Turati against the political violence of yesterday and today

22 March 20244 weeks ago babelfish

“Down with violence!, down with death!”. The relevance of Filippo Turati's speech at the commemoration of the dead in the attack on the Diana theater in Milan on 23 March 1921. Walter Galbusera's speech

A bomb attack on the Diana theater in Milan, which occurred on 23 March 1921, caused 21 deaths and 80 injuries. The culprits were identified in an anarcho-individualist group composed of Giuseppe Mariani, a twenty-three-year-old brakeman from Mantua at the railways, Giuseppe Boldrini, a twenty-seven-year-old worker also from Mantua and Ettore Aguggini, a nineteen-year-old Milanese worker. They intended to attack the police commissioner Giovanni Guasti, representative of a state that held Errico Malatesta in prison, accused of an unspecified conspiracy activity, the most authoritative representative of the anarchist movement of the time who had started the hunger strike. But Malatesta himself, having learned of the facts, suspended the hunger strike and expressed "his disdain for the abhorrent crime which only benefits those who oppress workers and those who persecute our movement". Two of the accused, tried in 1922, Mariani and Boldrini were sentenced to life imprisonment, Aguggini to 30 years. Having been released from prison as a result of the amnesty on 1 July 1946, Giuseppe Mariani published a book ("Memoirs of a former terrorist" where he recounts the details of the attack and recognizes the futility of violence. He died in Sestri Levante in 1974. A few days after the massacre, on the evening of 7 April 1921, Filippo Turati commemorated the victims of the attack at the Teatro del Popolo in Milan with a memorable speech which firmly reiterated his warning against violence, the "heaviest legacy of war", by anyone practiced. In the midst of the "black two years" which followed the "red two years" of 1919-1920, Turati had faced the same topic with great courage a few months earlier at the PSI Congress in Livorno when he came to challenge the maximalists and communists (who would have those days gave birth to the PCd'Italia) with the dramatic and provocative statement: "Comrades, we create fascism!"

Faced with the deaths of Diana, Turati rejects in principle that it should be only the enormous number of victims that arouses indignation and condemnation. Every single crime, of whatever origin the victims and perpetrators were, had to elicit firm rejection. “No to violence!” it is Turati's appeal which is addressed to the entire society and makes no distinction. It rejects the tragic illusion that profound inequities and serious and widespread injustices could be addressed with the use of violence because the only practicable way remained that of gradually achieving social progress while respecting democracy.

The massacre takes place in a country crossed by a creeping civil war, in which "Everyone was a wolf, sometimes in intention, if not always in deed". But for Turati the victims are equal in the tragic solemnity of death, they themselves refuse that violence is legitimate, useful and necessary: “Kill a little or kill a lot, kill innocents. All victims of violence, primarily the victims of war, are innocent. All the dead of this post-war period, of this most uncivilized civil war, whatever their rosette, are all innocents, they are equals. And the murderers are all murderers in one way! “For Turati, our civilization began from the day in which man, having become a citizen, renounced taking justice into his own hands, which is why he also forcefully reiterates his socialist message: “It will be the task and pride of the parties of the future, of the great proletarian organizations that the armed representation of the state only serves the community as a whole, does not oppress the weak, does not indulge the powerful, renders sentences and not favors."

And for greater clarity he adds that "There are methods that do not belong to us such as those which, instead of proceeding with the orderly conquest of political and economic power, driven by faith in the miracle of violence whether of individuals or crowds, military or proletarian, you use the bomb or the coup de main or the dictatorship is always treacherous. Violence is not strength but its negation, it is weakness and creates weakness."

And he goes further (and how much further given the ideological debate of the time!) when he states that "He who, from a few episodic phrases, superseded by himself and by the times, claims to derive a justification that is most repugnant to all, insults Marx." intimate part of the doctrine. We were born from freedom of thought. Freedom is reason, intelligence, goodness, civil progress, outside of it there is nothing but servility and degeneration.” And prophetically he adds that “A mental fashion has arisen again, after centuries of denying beauty and nobility. We rave about minorities who must push the world forward with cannon fire, about demiurges who have the mission of establishing ferocious dictatorships to redeem the majorities in spite of themselves, shaping humanity on a model of their own invention. This is the great deception of history. Violence denies freedom, we defend and demand freedom.” As Carlo Rosselli wrote, Filippo Turati before being a political leader was an educator, a master of freedom who clearly and courageously pointed out the fundamental errors of the social-communist maximalism of the time.

More than a hundred years have passed but today a cultural battle against violence without adjectives is even more necessary. If the sensitivity of public opinion has increased, episodes of intolerance and incitement to hatred do not fail to recur which do not even spare the world of schools and universities. From a political point of view, Turati's message indicates a field of convergence that today should bring together all the political forces of our country that recognize themselves in the values of freedom and pluralism and that, legitimizing each other, can alternate in the governance of public affairs. It is not a question of seeking "reconciliation" by rewriting history, which would prove to be an impracticable path, but of rediscovering and accepting shared values on which to build the future path. For this reason it is necessary but not sufficient to refer to the values of anti-fascism but it is necessary to reiterate at the same time the firm rejection of any form of authoritarianism and despotism, present or past, whatever its nature. This is why Filippo Turati's appeal is so timely. And this is all the more necessary if we consider the construction of a new Europe a priority. The old continent was devastated in the last century by dictatorships of every color which unfortunately have not completely disappeared today. The new Europe, in order to grow and consolidate itself on the values of freedom and solidarity between peoples, will not be able to accept any ambiguity or misunderstandings about its democratic cultural identity.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/turati-contro-la-violenza-politica-di-ieri-e-di-oggi/ on Fri, 22 Mar 2024 06:28:21 +0000.