Italy: Statements by Anna Beniamino, Juan Sorroche and Action for Palestine Ireland
Some contributions from inside and outside prisons for the initiatives “Sabotage war and repression” on February 7 and 8 in Viterbo
On February 7, about 150 people took to the streets in Viterbo for a radical demonstration that showed how it is possible and necessary to link the issues of war and repression: with the resistance of the Palestinian people, against defeatism in Ukraine, against repression as an expression of war policies on the home front, against 41 bis as a war prison, and in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito. These issues were explored in greater depth the following day, again in the city of Viterbo, at a very rich militant conference. Here is the text announcing the two initiatives:
https://ilrovescio.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Sabotiamo-la-guerra-e-la-repressione-corretto-al-23.12.pdf
While waiting to publish further material as it becomes available, we are circulating letters from Anna and Juan from the prisons where they are being held as contributions to the conference on February 8. We are also publishing a greeting from Ireland, as partial testimony to the internationalist nature of the days of struggle and discussion on February 7 and 8.
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Contribution by Anna Beniamino from section AS2 of the Rebibbia women’s prison (Rome) for the conference held on February 8 in Viterbo.
First of all, thank you for asking me to contribute to the conference on War and Repression. I will try, starting from the perspective that is, despite myself, clearer here: repression and the ‘local’ repercussions, in prisons, of global policies of war, economic austerity, and the militarization of society.
I am aware that there are no theoretical recipes or detailed, definitive analyses, but only a simple and solid certainty that any real, non-virtual struggle implies reaction and repression.
The problem is ‘only’ to take this into account, to be ready and not to be paralyzed by fear of it, to build solidarity and awareness of one’s own means and ends, with continuity and tenacity. Especially in these times when preventive repressive work is spreading across multiple levels, both covert and overt.
Starting in 2022, when Alfredo was transferred to 41 bis, I wrote several times about differentiated circuits and regimes as well as, long before that, inside and outside prison, about struggles and repression, in ordinary and “extraordinary” terms; I refer back to all this and to my latest notes for the Roman assembly against 41 bis.
Essentially, I believe that the discussion should be resumed… because it is never over, nor have the ethical assumptions that supported it fallen away, so as not to leave a well-established discussion unfinished, not to leave a comrade alone, not to waste an opportunity in which a single battle has shown how we can be together, “irredeemable” and positively recognizable outside the narrow area of the anarchist movement in its content, so as not to leave alone the comrades who are now facing the various trials connected with the mobilization, because credibility is also built on continuity and consistency, because the mask has been removed from one of the pillars of bipartisan rhetoric on “mafia and terrorism,” because the “fight against terrorism” is now a global smokescreen and the current context of militarized capitalism and blatant neocolonialism in the procurement of resources and the opening of trade routes lends itself well to the reception of an anti-authoritarian, anti-militarist message of solidarity among the oppressed.
And 41 bis is a militarized prison management system, which they are trying to maintain. It is not residual (a compost bin for mafia foot soldiers in use in the 1980s) but undergoing restructuring, fundamental and foundational, a clear expression of the technological control of the human animal, of the reduction of the body to a machine and of the individual imprisoned to a bodily simulacrum to be kept alive (not always!) with acceptable vital parameters, preferably in a vegetative state.
The data on the various Dantean circles of the prisons of the Bel Paese are now well known even in the mainstream (and also thanks to past mobilization), just a few small additional notes…
41 bis does not appear to be in the process of being phased out, but rather restructured and centralized, with a predictable increase in capacity—with seven dedicated prisons, three in Sardinia and four on the mainland. From what has emerged in the local media in recent months, both in Alessandria and in Sardinia, the municipality and region have been struck by administrative NIMBY syndrome: they do not want such a notorious type of prison in their territories or, more prosaically, the idea is to sweep the dust under the carpet (of their neighbor). It can be assumed that, for the prison administration, centralizing only 41 bis prisoners in the same prison (as is currently the case only in L’Aquila) means reducing costs and further militarizing the regime.
