Transcripts
"Takes on Genova"
by Donatella Bernstein
Since July, a spate of testimonies have emerged, mostly in the moderate left national La Repubblica. First a priest (Don Vitalino della Sala in Repubblica 22/7) declared he saw the 'black bloc" anarchists pour out of a police van, then a male nurse at the Bolzaneto detention centre racked by guilt told of the beatings at the police headquarters. He asked to speak to the parliamentary enquiry, and was interviewed on the only programme who ran such stories, TG3 before its licence was revoked. He says as a nurse he was used to gore, but he's never seen so much violence. Then a carabiniere gave an interview to La Repubblica saying when he told a colleague they should stop the beatings, his colleague turned to him and said "don't worry, we're covered". They had been trained for war, complete with psyched-up versions of the 'enemy'. Accounts were given of police already on Friday screeching around Genova yelling at demonstrators : "we're going to kill you all!" Bolzaneto detention centre outside the city was said to be a real lager: policemen kicking and beating, and keeping people spread-eagled against the wall, threatening girls with rape by truncheon, singing fascist songs, and forcing prisoners do repeat them, a doctor ripping body piercing off a face'
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My friend G. is a Genoese resident. His dismay needs no comment:
"The political climate here is undescribable"he wrote on July 26th. "I imagine destabilising tactics along South American lines were adopted, to keep the country's consensus on the right, not only through promised wealth and seductive tenders and tax cuts, but through the spread of fear. And they didn't want witnesses: a compliant press urged citizens to take early holidays leaving their homes and shops prey to destruction. A farce led by provocateurs who were never intercepted, by an army of infiltrators, and some people from hapless social centres such as Carlo Giuliani who lost his life. Similarly for the poor boy recruit who shot him, sent out to supply the much-needed incident. It's all straight from a manual. Why does the alternative left not think, not study? One lone hope: the architects of this small coup did not foresee the presence of 200,000 marching. Too many to avoid uncomfortable witnesses. Ultimately, this episode is just an update of what has always happened in Italy to keep the country to the right. Great country, this is, so poisoned and betrayed."
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At the same time the G8 were meeting in Genova, the 50 poorest nations met in Zimbabwe to consider their stance on the WTO agreements. They categorically and unanimously stated that they would not support the WTO trade round unless it was more reciprocal, especially on agriculture. They were not prepared to be invaded by cheap mass-produced food from the first world unless they were allowed to invade the 1st world market with their agriculture in return. It's not talk of protecting their agriculture for internal consumption yet, but it's getting closer. This extraordinary parallel conference received no coverage, anywhere, as far as I know. I heard it on the world service at 1:00 a.m. It was repeated twice and then disappeared from their bulletins.
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The moral of the story? We are all perfectly free, as long as what we do doesn't matter. The more we matter, the more violence and silence will drown us.
Some of our best intellectuals, Curcio Maltese Giorgio Bocca, etc. have commented on how the media has concentrated on violent events which completely obscured the issues. There has hardly been any discussion of the content of the protests. Bocca comments that after the mergers and acquisitions of the last decade and their disastrous consequences, the race to greater profits at ever greater human cost, could only lead to massive revolt. Maltese says the Italian left has failed to understand the breadth of the anti-globalisation campaign, and the great opportunity it represents. He sees whole generation on the march wanting political participation, and intent on addressing and changing the course of globalisation, so far the domain of multinationals whose guiding reference point is profit. He says that it is a generation with antibodies against "la pensée unique" one-dimensional thought. Interestingly he shows how Agnoletto and Cesarini (Genova Social Forum Leaders) have burned themselves out in a media circus of the "society of spectacle" (Debords). But the movement, he says, is iconoclastic, and isn't taken in by images. The Great media circus seems designed to cancel out the value of the movement and its populist grounding, by concentrating on images of a few black bands and a couple of mass leaders, and then carry on as usual. He sees this revolt at the new politics of the next decades, after a "long season of political emptiness, and the predominance of economy and marketing."
Donatella Bernstein
September 2001
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