ABSTRACT: Alexander Langer states that the individual practicing non-violence must be willing to risk not only his health so much as his positions and his own rigidity.

If non-violent actions are to be "strong", risks have to be taken--real risks. Not only and not so much as regards eventual damage to health due to hunger strikes or the effects of possible police aggression during sit-ins, but more importantly as regards our own possibly rigid positions. For, when non-violent action is conceived as a simple "megaphone" for pre-established positions, or worse, an instrument for damaging someone else without actually exposing oneself also to the possibility of change (for example, being concerned exclusively with the number of lines in the newspapers or seconds of television time with which the action "was covered"), the non-violent impact is in danger of being diminished, falling into the obvious, the deja vu, the suspicion of exploitation. Taking extreme measures--when they are, because not all non-violent actions necessarily imply extreme measures--are justified only in cases threats or injustice which are equally extreme: the actions of a head of a family, desperate an

d homeless, who threatens to jump off the ledge of a building, or the prisoner who resorts to hunger strike, have a different sort of credibility than our electoral fasting.

I say "our" because I have also participated in more than one of the hunger strikes aimed at bringing attention to the unfair policy of exclusion practiced by the major networks (television, for the most part) during electoral campaigns or referendums, and I recently proposed (and carried out, together with 70 others) a week-long "propitiatory fast", which was also in the interests of a strongly electoral objective: the opening of dialogue and the creating the possibility of Green unitary action during the last European elections. Even if there was no intention whatsoever--and this was repeatedly specified--of its being directing at anyone, or was it aimed at damaging others, and intended simply to focus attention on and confer credibility to a serious intention (the convocation of a "Green Council"), it was still a case of an action contingent electoral interests. This to me seemed disproportionate a few weeks later, when compared with the events of Tien An Men Square, during which the discovery of fastin

g and non-violent resistance occurred in completely different conditions and with a completely different level of dramatic content.

Apropos of "dramatic" content : it is natural that non-violent action stresses drama: it is the weapon (pacific!) of the poor, who attempt to compensate for, at least minimally, the mammoth imbalance created and maintained by the chief/thieves of communications and show business, who with supreme arrogance transform non-events into events, cancelling or disfiguring news items and events at will.

However, I feel it is just for this reason that new words and forms, actions and methods must be found to give new vitality and effectiveness to non-violent action in Italy and in Europe, and in particular the following: the transformation and in a certain sense transfiguring of those practicing and those participating in non -violent action (by creating strong bonds of solidarity and interaction); and aggregating and extending communications, thus increasing, the possibilities for participation, assuming and sharing responsibility in those "great causes" (those which justify and perhaps necessitate self-destructive actions).

Despite the fact that the existing political system and the mass media promise maximum news coverage and communications, the receiver is in effect inundated with a mixture of irrelevant and fraudulent propaganda, supporting the powers that be. Fasting, non-violent demonstrations, silence (so difficult to make heard) are perhaps no longer sufficient to offer any effective antithesis, which would also make a claim to impact and simplification, but not necessarily having lost the capacity to transform its practitioners or present another level of truth and democracy. These will not be adequate antidotes for removing the poison from the mixture, but like the Chinese students, we must succeed in persevering beyond the temporary setback.

And perhaps we will succeed in doing something to render our "unilateral" and slightly predicatory actions truly communicative: why not, for example, combine fasting with an invitation to some of the interlocutors called to join us in the long march, during which we might listen to one another, quarrel and perhaps in the end find the solutions necessary?