ABSTRACT: Interviewed by "Epoca" [a popular magazine, ed.] on the current quarrel with the PCI [Communist Party] regarding Plamiro Togliatti's (1) political responsibilities, Marco Pannella indicates the reasons for the clash with the Italian Communist Party on the ideology of violence.

("Epoca", September 13, 1990)

"For twenty-one months the "Corriere della Sera" failed to devote a headline to me. Now I have come back to life for them too..." Marco Pannella is not in the least embarrassed by the polemics he provoked at the "Festival dell'Unità" [a yearly PCI rally, ed.] last September 5 when he wounded the Communist grass roots by dusting off an old definition of Palmiro Togliatti: "the great assassin". It is true that this lost him a lot of friends among the Communist militants most attached to the memory of "The Best Man". In exchange, however, the Radical Party leader gained a lot of newspaper articles, thus coming out of the shadows that seemed to have enveloped him for several months.

His penultimate political sortie dates back a year and a half to when Pannella promoted an electoral alliance for Europe (blown away in the election) with the Republicans and the Liberals. His last action was only slightly more recent: When Occhetto [PCI party secretary] in November 1989 announced the birth of the "Thing" (2). Marco Pannella decided to be present at the delivery. An awkward presence, his, actually intolerable for many leaders of the Botteghe Oscure [the seat of PCI headquarters, ed.]. The quarrel with Claudio Petruccioli at the Festival dell'Unità in Modena served as the detonator. Was this a simple road accident? No. In fact, Pannella has now even decided to drag Nilde Jotti, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, into the affair. If they were to listen to him "The Best Woman" would have to go.

Honourable Mr. Pannella, we are back at the start. In 1979 three Communist leaders (Luciano Lama, Giorgio Amendola and Antonello Trombadori) charged you with defamation of the Armed Forces and the Resistance when you condemned the terrorist attack in Via Rasella (3). Eleven years later you have returned, so to speak, to the scene of the crime...

"I did not "condemn". My heresy was to remind people that the victims of Via Rasella were not horrid Nazi combat troops but boys from Bolzano (4) forced to enrol. I had just defined the Red Brigades as "killer comrades" and recalled that the left, Communist and Jacobin, had to radically change its ideology that traditionally had proposed the death of the adversary and its own people as a painful necessity."

Many at the time raised the objection that one could either be a "comrade" or a "killer".

"I replied that this was ridiculously false. Togliatti, who was responsible one way or another, but authoritatively, for having concurred in the deaths of millions of Communists at the hands of the Third International, could certainly not be considered a "monster", but a "killer comrade" he was. As far as I am concerned, my old non-violent convictions induced me then and induce me now to commit much worse sacrileges."

Give us a few examples.

"From Ho Chi Min to Mandela, from Castro to the whole gallery of "heroic liberators": it is urgently necessary to discuss it. Either we will succeed, as I hope, in creating in a short time this militantly non-violent, libertarian, ultra-democratic, ultra-ecological, lay, liberal-Socialist and liberal-democratic International with the direct adherence of many thousands of people, or we will see on the left and everywhere else many more tragedies than all of us already fear."

You insist on calling Palmiro Togliatti "killer comrade". And some people, like Antonello Trombadori, involve Nilde Jotti, the present Speaker of the Chamber, ex companion of Palmiro Togliatti and Communist representative from Reggio Emilia. Do you feel that Jotti can in some degree be included in your judgement?

"Judgement is not exactly the best word. They did not kill because they were nasty or violent..."

What then was the reason?

"Why just because the prevailing ideas, even at times those of the liberals and the Communist ideology in particular believed that violence was the midwife of history, of death, of war, in many cases a necessary instrument for life and peace. So what I want to know is what they think today. And how do they judge that "sin": if they exclude it for good and not only tactically."

But Jotti?

"I repeat, for her, as for everyone, the essential thing is to have abandoned for good her and the party's old positions. More generally, those who have made serious errors, strategic or even only one's of great tactical importance, if their absolute good faith is intact, shouldn't they spontaneously move to the sidelines, at least for a little while? We Radicals, on the other hand, have always been judged undependable, to say it with the ineffable Lama, precisely by those who in general have governed and fought against our ideas, and against those ideas which are their own today and have always been ours."

In brief?

"The real ideology to defeat is not that of death but of power at all costs. The important figures in all parties are the heirs of transformism and not of the other "isms" which they nominally evoke."

First the Risorgimento and then the Resistance. What do you foresee as your next desecration?

