On the Reactionary Drift of Some “Comrades”...

[ed. – This notification was sent last year in the run-up to a gathering that summer in Italy. The gathering had an explicitly international dimension; including scheduled participation from the UK, such as the 325/Dark Nights Collective. Beyond this event alone, we think this speaks to the fact – however marginal – of other anarchists drawing themselves into shady alliances in recent years (often justified through a crass and acritical populism), here like in other countries: we hope not irretrievably.

Regarding the situation the text below addressed, the exposure of these toxic elements at the base of the Resistenze al Nanomondo project (in English, Resistance to the Nanoworld) and their likes in other places is deeply saddening here at Return Fire. Some of these people and their activities (see Return Fire vol.4 pg73) were great inspirations to our project a decade ago when we read about them. Others of them seemed ready previously to defend an anarchism that was techno-critical and in defense of the earth against against ‘(eco-)fascist’ incursions (mostly far away and exotic), only to now rub shoulders with them on the continent...

A thread running through each chapter of this volume of Return Fire is on the place and application of our critique of the Left, and really this cannot be separated from our critique of the Right: or rather, of the whole stupidity of splitting the complexity of life into a binary between the two, where criticising one draws you closer by default to the other by the idiotic logic of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend,” the same principle that has led anarchists through the history of such marriages of convenience to be stabbed in the back by their republican, Soviet or democratic “allies ,” often in short order. Have we really still failed to escape this cage, just swapped costumes?

It’s important to emphasise that for us, the result shouldn’t be a purity and total distance taken from messy and contradictory social struggle. We have respect for the comrades who try to enter, for example, anti-lockdown protests where the Right and conspiracy theorists are rife with the intention of encountering people as individuals and offering our own analysis, which means the engagement can only be critical: this seems to have been an effective part of the eventual exclusion of fascists from much of the Yellow Vests anti-austerity movement in French-speaking parts of Europe where they had previously enjoyed acceptance and influence, as opposed to the comrades who just refused to engage. For this reason it disturbed us to hear other anarchists “in Wales & England” recommending they just be obstructed “as far-right mobs” in a way that corners us into supporting State measures, rather than pressuring them to reject the far-right elements themselves, and projecting our own ideas into the spaces they recruit from. (Some hints of this possibility emerged during the resistance in Trieste, Italy, to the COVID Green Pass: see Capitalism & Electrification.) But inviting not grassroot participants but principle ideologues of precisely the bigoted element that needs combating in those spaces, and hosting them at our own events, is quite another thing: it only seems possible by a certain obscuring of our own perspectives, or perhaps not (or no longer) holding those perspectives.

Of other broadly anti-system currents – some of which we will surely share something with, and others almost nothing – we can read widely and engage widely, but critically: and interpret them through an anarchist lens (and not just an anarchist techno-critical lens), refusing to just parrot others or give them our platform. Otherwise we end with complete incoherency such as (previous?) anarchists rightly noting the eugenicist root of the trans-humanist project – see Return Fire vol.4 pg43 – only to then join with conspiracy theorists who promote a eugenicist attitude to COVID-19 and not only, because the latter “at least” cry freedom and criticise the technological network such as 5G... often for starkly different reasons than do anarchists (see The 5G Net). And when it comes to the starkly reactionary gender essentialism described below, perhaps they forget the eugenic feminism of the English women’s movement efforts to impose a colonial “hygiene” in India and Africa last century ago against some of many societies that did not sufficiently conform to their binary system...

As things heat up, and anarchists are sometimes on the back foot, temptations will always be there to abandon some of our principles to feel included in another current that seems rebellious in aspects that might ultimately prove false. The graves of our comrades of days gone by, and those of the marginalised that those ‘(tecno-)rebels’ hatefully collude with the dominant system in persecuting then and now, stand by to warn us of this error.

We thank the comrades who wrote this and submitted it to us (evidently who share our techno-critical perspective), and we now publish it in the spirit of solidarity with the rebellion against restriction of abortion access under the States defiling Turtle Island on the other side of the Atlantic; most recently in the so-called United States, as, before it, in so-called Mexico; weapons in hand. The groups Terza Posizione, Fronte della Gioventù, Political Movement Ordine Nuovo, and Casa Pound (see Return Fire vol.4 pg62) named in what follows are all post-Second World War fascist organisations in Italy.]

