Where is the political and social struggle today? It would seem that it's not doing very well; the prevailing and enduring pacification permeates the air with its mephitic fumes. Yet no regime can contain the conflict, which always expresses itself in forms and modalities, sometimes underground and invisible, sometimes open and engaging. We saw it in last fall's struggles on behalf of the Palestinian people, and we see it now in the dozens and dozens of protests and protests sweeping across the territories and the world of work (which is not as completely pacified as it might seem) and involving numerous people. Certainly, what interests us most is what happens in society, less so what happens within institutions. However, a look at official politics is not idle. For some time now, an authoritarian drift has been underway that tends to strengthen the government's power, to remove spaces for social intervention, and to scale back what we call rights. The current Italian government is characterized by a strong authoritarian tone, accompanied by constant ideological propaganda based on nationalism and social order. In the face of this, the parliamentary opposition remains inert, disoriented, and more concerned with frills than substance; indeed, it sometimes seems to be chasing the government on the same ground: see, for example, the latest security decree or the migrant policy. However, even within the institutional framework, some signs of vitality can be discerned. I am referring to the constitutional referendum on justice, whose outcome and high turnout, especially among young people, cannot be underestimated or ignored, even by those, like us, who have no faith in the instruments of so-called representative democracy. The significant outcome of this referendum, emphasized by all, was the weight played by the youth vote, which allowed the "No" vote to win. This result tells us that there is a segment of the youth movement (but not only) that opposes the ongoing authoritarian drift, the irrelevance to which it is condemned by government policies (and not only those of this right), deprived of hope and a future. While the "No" vote's success in the referendum certainly does not represent a turning point, we must nevertheless ask ourselves what the consequences would have been of a "Yes" victory, with a government flying the fast lane of arrogance and the belief that it had a society reduced to a mere extra in an electoral pantomime. On the other hand, the foolishness (to be generous) of the major opposition parties lies entirely in having launched (or attempted to launch), immediately after having themselves identified this youth force as a positive break with the recent past, the primary campaign to identify the opposition leader for the next general election. How miserable, or perhaps better said, how arrogant!
Turning now to the unrest stirring in society, there's no doubt that the most significant mobilizations of recent months have been those launched in support of the Palestinians, to denounce and stop the genocide in Gaza, and those coalescing around the slogan "No Kings." Now, without going into the merits of these mobilizations, what I believe can be noted is, on the one hand, the presence or persistence of a social opposition (how broad and deep, it remains to be seen) resisting incipient fascism, contiguous and overlapping with the mobilization for the referendum, and, on the other, conversely, characterized by fragmentation and a certain uncertainty. In recent years, at least since the post-Covid era, there has been no shortage of protests against government policies increasingly marked by economic austerity, social restrictions, and a tendency toward warmongering. Yet these mobilizations have often arisen haphazardly, have had peaks that quickly faded, and have lacked a firm vision of the historical moment and a clear perspective on the struggle beyond simply listing a series of generic demands or indicating equally generic objectives, almost always under the banner of defending the Constitution.
Certainly too little to counter such pervasive policies and address the urgent need for action in the face of the natural, ecological, and even human degradation that is sweeping us. Yet, from this (sometimes fatuous) fire, we must begin again and again to attempt to dismantle the knots of an exhausted capitalism that remains clinging to its own mechanisms, leading to destruction through wars and ecological catastrophes. But if we fail to develop the ability to refine, clarify (to use a Dolcian term), and understand what can truly help us escape the tunnel of capital, we risk being crushed by the logic of the system. There is certainly no scheme, program, or plan that we can mechanically transfer into reality and escape the spiral of negativity; we must experiment and experiment; however, it is also necessary to understand in which direction we must experiment: certainly not to support the dominant model, but to oppose and transcend it. The possibilities for experimentation are obviously many; here I will limit myself to a single example from the past (and who knows, it might provide guidance even today). At the height of the struggle, after the Second World War, to obtain land and dismantle the latifundia system, farmers, especially in the South, experimented with a reverse strike. They went to the latifundia, occupied them, and cultivated them, prefiguring what could become a new model of land distribution and a new model of society.
Perhaps the paths to follow are simpler than we imagine; we should acquire the clarity to set out.
Angelo Barberi
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/2026/06/15/lotta-sociale-tra-conformismi-e-sperimentazioni/
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