"When an historical event is really great, "desecrations" only serve to elevate its greatness. Alfredo Oriani and the whole Catholic sphere desecrated the Risorgimento, each in his own way, even before it had been achieved. And every great event has its own shadow zone and its exploiters. They are short-lived, not the event."

Are you only referring to the Risorgimento or also to the Resistance?

"The Radical Party has been waging an old fight against the "post-Fascist anti-Fascists", the heirs of Fascism, rather than against the liberal-democratic, liberal-Socialist and Sturzian (5) anti-Fascism... already when it was not fashionable and one paid a high price for it."

Mr. Pannella, were you expecting such a hard clash with Claudio Petruccioli in Modena?

"That "scuffle" was nothing other than the most evident example of the daily backsliding on the part of the present PCI leaders that has been going on for at least a year."

And yet in January, Achille Occhetto attended the PR Council. That gesture appeared to many to be like a sign of agreement.

"It had no future. But in view of the "Thing" we will stay on until the end. Even if Petruccioli, who actually wanted to call off the debate with yours truly, has confirmed his intention of doing everything possible to get rid of us."

Will they succeed?

"This error must be defeated or it means heading straight for a suicide mess. Are they waiting for the arrival of the Wandering Madonna, for Leoluca Orlando? Otherwise there will be nothing but figures who have already been elected in the PCI, or old permanent employees of "L'Unità" [the official PCI daily, ed.] and whatever remains of the "Club". But with others missing, however. And what counts most, without clear projects and policies."

Among the lay parties and the Socialists, it would seem that something is on the move. New music or old refrains?

"For now it is simply a question of an ultra-tactical convergence: for the PSI to try to acquire the leadership of 20-25%, and for the others the attempt merely to survive. We have tried it for years, even for decades if you include our predecessors... Cariglia does very good work."

At the North Italian Radical Executive meeting you announced some big innovations. What are they?

"The cost of the Radical Party's not solidly establishing itself is becoming clamorously evident. But the power of our ideas and our rigour in representing them (thanks to the oxygen and new blood we got with 4,000 new members and despite the forced suspension of our activities and the annulment of our structures) may now determine a new "Radical miracle", not only in Italy but in the world. Let those who hope for it enrol in the party."

Father Eugenio Melandri does not pardon you for having supported the sending of the Italian expedition to the Gulf. And he has asked you to remove the image of Gandhi from your emblem. What are you going to do?

"A certain, majoritarian pacifism has been an involuntary but precious ally of Nazi-Fascism and Stalinism and all the violent regimes when they assault democratic regimes to resolve their own internal contradictions. Even Gandhi was not immune to attacks of the Melandri type, naturally... So it is a good sign, if painful."

Let's change the subject. The referendum on the election laws - aren't you afraid someone is working behind the scenes to block its taking place?

"The nerve centre is the Constitutional Court. In the past it has already rendered indecorous and grave services to the party-power regime. The pressures on that front are highly evident. It is very dangerous."

On whose part?

"It seems to me that leading the attack is a man of growing authority and very few inhibitions such as Giuliano Amato [Socialist deputy]. But even without him there is certainly already a great throng at the doors of the Consulta [Constitutional Court] and pressures on the consciences of various judges."

According to you is this Tenth Republican Legislature already doomed, or do you believe in the possibility of finding in the Italian Parliament the necessary strength for blocking this development?

"Ever since 1968 we have been emphasising the need for a large Parliamentary league for the defense of the legislature. This summer a first big step forward was made with the absolute majority of the deputies signing a letter of Oscar Luigi Scalfaro [DC deputy and sometime minister, ed.] to the speaker of the Chamber against early dissolution. To my mind it was a good start, but it urgently needs to be organised in solid, strong and public way. If we succeed, I don't think Bettino Craxi [PSI party secretary, ed.] will want - as Ciriaco De Mita [DC] did in 1987 - to go all the way and liquidate a legislature to block a referendum. Nor that he will be able to do so."

-----------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Palmiro Togliatti (1893-1964), secretary of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death.

2) The "Thing" was an expression used to indicate the PCI's early attempts to transform themselves into an as yet undefined new party which eventually became the PDS - Partito Democratico della Sinistra - which eschewed Marxism.

3) Via Rassella - A street in Rome that was the scene of a terrorist bombing against German troops leading to 10-1 reprisals of Italians slaughtered at the Fosse Adreatine. It is generally considered one of the great heroic acts of the Resistance.

4) A city of the Alto Adige or South Tyrol, a largely German-speaking region of Italy which has passed from Austria to Italy and back again several times in history.

5) Referring to Don Sturzo (1871-1959), a cleric and statesman whose political activities eventually led to the founding of the Christian Democratic Party.