We write this text to warn against the umpteenth worrying reactionary drift of some well-known characters who still find accessibility within the anarchist scene, in Italy (less and less) and abroad, despite the fact that in recent years they have accumulated a series of alliances and embarrassing speeches, tending to the most extreme populism and increasingly close to the right-wing world.

We are talking about the organizers of the Three Days against Technoscience, also involved in the website Resistance to the Nanoworld, the magazine The Cry from the Earth and in the documentation space La Piralide in Bergamo.

For the three international days against technoscience that will be held in Alessandria (for the third consecutive year), characters such as Maurizio Martucci and Daniela Danna are invited to speak this time.

Maurizio Martucci, spokesperson and founder of “Alleanza italiana Stop 5G”, wrote a few years ago an article[1] to commemorate the history of Meridiano Zero: a fascist group born in 1991 by the will of exiles from Alemanno’s Fronte della Gioventù, inspired by the Political Movement Ordine Nuovo and Julius Evola,[2] and dissolved two years later. On October 4, 1991 the first group of militants of Meridiano Zero became the protagonist of violent incidents with members of the student collectives of the extreme left in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Rome.

The group Meridiano Zero proposed itself as projected into the future, “beyond right and left” (inspired by Terza Posizione), but we know that these expressions are often used as a strategy by neo-fascist groups, as is clear from these words: “commemorative neo-fascism is alien to us. Fascism and Nazism are of interest to us as historical phases representing ethical values, but we are concerned with the future: we are just a group of young people not homologated to the masses”. It is no coincidence that the group Meridiano Zero will then inspire the birth of Casa Pound.

In the mentioned article, Martucci praises the fascists of Meridiano Zero as being “against genetic manipulation, in defense of all that is natural, against uncontrolled technological development”. The term they coined “tecnorebels” is still used by Martucci as a slogan and also appears in the text of the presentation of his speech at the Three Days Against Technoscience.

Maurizio Martucci’s book on 5G (”# STOP 5G Health, environment, geopolitics, privacy, transhumanism and social control”) was also presented on July 22, 2021 at La Piralide in Bergamo, a “radical ecologist” space run by the same people behind Three Days Against Technoscience, Resistance to the Nanoworld and The Cry from the Earth.

Need we say more? Isn’t it enough to say that in the past that the organizers of this three-day event wrote articles in the ecological magazine The Cry from the Earth that to an unobservant (it would be better to say unempathetic) eye may be critical of technologies but have a transphobic and essentialist basis? Yet the attacks in the articles of this newspaper have been exposed for long time, articles where, in order to talk about transhumanism, technologies, feminism, they fall into transphobic, anti-queer and essentialist discourses that would be worthy of being included in catholic and fascist magazines.

Since a long time it has been highlighted (also because they are not hidden at all) the disconcerting alliances between Silvia Guerini and groups like Arcilesbica, transphobic lesbian women groups, as well as her articles and books that besides being against technoscience (and we are too!) point the finger on trans people as if they were promoters of transhumanism [ed. – see Nicolas Casaux, Transphobe, is Lying to You]. Without ever forgetting, and we don’t want to forget, that Silvia Guerini wrote in the past homophobic leaflets and a book against abortion (to be correct we point out that Silvia has distanced herself from this book, revising her position against abortion and asking not to spread the book anymore – which however remains available in the catalog of Arkiviu-Bibrioteka T. Serra editions).

Of the same tone is the increasingly close collaboration between Silvia Guerini and Daniela Danna, an academic sociologist who in recent years has adhered to TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) positions, writing texts and publishing translations on her website that reproduce verbatim the worst arguments of the American TERF wave: the alarm about the “trans lobby” that would be taking over the world, the denial of the concept of gender identity, the denial of the existence of trans children, the claim that trans people are nothing more than gays and lesbians who do not accept themselves as such, the description of trans women as “men” who invade women’s spaces with the intention of raping them, and so on. Daniela Danna’s transphobic book “The Little Prince” was presented at La Piralide a couple of years ago, accompanied by controversy, and the sociologist will be speaking again this year, as she did last year, at the Three Days Against Technoscience. On July 3, 2021 Daniela Danna and Silvia Guerini also participated together, with speeches, in a conference with the title “A world without mothers?” in which maternity is described as a “natural destiny linked to the identification of the woman with the mother” and the modern freedom of choice and the consequent choice of many women not to become mothers is lamented.

