ABSTRACT: On the threshold of the year 2000, we are witnessing a series of extraordinary and thrilling events, which could nevertheless soon transform themselves into their opposites. In fact, newly-won freedom can rapidly manifest itself in disorder, violence and poverty.

Who will hold the torch of liberty on high?

Not the governments who fail to govern the lives and protect the rights of the people; the diplomats who are nothing more than puppets; the "nationalized" parties, or the European and International Organizations that are deprived of adequate powers.

The Radical Party calls on all responsible democrats, supporters of nonviolence, federalists, anti-miltarists and environmentalists to form a powerful freedom movement by creating a new, transnational, cross-party political force, to save our world!

(The Party New, no.3, August 1991)

We are writing these words on 28 August 1991.

This magazine will reach most readers on the eve of the second session of the Federal Council held by the Radical Party (31 October - 3 November), and just a month after the first session (19 - 22 September).

The world situation is tragically clear. We are witnessing the breakdown of society, not the beginning of an era of freedom and justice.

"Real democracy" has won, but rather than heralding the democratic force emerging as the victor, the trumpets are sounding the single, solitary note of a funeral march.

The Soviet Union has been thrown into turmoil by conflicting economic and strategic choices, not the democratic freedom offensive which failed because it was unable to start a "revolutionary" war on a global scale in time.

In the West, in fact, the forces of democracy, freedom, tolerance, free trade, rule of law and rights for the people, nonviolence and peace - not passive resistance - have virtually been reduced to insignificance by the powerful multinational and sociobureacratic powers, and are incapable of creating, or ensuring, a new democratic and civil order, or proper principles and structures for the world.

Extraordinary and thrilling events, like the ones we have just witnessed, are rapidly transformed into their opposite. Newly-won freedom rapidly deteriorates into poverty, disorder, violence, intolerance and chaos. A single party dictatorship is not replaced by democracy, but by partycracy; it is not replaced by legal and public institutions that are lay and humanist, but by a pluralism that allots power according to a sociopolitical ratio which favours ethnic groups and sects. This is a new Leviathan that rises up not only to attack the fundamental rights of every individual, but also to jeopardize the existence of these rights for everyone and everybody.

The 20th century is ending in complete disaster. Nationalism is spreading like the plague in all areas outside the Anglo-Saxon world. It manifests itself in all its various forms - statist, ethnic, racist, authoritarian, demagogic - and is often violent and intolerant; while the paralysis created by the nationalistic and bureaucratic European governments with their protectionist policies is steadily become more acute. This is suffocating our United Europe "baby" at birth. The sham federalism of the Communist empire continues to generate monsters, suicides, poverty and shattered dreams.

In the heart of "democratic" Europe the heirs of the Second Socialist International have completely betrayed both its ideals and its intrinsic social meaning, and become the nationalistic "caretakers" of paralyzed institutions, a political body that is as obtuse and arrogant as it is pathetic and destructive. They do not understand the tremendous significance of the Iron Curtain having been "lifted", and its having made the reunification of peoples - and people - possible in Russia. They want to apply medieval systems of government, to nationalize - and they have finished up by nationalizing themselves!

And so, in 1991, people are fighting and killing each other only one step away from Vienna, and a couple of steps away from Milan and Paris. Just like the Tutsi and Hutu in Burundi; the Zulus and Xhoxas in South Africa, and the Serbs and Croatians in Yugoslavia. How long will it be before the Albanians, Macedonians and Bosnians start?

And so, in 1991, the West reveals that it has learnt nothing from the pages of history written in recent months, by rushing off to Peking, the stronghold of a Communist empire even worse, if this is possible, than that which seems to have been vanquished and erased for ever - an empire where over a billion people live, as far as we see them, as if they were the last handful of an unknown Aborigene race in the heart of an ancient jungle. And in "democratic" Italy, the halls of power have recently refused to receive the Dalai Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who still sustains the lofty ideals of an oppressed people, in order to go kowtowing to the court of the Chinese Communists.

And similarly the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, surely the most monstrous, inhuman, ignoble, and aberrant form of Communism, is an accepted, and respected, interlocutor in the constitution of a "new" Combodia.

