An open (and desperate) letter to those who eat our bread

[This text was published during Alfredo Cospito‘s hungerstrike. We publlish it nevertheless, because we think it raises important re ections and critiques.]

Dear comrades,

In these dark times, when every horizon seems to be closing for good, we turn to you and to you alone (to the fighters, not to the consensus hunters; to the steadfast dreamers, not to the situational pragmatists – that is, not to the militants and opportunists). To those of you who have met us over the years in Italy and around the world, or to complete strangers, who are the only ones who can understand our current state of mind and our words. Many say that those who have no hope should remain silent. Although this would explain the silence in which many of us fall, we do not agree. In fact, in some ways we believe that the exact opposite is true: those who persist in peddling evocative narratives (from heavenly paradise as a reward for earthly resignation, to communism as the inevitable outcome of capitalist development, to the insurrection that accompanies every citizen mobilisation or neighbourhood uprising) should shut up. Especially now, when humanity is well on the way to self-destruction, when the planet is on the brink of ecological collapse, when social carnage is getting worse by the day, when war is being waged with nuclear weapons, when voluntary servitude is so widespread that any aspiration for the slightest freedom seems ridiculous, it seems more urgent and necessary than ever to penetrate deeply into reality and not to scratch the surface of things in order to derive from it comforting illusions. That is why this letter is desperate, because it is born of discouragement in the face of a situation that seems hopeless in every way.

We do not hide it. We have staked on the coincidence of thought and action, we have been taken in by opinions and staged productions. We have invoked the unique and its own and are now surrounded by selfies and their vanity. We have tried to spread utopias and have been crushed by realism. We have loved the most exaggerated and unique ideas and fallen prey to sweeping and mass propaganda. We have longed for the awakening of conscience and are now prisoners of the algorithm. We gave priority to ethics and were overwhelmed by politics. Poetry may have survived Auschwitz (and television?), but critical thinking has been wiped out in Silicon Valley. We have become like the German revolutionaries Stig Dagerman ¹met in the immediate post-war period: living ruins, dignified but rare.

And today? What can we say when words have lost their meaning everywhere? Upstairs and downstairs, in the palaces and in the squares, everything has turned into a clattering chatter, a huge farce that leaves one dismayed and stunned. The umpteenth demonstration in this sense in the last few days² is the reaction to the hunger strike to the bitter end of the anarchist prisoner Alfredo Cospito, whose announced, expected, feared, desired death has opened a real masquerade ball.

Have you ever heard of Satanta the White Bear, chief of the Kiowa, one of the many Native American tribes? He was big and strong, took part in many battles and was known for his courage. He was one of the first Indian chiefs to be tried by a white court. He spent a few years in prison, then was released, but fearing that he might arouse the warlike instincts of the younger Indians, he was soon sent back to prison. For several years, White Bear spent many hours peering through the bars. His eyes looked north, to the hunting grounds of his people. When he realised that he would never again ride free through the forests and prairies, when he realised that he would never again sleep in a teepee (a tent with a circular floor plan, a symbol of movement and equality), when he realised that he would never again see the other members of his tribe, but would rot in a rectangular concrete cell, he decided to put an end to it all. On 11 October 1878, he threw himself out of the window of a prison hospital in Huntsville, Texas. An understandable decision. A humane decision.

Alfredo Cospito, also tall and, until recently, stocky, is not an Native American but an anarchist who was sent to prison more than ten years ago for shooting in the legs the most important person in charge of nuclear energy in Italy, the director of Ansaldo Nucleare in Genoa. He has been on hunger strike until th 19.04.2023 to protest against the prison regime to which 41Bis has been subjected since May last year. His life is in danger, but he is not giving up. He says he will continue until his last breath, and knowing his tenacity and determination, he is capable of doing so. Only he can say what he can and cannot accept. Only he can decide what he wants to do with his body. How he wants to live, how he wants to die. And why.

So far, so good. Everyone makes their own choices, whether they agree with them or not. But unlike the White Bear, Alfredo Cospito has made a political choice. He is accepting death in order to get a certain demand accepted. With his hunger strike, he wants to achieve the abolition of 41bis, that is, he wants to force the state to remove the so-called „harsh imprisonment“ from its law. The more days pass, the more solidarity actions spread all over the world and the closer the tragic end comes, the more attention his struggle attracts. That reactionaries are outraged by this „blackmail“ of the institutions by a convict is natural and not worth mentioning. Nor is it surprising that progressives or pseudo-dissidents of various stripes should pounce on this „civilised non-violent protest“, which is why one can only shrug at the solidarity of the usual beaurocrats (priests, intellectuals, artists) and turn up one‘s nose at that of the scoundrels (judges, ex-ministers, neo-fascists)….. This is the way things are and there is no point in trying to understand it.