At the same time, since the pandemic, AS circuits have been tightened, stabilized under closed conditions, with gradual reductions in usability, always with a view to simplifying control and economizing in its management, with the specter of “security” being touted everywhere. Doing some quick math, it is clear that the prison system is in chronic and growing managerial/economic crisis (as is the entire state apparatus, for that matter), so the first to pay the price are the lumpenproletariat piled up in the common sections, where self-control is clearly emphasized, where self-destruction and intoxication with drugs and psychotropic drugs are functional to the control (if not managerial control) of situations on the edge of survival. Last but not least, juvenile prisons are more overcrowded than ever, a clear demonstration of the preventive work of repression.
Meanwhile, the Italian state is preparing to achieve European leadership in the imprisonment of long-term political prisoners, from the season of struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, still in AS, and in the use of that typically Italian 41 bis, of emergency elevated to a system, which constantly moves on the margins of ‘law’, adaptable according to the target.
Although the technical-jurisprudential data lends itself to an interpretation of denied rights, and I believe this is one of the critical points that is controversial and open to misinterpretation if poorly managed/explained, in terms of victimization and the restoration of rights, I do not believe that it loses its incisiveness if, in reality, formal contradictions and legal and procedural distortions are highlighted, legal and procedural distortions, also to highlight the arrogance of power, to combat the normalization of repression, double or multiple standards depending on the enemy (yes, that ‘criminal law of the enemy’ that is being discussed) and the expansion of the repressive ‘offer’ and the audience of potential candidates.
Previously, someone said, to give a down-to-earth example, ‘ah, but the crime of association, 270 bis, is impossible for anarchists, it’s a remnant of the repressive strategy of the 1980s’ – then we found ourselves with a barrage of convictions and proceedings for 270 bis and its siblings, thrice, four times, five times, etc., etc., which are modeled and used according to national and international political balances. From the internal communist target to the anarchist one, to the Islamist one, to now settle on the Palestinian resistance.
It is not a laboratory, as was commonly said some time ago, it is the current reality. These are not experiments to be studied, it is a practice to be fought, the “multitasking” use of terrorism charges, which can be applied to any political opponent.
Although the global panorama of war & ‘Board of Peace’, genocide & ‘Gaza Beach’ now makes the true nature of democratic regimes and the military use of technological and scientific progress clear even to Western citizens who have been lobotomized by the media and consumerism, and although the sirens of war are getting closer and closer to our backyards, I have the impression (from here, from the aquarium of a prison, therefore with all the limitations of vision that this entails) that in these parts repression is investing heavily in prevention, clumsy and arrogant like the current rabble in power, with a martial appearance and effective genuflection to the guidelines of global capital. But still able to reel off new types of crimes with impunity, red tape and restrictions that simplify the work by dissecting it in advance.
In moments of “fatigue” in the struggles, the audience of potential targets of repression expands, almost like a stress test of tolerance, to include those fringes of the movement and social opposition in the broad sense that normally, in Western democratic regimes are perceived as more protected (or rather convince themselves that they are, having traded scraps of freedom and critical thinking for some niche of survival).
Emergency legislation is being modeled without there being an emergency, yet.
It may seem contradictory; logic would dictate greater action, greater repression, but here we are essentially at the point of preventive sterilization. Cutting off the buds before they become a thorny bush, when it is easier to do so, delighting in manipulating what is beginning to emerge, not as a revolutionary movement but as a movement of opinion, indignation, and denunciation.
When it is easier to contain it with batons and tear gas, fines and the buying and selling of the most recoverable components, stick and carrot, gunshots and social media, as needed, to each his own, with a few more licenses.
Those who study and work in the field of control know full well that for several years now, the symbolic, ritualistic, informative, and counter-informative aspects of protests have prevailed in Western squares. From the black blocs of Seattle, who targeted shop windows, to Fridays for Future, who prioritized holding up signs for the cameras, from the rhetoric of “don’t believe the media, become the media” to the compulsive use of social media in an unresolved love-hate relationship.
The current protests in Minneapolis against ICE show this, with tragic results: “subversive,” ‘insurrectionist’ high-tech protesters, carrying cell phones to film the misdeeds of these “special forces” who round up adults and children… The police (after technologically tracking migrants and protesters) are more old-fashioned than their opponents, now shooting as they did 100 years ago, at a kneeling protester.
