Italy Heading Toward a Bonapartist Police State

Italy:
For a Real General Strike to Stop the “Security” Decree and Arms Build-Up!

Build a Leninist-Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party!

The following article is translated L'internazionalista No. 8, May 2025, the newspaper of the Nucleo Internazionalista d'Italia, Italian section of the League for the Fourth International.

APRIL 15 – On April 4, the right-wing Italian government of premier Giorgia Meloni approved a decree putting into effect almost all the repressive measures of the draconian draft “security” law DDL 1660 that the Council of Ministers had introduced last September. Six days later, on April 10, the government majority pushed a motion through parliament in effect approving the ReArm Europe plan announced by European Union (EU) president Ursula von der Leyen in mid-March providing for 800 billion euros (€), or US$900 billion, in loans in order to build up EU military forces. And on April 17, Meloni will travel to Washington to plead for lower tariffs on goods made in Italy in the trade war unleashed by U.S. president Donald Trump.

Repression, war and militarization are the order of the day. Today, under the regime of Meloni and her fascist Fratelli d’Italia (Fd’I), Italy continues supplying arms to the Zionist butchers in the genocidal U.S./Israel war on Gaza. Meanwhile, it has shipped billions of euros’ worth of weaponry to the NATO puppet government of Ukraine in the imperialist proxy war against Russia, even as it wages class war against working people in Italy. It will take a full mobilization of the power of labor and all defenders of democratic rights to block the hard-right government. The Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia urges class-conscious workers to fight for a united, unlimited general strike to STOP the security decree and arms build-up!

For Workers Action to Stop Arms to Israel and Ukraine!

“Security” Crackdown on the Right to Protest

The omnibus “security” decree is designed to facilitate mass arrests and longer jail time in order to suppress protests, workers strikes and other “disorder,” and to intimidate the civilian population by establishing “functional immunity” for the police. Notably, the ex-DDL 1660 makes blocking streets, highways and rail lines – a frequent tactic of strike pickets and climate or antiwar protesters – a crime rather than an administrative violation, now punishable with up to six years in prison. For months there have been thousands-strong demonstrations against the legislation, which the jurist Patrizio Gonnella, head of the association Antigone, called “the biggest and most dangerous attack on the freedom to protest in the history of the Republic.”

Along with criminalizing protest and social struggle, the decree would also make it a crime to occupy vacant buildings, punishable by up to seven years in jail, in an attempt to crack down on the significant number of squats in Italian cities due to the unavailability of affordable housing. To deal with prison protests against conditions in Italy’s seriously overcrowded jails, it would make “resistance, even passive, to carrying out orders” a crime of “revolt” (up to eight years additional incarceration). And the penalty for the crime of “resisting a public official,” for example, confronting a police charge against a demonstration, is increased by half (up from a third in the draft law).

Some provisions are overtly vindictive, such as the call for jailing pregnant women or those with children under one year of age declared guilty of some crime, like squatting. This is a racist provision directed against Roma women. The ban on sale of sim cards (for mobile phones) to those who have a residence permit is targeted at immigrants and asylum seekers. . It also provides for cancelling “acquired citizenship” of people convicted of these “crimes” at any time for up to ten years after conviction. This is directed at youths from immigrant families, because in Italy, children of non-citizen parents are not automatically citizens, but can only apply for it after the age of 18.

Singled out for particularly harsh punishment is “defacing means of transport” for the “purpose of harming the honor, prestige or decorum of the institution” – such as spray painting “fascisti” on a water cannon being used against demonstrators. And police officers would now be authorized to carry their service arm and another unlicensed “revolver or pistol of any size” when off duty. This provision is explicitly an extension of public security laws from 1931 and 1940, i.e., under the Mussolini fascist dictatorship, when police higher-ups were enabled to carry official and private arms both on and off-duty.

Meanwhile, the state will pay for the costs of legal representation for any police officer accused of committing abuses while on duty. Also, using a law designed for policing riots at sports events, police are now empowered to arrest people “in flagrante” (without a judicial order) in political demonstrations and also “in deferred flagrante” if they are only identified later. To facilitate this, police will be equipped with body­cams to record the faces of demonstrators so they can later be charged with resisting or injuring a police officer who was beating them with a riot baton (in other countries bodycams are used supposedly to cut down on police abuse).

