
Movement», which tries to bring the FAI to class and revolutionary positions and
is therefore expelled in 1950.

Member of the Turin delegation to the Pontedecimo Conference, in which the
Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action (GAAP) were formed in 1951, proposes to
take the Alliance Pact of the Italian Anarchist Union formulated by Luigi Fabbri
in the 1920 and clarifies the distinction between Trade Union Defense Committees
as part of the mass trade union organization and Corporate Anarchist Groups as
tools of the libertarian political organization, denouncing the "confusionism"
and "nullism" that characterized the attempt of a part of the anti-organizers of
the FAI to re-establish the Italian Trade Union Union. "The goal of GAAP", he
later recalled, "was to form the movement into an organized party" (3).

A year later, considering the role of the anarchist movement to be exhausted and
the action of the GAAP insufficient, he will join, like not a few other
libertarians after World War II, the Italian Communist Party, considering it the
only force capable of representing a mass opposition, to then hold important
positions within it at the local level. About his resignation he will tell years
later:

"It is useless to be here to set up a party, an organization that is like a party
(because we wanted in the Proletarian Action Groups to set up an organization
with cards, etc.)[)]the vast majority[of the workers]were organized in the
Communist Party and that was the organization that busied itself most for the
interests of the workers, because the anarchists who worked in the factories were
few "(4).

Fired in 1953 for having organized a strike at FIAT against the "Fraud Law", with
which the Christian Democrats had tried to impose the majority electoral system,
he continues his trade union commitment as regional manager of FIOM, of textiles
and then of CGIL pensioners , also assuming the office of provincial secretary of
the National Association of Persecuted Italian Political Anti-Fascists. Always
consistent with his choices as a militant of the working class, he died in Turin
at the age of eighty-two.

Note:

(1) Aldo Demi, Autobiography of the worker Demi Aldo, "Nuovi Argomenti", n.
31-32, 1958, p. 338.

(2) Interview conducted by Giorgio Tordolo Orsello, Turin 8 June 1991, audio
recording, Arch. Priv. Giorgio Tordolo Orsello, Turin.

(3) Interview conducted by Giorgio

Tordolo Orsello, Turin 9 April 1992, audio recording, Arch. Priv. Giorgio Tordolo
Orsello, Turin.

(4) Interview conducted by Giorgio Tordolo Orsello, Turin 19 October 1991, audio
recording, Arch. Priv. Giorgio Tordolo Orsello, Turin.

Sources:

Central State Archives, Ministry of the Interior, General Directorate of Public
Security, Reserved Affairs Division, Central Political Records, personal files,
b. 1723, Demi Aldo; Central State Archives, Ministry of the Interior, General
Directorate of Public Security, Reserved Affairs Division, Central Political
Records, 1944-1967, General and General Affairs 1944-1965, b. 50, f. 9 "N. 24-

Anarchists», sf. 1 "List of anarchists in Italy and abroad".

Bibliography:

Italian Combatants Association

Antifascist Volunteers of Spain (edited by), Spain in our heart. 1936-1939. Three
years of history not to be forgotten, AICVAS, Rome, 1996;

National Association of Persecuted Italian Anti-Fascists (edited by),
Anti-Fascists in the Central Political Records, 19 vols., ANPPIA, Rome, 1988-1995;

Adriano Ballone, Men, factory and power. History of the National Association
persecuted and fired in political and trade union reprisals, Franco Angeli,
Milan, 1987; Franco Bertolucci (edited by), Proletarian Action Anarchist Groups.
The ideas, the militants, the organization, 3 vols., BFS, Pisa / Pantarei, Milan,
2017-2019; Fausto Bucci, Simonetta Carolini, Claudio Gregori, Gianfranco
Piermaria, "Il Rosso", "il Lupo" and

«Lillo»: the Livorno anti-fascists in the Spanish civil war, La Ginestra,
Follonica, 2009; Giacomo Calandrone, Spain is burning. Chronicles of Garibaldi,
Editori Riuniti, Rome, 1974;

