dossier Anarchists Against fascism

The sense of a Presence
by Furio Biagini

The anarchist contribution to the Resistance was not limited only to military action. Wherever possible, the anarchists engaged in organizing and defending the lives of people severely affected by the brutality of war by establishing shops and cooperatives of production and consumption, embryos of the society more free and just the construction of which they had dedicated their lives.

In recent years many historians have undertaken a critical review of the economic forces and ideals that shook the first half of last century. What unites all these works is the constant removal of anti-fascism, its tension and its revolutionary ideological components. On the contrary, fascism, and historically has been the subject of a historiographical reassessment, which is the finest example, systematic and acute work of Renzo De Felice, and that of his colleagues gathered around his series "The facts of History "edited by Bonacci. This interpretation avoids handling the historic responsibilities and policies of fascism, it minimizes the reactionary, anti-proletarian and anti-democratic regime and a common destructive, freedom-totalitarian and authoritarian governments had become accustomed to our weak liberal system. The Resistance, which deliberately ignores the European dimension is seen only view the Italian as cruel civil war where one and the others are on an equal footing.
This historical revision - a phenomenon that involves the whole of Europe, think of the historical revisionism of Nolte, of Rassinier, of Irving who deny the reality of the Holocaust, or shorten the range of up to cancel the responsibility of the Nazi regime - is also expressed by removing from the studies and analysis of the consistency and the role they played in those events minorities, the minorities agents, as were anarchists or militant of Justice and Freedom, or those minorities driving as they tried to be communists and socialists.
A fault, this mostly due to the official historiography of the Resistance, which is more concerned to formalize and sanctify the fight against fascism, systematically censored or misrepresented those experiences that are scarcely within the policy choices dictated by reconstruction or by the cold war, summarily dismissing the inconvenient opposition of those movements and revolutionary groups that fought against fascism to take the social revolution that they had always advocated.

psychological inferiority

It is no coincidence therefore that, apart from a few hints on some pages of Ferruccio Parri, in the lessons of Carlo Francovich and writings of a few others, there is no trace in the history of anarchist resistance in the presence of the partisan struggle. Yet the resistance, not to mention those who fell in Spain, giving their life for the freedom of all, take the names of the brigades and Malatesta Bruzzi who worked in Lombardy, training Amilcare Cipriani in Como, of Pistoia, Franche Libertarian Teams, the libertarian formations in Liguria, the Battalion Lucetti and Elio of Carrara.
The anarchists participated in the resistance on a massive scale and paid a high tribute of men and blood, but suffered the hegemony of the other leftist forces, particularly the absence of a specific organization and a single military command to bring together all movement in the liberation struggle. Of course they were organized into their own partisan, but as a rule they were found framed in the Garibaldi, in Matteotti, in the formation of Justice and Freedom. "Their battle formations - Gino Cerrito wrote about the anarchist participation in the resistance - are linked to the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Action Party. In CLN to be attended by delegates can never qualified to impose a policy revolution, an attitude of somewhat libertarian-oriented sense. Even if they are second to none in the armed struggle against Nazi-fascism can not overcome the psychological inferiority step which puts them in their lack of organization and the lack of a uniform policy." A situation which is explained in the history of anarchism in aversion to militarism and hierarchy in the belief that any form of government is a negation of human freedom.

dispersion and delays

Yet anarchists gave a substantial contribution to the fight against fascism. Since 1921 when the fascist violence began to hit the press and activists, the response was resistance to the bitter end by organizing events, participation in and adherence to general strikes, Arditi del Popolo, politically diverse movement that will try to respond shot to shot to blow up the arrogance squad. The rise to power of Mussolini and his government marks a turning point in the history of Italian anarchists as it determines the dispersion. The most severely affected movement of the other anti-fascist parties (in relation to the forces of course) violence squad before and then the legal ones. The fire of the locations of the sections of the USI, the union of anarcho-syndicalist, tendency to the ravages of printers and editors, the killings following the seizures, arrests, internment. Italian Anarchism is entering a phase of hiding, but his forces are more and more decreasing. For the survivors, the persecuted, the unemployed, that is not bugged exile. Those who had escaped from the jail in Italy and death find refuge in France.
Even abroad the lives of the anarchists as indeed that of all the escapees was not easy. The repression was hard even in the host countries. The war in Spain then took those who had escaped from prison or exile.
The defeat of the anarchist movement in Spain was hard and it also echoed the Italian exiles. The latter did not even have time to reorganize the outbreak of World War II and the fall of France scattered them all over again. This was the worst moment. Those who failed to take to the bush or to escape were rounded up by German and French authorities and sent to concentration camps or handed over to Italian authorities. There is therefore no wonder that the fall of fascism found the anarchist movement dispersed, kept alive mostly in the memory of many individual workers and the attitude of the militant left. The anarchist movement comes so late and severely limited in its possibilities of partisan action. These failures were aggravated after July 25 of '43, when facing the succession of events there would be an even greater need of the oldest and most prestigious activists who packed the islands of confinement. But while the fall of Mussolini militants from all the other parties were freed by the Badoglio government anarchists are being held in a first time at Ventotene and later transferred to the concentration camp Renicci of Anghiari, near Arezzo where they can escape only after the 8th September.
Lack of policy frameworks, dispersed in exile in persecutions, deaths in Spain, without support from allies, close to the logic of the policy of the two blocks, the anarchist movement can only trust in their own forces and militants in what they can win in battle, both in terms of the weapons and supplies.

not only armed struggle

For all these reasons, anarchists preferred in most cases to join formations controlled by the Communist, azionista and socialist Party, even in those localities where the anarchist presence was sufficiently large to allow formation of only anarchists. The anarchist contribution to the Resistance was not confined to military action, no matter where the anarchists engaged in organizing and defending the lives of people severely affected by the brutality of war by setting up shops and cooperatives of production and consumption, embryos of the society more free and just the construction of which they had dedicated their lives.