The decreeing of the “security” law comes amid numerous criminal prosecutions of anti-fascist protesters against Fd’I and Lega events. But while the hard-right Meloni government is ordering police-state repression, it must not be forgotten that previous center-right, center-left and “national unity” governments have also increased police powers. The Miniti decrees (2017) under Democratic Party premier Paolo Gentiloni imposed “urban Daspo”¹ bans on protests in certain areas, while the Salvini decrees (2018) under the first government of Five Stars leader Giuseppe Conti also made blocking of streets and highways a crime.

Those “security” decrees took particular aim at immigrants. The government of central banker Mario Draghi, in turn, escalated attacks on labor organizers and pickets as it imposed austerity cutbacks amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2021, strikers in Prato were viciously attacked by police; in Piacenza, homes of FedEx-TNT logistics workers were searched, union organizers Carlo and Arafat arrested and residency permits of immigrant workers revoked. In Modena, 300 SI Cobas union members faced charges for strike activity.² In October 2021, 67 mostly female Italpizza workers in Modena were charged for their 2018-19 strike.

More recently, the Meloni government has stepped up repression. A maxi-trial against 43 members of the 7 November unemployed movement, Cantiere167 Scampia and Iskra, began on 28 October 2024 in the prison bunker of Poggioreale in Naples. The charges against them include unauthorized demonstrations, aggravated resistance and interruption of public services. A defiant demonstration of over a thousand protesters marched on the prison on opening day. There are also by now hundreds of administrative measures, penal trials and legal actions directed against trade unionists and organizers, pro-Palestinian activists, social centers, anti-fascist militants and, in short, against anyone who rebels.

The connection between the “security decree” and repressing protests against Italy’s involvement in imperialist and Zionist wars (in Ukraine and Gaza) is direct. When on 23 and 24 February 2024 strikes and demonstrations were called by the “rank and file unions”³ against the genocide in Gaza, police in Florence blocked demonstrators from reaching the U.S. consulate, attacking them with batons. In Pisa, cops in riot gear didn’t even let student demonstrators reach the starting point, viciously beating defenseless protesters with truncheons. Meloni’s response was to denounce the pro-Palestinian demonstrators and to “thank the forces of order for their precious work.”

This was not an isolated case. On 5 October 2024, a national demonstration in Rome in solidarity with the Palestinian people, part of a Europe-wide mobilization, was banned. Police attacked the march of some 10,000 protesters, using truncheons, tear gas, armored cars and water cannons, injuring at least 40. Police set up checkpoints at highway toll booths and train stations to inspect people coming to the protest, hauling scores into police headquarters. Rai-TV (a.k.a. tele-meloni) reported the premier’s “full solidarity” with the police against “so-called ‘demonstrators.’” With the new security decree, such measures will be standard operating procedure for the police.

The Decree-Law  No. 48 (ex-DDL 1660) was published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale on April 11 and is immediately in force. Parliament has 60 days to enact it. The time for the workers movement to act to stop it is now.

For Class War Against Imperialist / Zionist War

The fascist-led Italian government of Giorgia Meloni has vociferously supported the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu with its fascist ministers in their war of extermination against the Palestinian people. Italy has become the sixth largest arms exporter in the world, and the third largest exporter of arms to Israel after the USA and Germany. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani (Forza Italia) claimed that all arms shipments to Israel were suspended starting October 7, 2023. This is false. Investigations by Altreconomia revealed that Italy exported weapons and ammunition worth approximately 817,536 € to Israel in October and November 2023, with more in December. By January 2024 the total was over 2 million € (Il Post, 10 April 2024).

Leonardo is the largest arms producer in Italy, with 31,000 employees and multiple production sites. Leonardo confirmed to Il Fatto Quotidiano (1 October 2024) that “for the year 2024, a total amount of around 7 million euros is planned” for sales to Israel. On 15 April 2024 the Italian railroads signed an agreement with Leonardo that “ensures the movement of military resources, inside and outside of Europe,” on “short notice and a large scale.” So the railroad authorities are giving priority to military cargo over passengers and civilian cargo. There have been several rail and transport strikes over the last year over deaths at work due to lack of safety. These struggles should be linked in concrete action against the imperialist and Zionist wars.

