Comment on the pro-Palestinian demonstration in Milan

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On Saturday 12 April, the Associazione dei Palestinesi in Italia (Association of Palestinians in Italy) and the Giovani Palestinesi d'Italia (Young Palestinians in Italy) organised a national demonstration in Milan, joined by various Muslim clubs from other parts of Italy, some sections of the Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d'Italia (National Association of Partisans of Italy; an association founded by participants in the resistance in Italy against the Nazi-Fascist occupation during the Second World War), trade unions such as Usb, Slai Cobas, the party Potere al popolo!, people from social centres, anarchists and others, those too from various Italian cities. The organisers and the newspaper “Il manifesto” reported 50,000 participants, the mainstream media reported 10,000. As always, some tend to exaggerate the number of demonstrators, others to reduce it. The fact remains that this national demonstration was the most numerous of all the dozens of demonstrations that have been taking place for many Saturdays now – with the general silence of the press – in Milan and in many Italian cities against the systematic massacre of Palestinians in Gaza: many young and very young people came, “many boys and girls of the ‘second generation’ (children of immigrant parents ), as well as many Italians, but also many families, children and elderly people”, as “Il manifesto” of 13 April said.

Milan, in the week of the most important international furniture fair, Fuorisalone, and Design Week, the bumptious city of billionaires and super-millionaires, rushing to the position of Italy's luxury capital, had to show its determination to curb any act, that would tarnish this showcase, but at the same time it did not want to be seen as a city where one cannot express one's ideas, even if these ideas are not the ideas of the rulers of Milan or the Lombardy region, let alone the government. The march was therefore allowed not to follow the traditional route through the city centre, ending in the Piazza Duomo, but to start in the square by the main railway station and then to go out of the city centre and end at the Arco della Pace.

There was no doubt that this was a pacifist demonstration; there were many Palestinian flags, slogans such as “Free Palestine”, “No to genocide”, “Resistance now and forever”; some banners read “Israel a danger to the world. Let's stop genocide and war”, “Let's remain human”. And the police? It was present, in riot gear, ready to intervene and prevent any group of demonstrators from separating from the march and deviating from the permitted route… And indeed it did intervene, but according to witnesses present, ruthlessly, near Porta Garibaldi station, splitting the procession in two; the reaction was obvious, demonstrators threw objects and smoke bombs, seven of them, alleged anarchists, were arrested by the police and taken away.

Broken glass, sprayed windows of some bank offices and Starbucks and Burger King stores (denounced as “accomplices of genocide”), and on the window of one of the banks, among the anti-armament signs, the words “Shoot Giorgia” appeared. This writing naturally provoked a response, especially from the leaders of the “Fratelli d'Italia” (Brothers of Italy) party, headed by Giorgia Meloni, the current Prime Minister: they publicly denounced it as “the most shameful manifestation of the escalation of political and ideological hatred” and accused “those who write ‘Shoot Giorgia’ of not being activists but potential terrorists” (Elisabetta Gardini, the current deputy head of the Brothers of Italy parliamentary group) and denounced “the threatening writings against Giorgia Meloni and the disgraceful attacks on the police during the pro-Palestinian march in Milan” as “very serious facts that are repeated at every demonstration and are the result of a dangerous campaign of demonisation of the political opponent and of women and men in uniform” (Ignazio La Russa, one of the founders of the Brothers of Italy and its leading exponent, now President of the Senate). To infer from such a writing, which is not even worthy of attention, a campaign against demonstrations such as those supporting the Palestinians, which are considered a breeding ground for terrorists, aggressors against the police and defamation of political opponents, can only those who have every political interest in excusing the terrorism of the State of Israel and the real and systematic massacre of the Palestinian population, for which they do not utter a single word, even a single sentence, if only to save face, of condemnation, and thus become de facto accomplices, supporters of this massacre.

Well, it is yet another confirmation of the tendency of the state to take harsh action against those who, regardless of the real reasons – whether it is social need and real poverty, whether it is resistance to bullying and conditions of persecution, oppression and unbearable imprisonment, or whatever else – commit acts that are classified as crimes under the Criminal Code. Consider that the Meloni government just issued a security decree, drafted by Ministers Nordio (“Justice”) and Piantedosi (“Interior”), in which, as of midnight on 12 April 2025, up to 14 new offences came into force, including illegal occupation of buildings, damaging other's property during demonstrations, blocking roads and – an aspect that could not be overlooked: what an iron fist against migrants! – participation in riots in immigration centres and even acts of passive resistance. If this is not state terrorism, what is it? These decrees have the property that they come into force immediately because they are dictated by a state of emergency. But what is this state of emergency?