Last year, at the Three Days Against Technoscience, among others the French ecological collective Pièces et Mains d’Oeuvre [Parts & Labour] was invited to hold a lecture, whose racist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic as well as politically ambiguous positions have already been abundantly highlighted.[3] The TERF positions of the collective Resistance to the Nanoworld have also been made explicit, not only in the collaborations with Daniela Danna, Arcilesbica and with the contents of several articles they have published, but also in the space they have given on their website to presentations of transphobic feminist authors, such as the presentation of Sheila Jeffreys scheduled last March in Italy and focused as well on the defense of the true “woman” in front of the alleged danger brought by the trans movement.

To mention another episode, again in the space of documentation La Piralide of Bergamo, recently was presented the book “Il giallo del Coronavirus” by Sonia Savioli published by the Arianna publishing house, which “boasts” in its catalog books written by Alain De Benoist, founder of the movement called Nouvelle Droite (The New Right) in France, as well as anti-Semitic books and articles published on their website regarding the alleged “Jewish world conspiracy”, pro-Trump articles, conspiracy theories and other garbage. We don’t have much information about Sonia Savioli, but we wonder how it is possible to present a book edited by a right-wing publishing house in a space crossed by anarchist individualities. And we also wonder how it is possible to include the presentation of the book against 5G by Maurizio Martucci.

Where are the organizers of this three-day international event attended by anarchists from all over the world going? What is not yet clear in front of these choices of the group of La Piralide, the magazine The Cry from the Earth, the website Resistance to the Nanoworld and the organizers of this three-day event against technoscience?

Among other things, if the speeches and collusions with sexist, transphobic and right-wing people, groups, publishers were not enough, there is also very little anarchism in the fact of establishing alliances and collaborations with people linked to the world of institutions and media, such as with associations linked to parties (as is the case of Arcilesbica with the Democratic Party), mainstream journalists (Martucci), academic sociologists (Danna), and others, not to mention the embarrassing “Appeal for the abolition of any artificial reproduction of the human”, signed by Resistance to the Nanoworld together with Parts & Labour and others, which among other things asks the “national and international authorities” that any artificial reproduction of the human and any genetic modification of it be qualified as a “crime against the species”. Since when, for the anarchists, are the authorities of any kind considered interlocutors for their demands?

We think it’s time to start holding these characters accountable for their positions, people who until a few years ago were anarchists, and whose writings continue to find space even in anarchist distros, between a fanzine that hurls stones at patriarchy and an analysis on how trans people do not promote transhumanism, to detailed fanzines on the new and old right-wingers disguised as ecologists and anti-speciesists [ed. – see Return Fire vol.3 pg98].

We think that the group Resistance to the Nanoworld has an urgency to fight this world impregnated with technologies and faith in science, but to this aim you can’t give voice to everyone, overtaking divergences as if they were small obstacles to the struggles that we carry on with passion; this is the argument that is made by the new right-wingers, who say they have overcome the right and the left, to be something else, and who in this period of pandemic took to the streets shouting “freedom!” (often allying themselves with restaurateurs and bartenders — thus defending the interests of the bourgeoisie) and making us cringe.

Giving Maurizio Martucci the chance to participate in the Three Days against Technoscience, as well as presenting a book by Arianna editions is not an oversight, no, it is no longer possible to believe that. These characters know very well what they do and write, proof of this is the fact that they continue undaunted on their way despite having been warned several times about the type of collaborations they were establishing.

We believe it is time that even those who continue to give them space, to participate in their events and to distribute their materials ask themselves some questions and give themselves some answers about how and with whom they are carrying on the anarchist struggle against science and technology.

Post-script

Following the publication of the text “On the Reactionary Drift of Some “Comrades””, which exposed the worrying queerphobic and transphobic discourses as well as the increasingly explicitly reactionary and right-wing political alliances of the ‘Resistance to the Nanoworld’ collective (and related projects), we received numerous additional reports that underscore the points made in our original text.

