Left parties condemn state violence
Genoa struggles reverberate throughout Europe
By John
Catalinotto
The Genoa demonstrations opened a new period of struggle
in Europe, especially in Italy. Communists and
anti-imperialist fighters across the continent are rejoicing
at a new generation's readiness to act for social
justice.
They and the rest of the anti-globalization movement are
also discussing the greatest display of police violence seen
in Italy in decades.
These events will surely influence the development of the
anti-globalization movement here in the United States,
including the protests foreseen for Sept. 29-30 in
Washington, D.C.
During their willful and well-planned attacks on the over
200,000 protesters of the G-8 summit, police killed one
demonstrator, Carlo Giuliani, arrested 301, and injured
hundreds. Injury estimates vary between the official 231 and
the movement's report of 800.
European anti-globalization leaders have called for
demonstrations Aug. 20 to mark one month since the killing of
Giuliani, who was shot at close range by one of the
carabinieri--the Italian national police.
Future summits--and protests--are set for October in
Geneva, Switzerland, and December in Brussels, Belgium. On
Sept. 26-27 in Naples, Italy, NATO leaders are scheduled to
meet to discuss implementing Bush's missile defense scheme.
Strategy and tactics for these actions are all up for
discussion.
Luca Casarini, a spokesperson for the "White Overalls"
group and for the Genoa Social Forum--the umbrella
organization that had attempted to coordinate 700
participating groups--gave his evaluation of Genoa in an
interview with the newspaper La Repubblica. The "White
Overalls" had intended to use civil disobedience to express
its protest of the G8 summit. According to Casarini, the
vicious police attack drove his group to building barricades
and fighting back.
Casarini was concerned that the police violence would
leave future demonstrators with only two choices--"Either
give up demonstrating, or go to demonstrations armed." He
hoped for a third choice, where those practicing civil
disobedience might know they faced an orderly trial but not a
bullet.
In Berlin on Aug. 6, under the auspices of the Junge Welt
daily newspaper, some 500 people from virtually all the
different tendencies on the anti-globalization left met to
discuss the aftermath of Genoa and also of Gothenburg,
Sweden--where police had shot anti-globalization
demonstrators in June.
The title of the meeting--"Who is Afraid of Whom?,"
meaning the rulers or the demonstrators--said a lot about
what is on the mind of the German left. Speakers were for not
splitting the movement. For example, they supported defending
Black Bloc activists along with everyone else jailed in Italy
or Sweden.
There was divided opinion over whether the kind of police
assault that occurred in Italy--under the right-wing regime
led by Silvio Berlusconi--should be expected in European
states having social-democratic or center-left regimes.
Workers' parties support
the struggle
The Genoa action had the strongest participation yet,
since this movement was launched in Seattle, from
organizations openly identified with the workers' struggle
for socialism.
Tens of thousands of young workers came from the
Refoundation Communist Party of Italy. A thousand came with
the delegation of the Communist Party of Greece, and smaller
delegations came from the Portuguese Communist Party, the
German Communist Party, the Belgian Workers' Party and other
groups from around the continent.
Despite the heavy casualties, these parties were
optimistic about the strong turnout of young workers. They
saw the action as evidence of a coming upsurge in
struggle.
Articles in these parties' newspapers alternated between
hailing the demonstration as "a turning point in the
worldwide struggle against social injustice" and describing
the cops' brutal, unprovoked attacks, arrests and beatings of
the participants.
While there was criticism of the anarchist Black Bloc
tactics, or reports that police provocateurs had infiltrated
parts of the demonstration, they all condemned the G-8
themselves and the Italian police as the source of the
violence. They resisted the attempt by the authorities and
the media to divide the protest into "good"--meaning
pacifist--and "bad" demonstrators.
Meanwhile, much of the European capitalist media--along
with Socialist Party leader Lionel Jospin in France, Social
Democrats and Greens in Germany like Joschka Fisher, and
members of the center-right Austrian government--have
deplored the violence of both police and demonstrators. They
chide the Berlusconi regime for using "excessive police
force" in Genoa, by which they mean illegal arrests, beating
and torturing of prisoners, and so on.