Luigi Cambiano, The Turin anarchist movement through the pages of «Era Nuova»
(19441950), degree thesis, supervisor Prof. Marco Scavino, Faculty of Literature
and Philosophy of the University of Turin, AY 2004-2005; Ilaria Cansella,
Francesco Cecchetti (edited by), Tuscan anti-fascist volunteers in the Spanish
civil war, Effigi, Arcidosso, 2012; Filippo Buonarroti Tuscany Center, Livorno
State Archives (edited by), Livornesi at the Spanish war. 1936-1939, Filippo
Buonarroti Tuscany Center / Livorno State Archives, Livorno, 2020; Piero Gobetti
Study Center, Italian Association of Voluntary Antifascist Combatants in Spain
Piedmontese Section (edited by), Piedmontese and Aosta Valley Antifascists in the
Spanish War, Piero Gobetti Study Center, Turin, 1975; Arrigo Cervetto, Works, 29
vols., Communist Struggle, Milan,

Aldo Demi, Autobiography of the worker Demi Aldo, "Nuovi Argomenti", n. 31-32, 1958;

FAI Milano 1 Group, Anarchism and the workers. A conference on the relationship
between the anarchist movement and the labor movement

ratori, GM 1, Milan, 1949; Marcella Filippa, Imaginary identity work of a group
of workers from the Ironworks. 1935-1955,

«Labor and Socialist Movement», n. 1-2, 1990;

Franco Giannantoni, Fabio Minazzi (edited by), The courage of memory and the
Spanish civil war (1936-1939), Arterigere, Varese, 2000;

Fabrizio Giulietti, The anarchist groups «Barrier of Nice» and «Barrier of Milan»
in the network of the fascist police. Turin 1930, «Historical Review of
Anarchism», n. 2, 1997; Pedro Mateo Merino, Por vuestra libertad y la nuestra,
Disenso, Madrid, 1986;

Giancarlo Pajetta (edited by), Livornesi beyond the Pyrenees. The Livorno
volunteers in the anti-fascist war of Spain. 1936-1939, digital edition, 2010,
https://docplayer.it/104669167-Livornesi-oltre-i-pirenei.html; Lorenzo Parodi,
Chronicles of workers. Factory correspondence of the 1950s, Lotta Comunista,
Milan, 1988;

Giorgio Sacchetti (edited by), Congresses and conferences of the Federation-

ne Anarchist Italian. Acts and documents (1944-1995), Camillo Di Sciullo
Libertarian Studies Center, Chieti, 2003; Giorgio Tordolo Orsello, The anarchist
movement in Turin after World War II (19451951), degree thesis, supervisor Prof.
Nicola Tranfaglia, Faculty of Literature and Philosophy of the University of
Turin, AA 19911992.

Audio and video documents:

Interview with Aldo Demi, Turin 8 June, 29 June, 19 October

1991, 9 April 1992, created by Giorgio Tordolo Orsello, audio recording, Arch.
Priv. Giorgio Tordolo Orsello, Turin;

Interview with Aldo Demi, Italian anarchist in Spain (later PCI), Turin 25 April
1986, made by Claudio Venza, audio / video recording, Centro Studi Libertari /
Archivio Giuseppe Pinelli, Milan;

The long resistance. 1936-1945, documentary film, directed by Luciano D'Onofrio,
https://www.lalungaresistenza.it.

Photographic documents:

A. Aldo Demi (Arch. AICVAS, Milan);

B. Demi (1) with the anarchist trade union leaders Gaetano Gervasio (2), Marcello
Bianconi (3) and Attilio Sassi (4) at the first National Congress of the CGIL,
Florence 1-7 June 1947 (Arch. Priv. Fam. Demi, Turin);

C. Demi, second from right, with the Internal Commission of Fiat Ferriere, Turin
1950 (private Arch. Demi family, Turin).

The author thanks: Liliana and Orietta Demi, Marcella Filippa, Tobia Imperato,
Giorgio Tordolo Orsello.

Taken from the magazine "Il Cantiere" Materials of the Communists-Anarchists for
the class struggle n. June 9

ilcantiere@autistici.org - Alternativa Libertaria / Fdca (Italy)
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