ABSTRACT: The indifference shown by the Western countries and the leftist and liberal political parties for the riots in Danzig. With the alibi of needing to guarantee the stability of the "balance" among the Eastern states, we end by furnishing cover for the totalitarian regimes.

(Lotta Continua, August 1980, from "Marco Pannella - Writings and Discourses - 1959-1980", Gammalibri, January 1982)

Jacoviello is right. Just as the "liberal and democratic" West chose Mussolini when there was a choice of Sforza, Sturzo, Salvemini, Rosselli, as well as Croce, Gramsci and Terraccini (1); just as Churchill stated that if he were Italian he would have been a Fascist; just as the France of the Popular Front allowed the Spanish Republicans to be exterminated by the Nazi air force and the troops of Mussolini and Bonaccorsi; just as at Munich the betrayal by France and the West of Poland, the Sudetenland and others was sanctioned; just as economic sanctions were imposed only to reveal their ineffectualness, or better, their inconvenience; just as Stalin chose tactical and historical alliances with Hitler while sending killers to assassinate Trotsky and exterminated entire populations and the whole general staff of the October Revolution: just as the French Communists propagated for weeks the non-resistance to the Nazi invaders seeing that it was a war among "capitalists" in compliance with orders from the IIIrd

International which counted Togliatti among its most prominent leaders; in the same way today the "Atlantic Pact" countries, the USA and the Italian tail first of all, show solidarity with the "stability" reached by the countries of the "Warsaw Pact".

In Italy the sacred liberal and democratic fire, in fact, seems as reluctant to burn as wet straw. To be sure, the union accepted our request yesterday and has decided to send a delegation to Poland. But no one, no one revealed that this decision was taken promptly by the "folkloristic" newspaper L'Unità (the official Communist Party organ, ed.). Better for everyone to gabble about Pajetta (Giancarlo Pajetta, a Communist leader, ed.) and about the theologian of consociational democratic life of national unity for an authentic Communism, Pietro Ingrao. As too often happens, our Socialist comrades confuse stiff dignity in their behaviour with seriousness and a sense of government and politics. Even friend Baget-Bozzo (a Socialist deputy who was a priest, ed.) can serve to help us observe that many of those (but who?) who are ready "to die for Danzig" did not die yesterday for Bolivia: thus we can continue to "live" in all tranquillity in any case, since you can only "die" once.

The same thing is happening with regard to the current death by starvation of 40 million people. On the contrary, the Radicals - culpable of having at least brought the fact to attention -

have been excluded from the Italian parliamentary delegation that will be going to the UN the day after tomorrow for the third decade of the "Fight Against Hunger" on behalf of the Andreotti

squad. And in Paris Simone Veil (President of the European Parliament at the time, ed.) has also decided to exclude the one representative of the group to which we belong, the only one in nine, from the delegation to the European Parliament.

Meanwhile the Polish Embassy in Rome agrees within five minutes to receive the visit of photographers and journalists, whereas for three days it has refused to receive me and M.A. Macciocchi

(2). There is consistency among the assassins.

(1) Jacoviello - a Communist journalist; Padre Luigi Sturzo - a founding member of the Christian Democratic Party; Gaetano Salvemini - an anti-fascist of the Action Party; Carlo and Nello Rosselli - anti-fascists of the Action Party; Benedetto Croce - the Neapolitan philosopher; Antonio Gramsci - the Communist

theoretician; Umberto Terraccini - a Communist leader.

(2) M.A. Macciocchi: A Communist theoretician later elected to the European Parliament on the Radical Party lists.