Nevertheless, we cannot help but put a question to those who have ears and hearts: Would so much overarching interest have been possible if the original demand had not been political-humanitarian in nature? What we mean is what the anarchist lawyer himself says when he declares that „the great merit of Cospito is to have reopened the public debate on what the 41bis is and whether or not it is compatible with the Constitution“. These are not just the words of a lawyer doing his job to the best of his ability, but the only possible perspective on the question raised: if the mission of the prison is re-education, as we are led to believe, what is the point of a harsh penal system like 41bis? Shouldn‘t the state abolish it, or at least limit it as much as possible? (Restrict it to mafiosi who dissolve children in acid, as if we did not know that the state released these mafiosi after they repented). Although this question is being discussed in public, it is a purely institutional question. Not social, not popular, not class, and certainly not nihilistic, but institutional. This is echoed and reiterated in the Appeal for Cospito, addressed “to the Prison Administration, the Minister of Justice and the Government“ and signed by dozens of lawyers, judges and academics in various capacities: „To call a challenge or blackmail the attitude of those who make the body the ultimate instrument of protest and affirmation of their identity is to betray our Constitution, which places human life and dignity at the forefront of the values whose protection is entrusted to the State for the sake of its own legitimacy and credibility, and not as a concession to those who oppose it. This is the difference between democratic states and authoritarian regimes“.

It is enough to read such sentences and the names of the signatories to understand what they are really about: trying to save what can be saved from the total shipwreck suffered by the right. In a sense, those who say they want to save Alfredo Cospito are speaking the truth in order to defend democracy, which has been so delegitimised that it is necessary to compensate for its aberrations with a noble gesture. Saving the life of an anarchist who has never killed anyone could be the right opportunity. „Yes, it‘s true, we killed the rioters from the prisonrevolt of Modena, we massacred prisoners of Ivrea, we made life impossible for millions of people, but come on, we were lenient with this anarchist…“. This is what makes a Gherardo Colombo³ worry about Cospito, who will always be remembered as the judge who killed Pinelli for the second time1. A motivation that can also be applied to those who, like Adriano Sofri or Donatella Di Cesare, participated in the lynching of the opponents of the Green Pass.

But all the occasional outpourings of good feeling in this world can no longer hide the stark fact: democracy is an authoritarian regime. And after three years of state humiliation of human life and dignity in the name of public health, this is no longer the radical criticism of a few hotheads, but a banal statement of fact.

You don‘t have to be an anarchist to realise that the Constitution is nothing more than toilet paper, judging by the way it has been used in public by its own admirers of late. Even those with a solid academic and philosophical reputation in the field of jurisprudence have recently had to admit that they can no longer „confront a jurist or anyone who denounces the way the law and the Constitution have been manipulated and betrayed without questioning the legal system and the Constitution“. Need I remind you that neither Mussolini nor Hitler needed to question the constitutions in force in Italy and Germany, but found in them the legal bases they needed to establish their regimes? It is possible, then, that the gesture of those who today seek to base their struggle on the Constitution and on rights is already defeated at the outset…. It is as if certain procedures or principles in which one believed, or rather pretended to believe, have now shown their true face, which cannot be ignored. It is paradoxical that what even an academic like Agamben was able to understand escapes most of the subversives who today call for the end of 41bis. Under moral pressure to prevent the death of an anarchist, they fail to see the point of their mobilisation.

Suffice it to say that the tone of this hunger strike remains the same as it moves from the palaces and courtrooms to the streets. It is pathetic, to say the least. Not to mention the embarrassing praise of the sanctity of martyrdom. But what about the constant distinction between bad mafiosi and good anarchists? Or the deplorable denunciation of the disproportion between the acts committed and the sentences imposed (certainly nothing new, considering the 14-year sentence imposed for the days of Genoa in 2001), which, although appropriate in the courtroom, sounds particularly odious coming from those who no longer dare to advocate always and only the destruction of prisons? What can be said about the usual „quantity mania“, which swells but does not grow, and which is nourished by those who take the occasional scruples of judges and intellectuals as proof of a broad consensus? Well, it is certainly impossible to say what is more unintentionally funny: the proposal by a Norwegian politician to award the Nobel Peace Prize to one of the greatest warlords (the NATO Secretary), or the initiative by some „anarchists“ to „break the deafening silence of the tenant of the Quirinal Palace“ [official residence of the President of the Italian Republic] in order to „break the conscience (and the blessed sleep…) of those who should be protecting Alfredo‘s safety“. Hearing those who tirelessly proclaim their „solidarity with Alfredo and his practices“ say that a head of state should watch over the health of an enemy of the state, one is inclined to paraphrase⁴ the words of a famous French anarchist who climbed the scaffold: „In the virtual war they have declared on the bourgeoisie, certain anarchists demand protection; they do not give death, they demand not to suffer it.“

