ABSTRACT: A collection of documents on the radicals' libertarian antifascism: to recognize fascism means to understand what it has been and above all what it can be. Apparent antifascism too often hides a complicity with those who represented the true continuity with fascism, the reprise of laws and methods typical of that regime. (" WE AND THE FASCISTS", The radicals' libertarian antifascism, edited by Valter Vecellio, preface by Giuseppe Rippa - Quaderni Radicali/1, November 1980)

Comrades, with the excuse that it is persecuting a Fascist organisation, the Republic of Italy in 1975 is claiming the right to judge in a Fascist manner.

We must stop them.

The real purpose of this pretext, like all other authoritarian and violent acts by the state institutions, is not to combat one or another of the violently dissenting fringe groups within the regime, but to combat the mass of workers and their union and political organisations, the minority ones first of all.

The trial taking place in Rome against members and activists of the far right "Avanguardia Nazionale" group aims at a republican legitimising of the long series of attacks made by the regime on our institutions (and persons).

The Fascist laws of the "Republican" Oronzo Reale (2) also have need of "Fascist" victims to assert themselves, to continue

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Translator's notes

1) National Vanguard.

2) Author of special laws on public order.

to kill, to be continually more effective and definitive against democratic rights.

By special laws, with special rites, for reasons relating to the ostensible defence of the state, sixty people are imprisoned while facing a grotesque, mendacious and infamous trial before a Special Court. They are in prison without having been able to exercise any right of defence: that this is "legally" possible is an even more intolerable fact.

Anti-Fascism cannot tolerate that the regime should reserve for probable Fascists as well as possible innocents the same treatment that the Fascists and Nazis gave to those who fought for justice and liberty.

We must keep a police round-up requested by the Moro-Reale (3) government from being changed into sentence of guilty pronounced in the name of the people.

The hired assassins, the thugs, the fanatics, the informers and the instigators should be tried for the acts they have committed along with their accomplices and instigators in the regime. But for the rest they should go free. Even they, and they most of all, must have a guarantee of their rights, their civil and constitutional rights, their elementary personal rights, the respect of liberal principles and political democracy. This is

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Translator's notes

3) Aldo Moro (DC), the Italian premiere at the time.

what yesterday's anti-Fascists had hoped for and it is what we must guarantee in order to honour them, among other reasons. And do not be afraid of the condemnations that are already being heaped on us by the anti-Fascists of today.

As soon as the news came out that our comrades Mauro Mellini and Franco de Cataldo had accepted the defence of some of the defendants in the trial "against" Avanguardia Nazionale, there were immediate reactions. "Il quotidiano dei Lavoratori" (The Daily Worker, ed.) immediately hurled anathemas against these two "individuals" who pretend to be "anti-Fascist" and are in cahoots with Fascist killers. The newly-constituted "Socialist attorneys" immediately began their social activity by condemning and deprecating our unheard-of decision.

Many letters also reached us. We are publishing two of them, both of which are exemplary. The one by our comrade Canestrini, which is not apocryphal, is not unfortunately of a kind that admits of a direct reply of any sort from comrades Mellini and de Cataldo. The other is testimony to a confusion which is completely comprehensible: "Anti-Fascist" ideological terrorism has by now reached a point of being so "Fascist" as to

legitimately inspire fear. However, the debate is open.

Canestrini: They Do It For Money And Transformism

Franco Bricola, a university professor who is a registered Communist Party member, is defending a Trent company where lead pollution killed 13 workers and irreparably injured 200 others whose damaged health has been recognised as due to their work. To me, who have obviously taken on the cause of the injured parties, he declared to have accepted this incredible defence because from time to time one needs a case that allows one to make enough money to live and also to take on political cases gratis.

If de Cataldo and Mellini had spoken thus when they were denounced by democratic public opinion for what they had undertaken, political judgements against them would have still been hard, but they would have benefited by extenuating circumstances of a generally moral character. Instead, their wanting to make a question of principle of it, as I seem to understand, only shows how the true betrayal of great ideals takes place by means of clumsy justifications.

What I am writing, as only I can know, costs me the "tears of blood" of the popular saying. But in the face of the hundreds of democratic lawyers who refuse money and blandishments, who remain upright and consistent examples (there still are, by God, the De Lucas, the Todescos, the Ramadoris, the Guidetti Serras, and fortunately they are not the only ones!), the spectacle being put on in Rome is only an example of the well-known Italic transformism, but always well camouflaged.

One may well disagree (I do not) with those who said at one time that the Fascist question ended April 25 (4). But it is a long road from there to the point of defending in court their right to reorganise the counter-revolution.

The foregoing does not require a reply. Sandro Canestrini

Radicals of Pisa: Let Us Offer Our Profiles to Swindlers

Dear comrades De Cataldo and Mellini, we too are Radical Party comrades who have read in the newspapers recently some fragments and partial notices of your probable commitment to the defence of some Fascists for crimes of opinion.

We are in agreement with the reasons that have led you to make this decision, but we still consider it to be inopportune on the political level.

In recent times we have been witnessing a new, rabid anti-Radical regurgitation on many sides. For several weeks the usual indifference of political groups and newspapers has changed into an interest, due to our increasing successes, that immediately takes the form of vile swindles - even on the part of organisations that have been closest to us - to discredit us as much as possible with public opinion.

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4) The anniversary of the Italian liberation.

Thus, in this very delicate moment, in view of the Radical Party's lack of newspapers or other direct means of spreading information, we consider that your action gives our counterparts an opportunity to diminish the credibility and confidence that we have won among the people by our constant struggles.

We therefore ask you to reconsider your action.

Comradely greetings

Enzo Astro, Giorgio Materazzo, Maria Paula Giorgi,

Gabriella Giorgi, Fortunato Grillo, Claudia

Macchia, Luca Di Marino, Patrizia Frangioni, Pisa.

("Notizie Radicali", December 31, 1975)