A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #41 - For a united, autonomous, and mass antimilitarist movement - Tiziano Antonelli - Livorno Antimilitarist Coordination* (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Good evening, thank you to the comrades who organized this initiative 
and allowed me to speak. There's a lot to say, so I'll try to be as 
brief as possible. For those unfamiliar with us, we formed the Livorno 
Antimilitarist Coordination Group four years ago and immediately began a 
campaign against military missions abroad. Our vision is to build a 
united, autonomous, and mass antimilitarist movement. ---- We are 
stubbornly united. Those who had the opportunity and desire to 
participate in the demonstration we held on November 4th saw that all 
the organizations that participated in organizing the demonstration had 
the opportunity to participate and contribute to the initiative. 
Autonomous because it is made up of activists of various political 
orientations and idealistic inspirations, and everyone has their space 
and the opportunity to contribute. Massive because the experience of 
these past weeks has shown us that only if we manage to be in the 
streets, to mobilize the masses, can we achieve results.

The struggles of recent weeks have taught us important lessons. The 
first lesson, in my opinion, is the renewed prominence of the working 
class, in the workplace and especially on issues less tied to personal 
interests. While it's true that militarism also affects our immediate 
living conditions, what motivated the demonstrations of September and 
October was a rejection of war as such and a spirit of internationalist 
solidarity. From a certain perspective, these were demonstrations that 
we can define as selfless.

This is an important moment for reflection, also to understand how those 
demonstrations came about, the deeper meaning of the blockades. The 
blockade, beyond its immediate cause, means reclaiming a leading role 
within production, it means questioning the production of weapons, it 
means questioning the transportation of weapons, it means questioning 
the transmission of knowledge that institutions seek to orient along 
militaristic lines. What does this mean? It means that the working 
class, the workers who produce everything, can decide what to produce, 
how to produce, and this is the central element of social change. If we 
can develop this consciousness of producers, we can pave the way for 
expropriation and the abolition of the society based on private 
property, which is the only solution to the crises we are struggling with.

Regardless of future scenarios, the Livorno Antimilitarist Coordination 
hopes that December 12th, a very important date, will be a further step 
in this direction. However, we must realize that the budget the 
government is proposing is a transitional budget. The real budget will 
come later. The government has already reserved EUR15 billion from the 
Rearm Europe plan. In April, there will be a meeting in Brussels to 
assess whether Italy, having emerged from the infringement proceedings, 
will be able to access this money. In June, the traditional NATO summit 
will take place in Brussels, where further military spending will be 
decided. That will be the moment when the real budget will be released, 
when it will truly be taken into account.

It's one of the moments. Because the other moment will be when the war 
in Ukraine ends. Because when the war in Ukraine ends, Italy, for 
example, will have to budget the EUR30 billion it has given to Ukraine. 
As of October 15 of this year, between direct contributions and 
contributions through European institutions, Italy had given EUR30 
billion to Ukraine.

This money will never be returned. Because before the war, Ukraine had a 
gross domestic product of 130 billion. And it has no means of repaying 
all this money, the money it received from Italy, the money it received 
from the European Union, the money it received from the rest of Europe, 
the money it received from the United States, the money it received from 
the rest of the world.

And someone will have to pay for it. And it will be us. And this doesn't 
just concern Italy, but the entire European Union.

The European Commission has prepared a budget for the period from 2028 
to 2034. This budget stipulates that of the EUR1.3 trillion budgeted, 
EUR400 billion will be unallocated, meaning it will be entirely at the 
Commission's disposal. How did they achieve this? By reducing 
appropriations for the common agricultural policy and cohesion funds, 
which are also intended to address social issues.

Why is the European Commission doing these things? The European 
Commission is able to do these things because it creates an emergency 
situation. With the emergency created by Covid, it was able to launch 
the Next Generation EU financing program, which essentially allowed it 
to launch a kind of Eurobond. It doesn't yet have the final formal 
approval, but that's the gist of it.

The same thing happens with war. Under the guise of a war emergency, the 
European Commission will use this money for rearmament. Furthermore, it 
has launched a program called the European Democratic Shield, which 
provides EUR9 billion in funding to media outlets, mass media, and civil 
society organizations, which will propagate the European Union's 
political proposals. So they will propagate war, propagate rearmament, 
propagate centralization, propagate all these good things. We have the 
ability to stop them.

We have the opportunity, for example, to ensure that the anniversary of 
the war in Ukraine, the beginning of Russia's aggression against 
Ukraine, becomes a further opportunity for struggle, by holding European 
governments accountable and stopping them from needlessly squandering 
the money they take from us on massacres. This is a huge commitment, but 
one we can take on. And I hope we can take it on in a united manner.

Because behind all this is leverage. There are many factors, but above 
all, the fact that governments are afraid the truth will be known, just 
as they were afraid the truth about vaccines would be known, they are 
afraid the truth about the war in Ukraine would be known, about the 
money they're wasting. December 12th is an important day, I was saying, 
because December 12th shows us that we have the ability to expose the 
lies the institutions tell us.

On December 12, 1969, bombs exploded in Milan and Rome. Sixteen people 
died at the Banca dell'Agricoltura. Giuseppe Pinelli was thrown from the 
fourth floor of the Milan Police Headquarters.

It was the greatest attack on workers' power in the factories and the 
greatest attempt to criminalize the anarchist movement. But it was 
foiled, foiled because there was a mass commitment, built slowly, 
thoroughly, to expose the frame-up with clarity, debate, discussion, 
collaboration, and mutual engagement, not with violence. We managed to 
overcome the violence of others, the violence they use against us.

Here, I hope that we will be able to build a vast, united and autonomous 
mass movement against militarism and against war.

*The Livorno Antimilitarist Coordination, established in 2021, has the 
primary objective of demystifying the role of militarism in society and 
launching a campaign to stop the Italian state's military intervention 
abroad. Alternativa Libertaria participates in the coordination's 
activities with its members and supporters. This speech was proposed by 
Tiziano Antonelli, on behalf of the Livorno Antimilitarist Coordination, 
at the assembly promoted by the CGIL on December 9, 2025, in Livorno.

https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL/
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