February 10, 2018: Thousands of people protest against racism and fascism during a national demonstration in Macerata, Italy. Danilo Balducci\/Press Assocation. All rights reservedLast Saturday in
\nthe centre of the Italian city of Macerata, a young man affiliated with the
\nextreme-right opened fire on Gideon Azeke, Jennifer Otiotio, Mahmadou Tour\u00e9,
\nWilson Kofi, Festus Omagbon and Omar Fadera. They were singled out because of
\nthe colour of their skin and their African origins. <\/p>\n
<\/i><\/p>\n
Several days prior
\nto the attack, several suitcases had been found in Macerata containing the
\nmutilated body of a young female drug addict, Pamela Mastropietro. The principal
\nsuspects of the grisly murder at present are two Nigerian drug dealers. The
\ngunman who perpetrated Saturday\u2019s attacks said in his confession that he\u2019d gone
\nout hunting black people to avenge the young girl\u2019s death, and with the
\nintention of killing every immigrant selling drugs. The media were quick to
\nportray the attacks as the acts of a mentally unstable individual or as crimes
\nof passion, but the environment in which the attacks occurred weakens the case
\nfor either of these explanations. <\/p>\n
On the contrary,
\nrather than avenging the young woman\u2019s murder, the gunman sought to send a
\nclear message to his compatriots: immigration is a threat to all of us,
\nparticularly for the most vulnerable members of society.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately,
\nthis message found itself an eager audience. Leaders of the Italian \u2018far-right\u2019,
\nnotably Matteo Salvini and Georgia Meloni, have seized every opportunity to
\nhammer it home, stating that while the attacks were of course criminal,
\nultimate responsibility for them rests with \u201cthose who would fill Italy with
\nmigrants.\u201d <\/p>\n
Our response must
\nbe to call things by their right names: what happened in Macerata was an act of
\nfascist terrorism, the most serious attack of its kind since Italy\u2019s \u201cYears of
\nLead.\u201d\u00a0 This act was intended not only to
\nsow terror among people of colour living in Italy, but also to play on the pervasive
\nfears that haunt Italian political opinion concerning immigration. Furthermore,
\nbeyond matters of political opinion or party affiliation, the theatricality of
\nthe attacker\u2019s surrender to the police displayed precisely those elements
\nconstituting the essence of an underlying fascist ideology: that is to say,
\nfascism as an obscene death cult. Why then do Italy\u2019s political leaders seem
\nunwilling to recognise these facts?<\/p>\n
The centre-left\u2019s
\nfailure to recognise the racist and fascist nature of the shootings is nothing
\nless than the culmination of a series of abdications of responsibility. These
\nabdications, like self-fulfilling prophecies, have been the logical outcome of
\nthe assumption that Italian public opinion has been won over by a \u201cxenophobic\u201d
\nor \u201canti-anti-fascist\u201d common sense. Accordingly, progressive forces in Italy
\nhave tolerated the emergence of what Hannah Arendt called \u201crace-thinking,\u201d which
\nis now in the process of solidifying into a genuine \u201cracist ideology.\u201d <\/p>\n
The \u201cimmigration
\nas a social problem\u201d trope has become an established fact across the political
\nspectrum, with the result that the divide between different political options
\nhas shifted from the question of the problem itself to that of its possible
\nsolutions. Therefore, the various political actors, while not necessarily
\nengaged in \u201crace-thinking\u201d themselves, have come to adhere to a single
\ndiscursive framework in which immigration policy becomes the fundamental
\nproblem.<\/p>\n
It does not
\nmatter how much effort is put into statistical evidence proving the falsity of
\nthe idea that \u201cnative Europeans\u201d are being invaded and replaced by African
\nmigrants. As Hannah Arendt reminds us, an ideology is not a theoretical
\ndoctrine, but an arm of mass persuasion appealing to the \u201cimmediate political
\nnecessities\u201d of men and women, in other words to their lived experience and
\ndesires. <\/p>\n
February 10, 2018: Thousands of people protest against racism and fascism during a national demonstration in Macerata, Italy. NurPhoto\/Press Association. All rights reserved.There is no point
\nin calling for thoughtful reflection and silence, as did the mayor of Macerata,
\nwhen, fearing further division and violence, he called for the cancelation of an
\nantiracist and antifascist rally organised for February 10 in his home town.
\nRather than appeasing tensions, the silence the mayor calls for runs the risk
\nof leaving an open space for the voices of those who sow hatred, because at the
\nmoment, it is those voices who occupy the foreground of public debate.<\/p>\n
<\/i><\/p>\n
It is for this
\nreason that the struggle against the sort of barbarity we have seen in Macerata
\ncalls not for silence, but for powerful symbols. We must counter the
\npseudo-heroic acts of the fascist gunman with thousands of daily acts of
\nresistance. We must counter the fascist death cult with the phrase used in the Zapatista
\ncommunities of Chiapas to welcome visitors who come as friends: \u201cLong live
\nLife, down with Death!\u201d With this in mind, we of DiEM25 Paris and DiEM25 France
\nwelcome the success of last Saturday\u2019s rally, which, despite all opposition, drew
\nthousands of committed citizens to Macerata and sparked solidarity
\ndemonstrations all over the world. We invite all who want to stop the race to
\nbarbarism on our continent to seize any occasion to speak up against racism and
\nfascism, in a spirit of solidarity and constructive disobedience.<\/p>\n
Viva la vida y muera la muerte!<\/p>\n
Translated by Simeon Gallu DiEM25 Paris<\/em><\/p>\n Anti-fascist demonstration in Macerata on February 10, 2019 in response to the assault on immigrants by extremist Luca Traini. NurPhoto\/Press Association. All rights reserved. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 10, 2018: Thousands of people protest against racism and fascism during a national demonstration in Macerata, Italy. Danilo Balducci\/Press Assocation. All rights reservedLast Saturday in the centre of the Italian city of Macerata, a young man affiliated with the extreme-right opened fire on Gideon Azeke, Jennifer Otiotio, Mahmadou Tour\u00e9, Wilson Kofi, Festus Omagbon and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}