ABSTRACT: Marco Pannella describes the constant violation of the principles of the legal State which is being carried out in Italy, and the recent toughening of the fascist and inquisitorial laws enforced by the alliance between the Christian Democrat Party and the Communist Party with the excuse of fighting terrorism.

By refusing the principles of legality, the State in practice encourages the growth of terrorism, which bases its capacity to attract militants precisely on the repressive nature of the State authority.

For its nonviolent opposition, its uncompromising struggle in defence of legality, its parliamentary commitment against anti-libertarian laws, its popular referendums for the abrogation of fascist laws, its campaign against world hunger, the Radical Party has become the real enemy of the "historical compromise" (1), of the Italian regime.

According to the author, a legal coup d'état is possible in Italy in a situation such as this.

(Le Monde 15/4/80)

Somewhere in Europe there exists, since a couple of weeks, a country in which it is possible to spend twelve years in prison legally before being tried. Until a few weeks ago, the limit for preventive custody was ten years: clearly, it must have been judged too liberal, and it was therefore corrected.

That placid country is Italy.

In this same country and on the same occasion, the authority has just ratified the formal right for military and police forces, to imprison the inhabitants of entire areas by day or night, without a warrant and without the presence of a judge, on the basis of the mere suspicion of the existence of an arms cache: if necessary, even an entire city. From now on therefore, a pogrom will no longer be called a pogrom, but a perfectly legal public action. That placid country is Italy, where imagination is finally in power: because what jurist of what country, I ask, could have possibly even imagined crimes such as this: 'virtual accomplishment of actions that are suspected to be objectively preparatory of terrorist violences'? Not even canon law has never been so extreme, so accurate and lengthy! But here in Italy, it is the law since a few weeks.

This placid country is Italy.

A country which is happy, satisfied to learn that on the basis of the same decree, in the event of "bravadoes" on the part of the military or the police, the culprit is no doubt arrested, if the law provides for it or if the judge orders it; but his prison will be his barrack, where the judge must go to question him. If the case becomes delicate or without any special reason, the public attorney has the right to drop the case or to commit it to his assistants. This, my friends, is this placid country.

SINCE FORTY NINE YEARS

In this country, since forty nine years, among the crimes that can be tried by the Court of Assizes, there are crimes called 'vilipendio', outrage, lese majesté of the Head of the State and of Government, of State religion, of the officers of a regiment of the army or of the judges of a Court of Justice. There are at least a dozen offences related to ideological and opinionative subversion; there are as many offences related to the instigation to hate between social classes, for example. Any citizen who has carried out his military service remains subjected to military justice and to its military codes in times of peace, which were promulgated by His Majesty the King of Italy and of Albania, Emperor of Ethiopia, and by his "head of Government for the grace of God and the will of the nation", the leader of fascism, Benito Mussolini, in 1941.

As you see, in Italy the right of the State has nothing to do with the legal State. Ever since the national union and the "historical compromise" united the Christian Democrat Party and the Communist Party and their external currents, a number of fascist codes have been toughened up six times over a period of four years.

No account is taken of the fact that President Carter, in his speech on the "State of the union", proclaims his concern for the risks of an authoritarian response to terrorism in Italy, or that people abroad talk about the repeated confiscation of a satirical weekly magazine based in Rome. Nor does it matter that "The Economist" points out the same thing. The only opponents in Rome are the Radicals. But the Radicals are proclaimed outlaws, especially by Berlinguer (2), and with far greater verbal and other violence than Marchais would ever use against Mitterand and Rocard.

Why, in fact, give any credit to weird heretics such as we are? What is the use of divulging their "excesses" and their "paradoxes"? What does it matter if they denounce (and no one knows it, neither in Paris nor in Rome) the fact that the budget for judicial expenditure has been reduced to 0,67 percent of the national budget, and that they have been asking for years to increase it by at least three times? What does it matter if they remain isolated in requesting the respect of the Constitution after 32 years, at least by creating this judicial police depending directly on the magistracy, which no one wants to talk about? Or the fact that they opposed the above mentioned decree because it was the 67th decree issued over a period of six months; one decree every working day: a real permanent coup d'état, denounced by Presidents of the Republic and Presidents of the Assemblies. It is the 67th decree, whereas in five years of "clerical" and "authoritarian" legislature since 1948, the government abrogated only se

ven of them. What does it matter is the Radicals consider it useless, after 11 years, to conclude the trial for the first major terrorist attack, the one committed in Milan on 12 December 1969, which, as the judges discovered, was "covered" by the secret services and by the State administration (which, in the best of hypothesis, should be considered the apprentice of today's massacres) and other, more serious massacres, such as the massacre of Peteano in 1970, whereby three carabinieri were killed?

