Vetriolo English

This is the fourth issue of ‘Vetriolo’. Four issues are certainly not a few for a publication such as this. Rather than accumulate and reinforce certitudes, we believe the paper has tried to corrode and crush them, as it posed new doubts and nourished old questions. Certainly not out of a mere taste for rhetoric or polemics, but because we think that there are always a lot of ‘knots to be untied’. At the same time we think that it’s necessary to reflect and analyse, a difficult task which is certainly not opposed to the corrosive demolition of certitudes; on the contrary it’s complementary to it. In these reflections and analyses we have always maintained that reality is not an incomprehensible enigma, contrary to what those who want to impose their resignation on us have always stated. So in this issue we also tried to analyse the current reality, and in particular we wanted to do so by proposing some hypotheses, besides carrying on the reflections and analyses which characterized previous issues with more or less extended theoretical articles alongside articles of agitation and topicality. To the readers their own considerations. We reiterate and remind, once again, that this paper is neither an aseptic intellectual product nor a container of opinions and points of view. Precisely because it doesn’t intend to close itself up in easy answers, shout solutions ready for consumption or brandish pre-arranged theses, this is an instrument which can imply a lively involvement with the ideas it affirms, and we always wish this is the case.

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It’s been a long while. After a year we are publishing another issue of Vetriolo, issue number 2. We haven’t brought out the paper more frequently up to now, nor have we wanted to. Not that we didn’t have anything to say during this time, on the contrary. However we have never strenuously followed the possibility of giving a strict periodicity to the publication, which because of its form (with fairly concise texts of agitation, analysis and topicality as well as more extensive and complicated theoretical articles) is not suited to it. At the same time we’d like the paper to come out without long delays. In any case we think that this paper is an important instrument for the anarchist movement regardless of the frequency with which it comes out. The pages of Vetriolo have always been and will continue to be a means aimed at discussion, dialogue and confrontation among anarchists. The paper will continue to give time and space to dialogue and debate among revolutionaries, including those who find themselves imprisoned. In this issue there are writings and articles by Marco, Anna and Alfredo, imprisoned following the arrests of the repressive operation ‘scripta manent’ of 6^th September 2016.

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With 30 years of charges on my back, it may seem absurd to feel the need to communicate projects and considerations. With the insistent censorship that distorts everything I write and say, it may seem stupid and mad to continue to resolutely communicate and write considerations lending themselves to censorship. I need such stupidity and madness to feel still alive and participating.
I have only one choice, back to the wall: continuing struggling, continuing with every means at my disposal.

I got inspiration to write this text from the prosecutor Sparagna [in charge for Scripta Manent]; in his solitary “interlocutory — monologue” he claimed with ill-concealed embarrassment that he got us by process of elimination, by the “scorched earth” that the anarchist movement in Italy made around us. Is it possible that the anarchist movement here in Italy sank so low as to not feel empathy with comrades caught in a grip of repression, to think of us as a foreign body?
The truth can not be found in the “specious” and stupid logic of a prosecutor from Turin. The truth is hidden in the folds, in different expressions of solidarity that have been addressed to us, in the opportunity that even a wave of repression such this one could give us. This is apparent from many actions expressing solidarity across the globe to us, this is apparent from a few but significant solidarity statements that we received. At first glance these statements may seem like the usual solidarity for appearances’ sake, but at my eyes they become fully meaningful.
Maybe because of their origins, comrades with different projects, despite everything, were profoundly, directly, touched. Maybe because all these comrades are in some way part of this anarchism of praxis that keeps anarchy alive and kicking, and well reacting across the globe. For this and for many other reasons, those words of solidarity are no small things and can become an opportunity, especially if they can go beyond the repressive matter.

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