Is this a short circuit in the repression of democratic dissent administered in its purest form, the alarm bell of a change in scenario, or a sign that the transition has already taken place?
In Italy, the pandemic has led to a shift from Berlusconi’s glitter and doubloons to Meloni’s insignia. Although the national leaders are unlikely to display martial aplomb, they are in fact promoting warmongering policies, trafficking in arms, and aspiring to post-war reconstruction deals (depending on the bone they are allowed to gnaw on under the table), dusting off the rhetorical paraphernalia of yesteryear, God-Country-Family, defense of borders, etc., etc., but doing so from the screen of a smartphone, the widespread form of political ‘education’ today, in the collapse of the party-electoral system (if we do a few more quick calculations on the percentage of national voters and those in the various European states). This ‘education’ is not rhetorical but necessary in the search for new cannon fodder for new internal and international conflicts: at the moment, we are in the midst of fiction and commercials designed to sell a military career as attractive, with aesthetic suggestions wavering between Top Gun and toy soldiers helping children and the elderly find their way home… soon they will relaunch compulsory military service as ‘formative’ and ‘performative’, ‘smart’ cannon fodder…
However, there is a counter-rhetoric to the poison of war and militarist propaganda, also dating back to that era, created by the distillations of revolutionary currents, by those who were resistant and capable of countering it with atheism and anti-clericalism, internationalism and anti-militarism. This is more relevant than ever, given that, if we raise our gaze for a moment and look beyond the more comfortable representations of these shores, we see that, in addition to war, there is renewed talk of desertion on both sides, Russian and Ukrainian; given that the squares of the world sometimes move of their own accord and the transition from indignation at a corrupt system to irreparable rupture occurs precisely in those generations born and raised on the web and social media, from Nepal to Indonesia.
It is a matter of reversing the perspective and becoming aware, here too, of one’s own role, limitations, shortcomings, and responsibilities in order to free ourselves from postmodern muddle and interclassist vagueness, to recognize the differences between mimetic representations of conflict and real conflicts, to choose whether to exercise solidarity among the oppressed or to be unable to recognize the oppressors, in the game of mirrors of current communication that sometimes uses overexposure, fast scrolling, and the deconstruction of meaning as preventive weapons. And even the most resistant tend to be distracted, dazzled.
Knowing how to recognize oneself and recognize the nature of the conflict at hand would be a small starting point, not a destination.
Anna,
January ‘26
Rome, Rebibbia
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Contribution by Juan Sorroche from section AS2 of Terni prison for the conference on February 8 in Viterbo
Hello to all, comrades, present at today’s event. Greetings to those who created this space for discussion and gave us prisoners the opportunity to express ourselves in this space, and also for the solidarity you often express.
I am Juan Sorroche, an anarchist prisoner arrested on May 22, 2019, and I am writing from the AS2 section of Terni prison, where I have been incarcerated for six years with a total sentence of 28 years and two trials still ongoing.
I feel compelled to say a few things at this conference, even at the risk of coming across as self-referential and rhetorical. As an anarchist prisoner, I do not write for aesthetic pleasure, but rather with the intention of creating debate and stimulating self-organization and coordination for the struggle. As a prisoner and as an anarchist militant, I have always believed that we must be clear and not hide our opinions and ideological intentions, even in front of judges, holding our heads high and not letting anyone speak for us.
I have always believed in and felt deeply connected to the place where I was born, but not to the land or the place itself, that is, not in a nationalistic sense, but in a cosmopolitan sense, in the culture of internationalist anarchist history, Spanish history. Even before I was aware of what anarchy and anarchism were, my dear grandmother (who believed strongly in God but was a staunch anti-clericalist due to her experiences during the period of insurrection and revolution, and then in the civil war) used to sing me a piece of a CNT song when I was very young. It was a single verse against priests that went something like this: ‘If the priests knew how many beatings they were about to get, they would sing freedom, freedom, freedom’. Then my uncle, who returned to Spain after Franco’s death, lived with us when he was a child and was a role model for me. During the war, he deserted Franco’s army, and they caught him and gave him a choice: be shot or go to Tunisia to fight for them. He chose the latter option, of course, and there he deserted again, risking being shot. He then secretly reached France by ship and made a life for himself there until his return. I could recount many other experiences and stories from my family.