Who can deny that there is an infernal circle based on blackmail that unites the different kinds of terrorism and that paralyses the powerful men of yesterday and tomorrow? Because, after all, the power of the official parties, in Italy, relies not only on the above mentioned laws, not only on peculiar practices (generals who are appointed prefects, others who assume the command of regions where 40% of the population is concentrated, a policy of frenzy armament of the police military forces, including the creation of a "revenue guard Corps"), but also on "Soviet-type" or "fascist-type" parliamentary majorities, with a unanimity of 90 to 95 percent of elected members; the official parties rely also on the quasi-unanimity of the press (all newspapers are subsidized by the State), on completely politicized labour unions, on regional powers, on the Confindustria (3) as well as on the chains of cooperatives...

A DEFEATED STATE

And yet, from a "military" point of view, it is quite obvious, it is the terrorists who are winning. The State is defeated by gangs of wretched people, of fanatics, whose infamous acts are left free to spread and grow more and more every day, since years. This lethal circle thrives on itself. Every assassination explicitly calls for an equally infamous law, with a converging pattern. Each law of this kind, on the other hand, becomes a recruitment manifesto for both sides. Heroes and martyrs: this is the daily bread of this Pax Romana.

The only target which this "Christian democrat" and "Communist" leading class aims at and succeeds in striking at is the same as the terrorists' one: the legal State, the Republican Constitution, the hope for a greater justice and a greater freedom, a liberal and democratic juridical civilization. Thus, the true enemy for this regime becomes the non-violent, constitutional, pacifist, democratic, legalistic and uncompromising opposition of which the Radical Party is the organizer and the instrument. Faced to the atrocities committed by the terrorists, and to the juridical crimes committed by the official parties, our opposition is both disturbing and frightening.

The effectiveness of our methods is more and more consolidated, it no longer needs to be proved. Through our parliamentary action, our non-violent struggles (fasting, conscientious objection, Gandhian and Socratic civil disobedience), our referendum campaigns (abortion, extraordinary laws, public financing of party bureaucracies and bodies, fascist military and penal codes, laws denying the rights for the local institutions to control the installation of nuclear facilities, arms warrants, savage and unrestricted hunting activity....) our parliamentary actions are international as well as national, such as those against world hunger; an alternative which only yesterday seemed less real than the revolutionary hallucinations and flames and the communist or Christian Democrat "Realpolitik", is starting to shape itself and assert itself. If only we pay attention, there are symptoms pointing to this everywhere: in prisons, for example, where previous authors of violent actions convert to non-violence.

TWO SCHOOLS

The Communist Party shares the responsibility of such disaster with the Christian Democrat Party. It is the powerful instrument, the primary engine of this policy based on a "national unity" and a "historical compromise", which is not a project for the future, as they claim, for the simple reason that it has been operating and dominating for decades. The battle (provided there is a battle) is a battle between two different schools: according to one of these, the best thing is for the Christian Democrat Party to detain the monopoly of the so-called "power", and for the Communist Party to stick to the role of the so-called "opposition"; whereas according to the other school, it would be better if they were both officially part of the government (a matter of a few more seats around the table of the Council of Ministers, who for years have being doing nothing but obey the will of the parties of the "national unity").

In the meanwhile, the State is in complete decay. All the partners of the national unity have a sort of veto on all important reformative laws, so that all reforms rot even before being passed. It is a constant act of "piracy" toward Parliament and toward all the possibilities of a real administration of society.

We Radicals have openly, democratically blocked the itinerary of one of such useless, violent, barbaric and suicidal laws for ten days, in the respect of the regulations and of the Constitution; ill-tolerated, it seems, even if they passed in Moscow or in Buenos Aires. The result was a scandal, attacks against those who try to make these laws known and judged by the people, in the respect of non-violence, of laws, of parliamentary regulations. Once again, we are the "fascists", the "social traitors", the "terrorists", the "poofters", the "drug addicts", the "Zionists", the "exhibitionists", the "fanatics", the "irresponsibles". In the thirties, all real antifascists, whether they were called Gramsci, the Rosselli brothers, Trotsky or Russel, Zinoviev or Blum, Brandt or Mann, were treated in the same way by the Italian Communist Party and by the other parties of the Left. But there is more: a legal coup d'état has become possible and feasible in Italy. Without changing the laws made by Zaccagnini and Berlingu

er, any "red" or "black" violent person or impostor (two colours which Mussolini craftily played with) could detain power in Italy. Wouldn't it be worth opening a debate on this subject in Paris, dear friends and comrades?

Translator's notes

(1) Historical compromise: political strategy devised in 1973 by Enrico Berlinguer, based on the cooperation between Communists, Catholics and Socialists.

(2) Enrico Berlinguer (1922-1984): Italian politician. Secretary of the Communist Youth Federation (1949-56), member of the Italian Parliament since 1968, Secretary General of the Italian Communist Party from 1972 to 1984.

(3) Confindustria: Italian Manufacturers' Association