ABSTRACT: In 1981 the Radical Party will not hold the "Easter March" against extermination from hunger, "in order not to add one more ritual to those which are already futiley being performed". On this occasion of silence on the one hand and activity on the other, not only on a national level, we publish this appeal to the citizens of the Western democracies and of the North - an appeal to refuse to be contributors, supporters and soldiers of an international economic "order" that produces death and extermination and which is, in fact, a new, bestial Nazism. "By your vote, by your choices, by your resignation and habits, by the paralysis to which you condemn your conscience you continue to support and impose the forces of death, extermination, and destruction. Peace and life, like war and death, can also break out, ignited by a spark of human wisdom and human hope. Desert. Let us begin the new resistance. Let us organise it. Together with all men of peace and good will".

(NOTIZIE RADICALI No.4 January 4, 1981)

With your vote, with your choices, with your resignation and your habits, with the paralysis to which you condemn your conscience, you continue to support and impose the forces of death, of extermination, of destruction.

You are the contributor, the supporter, the soldier - you, who are reading this - of a new, bestial Nazism.

Those who died in Via Rassella (1) were too, but perhaps they did not know what the world of the Nazis really was. You know it. You know that your money, your work, your vote support a policy that each year turns an ever larger part of the world into a huge extermination camp. You know that with only a part of what is spent on armaments life rather than death could be created, work rather than unemployment, riches rather than misery.

Those who died in Via Rassella had the excuse of being themselves the victims of a dictatorship while you are the free citizen of a "free" democracy. You are a "Communist", "Socialist", "democrat", "liberal" and - most certainly - "anti-Fascist", as well as a civil person and a Christian. This then is one of the things that happens, and it is monstrous: the triumph of neo-Nazism in the world is the result of political democracy and post-Stalinist Communism, conjoined and competing.

You have the arm of the vote, of free choice, of political democracy. The State budgets are approved by parliament, by the deputies and senators that you wanted to elect, who represent you and will represent you. And you vote for, and you pay for the holocaust of tens of millions of human beings guilty only of being of a different race and colour - or, more exactly, of being the victims of a system that condemns them to misery and unemployment, to hunger and sickness, of reproducing only in order to offer to our age, each year, a new massacre of the innocents. In these hours, sacred to so many people, from the Good Friday passion to the Easter resurrection, they will be exterminated by hunger and misery; they will be exterminated by the politics of armaments and "defence" - roughly half a million people. And always there are more of them, day by day, every day, every month, every year that follows. Because of your politics.

The mortality rate, this year, will be 15% higher than in 1980.

The arsenals of death will spew out constantly more arms and money while the grain bins disappear. This is the aim of the policies of our political forces, of the parliament, of the government. This is the goal of our death culture which they serve and speak for. This is the desire of those who govern and represent us.

They declared and promised a "war against war", a "war against hunger and for development", a "war against armaments"; before long they will send us from the moon to the stars. That may be nice - perhaps. But at the price of billions of murders which you will continue to provoke and to pay for.

They are giving us constantly more armaments (with or without a license), constantly more unemployment, constantly more disorder, constantly more death in the name of peace, of democracy, of development. Their politics is madness. They are surely madmen. Even during the time of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, those were thought mad who accused them of being mad. Instead they were, these anti-Fascists, men of justice and liberty, the only wise and reasonable men. Like the anti-Fascists of fifty years ago, today it is necessary to disobey in the name of reason, of justice, of peace, of order and of life. Or else we must be soldiers of violence and barbarism.

Desert. We are called to a new resistance. We are called once again to be rebels for love, partisans for life, armed with non-violence in order not to repeat the errors of the past. To build, to create life. Life for all and to rip away death, even from the enemy.

Desert this culture, desert these atrocious, destructive policies. Desert so that once and for all our children, blinded by the folly of power and the disorder that oppresses us, shall desert the terrorism and the violence of despair, of indifference and irresponsibility.

We need to defend and animate the laws of humanity and political democracy with non-violence and the reasonable firmness of hope.

We need to change our laws in the direction of life and civilisation, so that the ideals of civilisation shall be defended, with intransigence and reason, at all times and in all places. This is what we, for our part, as Radicals, are trying always more intensely to do - wounded or put out of commission by your choices. We try to do it as conscientious objectors, with laws, with our referendums, with the things we are doing and still preparing to do in the fight against hunger in the world, against all kinds of wars and against the violent.

A few choices would be enough, feasible and almost easy ones, of policies and government.

Peace and life, like war and death, can also break out, ignited by a spark of human wisdom and human hope.

Desert. Let us begin the new resistance.

Let us organise it together with all men of peace and good will. ---------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Via Rassella - A street in Rome and the site of a partisan attack on German troops which led to a 10-1 reprisal massacre by the Germans at the Fosse Adreatine.