This little digression is to say that I have come to the conclusion that for me, and probably for many individual anarchists and libertarians, beyond the rational aspect, there is also a need to nurture and enliven that of the heart, of the spirit of rebellion.
It is essential and necessary to explore them and observe them continuously with curiosity in order to give us strength of mind, despite prison, suffering, mistrust, and despite all the pessimistic judgments that kill the will of anarchy. And personally, I believe that the soul, the heart that moves each anarchist and libertarian individually, is not a matter of folklore because it tells us many wise things. If we observe sincerely, it asks us questions, it helps us understand ourselves and understand: where do those distant, deep feelings and our primordial impulses of revolt that have lit this flame come from? And it tells us to get out of bed every day and move towards the life-struggle of anarchism. It also tells us how to be anarchists, where that has taken us, and where we want to go. Without regrets.
But above all, it tells us and gives us the will and spirit to believe in ourselves, in Anarchy, and in the revolutionary-libertarian spirit. And it tells us to continue and continue every day, and mainly to listen, understand, and overcome that part of ourselves that crushes us, discourages us, keeps us constantly immobile without understanding our fears, and corrodes us from within, increasing resignation and frustration. All this and much more is what our roots, our hearts, and the spirit that moves each anarchist individually tells us.
And so I believe that my anti-militarist and internationalist-anarchist tendencies run deep. For me, it is a very intimate matter that has been handed down to me in warmth and human love. Those people were able to impose themselves as figures without pretension, and for this very reason they remain essential roots for me, pillars of reference who loved me and whom I loved as a child, roots that must not be lost and that run deep within me.
I cannot feel and understand these complex sensibilities and feelings as separate from these complex rational concepts; for me, they are a holistic Taoist whole, they are integrative, inseparable in a personal and ideological sense.
But be careful, I don’t think it’s just a matter of sensitivity, of anarchist or libertarian spirit!
Because I believe that self-organization is necessary, both as our compass and as our material foundation. Direct libertarian action is needed, accompanied by planning with clear perspectives at different levels, tactical and strategic, discussed in depth by everyone without delegation.
Clarity is essential with the comrades with whom we self-organize, whether they are anarchists, libertarians, or not.
This clarity: that these perspectives can only be achieved through the violent destruction of the state, capitalism, and progressive industrialism in the world.
Of course, comrades, I don’t believe that class struggle is exclusively about violent actions. Nor do I believe that it involves only peaceful and cultural struggles. If anything, it is the convergence of all these multiform struggles and many others; both social struggles involving countless people and minorities, groups, and individuals who engage in direct action, and even those more specific to armed propaganda. It is this diverse and multifaceted convergence that constitutes the real strength, the qualities necessary for class struggle.
We must fight against the miserable interclassist social pacification of the warmongers that exists today in Palestine and in our own contexts, which serves only to lull us to sleep, to transform our consciousness in order to extinguish the struggles of rupture and revolt, and we must self-organize autonomously in the class struggle. Because I do not believe that spontaneous radical social explosions of struggle alone are enough, such as the wonderful days of September 22nd when we “blocked everything” and, mind you, I believe they are still very important and fundamental!
But at this moment in history, we also need the spirit, the soul of the will of the revolutionaries, who must also be connected and prepared in body and materially self-organized as revolutionary-libertarian and autonomous minorities.
Malatesta already said this back in 1915, during the First World War, forcefully asserting concepts that I believe are still very valid today in a context such as the current class struggle, the world war. He stated this in his text, “The Anarchist International and the War,” the so-called Manifesto of the Thirty-Five, published a year before the harmful and deleterious Manifesto of the Sixteen.
I believe, like Malatesta, what he wrote in the text: “Anarchists and War.”
“In times of war, anarchists have a very specific personal action to carry out: their action, we might say, is specific in terms of both means and ends. We stay among ourselves and agree to act in groups of three or four. A group of fifteen, twenty, or forty individuals should therefore be divided into four, six, or ten groups, each free from the collective preoccupations of the action.”
Of course, here he is only talking to anarchists. And of course, I believe that this is only a problem that must first be solved by anarchists and libertarians.