As an example of what can be done, on 25 June 2024 a couple thousand trade unionists and pro-Palestinian youth blocked entrances to the port in Genova in solidarity with Gaza. Dozens of trucks were lined up in the street, unable to enter the port for many hours. Traffic was in chaos in most of the city. Port workers of the Collettivo Autonomo di Lavoratori Portuali (CALP) in Genova were active and SI Cobas called a national strike on the same day that successfully shut down some important logistics centers. There have also been workers actions to block arms to Israel and the Ukraine in Greece, including blocking a container with 21 tons of ammunition.

In addition, Italy has played a leading role in the EU military mission Aspides in the Red Sea, directed against the Houthi (Ansar Allah) movement in Yemen, which has shown their solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide in Gaza by firing on some ships headed for Israel. , While the United States and Israel repeatedly bomb Yemen, indiscriminately killing civilians, the EU operation, which includes several frigates and an Italian destroyer, protects ships of the Italian-Swiss owned Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), one of the few lines still transiting the Suez Canal. The League for the Fourth International calls to defend Gaza and Yemen and to defeat the U.S. imperialists and Zionist mass murderers.

Meanwhile, under the Meloni government Italy has been a big supporter of the U.S./NATO imperialist proxy war against Russia over Ukraine. The Italian premier has met with Ukrainian puppet president Vlodymyr Zelensky at Palazzo Chigi (the seat of government) at least three times since the start of the war. As of early 2025, Italy has given 17 billion € in aid to Kiev, including the SAMP/T Franco-Italian air defense systems. Significantly, the “opposition” Democratic Party (PD) has also consistently voted for sending arms to Ukraine. But after the White House humiliation of Zelensky for not acting like a proper puppet, the Italian premier has a problem (see “Meloni, Trump and Musk” below).

The “rearmament” motion, approved by parliament after a single day’s debate, is actually much broader than the 800 billion € EU loan authorization, with an open-ended commitment to “continue the work of reinforcing defense and national security capacity.” This will no doubt be used by Meloni, as von der Leyen explicitly stated, to curry favor with Trump, who is demanding military expenditures by EU countries of 5% of GDP, more than double the current level in Italy. With a hard-right, fascist-led government in office, this will not be defeated in parliament, or with endless parades. It will take militant class struggle to shut the country down, in other words, exactly the actions that the new “security” decree outlaws.

The Meloni Government’s War on Working People at Home

Under the Meloni government, the imperialist war and sanctions against Russia (with electricity bills doubling from 2021 to 2022) have exasperated an already dire situation. Old people are forced to work until 67 (or even beyond, to make ends meet) while there is massive youth unemployment. Many women are fired or lose their job when they are pregnant, while childcare is too expensive or insufficient. Since most of the jobs are precarious and low paying, a number of youths go to live and work abroad. The total population is declining and aging as young people mostly can’t afford to have a family. Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe at 1.3 children per woman, far below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman.

But contrary to Fratelli d’Italia’s hysterical myth of the “replacement” of Italians, only 10% of the population has an immigration background, including “irregular migrants,” much less than in Germany or France, where 30% are either foreign-born or with at least one parent born outside the country. But rather than raise wages and increase social services, the first thing the Fd’I did in office was get rid of the “citizens’ wage” (reddito di cittadinanza) that provided a minimum level of welfare payments of up to 780 € per month (including rent aid) to families including nearly 2.5 million people. This was replaced by “inclusion checks” (assegno di inclusione) of at most 500 € for the elderly and individuals with disabilities only, received by 1.5 million people.