Here are some of the most significant of these updates:

Regarding Maurizio Martucci, and his fascist connections... (Martucci is the founder of “Alleanza italiana Stop 5G.” He was invited to Bergamo by the group La Piralide and by Resistance to the Nanoworld to talk about 5G at the “Three Days against Technosciences”):

• Gianni Alemanno – the former neo-fascist mayor of Rome, son-in-law of the mass murderer Pino Rauti – wrote the preface to Martucci’s book, “Cuore tifoso” (Fan Heart).

• In the interview below (also notable for his disdain for “foreigners in the stadium” and his references to “stateless globalism”), Martucci discusses his experience with the Lazio Ultras [football fan] group “Irriducibili,” which he helped to found. This context is useful in understanding who Martucci is and what scenes he was involved in during the 90s: sportpeople.net/rivoluzionari-maurizio-martucci-ricorda-i-primi-irriducibili-del-1987-intervista-allo-scrittore-dei-casi-sandri-paparelli-e-re-cecconi-sulla-nascita-degli-ultras-lazio-di-30-anni

Combined with his Wikipedia page,[4] this gives a good picture of his last 20 years.

It becomes clear that this is the political trajectory of an unrepentant post-fascist.

Note: the Irriducibili disbanded last year, and they are now they called “Ultras Lazio.” The last banner they displayed in Rome is from a few days ago. It says, “Hysaj worm, Lazio is fascist,” a response to a Lazio player who sang Bella Ciao [ed. – song of the old Italian anti-fascist partisan struggle].

At the Three Days against Technosciences, on Friday July 23^rd 2021, the documentary “Bioethics and the new eugenics” by James Corbett was screened:[5] Corbett is an “anarcho-capitalist”[6] who is most noted for running a website which promotes far-right conspiracy theories... He is a supporter of Pizzagate...[7] and also of various anti-semitic conspiracy theories, including that the “Jewish lobby” was responsible for 9/11.[8] Among other bullshit, he also claims that “global warming” is a conspiracy...[9]

In 2016, Maurizio Martucci reviewed a book by Alan de Benoist (theorist of the French “new right”) for “Arianna Editrice”, a publishing house that publishes right-wing, anti-semitic, and conspiracy texts. [10]

He also reviewed a book by Enrica Perucchietti, a fascist Catholic who espouses gender essentialism and anti-queer positions.[11]

Silvia Guerini has continued her commitment to Arcilesbica (as can be seen by browsing the Facebook page of the latter association). Guerini defends an essentialist and biologically determinist conception of “woman” and rejects outright the notion of gender self-determination. These positions translate into explicit attacks on trans people.

Recently, Silvia Guerini published an article on this topic on the website, Rad Fem Italia.[12]

The ideas on abortion and gender transition expressed in this article all already quite striking. However, in addition to this content – which speaks for itself – it should be noted that Guerini also praises the minority report of two MEPs: the Spanish De la Pisa Carrion of the Francoist Vox party, and the Polish Wisniewska of Law and Justice, a populist, extreme-right party...

Another article exemplifying Guerini’s current positions is “Gender Neutral Revolution” published in July 2021 in The Cry from the Earth #9 and on their website.[13]

This article, along with the contents of the Rad Fem Italia site (which hosts Guerini’s other article), can be counted as within the conspiracy cauldron. It makes little sense to engage rationally with the “arguments” of these text, because they are really nothing more than a jumble of conspiracy theories about how the “trans lobby” (inspired by the Jewish one), thanks to funding from various Jewish billionaires (Soros et al), has joined forces with transhumanists, biotech multinationals, and eugenicists in order to control the world. All of this is topped-off with absurd fear-mongering about the concept of gender identity and the predatory potential of trans people. Guerini implies that trans people endanger the lives of cis women, while distorting the trans experience through fanciful psychological interpretations that deny its legitimacy. She aligns herself with legislative proposals to prevent trans people from transitioning or to convince them to de-transition (similar to what certain Catholic groups do with respect to homosexuality!), the psychological terrorism that focuses on children. The text is full of paranoid talk of the “transhuman project of replacing sex with gender”, which would go hand in hand with an alleged “gender-neutral” revolution whose goals are to erase biological sex along with the symbolic order of the mother... As in all conspiracy theories, the data and news cited in support of these theses are the most biased and mystifying [ed. – see Nicolas Casaux, Transphobe, is Lying to You], coming from other conspiracy circles, from fascist and/or Catholic hate groups, or from mainstream media articles whose contents seem to have been invented from scratch or rewritten and twisted to suit the purposes of propaganda.

