The attempted massacre in Macerata is not the fruit of a madman’s insanity. It is the legitimate and consequent result of the climate of racism, hostility and hatred towards immigrants that has been deliberately fomented for years by the (differentiated, but converging) centre-right and centre-left governments’ policies,
by the insistent propaganda of the mass media, by the action of more or less openly racist forces, like Salvini’s Lega or Beppe Grillo’s and Di Maio’s Five Star Movement.
The racist policies aim to:
· terrorize the mass of immigrant workers to force them to undergo the super-exploitation conditions that employers and Italian and European finance thrive on.
· direct Italian workers and young proletarians against a false target. The government and employers want unemployed and precarious workers, people living a precarious and hard existence, people undergoing everyday harassment and humiliation to direct their righteous anger not against the real culprits (i.e. the state institutions and the industry and finance bosses who pull the strings), but against immigrants, that are pushed into blackmailing and sometimes marginalization conditions right by the policies of the capitalists and of their servants in charge of institutions;
· build popular consent to the wars and the missions of oppression and robbery that Italy and the other Western powers are leading and preparing in Africa and the Middle East, so as to consolidate their centuries-long looting of immigrants’ countries of origin.
Therefore, in the face of such facts as those of Macerata, hoping for a "useful and correct" intervention of institutions and government would mean hoping that wolves would guard a flock of sheep. It would mean expecting help from the main responsible for the daily massacre of immigrants in the Mediterranean.
In order to effectively fight racism and racist forces, it takes initiatives that promote and carry forward the process of self-organization of immigrant workers – the only thing able to ensure their defense and their physical safety.
To fight racism and the instrumental use of migrant workers as (unintentional) competitors with Italian workers in the labour market and in the social services, it takes to fight for full rights for immigrant workers, against all the racist laws and measures and, also on this basis, to point tenaciously at building opportunities for discussion, organizing and common mobilizing of Italian and migrant workers. In order to defend ourselves together against unemployment and insecurity, to claim dignified social services, decent housing, and health care not just for the rich, to obtain by fighting decent living conditions.
To fight the racism and the conflict that the employers and the political Parties in the service of them are fomenting between Italian and immigrant workers, it takes policies that do not have trust in institutions and that on the contrary denounce institutions as one of the main sources of the oppression of immigrants and of the social climate of growing hostility against them. It takes policies able to contrast the action of the Italian government in foreign affairs too, calling to struggle against the newly launched Italian military mission in Niger, by denouncing its neo-colonialist nature and its relation with the racist climate and the racist policies wide-spreading across the country.
18th February 2018
Internationalist Communist Organization