What we are for and what we are against

No democratic political force has been so rigorously anti-Soviet and anti-totalitarian in the last few decades, or even in the last fifty years, than that of our fathers. This was the result of the policies of co-operation and complicity with the likes of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Brezhnev, Mao, and Castro, as well as the ferocious dictators of Africa, Latin America, and the Far East. And all this at the expense of the peoples oppressed by such figures.

We have always upheld democratic federalism, human rights, just laws and the respect for the law, the right to life and a life of rights, nonviolence and anti-pacifism, defence of the weak and the abused, and have always championed a new political order that would create equal possibilities for all people rather than uniformity, a system of interdependence (and not impossible, anachronistic, and merely formal "independent" States with no relation to the real problems of individuals, peoples, and the planet).

In these times, therefore, does it make sense to put forward, as a democratic, liberal, nonviolent, tolerant policy suited to the present and to its problems, dozens of "new" national armies, "new" diplomatic corps, "new" bureaucracies, "new" protectionist economic policies, arms deals, services secret or otherwise, friction and battles with neighbouring areas? Or scores of "new", "national" parties, which would be at best nothing more than a restoration or recreation of the now-fallen forces which supported and upheld the totalitarian regimes?

History takes its revenge. Together the Stalinist empire, the forces of ultra-capitalist protectionism and the romantic, authoritarian ideologies of the 19th century have forced on Africa and on part of the Third World the chaos and the jungle of "independent" States, often run by human butchers in military uniform, castes formed in Moscow or in Prague, in Rome or in Paris. And now the gift is being returned to sender.

From dictatorship to democracy: the only form of democracy which has not produced terrible aberrations is the Anglo-Saxon model, which tends to be comprised of two or three parties and to be based on a federalist, democratic concept of the State. Society grants it very few powers and functions, but it can exercise such powers and functions in a strong, authoritative manner.

The reform of the UN, with a drastic reduction of the number of representatives on a regional basis, with a consistent and suitably armed force - not necessarily or prevalently military - to ensure that its decisions are respected.

Transnational, libertarian, and cross-party political forces - in the continental "real democracies" rather than the Anglo-Saxon democracies - alongside the national parties and the internationals. These, like the Radical Party, will be independent of the Iron or Butter Curtains of national States, and will be organized according to specific common goals aimed at solving the problems of individuals and of the world, rather than on the basis of empty ideologies.

On the side of democracy and freedom

Last week, during the crucial hours of the coup in the Soviet Union, the Radical Party immediately denounced the "Gang of Eight" and all coups, and came out in favour of Yeltsin, the Russian people, constitutional legality. It also condemned the inadequacy of the initial response of President Bush, and the faint-heartedness of that of European leaders and also of the Pope, who only became more supportive when it seemed that democracy and legality would eventually prevail.

As always we were the first and often the only people demonstrating outside the Soviet embassies, proclaiming our solidarity with Soviet and Russian radicals.

We were amongst the very first to demand the recognition of the democratically-proclaimed independent republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

The two sessions of the Federal Council of the Radical Party, to which we invite all the parliamentarians who receive "The New Party" and who agree with the ideas and the project described in it, will certainly include discussion of this problem. But we would also like to bring the attention of our readers to the fact that our activity, our political "life" as the Radical Party, as it has been described, are not an ideological or even a political "position", but a chance to be taken or missed, an initiative in rapid progress, which may succeed or fail, for many reasons, in the weeks to come.

Five million dollars

Five million dollars are a mere pittance, virtually nothing, when it comes to organizing a transnational political force.

This is all we have managed to put together for this project. This sum will dwindle day by day, as will our human and political resources, and will have been entirely used up within a few months. The internationist reserves of the Italian radicals, which number just over two thousand activists, two thousand friends and comrades, have already worked miracles as regards support and generosity. But only if this number is doubled, in Italy and especially amongst the sixty thousand democratically-elected parliamentarians around the world, amongst the nonviolent radicals, amongst the democrats of every country, will the Radical Party be able to hold a great Congress for (re)foundation, before the material possibility of organizing and holding it vanishes completely.

In closing, we would like to remind you that this article was written on 19 August 1991, that this is the third issue of "The New Party" to be sent to you, that the two sessions of the Federal Council of the Radical Party will be a success or a failure according to the number of people present (or not). We would ask you, however, to respond to us, to step forward, to encourage or discourage us, to give shape to the ideas, proposals, and objectives we have described, if you agree with them, for as long as is possible.