Berlusconi like Hearst but bigger
Berlusconi's government is under pressure from both
foreign and domestic critics. He's had to move three
responsible police officials to new jobs. But basically he is
defying the opposition and supporting the police.
The Italian premier is a multi-billionaire media magnate,
one of the richest people in Europe. He owns the lion's share
of Italian private television channels and now controls the
government stations. Even foreign journalists had to remark
that at a recent news conference he got no tough questions
about police brutality--too many people in the room worked
for him.
Following the G-8 summit, Berlusconi accompanied President
George W. Bush to Rome, where he gave Italy's support to
Bush's national missile defense scheme and expansion of
NATO.
His junior partners in the government coalition are
Umberto Bossi of the anti-foreign Northern League--which is
racist even against southern Italians--and Gianfranco Fini of
the National Alliance, a neo-fascist party with roots in the
party of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Both fully
support aggressive police actions.
Fini and four senators from his party spent a day in the
headquarters of the Genoa police during the repression
against demonstrators. He later claimed it was his
"institutional duty." (Il Manifesto, Aug. 7)
According to witnesses, the Genoa police urinated on youth
arrested at the Genoa Social Forum building and beat them if
they refused to chant a fascist slogan from a song about the
colonial war against Ethiopia. Fini and his party must have
felt at home in the precinct.
More recently, when a bomb exploded early Aug. 9 in a
Venice courtroom, Berlusconi jumped on the event to bait the
left and batter his social-democratic opposition back into
line. They had criticized the police excesses, but he
neutralized them by demanding they show bi-partisan "unity
against terrorism."
He moved so quickly that some sectors of the left
suspected government agents of planting the bomb--which,
under the circumstances, is not at all far-fetched.
In the 1970s, the right wing of the Italian ruling class,
in collusion with Washington, used what was called the
"strategy of tension" to keep the reformist Communist Party
of Italy out of the government. Rightist forces set bombs in
public places, often resulting in many deaths. They
destabilized society and strengthened the police and
military.
Secret groups of ruling-class and governmental figures,
including military officers like the infamous Propaganda 2,
or P-2, collaborated with the CIA to stop any move to the
left. Berlusconi's name was on a list of P-2 members found by
police in a raid in 1981. He still knows how to take
advantage of incidents like the bombing to gain his political
ends.
Berlusconi plans to attack the living standards of the
Italian workers this fall, cutting pensions and putting
pressure on to keep salaries low as contracts come up. Even
before Genoa, everyone expected a "hot autumn." Now comes
news of a downturn in the Italian economy, with week-long
furloughs expected in September for a third of FIAT's 50,000
workers.
The same European social-democratic leaders who criticize
Berlusconi's cops had no problem waging a very violent war
against Yugoslavia. The Italian media magnate is indicating
by his Genoa tactics that he intends to bring the war home.
He is signaling a threat to use the police, carabinieri and
soldiers against the workers' movement.
The Italian workers and the anti-globalizers face
difficult conditions--a big rightist majority in parliament
and a conservative mood in much of the population. Yet their
leaders must develop a strategy both to nurture the new,
youthful movement and to defend it from attack from a
dangerous state apparatus. The anti-NATO demonstration in
Naples may provide the first test.
The Publix Theater
Only the machinations of a secret-police apparatus can
explain the arrest and charges against 25 members of the
Austria-based Publix Theater group as they were leaving
Genoa. They were charged with conspiracy to commit violence,
with a possible 15-year prison term.
This case has received much more than usual attention in
the U.S. media because one of those arrested was a young
woman from New Jersey, Susanna Thomas. Other U.S. citizens
were arrested with her. According to all who know her, Thomas
is a Quaker and pacifist. This hasn't stopped the Italian
cops from making her and the others in the theater company
victims of their revenge against all demonstrators.
They were finally released from prison and deported on
Aug. 14, but the charges against them have not been
dropped.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS
:: SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page