So 1 million people were just thrown into poverty, and the rest had their minimal incomes slashed. On top of this, the Meloni government cut back spending on public health as the Sistema Sanitaria Nazionale (SSN) is being dismantled. Total expenditures on health care fell from 9.6% of the gross domestic product in 2020 to 8.4% in 2023, while public expenditure was only 6.3% of GDP in 2024-25, well below the level in France and Germany (12%). This continued a trend since the onset of the worldwide capitalist economic crisis in 2007-09, with 30,000 hospital beds eliminated and 200 hospitals closed in 2007-2020. Those who can afford it turn to private health care, and with frenetic workloads, overworked doctors and medical personnel are retiring.⁴

In addition, this government is calling for a highly regressive “flat tax” that would make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and introduced regional “autonomia diferenziata,” an old battle cry of Salvini’s Lega (formerly Northern League). The law, which took effect in July 2024, permits all regions to keep almost all of the revenue they collect and, essentially, to spend it as they wished. This means that the richer regions like Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and Veneto in the north will have billions more every year, while the poor regions in the south will have billions less. There, 430,000 agricultural workers, mostly immigrants, toil for 12 or more hours a day, live in makeshift dwellings and are subject to abuse by bosses and labor contractors.

The conditions of these superexploited workers were brought to the fore by the death of Indian laborer Satnam Singh in June 2024. Satnam lost an arm at work, was loaded into a van and abandoned in front of his residence where he bled to death. The boss took away the phones of other workers to prevent them from calling for help. There are on average three reported deaths at work every day in Italy, while the real figure is probably significantly higher. Three high school students died at worksites in the past year as part of their “training” (exploitation for zero pay). And many logistic and other workers work in conditions recalling those of the industrial revolution, for wages insufficient to pay their bills even for basic necessities.

There have been ongoing workers struggles, notably at the GKN automobile parts factory in Florence, where workers have occupied the plant ever since the British investment fund owner fired all 422 workers in July 2021. This is by far the longest factory occupation in Italy’s history, as workers have sought to stop the bosses from carting off the machinery. As of March, the workers haven’t received unemployment stipends for five months, and are camped outside the Tuscan regional government demanding that the plant be reopened under public ownership. Meanwhile, there were explosive protests in Trieste against the Finnish-owned Wärtsilä Bagnoli naval engine plant which shut down production, eliminating the jobs of 450 workers.

These struggles will not be won on the basis of simple trade-unionism. In order to get around the sabotage by the union bureaucracies, rather than seeing each union in a plant strike separately (a frequent occurrence) and let members of other unions scab to get to work, democratically elected strike committees are needed representing all the workers in the facility. Against plant closures and mass firings, occupations and strikes should extend to other companies in the sector. Strike support committees should include other unions, non-unionized workers, the unemployed and other sectors. Against unsafe workplaces, there should be union safety committees empowered to shut down production in dangerous conditions.

Against the superexploitation of agricultural workers and state repression of immigrants, unions should fight for full citizenship rights NOW for all immigrants.⁵ Against runaway inflation and unemployment, they should demand a 100% sliding scale of wages and hours. Against the double oppression of women workers, class-struggle unionists call for free 24-hour childcare and free abortion on demand. Against fascist goons and strikebreakers, union-based workers defense committees should be formed, and mass picket lines built that no one dares cross. Taken together, such transitional demands, as raised in Leon Trotsky’s Transitional Program (1938), point to the only real solution: a workers government and international socialist revolution.

Crisis of Revolutionary Leadership

All these struggles and crises have played out pretty much in isolation from each other, but now they are facing a common threat from the new “security” decree, which presages a heavy police crackdown on just about any social protest, and the militarization of the economy, which will predictably be used to justify further cuts to social services. But this is not a fight over budget “priorities” – “guns or butter,” “jobs not war,” etc. – but a ruling-class attack against all working people. As such, it must be fought by a united class struggle, with a combative workers movement taking the lead in defending all the oppressed against the capitalist warmongers and strikebreakers, and the bosses’ fascist-led government.

That is not what is happening, however. The workers movement and left groups are quite divided. The CGIL (Italian General Confederation of Labor) has made clear from the beginning that it supports the NATO war on Ukraine, as well as the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. These “labor lieutenants” of the imperialist bourgeoisie are closely aligned with the Democratic Party of Elly Schlein, which has repeatedly voted to send arms to the (fascist-infested) Kiev government. But on April 5, the PD sent a parliamentary delegation to a sizeable (70,000+) M5S “peace” demonstration saying it was against the (fascist-led) government’s “rearmament” motions, but in favor of a “common European defense” – against Russia, of course.