However, this provides food for thought and a question to reflect on at the conference. This is by no means a new issue. But I believe it is a priority to address how our various specific spaces and times should be self-organized.
I say this also because I believe it is a serious mistake to confuse specific anarchist and libertarian self-organized spaces and times with other specific non-anarchist ones, without clarifying this. Also because, in my opinion, this only creates confusion and misunderstandings with everyone, anarchists and non-anarchists alike, and does not lead far in the class struggle.
And let me be clear, this does not in any way exclude me from fighting alongside other non-anarchist comrades.
I simply believe that we must be sincere in our self-organization among all of us, anarchists and non-anarchists alike, in order to create different spaces and times with mutual, reciprocal, and clear agreements that are anti-authoritarian.
But I wonder, and I ask at the conference: if we ourselves are not capable of self-organizing autonomously, how can we think we can contribute and support each other in conflicts, in specific struggles, or in the class struggle, bringing real and qualitative strength?
And above all: how can we expect not to find ourselves constantly unprepared and out of step with the times and spaces of struggle if we are not self-organized, without clear projects and tasks, with concrete tactical objectives, and a strategic ideological compass for these specific meetings of ours as a methodological tool that is constantly evolving?
Another issue to address is how to self-organize to defend and attack the major problem within our struggles in Italy that causes and produces the interclassist recovery of social struggles of radical and autonomous revolts of rupture?
I believe that the problem always arises as a consequence of this lack of self-organized spaces and times in the class struggle, leaving gaps without a real defense and attack to counter them with clear objectives, both materially and politically-ideologically.
I believe that all this, this lack, apart from very small and courageous minority components in the world, is one of the main reasons for the inability of our anarchist movement and the general movement of revolutionary rupture to develop struggles articulated towards a real class struggle that meets social struggles and autonomy in the class struggle.
This is the problem: it is not just a matter of analysis, which, incidentally, has been accurate and very good on more than one occasion in our movement, but remains only a theoretical point of view. The point is how to change reality by demonstrating these analyses in the struggle. But I believe that the interpretation of some recent analyses is correct and very useful – as, for me, is the anarchist text La fase nichilista (The Nihilist Phase) by Vetriolo – but we must not fall into inaction, in order to keep pace with the class struggle and make our own real contribution from a revolutionary-libertarian perspective. Because only the integration of propaganda with facts and analysis, and vice versa, is what demonstrates the credibility and real concreteness of such analyses and of revolutionary minorities, which, together with the actions of specific general and international social movements, can change the social context of reality with real qualitative forces in the class.
Of course, analytical concepts are fundamental, and it is especially important to be able to carry out a precise analysis today, but they must have a real, complex, and in fact inseparable and intrinsic link to what Malatesta wrote. The same applies to intrinsic armed propaganda, in an integrative relationship between revolutionary-libertarian minorities and specific general and international movements and the class struggle.
Without this intertwining of practice-theory-theory-practice… and self-organization in reality as a force and in quality, both in time and space, in the long run I believe that analyses, however good and qualitative they may be, such as The Nihilist Phase, remain a simple philosophical point of view.
And, let me be clear, I believe that internationalist movements are valuable and should be considered worthy of interest, and I also believe that it is essential to relate to them for development; they are the lifeblood of the various revolutionary class struggle movements.
But, honestly, when it comes to the revolutionary task, I believe that today these are very, very, very timid, and I would not give them so much emphasis. And, I repeat, I say timid or I would not give them emphasis for the great revolutionary task, which for me must be a libertarian task of breaking away, and above all creating a real balance of power that we should create as revolutionaries, to try to defend ourselves in order to attack the nation-state, capitalism, and progressive and technological industrialism in reality.
But we also need to be frank, debate among ourselves, confront each other, and be self-critical and constructively critical within our own ranks, especially in the face of the “parliamentary cretinism” and democratic reformism that exists today, which, incidentally, is completely counterrevolutionary.
And above all within many of our own movements of struggle, this democratic reformism is interclassist and very strong.
