by Massimo Passamani

The right to free speech is a lie. First, because it is a right and as such only acts to reinforce the power of those who have the authority to grant it or recognize it (which is the same thing). Second, because it is put in place when the possibility of speaking, of saying something to someone who is able to understand it, no longer exists. In other words, it appears afterwards, when the condition which it tries to safeguard is already suppressed. Third, because it is separated from the practical possibility of action and is therefore only an abstraction that serves other abstractions. Deprived of the oxygen that only the space of relationships and confrontations, and thus of communication and experimentation, assures to them, ideas remain powerless, gasping on the shore of opinions that talk about everything and change nothing. I would like to express a few thoughts about this last aspect.

Showing its ability to tolerate words (with a few exceptions for subversive ones), democratic power has created a "free" zone in which to conceal their responsibility by transforming them, precisely, into opinions. For example, what does a politician do? He speaks. Of course, he exploits, he oppresses, he kills. But he is not the one who pulls the trigger. He is not the one who forces you to need money to survive. He is not the one who throws you down from the scaffolding. He is not even the one who makes the double lock that locks in any of your acts of rebellion. When he appears, he merely discusses, responds politely to questions, smiles at criticisms, adds, refutes and amends. It almost seems that by speaking better than him (which doesn't take much), reasoning more correctly (which takes even less) and undermining his defensive arguments, our idea of freedom might win.

And journalists? Could someone maybe shoot someone else because she has different ideas than ours? One moment. He defends an act of war, praises a carabinieri [paramilitary police] operation that will send several dozen north Africans back home, asks a judge to apply the maximum penalty, convinces our political friends (or is convinced by them) that thirty-five years of work is not so very much, explains to us that the reason for a recent ecological disaster was the lack of laws, attacks a corrupt industrialist inorder to avoid telling us that they all are, causes us to worry about an adulterated food product (never telling us which one isn't) in order to hide the reasons for a revolt in China, in Palestine or in an Italian prison. In short, she plays with adjectives on other people's hides.

So what? Would one want to attribute the responsibility for all that happens in the world to a fabricator of syllables? It is necessary to take it out on those who act, not with those who speak. Fine. But who acts? We don't know, we don't see, and when he appears, he counts for nothing. So it is really true, as revolutionaries have always said, that social conditions are the cause of oppression. Magnificent. But there is something wrong when the masters themselves are saying this. By doing so, they hide their own responsibility in the generalized irresponsibility. There is something wrong when everyone is forced to act without considering the consequences (who could predict or even recognize them in such a complex world?), with freedom as the alibi. And year after year, these consequences produce an abundance of new causes.

If bureaucracy and administration -- the power of Nobody -- are ruling, if a slave can no longer see who is commanding her, then tyranny has nearly perfected itself. Also one of the best defense weapons -- treating the scoundrels who "speak" like the scoundrels who "act" -- appears to be almost entirely blunted. The right to free speech. But who can argue that "acting" is always more fraught with responsibility than, for example, writing? Why condemn the one who, blinded by his phantoms, suddenly kills a prostitute or a transsexual, and absolve the one who, in the calm enclosure of his library, appeals to history for some arguments to justify in words some military aggression against a category of Enemies of the fatherland and of democracy? Why desire the use of force against one who beats up immigrants while merely "energetically denouncing" anyone who provides cultural, social and even economic reasons for the beatings in words?

Was Eluard so different from the Stalinist murderers whose praises he sang in poems -- that is to say, in elegant words that were not only said, but were said with the suitable form and rhythm? And the exploited person who speaks as a racist because he is afraid of losing not just his job, but also the security of his exploitation? And the exploiter, giving and taking away this security from the height of his power, who speaks of anti-racism? And the one who writes for the one who speaks (who composes speeches for some statesman, for example), is he twice as safe for this reason? And what about the one who speaks after acting? Personally, I recognize the right of someone to support tyranny in words to the same extent that I acknowledge the right to tyrannize. I place the journalistic defenders of state terrorism hit by a bullet on the same level as cops or fascist squad members who are killed. Risks of the trade. Anyone who speaks or writes like a scoundrel is a scoundrel, so much more so since the cultural means available for understanding how despicable it is to pay such tribute to the master are better. I don't make concessions for what an exploited person says. And I don't change positions toward an exploiter, regardless of what he says.

And anarchists? Here it starts to get painful. To give an example, a representative of a Leftist party was invited to an anarchist initiative. Why was he invited? This already deserves some discussion. But there he is, he takes the microphone and speaks. Someone disagrees and doesn't allow him to speak. It's simple, this someone is a fascist. He doesn't accept confrontation -- his reasons are lacking. Freedom of speech is sacred for anarchists. One moment. I am that someone. I don't lack reasons (few are needed), but they don't come into it. If the party representative were to have a meeting on the immense beauty of anarchy, it would change nothing. Just as it would change nothing if he were to participate in the organization of the initiative without speaking. What he says at the moment is not in question, but what he does with words and what he says with actions. He himself is in question. I am still of the opinion that those who power tolerates are not to be tolerated at our initiatives. In confronting them, rather than turning to dialogue, I prefer the practice of merited insult. And if Prodi or even Agnelli were to come to speak, and someone were to jump on them, would this mean that Capital has more reasons than subversion? Would this someone also be a fascist, because she didn't wait for them to finish speaking before jumping on them? The usual exaggeration, everybody knows that they are rogues. So the "right to free speech" is not for everyone (fascists included), but only for those whose liabilities are acceptable (a Parlato for example)? As is clear, there is something else. In fact, the party representative is not even attacked in words (with Reasons). On the contrary, they do conferences together, he is asked to write the foreword of some book, he marches nearby in protest marches. At the front, the police (these ones of few words) that our leftist friend defends in the columns of his newspaper or in some chamber of the republic.

Okay now, in this family photo, I think I recognize it better. It is right in the middle, the right to free speech.

Insurrectionary Anarchists of the Coast Salish Territories