Contrary to those who bask in a mirage and deduce an electrifying weakness of the state from the statements of some television journalists who commented on Cospito‘s hunger strike, it seems to us, on the contrary, that the anarchists have become more than weak and authentic puppets when they are reduced to becoming megaphones of constitutional-political struggles. The state no longer even needs to liquidate the anarchist movement, which has liquidated itself by renouncing its own ideas in order to realise pragmatic tactical convergences. If a large part of the left is joining the anarchists today, it is not because events are forcing them to do so, but because these anarchists are almost the only ones today who are responding to the call to „say something left-wing or even non-left-wing, something civilised…“. – like demanding the abolition of 41bis. By the way, have you ever wondered how much hope there is of winning such a battle? Considering that the agony of an anarchist in prison and a few broken windows in 2023 are unlikely to break the state any more than the Mafia bombs that exploded thirty years ago, how many more tricks can we play? The remission of the Article 41bis sentence and the non-application of the life sentence in his case? What a great victory: under the regime of ordinary high security, he would have faced only twenty years in prison.…

Forty years ago, there were those who criticised the proposal for an amnesty for political prisoners on the grounds that the moral pressure of four thousand bodies dying in solitude could not justify negotiations with the state. They argued that one should not demand the release of comrades in order to resume the struggle, but that one should fight for the release of comrades. Even taking into account the different historical contexts, a millennium has indeed passed if today the change of the prison regime for one anarchist (plus three Stalinists and a few hundred alleged mafiosi) is made the goal of mobilising an entire movement. It is possible to tell a nice story about the anarchist exception in the general Italian situation and to imagine today the agonies of the bourgeoisie, angry with the state for having „unleashed“ the anarchists, just as it was possible yesterday to imagine the resurrection of the Paris Commune under the sky of Venaus⁵. In reality, the state today rules so unchallenged that it can get away with anything: letting anarchists rot in jail at will, charging trade unionists with extortion or placing environmental activists under special surveillance. Why shouldn‘t he? Because it‘s unconstitutional? If he can lock up 60 million honest citizens in their own homes without anyone making a sound, even to the applause of many right-wing revolutionaries, then surely he can bury an anarchist dead or alive. Without having to justify himself. To whom should he justify himself? To the journalists? To the intellectuals? To the politicians? To the lawyers? To public opinion? Before the subjects who are afraid of their own shadow and even their own breath? Before the subversives who can only demand that the state behave better, more justly, more fairly?

The victory of the State is truly complete when its enemies only speak its language and show that they no longer want to storm the skies (they are content to defend a few loopholes in the earth).

Alfredo Cospito is still alive and continues his hunger strike. He is doing everything he can and thinks of to get out of the hole in which he is imprisoned. But since he is in the hands of the state and the game is played entirely on institutional grounds, there is no reason to be optimistic about his fate. The government has ample opportunity to juggle the situation. It can show concern and set the record straight in the tradition of patriotism; it can prolong the prisoner‘s ordeal by force-feeding him; it can be generous today only to be crueler tomorrow. It can even show a certain humanitarian spirit and then pull the plug („Oops, there was a complication, we‘re sorry, we did everything we could, but you know how it is, his body was weakened“). As any gambler knows, the house always wins in the long run.

„If the Sinophians have condemned me to exile, I condemn them to remain in their homeland,“ Diogenes the Cynic is said to have said. Is this the art of putting a good face on a bad game, or an angry philosophy of life? Dear companions, we too are condemned to exile, eternal exile, because there is no place for us in this world. One dream after another, one desire after another, one freedom after another, everything is taken away from us. And it is no comfort to know that the extinction of the lovers of freedom precedes the extinction of the champions of authority. But here, in the midst of loneliness and despair, there is not only resignation, bitterness, melancholy, nausea. There is also what is called the courage of despair, the determination to try everything because we have nothing left to lose.

Let‘s find that courage. Let‘s banish the domesticated bipeds to their homeland and stop wasting time running after their parties, their classes, their movements. Let us enrich the paths of exile. Let us prepare for solitude. Let us practise surviving in the desert, moving in the desert, fighting in the desert. Without scruples, without pity. For an angry philosophy of life, for a vengeful philosophy of life.

Death, life lies in wait.

(found on abirato.net)

1 Stig Halvard Dagerman was a Swedish anarchist and published the book „German Autumn“. In it he describes the destroyed post-war Germany in 1946. to give a picture of the destroyed country after the world war.

2 It will most likely refer to the nationally mobilised demonstration in Turin on 04.03.2023. During this demonstration there were massive attacks on banks, luxury cars/businesses.

3 In the course of a judicial investigation led by Gherardo Colombo, among others, it was alleged that Giuseppe Pinelli, while standing at the window of the police station, had a fainting spell and fell out of the window.

4 In the original it says: „In this merciless war that we have declared against the bourgeoisie, we do not ask for pity. We give death, and we know how to bear it“. The reference here is to Emile Henry, who used this phrase in his trial statement. Less than a month later, at the age of 21, he was beheaded by the guillotine on 24 May 1884. The authors of the text „The best offense is not defense“ have rephrased the original sentence as an allusion.

5 Venaus is a village on the border between France and Italy. It is a pivotal point in the No-Tav (citizens) struggle against the high-speed train that will link Italy and France. Certain movement leaders and groups saw great insurgent potential in this widespread struggle. Hence the comparison with the Paris Commune.