And let’s be honest, this is nothing new. Certain tactical and strategic methods, including armed ones, such as direct attacks on both property and people, are only acceptable to certain individuals, groups, minorities, and activist movements in Italy if they take place in distant “tropical” countries with their folkloric armed guerrilla and partisan warfare. And unfortunately, the same thing is happening again today in Western Asia, as in Palestine, and yesterday with the Kurds, Algerians, Zapatistas, Mapuche, etc., etc. However, above all, they immediately distance themselves, as at the G8 in Genoa, etc., and above all, urge you not to even think of it as a possibility here in terms of the necessary armed guerrilla and partisan warfare, in a context of class struggle, at least not here, where we have a constitutional democracy.
We have already seen this time and time again in the various university ‘waves’ and in various struggles by antagonistic movements in twenty-five years of struggle in Italy, and I do not see why today should be any different without having done the hard political and concrete work of revolutionary struggle and autonomous rupture in the class struggle.
So I repeat: how can we strongly and politically oppose this “parliamentary cretinism” with practices of rupture and autonomy?
I believe that Malatesta already gave us good guidance in 1915.
The Salis case is emblematic, giving us a sense of the situation and telling us a lot about this internalized method of interclassist “parliamentary cretinism,” which is very serious, especially given the social and historical context of war in which we find ourselves! It is particularly serious within our struggle movements, serious for those who have delegated the anti-authoritarian and autonomous class struggle by voting for a party, thereby effectively reinforcing the nation-state, capitalism, technological industrialism, and the interclassist warmongering democratic system, thus severely undermining an already weak real revolutionary and internationalist solidarity.
I believe that not addressing all this clearly as a whole is a big mistake for the struggles.
A hug…
Greetings, anarchy!
Juan Sorroche
AS2-Terni – 27/01/2026
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Greetings from Action for Palestine Ireland to the initiatives on February 7 and 8 in Viterbo
Action for Palestine Ireland sends its revolutionary greetings to our comrades in Italy. We salute your mobilization against war and repression and your uncompromising stance against imperialism at a time marked by accelerating militarization, censorship, and social control at the heart of imperialism and in its peripheries.
From our perspective in Ireland, the current phase marks an intensification of global contradictions. The escalating Zionist assault on the West Bank and Gaza, the ongoing imperialist attempts at destabilization against Venezuela and Iran, and the widening arc of confrontation led by NATO all point to a deepening of the strategy of permanent war. This strategy requires not only external aggression, but also an intensification of repression on the home front. The coming year will require not only resistance as in the past, but also new forms of international coordination and political clarity among revolutionaries. It is time to build new waves of resistance rooted in a common analysis and a shared struggle.
In Ireland, this war-like reconfiguration is increasingly evident. We have witnessed a marked escalation in the repression of anti-imperialist activities: the brutality of the Garda against demonstrations of solidarity with Palestine and against NATO; violent intimidation of Irish republicans by the Special Branch; and the creation of new repressive precedents within the illegitimate courts of the Irish Free State, which now mirror British trends in sentencing aimed at criminalizing dissent. These developments are not isolated abuses, but expressions of a state preparing to discipline internal opposition as it aligns itself more openly with imperialist war.
A recent example clearly illustrates this concept. Activists from across Ireland organized a secret protest at Shannon Airport, long a logistics hub for US troops and military equipment transiting to imperialist wars. Upon arrival, they were met by senior Garda officers and special units of the investigative police. This preemptive mobilization of the state’s highest repressive apparatus signals an intensification of surveillance on anti-imperialist militants and confirms that Ireland’s supposed military “neutrality” is a fiction. The Irish Free State is actively abandoning even the facade of neutrality in order to integrate more fully into the NATO war machine, while repressing those who denounce and resist this role.
These trends do not bode well for Palestine, nor for the working class and oppressed people in general. However, they also highlight the vulnerabilities of the system. It is precisely when contradictions intensify, when war abroad requires repression at home, that capitalism reveals its weakness. Our task is to prepare for these moments, to organize and act in concert across national borders.
For these reasons, we welcome your mobilizations in Viterbo and your commitment to an internationalist struggle against war and repression.
We hope to strengthen collaboration between our struggles, contributing to a common front against imperialism, Zionist colonialism, and the bourgeois states that support them. Together, through coordination and revolutionary determination, we are committed to transforming resistance into a concrete force.
Solidarity,
Action for Palestine Ireland
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