13th JANUARY 2024, at 15 in Piazza Durante.

It is evident how in the last decades, securitarian policies, segregation and exclusion measures as well as population control mechanisms have been repeatedly tightened up. This trend has been characterizing the management of the territory defined as European. At the same time, we are witnessing the strengthening of extreme right-wing positions. Organized neo-Nazi and neo-fascist groups are increasingly proliferating, well supported outside and inside the institutions.

Decades of deep economic and social crises have not only crippled the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the population but have also created fertile ground for the propaganda of populist, identitarian and strongly reactionary ideas. Various political forces, more or less institutionalized, are in recent years reaping the results of this propaganda: from the growth in consensus recorded by the major European right-wing parties, such as the Rassemblement National, the Lega and Fratelli d’Italia, the AfD and Vox, to the success of street demonstrations fomented by fascists. The movement for Macedonian independence in Greece, the infiltration of fascists in several demonstrations against the Covid-19 restrictions, the recent riots in Spain against the amnesty for Catalan separatists or the racist riots that broke out in Dublin are just a few worthwhile examples.

In this context of ever more explicit and invasive oppression and the abrupt readjustment of global capitalism, those who organize to resist and to fight the violence of states, capital and their extreme right-wing watchdogs, are faced with ever more extensive and aggressive repression. In such dark times we’re living in, when the winds of war are whistling ever louder in our ears, repression of the internal enemy and social pacification emerge as priorities of all national governments.

In this general background, while the European Union is considering putting anti-fascist groups on the blacklist of those designated as terrorists, two comrades have been imprisoned in Hungary since February 2023. Both are involved in an investigation led by the Hungarian police for aggressions against neo-Nazis that reached Budapest from all over Europe during the weekend of the ‘Day of Honour’. A gathering during which the Nazis commemorate the annihilation of the German Wehrmacht by hand of the Red Army during the siege of Budapest, on the 11th of February 1945.

However, the accusatory castle of the Hungarian prosecutors is not limited to the events that took place in Budapest nor to the days of the commemoration: in the context of an increasingly close cooperation between states and European police forces, the attempt of the investigators is to link the actions that took place in Hungary to a much broader procedure opened in Germany since 2018: the so-called ‘AntifaOst’ investigation, in which several German comrades are accused of attacks against prominent members of the German neo-Nazi world. The attempt is to affirm the existence of a phantom criminal association that allegedly organized the attacks in Hungary.

For this reason, in addition to Ilaria and Tobias, who are detained in Budapest, the Hungarian public prosecutor’s office requested 14 European Arrest Warrants (EAW) against as many German, Italian, Albanian and Syrian comrades. Many of them have not been found to date.

In December Maja has been arrested in Germany and is now in prison and Gabriele, a comrade from Milan, has been under house arrest with all restrictions since November 22th, following the execution of one of these EAWs.

The trial that will evaluate his extradition request from Italy to Hungary is likely to end in January 2024, month in which the trial in Budapest against Ilaria, Tobias and a third comrade will begin.

They are variously accused of having taken part in the attacks and of being members of or knowing the supposed association that allegedly organized them.

On January the 13th we will take to the streets not only to clearly express our solidarity and proximity to the prisoners in Budapest as well as to Gabriele and the comrades who are wanted; we also want to clearly state that we have chosen a side.

We have chosen not to delegate the fight against fascists and Nazis to the democratic institutional apparatus that does nothing but defend and legitimize them in the name of a vaunted ‘freedom of expression’. We are convinced that fascists must be fought directly, at this historical moment more than ever. We claim militant practices and believe it is necessary to implement them at every latitude to stop Nazi’s groups.

Even in Italian cities, albeit less violently than in other European contexts, fascists are present and trying to raise their heads. These servants of capital, fake rebels only useful for maintaining the current social order, must be nipped in the bud!

Every day in our struggles, in our paths, we choose to stand with those who oppose the bosses, those who are exploited, those who suffer repression, those who resist imperialist wars and decide to fight back, with those who do not delegate their freedom.

We choose to stand against borders, which are militarily controlled and closed, preventing those fleeing misery from finding a safer place and in fact putting their lives at risk.

The same borders that kill migrants day by day have always been the terrain of political repression and capillary control of the territory. Recently, administrative instruments have been refined, because they are faster to enforce and have a more ‘depoliticised’ form. To give just a few examples, think of the Italian comrades detained in Paris and repatriated at the beginning of June on the occasion of the commemoration of Clement Meric, or of the dozens of comrades blocked at the border with a ban on entering the french territory for the No Tav demonstration in Val Maurienne at the end of June, or of the apparently ‘lifelong’ bans on entering France notified following the big day of struggle against the mega reservoir in Saint Soline on March, 25th. While these examples show us an increasingly heavy-handed control of political dissent and very close cooperation between European police forces, at the same time we are witnessing an increasingly unscrupulous and ‘effective’ use of instruments such as EAWs.

We are for acting in the first person, not delegating our struggles to institutions and the state that accept everything that falls within their paradigm of democracy and appeasement by trying to wipe their faces with fine words that only remain words.

A world free of fascism and fascists is possible, it is up to us to build it.

FREEDOM FOR ILARIA, TOBIAS, MAJA AND GABRIELE!

SOLIDARITY WITH THE COMRADES AND COMRADES UNDER INVESTIGATION AND ON THE RUN!

FREEDOM FOR ALL!