These arguments closely resemble those that the Vatican has promoted for several years now concerning the dangers of the alleged “gender ideology” [ed. – see Return Fire vol.2 pg60]. The Vatican claims that this “ideology” will undermine the traditional roles of men and women as well as the social order (god, country, family) that they are based on. But isn’t this precisely the social order that we want to destroy? Heterosexism affects people with a variety of experiences: not only cis women, but also trans people and the whole spectrum of individuals encompassed by the term “queer.” Yet these kinds of feminists try to make out as if trans and queer people are rather part of the enemy front. Feminists whose positions are closer to those of Forza Nuova than to those of anarchists refuse to see that the critique of patriarchy must necessarily be accompanied by questioning the content of gender categories and their binarism. Without this perspective, such critique will only rearrange the hierarchies, preserving their substance, instead of destroying them.

Let’s keep this reactionary garbage out of anarchist circles! Our ideas of freedom have nothing to do with this trash!

[1] Here’s the article: ultimavoce.it/meridiano-zero-solstizio-tecnoribelli/

[2] ed. – Evola was an Italian fascist ‘dissident’ to Mussolini’s regime, whose ‘apolitical’ veil covers his extensive elaboration of an esoteric cultural fascist project (including the reactionary side of perennialist philosophy) influential through the rest of the 20^th Century and today.

[3] ed. – This website PMO from Grenoble – home of the Minatec (see Return Fire vol.4 pg38 and from former researchers of which come some of the sites’ collaborators) and also of significant anarchist techno-critical action (see ‘From Fringe Prophecy into Voguish Ideology’) which PMO stand tellingly in contrast to – as well as poaching revolutionary ideas to present as ‘anti-industrial guru’ only to empty them of their content, has spewed insulting texts, morbidly provoking like they were still in the lab setting up guinea pig fights... Despite some relevant contributions on technology – though far from the only or best source even on this – the joke’s on them as they reveal their ignorance by taking what they have heard in ads or tabloids as queer or feminist ideas (while claiming to critique spectacular society!), deploying neo-masculinist tropes of men as victims of competition caused by women who also emasculate them, of “hetero-phobia” and “anti-white racism”... As André Dréan (among many others!) noted already in 2009, PMO “distills the ideology of fear, denigrates all attempts to radically challenge this world”. Yet they were published in the UK’s 325 anarchist magazine: whose 2020 issue also hosts texts by Resistance to the Nanoworld, along with Greek anarchist prisoner Dino Giagtzoglou railing against “queer theory and trans-feminism adherents” (as, more recently, does The Acorn web bulletin of UK’s Winter Oak – regarding the degree to which these currents are as “postmodern and liberal” as Dino reduced them to, see Memory as a Weapon; Mutant Identities in the Middle Ages). Countering this poison is necessary, even when those responsible are behind bars; despite prohibitions to the contrary in some anarchist scenes, critical solidarity is possible to combine with challenges to bigotry, as we hope these anarchists are not beyond the point of no return; as opposed to PMO, who simply consider humanity an error of nature and disregard all attempts at liberation. No comrades of ours.

[4] it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurizio_Martucci

[5] m.youtube.com/watch?v=6HqBK9ACo7k

[6] corbettreport.com/teaching-children-about-liberty-solutionswatch-video

[7] corbettreport.com/reddit-bans-pizzagate-investigation-the-corbett-report-continues-it [ed. – a predecessor of the Qanon theory, but more obviously bipartisan against the US Democratic Party; likewise hinging on theories of elite paedophile rings ‘discovered’ via a Washington pizzeria.]

[8] corbettreport.com/dancing-israelis-guiado-deflated-bayersanto-troubles-new-world-next-week

[9] corbettreport.com/the-ipcc-prepares-to-release-more-hot-air

[10] ariannaeditrice.it/articolo.php?id_articolo=53052

[11] ariannaeditrice.it/articoli/il-progresso-ci-spinge-a-rinunciare-alla-liberta-che-futuro-ci-aspetta

[12] feministpost.it/magazine/primo-piano/metic-report-leuropa-spinge-sullidentita-di-genere

[13] resistenzealnanomondo.org/necrotecnologie/rivoluzione-gender-neutral