There are events that mark a watershed in history, whether we're talking about History with a capital "H" or personal stories. For the generation that emerged from activism in the wake of '68, it was certainly the state-sanctioned massacre in Piazza Fontana; for many of my generation, it was the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001. I certainly don't want to compare the two events, which had completely different gravity, contexts, and dynamics, but both marked the moment of "loss of innocence" for so many people. And that's why, even though twenty-five years have passed, the burning memory of those days remains vivid, as if it were yesterday. And so it's important to talk about them and reflect on them, even though the world has changed radically in the meantime, in many ways for the worse.
To talk about Genoa, we need to talk about the transnational movement that was called "Anti-Globalization," especially by the mainstream media. Although it had existed in an underground form for some time, it gained global resonance with the protests against the WTO (World Trade Organization) summit in Seattle at the end of November 1999, when tens of thousands of people took to the streets, intent on protesting and blocking the gathering of the world's powerful by any means possible. Amid the noise of smashed windows and barricades against the police, the gestures of those helping to alleviate the effects of tear gas and the irreverent parades of the clown army, a new, powerful, and multifaceted international movement emerged to challenge the world's masters. From that moment on, wherever a forum of international organizations (IMF, World Bank, OECD, NATO, etc.) was held, tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated and besieged the physical venues of the summits.
Beyond its spread across every continent, the movement's other important characteristic was its ability to unite not so much ideas as diverse street practices. Indeed, in varying ways each time, for almost two years there was no such devastating division between "good" and "bad"-the bane of so many mobilizations-but a plurality of approaches that managed to coexist: from the clown army to the pacifist march, from the black bloc to the union strike. The institutions responded with increasing violence, until March 2001, when protests at the Global Forum in Naples ended with a police massacre in Piazza Plebiscito and the torture of those detained and taken to the Raniero barracks. Then, in June 2001, in Gothenburg, a police officer put three bullets in the back of a 19-year-old protester who, fortunately, survived. A clear foreshadowing of what would happen in July.
The G8 in Genoa was supposed to represent, in the minds of many, the high point of that movement, but instead it marked its end, along with the attack on the Twin Towers in September of the same year.
One of the causes was that the many souls who gathered in the Genoa Social Forum, the network that organized the counter-summit, effectively reproduced the old hegemonic and authoritarian logic of the political and trade union apparatuses, failing to embrace the new forms of agreement and shared practices typical of the anti-globalization movement in other countries.
Thus, state violence, deployed in all its ferocity, had an easy time dividing the movement, instilling doubt and suspicion. This was despite the fact that the "forces of law and order" had been clear since the morning of Friday, July 20: massacre everyone without hesitation. The murder of Carlo Giuliani, the savage beatings in the streets, the torture in Bolzaneto, and the massacre at the Diaz school were not "accidents," but the product of a long-planned plot. A practical lesson in real democracy, more effective than a thousand subversive speeches. Despite this, many souls on the pacifist and institutional left will continue to speak for years of democracy betrayed.
The "Anarchists against the G8," to which many of the Italian-speaking anarchists who traveled to Genoa belonged, chose to ignore the siege of the red zone where the heads of state were located, demonstrating instead in Sampierdarena, in proletarian Genoa, the site of the great workers' struggles.
We focused on a general strike, creating strike committees in various cities that led to territorial assemblies. We focused on radical objectives and social roots. In the issue of Umanità Nova that was published in Genoa, we wrote: "International demonstrations, like today's in Genoa, have been and will be important because they highlight the destructive, violent, and irreformable nature of various supranational organizations, but they cannot represent the focal point of a process that must necessarily develop elsewhere. The strength of this movement lies in its ability to combine radicalism and rootedness, to act and think locally and to act and think globally, and it must not wither away in mere protest against the powerful. Otherwise, it risks becoming a sort of counter-globalization tour operator, specializing in trips to exotic lands. A kind of Camel Trophy of subversion, complete with pre-programmed emotions. Or, worse, of acting as a movement's platform for a bloodless institutional left chasing positions and new faces. Politicians of every stripe, in need of legitimacy, took part in the Genoa Social Forum. (...)
This is a world that runs, running ever faster, and just as quickly grinds out experiences, paths. And even social movements that cannot escape the spectacle, the insane logic that, senselessly mimicking the rules imposed by marketing, rapidly consumes, suddenly rendering obsolete, even the capacity to criticize, transcend, and deny the established. It is a trap to be avoided, by displacing the adversary, multiplying one's own ability to clear new ground, autonomous zones, and free spaces. To overcome the numerous impasses in which it risks becoming stuck, the movement must be able to spread across the territory like dust, building conflictual relationships that feed on the capacity to intentionally construct other worlds, other relationships, other lives. Every day, everywhere. The urge to radical action that can draw nourishment from deep roots, from a vision capable of profoundly innervating the present, can be the sign of a revolutionary movement capable of building its own future in the here and now. As anarchists, we have begun, not without difficulty, to move in this direction, the only one capable of gathering the most fruitful demands of these movements. But it can and will be We must do more."
We believe those words are more relevant than ever. History has made it clear that only where large movements have emerged that have managed to combine a strong territorial presence with the method of mass direct action, not just among militant minorities, have governments and bosses become fearful.
The choice to strive for radicality and deep roots is therefore for us the main legacy of those July days, a challenge that is renewed every day in the struggles we promote and experience. A constant act of confrontational subtraction from the established, combined with the practice of self-management and daily struggle.
A comrade who was there
To read and download the Umanità Nova special released immediately after the G8:
umanitanova.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Le-tre-giornate-di-Genova.pdf
https://umanitanova.org/36486-2/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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