The only real and dramatic state of emergency that exists, and not since today, is the social one, it is the precariousness of life, it is some of the lowest wages among European countries, it is pensions insufficient to eat twice a day, it is exorbitantly high rents, the extreme exploitation that you have to accept if you want to keep your job, the dysfunctional health system, public education marginalised compared to private schools, the pressure of an economic system that translates into physical and gender violence; the real state of emergency for millions and millions of young and very young people is the lack of a future, having to live from day to day, being victims of crime and all kinds of fraud, being driven to consume and sell drugs to survive from day to day. The only real and dramatic state of emergency lies in the immediate and future consequences of a policy that protects white-collar criminals, politicians and businessmen, their relatives and friends, and that defends the forces of social conservation and absolves the police of whatever they do. It is enough to remember how the government and the forces of order acted in Genoa in 2001, during the G8 meeting in Piazza Alimonda; the murder of Carlo Giuliani, the massacre at the Diaz School, the torture at the police station in the Bolzaneto district of Genoa, and the systematic cover-up and deception to protect not only the police officers personally responsible for these repressions, but also and above all the political and police leadership of these forces of order.

The government is fortifying itself against a situation with such realities, realities of violence that never ends, such as workplace accidents and deaths in the workplace, violence against women and against all those who rebel against this state of affairs; is fortifying itself in a situation in which the features of the society that is preparing for a permanent war, a world war – and preparing millions of young and old people to become cannon fodder; in this situation individual and collective more or less temporary reactions to all directions, are being confusedly generated in the bowels of society; they reinforce each other in the most incoherent way, in a search for an outlet, like steam in a pressure cooker, where it is held and controlled by all forces which try prevent an explosion that would blow it apart.

Demonstrations in defence of the Palestinian people, so that they are no longer massacred, so that arms exports to Israel are stopped, so that democratic governments such as the Italian one put pressure on the Israeli government to stop the slaughter, are among the well-intentioned and spontaneous indignation with which one reacts to events of this kind. But at a time when an economic situation such as that in Italy, in which a large part of the proletariat has fallen into poverty, and in which a part of the commercial and artisan petty bourgeoisie, which has hitherto prospered thanks to the positive economic developments that offered them the possibility of a decent life, is plunging into conditions of proletarian insecurity and poverty, it is understandable that the reaction to this situation takes on a kind of noble protest if this protest is linked to highly prestigious demands of a humanitarian nature, such as the demands for an end to the bombing of Gaza and for disarmament. Demonstrations of this kind, as we have seen in recent decades, have never stopped wars, have never stopped repression, have never forced governments to disarm; demonstrations can either go the way of peaceful, meek denunciations that demand to be heard, and usually never are. They act only as valves to release steam, or they can go the way of a harsh and violent reaction, a reaction triggered by conditions that have become absolutely intolerable and for which the political power, the governors, the economic decision-makers are the real culprits, and against which popular anger and discontent are steaming. After a while, the anger wears off and disillusionment sets in because nothing has been achieved, so that people end up distancing themselves from social engagement, from political engagement, to withdraw into their personal problems, while waiting for the overall situation to once again give rise to discontent-provoking contradictions and spontaneous regrouping so that they can protest again.

But demonstrations can also take an entirely different path from that of peaceful illusions or the path of an immediate but totally ineffective violent outburst: the path of classist struggle with a proletarian nature.

Why proletarian? Because the proletariat, the class of wage-workers, is the productive class par excellence, the class that produces all the wealth but does not own a crumb of it. It is the class that represents a positive social force for itself and for the whole of humanity, a force that has been denied to it for many decades by the stratagem of the capitalist bourgeoisie and the forces of opportunism, a stratagem that takes the name of democracy, of class collaboration, of the “common” interests of the exploiters and the exploited, of the “national” interests of the “fatherland”, which must be defended and made “great” vis-à-vis all others. The capitalist bourgeoisie cannot do without wage labour, without the proletariat because it is from its exploitation that it derives its profits: the more it exploits it, the more it succeeds in pocketing the profits. But to continue to exploit it, it must crush it into conditions of absolute economic dependence, and to achieve this, it must exercise social, political and military repression against it. This is what the bourgeois state serves to do: to control and repress the proletariat whenever it tries to revolt against the intolerable conditions in which it is forced to live; in this way the bourgeois state proves that it does not stand above the classes, that it is not “at the service of society” but only at the service of capital, and of course of the capitalists.

Well, in order for the proletariat to regain its social class strength, thanks to which it can also stop the ever-increasing pressure on its conditions of existence and work, it must break with class collaboration, with that false social peace which only serves the ruling bourgeois class to continue to dominate. It must break with the “common” interests of the exploiters and the exploited, and therefore with that super-deception called democracy, and recognize the bourgeoisie not only as a social force that treats the proletarians as enemies of its power; but it must also recognize its own class power as proletariat, i.e. the direct enemy and clear opponent of the whole bourgeois class. Only by regaining this class power will it be possible for the proletarians of the most advanced capitalist countries, the imperialist countries that support the bourgeois powers that are massacring the Palestinians in Gaza, the Burmese in Myanmar, the Sudanese in Sudan, the Sahrawi people in Western Sahara, the Kurds in Turkey and hundreds of other oppressed peoples of the world, to contribute to strengthening the resistance of these peoples, of these proletarians, making the class struggles a united struggle at the international level.

Revolutionary communists work and struggle to make the future of the class struggle a reality, knowing that only on this path will it be possible for the proletariat to change the destiny of the world by eradicating all kinds of oppression in every country.

Il comunista - le prolétaire - el proletario - proletarian - programme communiste - el programa comunista - Communist Program