ITALIA

In Italy, a near-massacre by a fascist shooter displays the dark side of the country

Since Sunday February 4th a spiral of events stemming from a fascist shooting against migrants is spotlighting the guilty conscience of an entire political establishment and the media system. A short summary of five days of fear and loathing in Italian towns and cities

Macerata (a small town in the Marche region, with a population of about 43 thousand). Sunday morning, about 11 am. A hail of bullets is shot form the open windows of a moving car. The target? All the black people in the area. An Isis attack? It would appear so in the manner, but not for the target: niggers. At the end of the mad rush, a white guy comes out of the car into a city square, before the city’s war dead memorial. The man, ambushed by the police, takes off his bulletproof vest, wears an Italian flag, climbs the monument, screams something about Mussolini, makes the Fascist salute, and lets the cops arrest him without resisting.

Prior to this scene, he had just wounded six people. Two are seriously and four lightly injured. Five men and a woman. All of them are black.

Terrorism appears to have reached Italy. The author of the shooting is not a bearded Islamic fundamentalist, as the audience was expecting, but a right-wing skinhead. Luca Traini, a 28 -year-old. With a past close to fascist organizations such as Casapound and Forza Nuova. A present in the racist party of Matteo Salvini, with which he runs the 2017 elections in Corridonia, a village near Macerata with 15 thousand residents. He got 0 votes, but this did not stop his new passion for this political party. Photographs show him with Luigi Baldassarre, the Lega politician who won that election, and in the front line of a rally with the National Secretary of the party, Matteo Salvini.

Starting with this event, a mad circus of political reactions kicks off.

A few hours after the near-massacre, Maria Letizia Marino, the local secretary of Lega, made a statement claiming that Traini was in love with a “roman drug addict girl”. In this way she tried to link the attack to the feminicide of Pamela Mastropietro, an 18-year-old girl who died in the neighborhood of the shooting, whose body was cut up for hiding. The right-wing politician stated that “too much passion” could be the motive for the gesture. She clearly attempted to depoliticize what has happened, trying to shift its interpretation towards a love-affair. This was only the first of a series of similar attempts.

To be clear: there is a link between the feminicide and the near-massacre. But there is no love or passion at any point. Just racist rage that has been festering for years, amidst accusations against migrants repeated continuously by politicians and media. As far as we can tell, Luca never met Pamela. His revenge was just a blind attack against all black people. Even if the pusher charged first with murder and now for concealing a body (it is still not clear what killed the young girl, if a heroin overdose or somebody) was already in jail.

Dark ghosts, helpful to understand how deep the divisions inside society are along the edge defined by racism, start to emerge.

Luca Traini enters jail. Many newspapers recount that he was received with cheers by many other Italian prisoners. Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini formally condemned the violent act, but asked for the deportation of “600 thousand migrants” because they represent “a social bomb”. Indirectly, they accused the victims of the attack to be in some way guilty for it. Meanwhile, no political or institutional representative visited the wounded in hospital. With the only exception of Maurizio Acerbo, general secretary of Rifondazione Comunista running in the next election with the list Potere al Popolo (only today a member of Partito Democratico, the government party, has done the same). It looks like the ongoing election campaign is stronger than any sense of respect and dignity for these people. The main newspapers, always keen to represent and repeat the stories of the victims of Islamic terrorism, haven’t even published the names of the wounded men and woman.

Forza Nuova, a small fascist party, marginalised in the past years by the more “popular” Casapound, has publicly stated its support to Luca Traini, offering him their own legal team. According to the lawyer who in the end took on the defense of the accused, many people have started calling him offering money for the trial.

