26 April 2025 - ... on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Italy marks 80 years since liberation with calls against genocide and militarism

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Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Source: Potere al Popolo Bologna e provincia/Facebook

On the 80th anniversary of liberation from Nazi-fascism, left forces in Italy mobilize against genocide, armament, and the Meloni government

In the coming weeks, many European countries will mark the 80th anniversary of liberation from Nazi-fascist occupation. Italy is among the first, with dozens of events organized for April 25 – Liberation Day – despite ongoing attempts by the Meloni government and right-wing forces to rewrite or erase the memory of the Resistance. For most grassroots groups, this year’s events aim to locate the values that inspired partisan fighters in the 1940s into today’s context, marked by an aggressive rearmament agenda, support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and domestic repression of civil rights.

“Eighty years ago, our grandparents freed us from the grip of fascism. But remembering the past is not enough, especially not in the stale, institutional way the Democratic Party and center-left do,” Giuliano Granato of Potere al Popolo said during the demonstration in Naples. Along similar lines, the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) stated that April 25 should not be reduced to a mere ritual or commemoration. “It should actualize the values and ideals of the partisan Resistance, which freed, perhaps not once and for all, this country from the barbarity of war and Nazi-fascism and provided an inescapable push toward better democratic, working, and living conditions for the people of this country,” the trade union declared in its call to action.

Against Israeli genocide

These values, according to USB, Potere al Popolo, and other left groups, must necessarily include opposition to genocide. In many cities, protesters have insisted that Italy’s ongoing ties with the Israeli occupation are unacceptable. These ties, they argue, are evidence that the political establishment has failed to grasp the true meaning and importance of the Resistance. Ahead of Liberation Day, the Genoa chapter of Potere al Popolo organized an action addressing President Sergio Mattarella, criticizing him for formally honoring the Resistance while remaining silent on the genocidal war against Palestinians and on the breakdown of democratic rights under the current government.

Potere al Popolo Genoa with banner reading: “Mattarella, antifascists don’t finance wars and genocide.” Source: Potere al Popolo Genoa/Facebook

“To do so [speak of the Resistance] after cozying up to the president of the criminal state of Israel, effectively supporting the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians, is an insult to those who, since the days of the partisan struggle, have fought against all genocide,” Potere al Popolo Genoa stated. “To honor the Resistance while equating the Soviet communists who liberated much of Europe from Nazism with the Third Reich is an insult to history and memory.”

Against armament

Equally prominent as the call to stop the genocide and sever ties with Israel is the demand to reject Europe’s new armament agenda, which will come at the cost of public services, education, healthcare, and climate justice. Giorgia Meloni’s administration and mainstream opposition parties alike have supported this agenda in different ways, endorsing increased spending on so-called defense and entertaining proposals for a joint European army. These priorities stand in stark contrast with the interests of Italy’s working class and the vision of a more just society that accompanied the antifascist Resistance.

Against new iterations of fascism

Meanwhile, Giorgia Meloni and her ministers are pursuing a different kind of battle, one aimed at minimizing the role of the antifascist struggle, led largely by communists, in shaping modern Italy. While the mainstream opposition tends to fixate on this behavior by the right wing, Granato warns that doing so risks missing important pieces of the puzzle.

“For us, Giorgia Meloni is simply following the path she’s always been on, one clearly tied to the rise of neo-fascism. After the defeat of Nazism, the slogan of the Italian Social Movement [neo-fascist party] was ‘neither renounce nor restore’ – and that’s exactly what Meloni is doing today. She doesn’t outright deny their fascist roots, but she also doesn’t walk around openly glorifying Benito Mussolini,” Granato told Peoples Dispatch.

The most recent attempt of the right to undermine the legacy of the Resistance came in the wake of the death of Pope Francis, when the government declared a record five days of mourning and called for “sobriety” at all public events. Many understood this to be an attempt to minimize April 25 events. Liberal and right-wing local administrations seized the opportunity to scale down and cancel rallies, while far-right media ran headlines such as April 25: Day of mourning. “Sure, they can claim they were referring to the death of the pope, but the truth is, they’ve been waiting 80 years for an excuse to print something like that, because for them, April 25 has always been a defeat,” says Granato.

Progressive forces, however, resisted, criticizing the government for using the death of a pope who – unlike the administration, called for peace and solidarity – to advance its agenda. They also refused to limit the day’s activities to commemorations, echoing the partisans’ revolutionary vision of a radically different society. “We don’t stop at the official ceremonies, not just because they’re cold and formulaic, but because we believe the fight for liberation and resistance isn’t over,” Granato explains. “Just like many partisans understood back then that toppling fascism wasn’t enough, we believe that defeating the Meloni government wouldn’t be enough either.”

