Not because we are heroes, but because no one else will do it for us. Hope is a practice we must organize together. - Alessandro Ferretti ---- For two months now, Italy has been gripped by an unprecedented, mind-numbing heatwave, turning every day into a struggle for survival. Yet, instead of taking action to address this emergency, the government, boasting about sovereignty, has decided to put us all in debt by over twenty billion euros (almost EUR350 per person) to buy weapons from the United States, further sinking our country in order to further enrich the richest and most powerful nation in the world.
Despite this resounding slap in the face to the needs of all Italians, no reaction remotely commensurate with such madness has occurred, or will occur. Those who still bother to inform themselves no longer react to anything, like boxers stunned by their opponent's punches.Aside from those so exhausted they're actually rooting for the meteorite, many console themselves with a deadly illusion that fuels incompetence and resignation: people are still doing too well, but sooner or later the abscess will burst, and those who are suffering will take to the streets and stop this disaster. Well, know this: it's not true. There's no such automatic mechanism. Psychology and history tell us the exact opposite: prolonged and increasing suffering doesn't generate active anger, but depression, forced adaptation, and social atomization in a potentially endless vicious cycle. The worse you feel, the less mental and physical energy you have to organize. There will be no spontaneous, life-saving rebellion; we have to earn our salvation, and the longer we wait to act, the more unlikely it becomes that a mass mobilization will take off, because dealing with worsening material conditions swallows up the time and energy needed to fight. The usual activists do what they can, but they're neither martyrs nor saints, much less superheroes.
The ruling elites have perfectly understood this dynamic and systematically exploit it. The paradox, entirely in their favor, is that spontaneous progressive rebellions succeed when living conditions are improving, as happened in 1789 or 1968. To maintain their dominance, those in power know they must not resolve crises and offer hope, but rather keep society constantly in decline. The cycle is vicious: worsen social conditions to the point of making survival a full-time job, distract public attention by channeling frustration into sterile, horizontal conflicts, and harshly repress anyone who persists in taking action with security decrees and the criminalization of dissent. All of this weakens those who resist, creating room for further intensification of exploitation and marginalization. In this theater, institutional opposition is not the solution, but simply the system's backstop. Those who sit in parliament or local government, party leaders, and officials have no real personal interest in promoting a fight against the concentrations of power that are destroying society, because it would only bring them risks and trouble. With a few laudable but very rare exceptions, they prefer to set up superficial oppositions, managing what little power they still have, waiting for the disaster to eventually wear down the governing majority so they can replace it, but continuing to implement the same policies and serve the interests of the rulers.
It's a movie we've seen too many times to pretend it will be any different this time, so let's stop fooling ourselves: no savior will come from above. Let's go vote, for goodness' sake, but in the knowledge that whoever takes office will continue undauntedly to manage the decline, to the greater glory of those who already have everything but want even more.
To escape this trap, we must first stop cultivating the pernicious attitude of criticizing those who oppose power but do not do so in the "right" way.
Even now, we still have to listen to people pontificating that "the left should care about workers instead of young people, LGBT rights, or migrants." This narrative only serves to sow division among those fighting to improve their conditions, promoting an absurd war between the least privileged over who should have priority. The fight must be one and clear: against the elites, against the super-rich, against those who profit from the devastation of our lives. The enemy is those who are transforming our existences into a dystopian nightmare, not the classmate or classmate who demands a further shred of dignity. Looking up, united against those at the top, is the only perspective that prevents us from tearing each other apart.
Still others justify their symbiosis with the couch by saying that all this action is pointless, only serves to make us feel bad. Yet, there has been a sign, and it's recent, that breaking the inertia brings concrete results. Millions of people took to the streets to stop the genocide in Gaza, despite repression, the complicit silence of institutions, and weariness: they pushed the issue onto the public agenda, shattered the dominant narrative, and forced politics to reckon with real mobilization. That ceasefire, however fragile, demonstrates that stubborn collective action can still break the inertia. But a flash in the pan can't save us: it must become a continuous and structured practice.
We must stop being passive spectators of our own shipwreck. Once we recognize the fundamental futility of voting, one way to find the strength to resist together is to rebuild the social fabric from the bottom up, in neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools.
There are countless avenues for action that can impact the hope-destroying machine here and now. We can fight to deconstruct our cities by planting trees and creating gardens, opposing speculative projects that consume land and raise temperatures. We can fight against gentrification and touristification, which drive up rents and increase evictions, defending the right to housing against rent-seeking. We can build alternative local information tools, describing the local mechanisms and consequences of organized decline and the experiences of resistance that seek to reverse it. Breaking the monopoly of narrative is essential to breaking out of isolation and demonstrating that we are not alone in our rebellion. We can defend public health by opposing the closure of services, participate in targeted boycott campaigns against companies complicit in environmental destruction or genocide, and work to liberate and restore abandoned public spaces, transforming them into places of aggregation and social interaction, alternatives to consumer-only venues. These aren't short-term nonsense: they're practical workshops where we learn to discuss concrete issues, collaborate, bring people together, and defend dignity.
In this context, universities and schools are crucial. They have been transformed into cogs in a system designed to promote an empty meritocracy of knowledge, disciplining, selecting, and marginalizing. However, the still-aware teachers who work within them still have the opportunity to foster spaces of open-mindedness and critique of the system, experimenting with alternative teaching methods and collective self-education. The toxic myth of excellence and merit, which only serves to mask the privileges of the wealthy and make those who cannot make it feel guilty, can be deconstructed by asserting rights and broadening horizons beyond individualism. Networks of joint action can be built between students, precarious researchers, workers, and teachers, restoring knowledge to its role in decoding reality, revealing the logic of those in power, and creating the conditions for change.
I know this reasoning is simplistic, and that there are enormous obstacles between saying "let's get organized" and actually doing it: fatigue, lack of time, skills that can't be improvised, internal conflicts, the fear of failure. I don't presume to offer a manual or a recipe that works for every neighborhood or workplace; this is an invitation to set out on a journey, not a detailed map of the route. The answers to how to do it, how to support each other, how not to get lost, can only be found by walking together: knots are unraveled by discussing them with others, not by mulling them over alone.
And let's be completely honest: no text will save us, including this one. These pages are only useful if they become a pretext-if you pass them on to a colleague, a neighbor, a classmate, and they become the occasion for that long-put-off conversation.
What moves us is not what we read: it's the face of someone who looks at you and asks: shall we do this together?
Hope is not a fairy tale told to us at the end of the day, but a practice we must build with commitment and organization. If we wait for pain to wake us, we will wake up in a nightmare with no escape. The only way out is to dedicate real, continuous, and persistent energy to daily political activity, now, before the window of opportunity closes completely. Let's start talking to those around us, let's organize ourselves in our workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods.
Time is running out, continuing to wait for Godot would be pure suicide.
https://alternativalibertaria.org/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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