At the same time, antifascist organizations have also start to speak up and organize. Tuesday the 6th a few antifascists entered the bar where a press conference to be held by Simone di Stefano, leader of the fascist group Casapound, was planned for the next day. They accused the owner of letting the fascists speak, and threw a smoke grenade. So, the owner of the bar cancelled the fascist press conference. Wednesday the 8th a candlelight vigil for the young girl victim of feminicide took place, her mother has already declared that her daughter would not have accepted racist violence in her name. The same day the police force attacked antifascist protests in three cities – Pavia, Padova and Florence – protecting the fascist concentrations. Thursday the 9th Forza Nuova tried to protest in Macerata. Police had not authorised the mobilization. A national call to all the members of the group brought about 50 fascists to the city. Antifascist inhabitants of Macerata protested against their arrival in the city. Cops pushed them out of the town center and later held them briefly to the police station.

During the past 48 hours, however, the main gaming table has changed. The social centres in the region of Macerata, together with other antifascist and antiracist organizations, had immediately called for an antifascist demonstration. They had also accepted the participation, because of the exceptional situation, of some big associations and the union linked to the centre-left party (CGIL) calling for a massive demonstration against any kind of fascism. But on the afternoon of Wednesday the 8th, newspapers and webpages started to report incredible information. A statement claimed that the demonstration has been cancelled. Four heavy signatures closed the short text, which follows a call by the mayor of Macerata (linked to the government party of PD) to stop any demonstration, both fascist and the antifascist. The signatures are the ones of: ARCI, an association built as a network of many local circles; Libera, an ONG fighting mafia; CGIL, the main trade union, theoretically with a “centre-left” orientation; and above all ANPI, the national association of Italian partisans (yes, the partisans that fighted fascism). In the past year, Matteo Renzi has succeeded in linking the national secretaries of all these organization to himself.

In a few hours time, something of a revolt has kicked off against these organizations. Their Facebook and twitter accounts have been flooded by comments of people harshly criticizing the decision, many members stating that they will abandon the associations in protest against this unbelievable decision. More than 70 local ARCI circles and many ANPI sections have signed letters stating that they have not been consulted, that they disagree with the decision and that they will reach Macerata to protest.

The social centre in Macerata, CSA Sisma, immediately published a call confirming the demonstration, defining the position of these organizations as “ridiculous”. The big organizations were not the organizers of the demo in the first place, they had only joined the call.

From all over Italy social centers, antifascist and antiracist groups and associations have confirmed their intention to march. A wave of calls has spread the people in charge to organize transportation.

Criticism is addressing the government, accused of forbidding an antifascist demonstration following a fascist terrorist attack. The Minister of Interior, Marco Minniti – already known for his authoritarian positions and acts against social mobilitazions and for his criminal anti-migrants agreements with African dictatorships – first stated that he will personally forbid any demonstration, but later, perhaps because of the large mobilization, said that the government never banned it, and that the demo was allegedly cancelled by the organizers.

This sequence of events is displaying the dark side of a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown, where years of racist discourses spread by politicians, institutions, and media have created a dangerous racist environment. Much can be learned from what has happened since last Sunday.

Fascists are ready to take guns in hand to kill people, even if until known only as individual acts. A wide consensus could support terrorist acts targeting migrants, as has happened this time. The main political parties, also fearing reactions in the polls, have already abandoned any democratic and institutional rhetoric, following what they think is the actual “common sense”. Their rhetoric of “equidistance” from all types of mobilization, that is from fascist and antifascist ones, continues to help the extreme right-wing organizations to legitimize themselves as normal political actors. The leadership of historic associations of what was once the left – as the ones mentioned above – are in the hands of Renzi and, even in cases like this one, they do not refuse to take unpopular decisions, unpopular even with their members, to respect the political line dictated by the chief of the government party.

At the same time, there is another part of society that is much more aware than before of the fascist threat and will not take any steps back. In these hours, all over Italy people and comrades are organizing a massive participation to the demo in Macerata Saturday 10th February. We are aware that the Minister of the Interior will do as much as he can, from preventing the buses to reach the city to other kinds of provocative actions, but we are determined to take the streets against any kind of fascism and racism.