A group of protesters after the central demonstration in Naples, April 25, 2025. Source: Ex-OPG Je so’ pazzo/Facebook

Instead, Granato calls on the people to work together to free themselves from contemporary forms of danger and oppression: first and foremost genocide and militarization. “We worked to make today a day of liberation from militarism and genocide and to link it to the mobilization we are building, including a national assembly in Rome on May 24, and a mass demonstration on June 21, just days before the NATO summit in The Hague,” he adds.

“We believe militarism has always been a tool of fascism. The militarization of Europe today goes hand-in-hand with growing authoritarianism at home and worsens conditions for the working class across the continent.”

Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Post author:dizzy
Post published:26 April 2025
Post category:Fascism genocide Israel new authoritarianism Zionism
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So, Are We Just Going to Let Ourselves Die?

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Original article by Roger Hallam republished from Roger Hallam. I don’t have permission to republish this article but expect that it will be ok & he’s in prison.

The elites are blind, the media asleep — but the fuse of revolution has been lit, and history is about to turn.

Shortly before I was imprisoned last year, I had the privilege of joining a Zoom call with a man living in the Central American rainforest. He had been the primary fundraiser for the Social Forum, which, as some readers will recall, was the first international organisation of this century to call for a new global social system: “Another world is possible.” He told me, “Roger, when you go to see funders, tell them two things: First, that the money is not theirs, and second, that it will be worth nothing in ten years.”

This week, I recorded a message for one of the most radical Western companies funding climate crisis activism. I spoke to them about these two realities. Five years ago, perhaps even a year ago, they would have politely—or not so politely—shown us the door. But not now. My colleague was told the presentation was “magical,” information about funding a new global movement was shared with over 100 staff members, and a personal letter from me will be delivered by hand to the company’s founder, whose funds run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

At the same time, Just Stop Oil announced it would no longer engage in civil resistance. The media response has been significant, but none of it has focused on what really matters. I was sent a series of questions by Justin Rowlatt, the BBC environment correspondent. I replied to him with three main points. First, it is the evolution of a deep culture of respect, service, and trust that took us from three people in a room with a few quid to a household name, with thousands of arrests and millions of pounds in financial support, all within a year. Equally significant has been the unprecedented battering we have received, resulting in hundreds of people being imprisoned, many on multi-year sentences, including nearly all the key organisers. Nothing like this has happened to an open, nonviolent organisation in this country since the Napoleonic Wars.

A day or two later, the police battered down the door of Westminster Friends Meeting House in a raid to arrest a group of young people planning a protest. How many centuries would you have to go back to find this kind of treatment of the Quakers? The point, however, is this: it is only in the face of such state violence that the fearless personality is forged, prepared for the enormous sacrifices needed to bring down regimes.

Then there is the third, least important point, that obviously JSO has not been able to stop the metamachine of universal death that is the British carbon regime. Justin, in true neoliberal style, focused only on the third point: our “failure” – the superficial, the short-term, the flat material plane. He and the media cannot see cultural and spiritual depth.

The key determinants of regime change are now coming into place — large-scale funding, service-based culture, and the spirit of fearless sacrifice. There is one more ingredient. Ignored by the media is the “climate news” of the past 12 months, which is a hundred times worse than what provoked the mass mobilisation of Extinction Rebellion back in 2018. Underlying temperatures have jumped 0.2°C in a single year. We are now over 1.6°C and will be hitting 2°C by 2030. The carbon sinks are collapsing, and the feedbacks are triggered. Buried in the Appendix of the recent British Insurance Industry report is its prediction of 2 billion deaths at 2°C, and 4 billion at 3°C. That is half of the world’s population dead. This reality is about to explode upon us and trigger the fusion of the elements of revolutionary transformation.

Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent for the New York Times during the 1990s, told me a while ago that the reason why the elites do not see revolutions coming is because they only speak to themselves. They are stuck in their silo. Like Justin Rowlett and the BBC, they can only see what they want to see. The world is falling away beyond our feet. Trump is doing his stuff. They have no alternative but to resort to appeasement. And like in the 1930s, their dream world is about to be swept away.

So are we just going to have ourselves die? The deepest paradox of the present historical moment is that only when we have the courage to answer yes to that question, and so allow ourselves to experience the agonising depths of despair, desolation, and self-contempt, can we come to see and feel reality as it actually is, and so play our part in the coming re-making of the world.

To find out about this new global movement (we’re recruiting!) go to rev21.earth.