On the “far” left, some groups in effect line up with the NATO imperialists over Ukraine, the most explicit being the Partito Comunista dei Lavoratori (PCL, Workers Communist Party), which calls for military support to and arms for the Ukrainian puppet government of Zelensky (see our article on “NATO Socialists in Italy,” The Internationalist No. 66, January-April 2022). Much of the left correctly despise these shills for the imperialist warmongers. Coming out of the Stalinist mlieu, Rete dei Comunisti (RdC – Communist Network) and its affiliated youth organization Cambiare Rotta (Changing Course) and the high-school-age OSA are generally pro-Russia, although more along the lines of “peace with Russia,” which even the populist M5S calls for.

The RdC and its online newspaper Contrapiano, don’t equate NATO imperialism with Russia, a mid-level capitalist regional power, but they do not call to defend Russia against the U.S./NATO proxy war. Nor do they explicitly defend China (which they often call “socialist”), even though the clear goal of the imperialists – all of them, from Trump to the EU – is to foster a counterrevolution to destroy the Chinese bureaucratically deformed workers state. The Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia and League for the Fourth International call instead to defeat the NATO proxy war over Ukraine and to defend Russia and China against the imperialist war drive pointing to a thermonuclear Third World War.

Domestically, the RdC, CR, OSA and the allied USB (Unione Sindacale di Base) rank-and-file union engage in Stalinist-style class collaboration, seeking to ally with bourgeois “progressives.” This includes supporting Potere al Popolo (Power to the People), left-populist bourgeois formation along the lines of La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France. On the other hand, there is SI Cobas, one of the most prominent and left-wing of the several “rank-and-file” unions, and the Tendenza Internazionalista Rivoluzionaria (TIR) closely associated with it, which has roots in the tradition of Amadeo Bordiga. On Ukraine, the TIR calls for “defeatism on both sides,” precisely equating Russia with NATO.⁶

SI Cobas and the TIR last year called for the formation of a Rete Liberi/e di Lottare – No DDL Sicurezza calling for a “united front” against the draft law. In October, the RdC/USB and SI Cobas/TIR held demonstrations against draft law on different days. Then the CGIL and the social-democratic UIL labor federations called a one-day “general strike” against the government on November 29, mainly for economic demands but also calling for withdrawal of DDL 1660. Several of the rank-and-file unions also called to strike on the same day, to have the biggest show of opposition to the hard-right Fd’I/Lega/Forza Italia government’s drive to step up repression. A Palestinian solidarity demonstration was called for the next day.

The turnout for both was quite large, with hundreds of thousands of workers striking and tens of thousands marching in scores of cities on the 29th, and 25,000 demonstrating against the genocide in Gaza on the 30th. However, while the rank-and-file unions struck the same day, their marches (at least in Rome) stayed away from the CGIL/UIL concentration. And the RdC/USB boycotted the strike/demo, calling their own “general strike” for December 13. This scenario has played out hundreds of times before, as the class-collaborationist confederations and the militant rank-and-file unions each do their own thing. This is the exact opposite of the Bolsheviks’ classic formula for a genuine united front, “March separately, strike together.”

The question of Italy’s evolution toward an authoritarian, bonapartist police state is posed point-blank. That the security decree is a watershed in Italy’s post-World War II history is no secret. Multiple watchdogs (e.g., Osservatorio Repressione) are tracking developments. The imperialist “human rights” organization Amnesty International is on the case. The European Commissioner of Human Rights wants the government make a few modifications – which would change nothing, the whole package is liberticida, a mortal threat to civil liberties. At least two networks have organized protests, the already mentioned Rete Liberi/e di Lottare and the more “moderate/mainstream” Rete No DDL Sicurezza – A Pieno Regime (Full Speed Ahead).

The latter is a genuine popular front, bringing together liberal activists such as Greenpeace and Fridays for Future, certified reformists like the Partito Rifondazione Comunista and now the CGIL, and bourgeois politicians of the PD and M5S. One can’t separate the “security decree” from the militarization it is to protect, yet the PD has repeatedly voted for arms to Ukraine, and the first government of M5S leader Conte imposed the Salvini Decrees. Even the Rete Liberi/e di Lottare calls to fight the decree on a purely (bourgeois) democratic basis. Yet to defeat the attack on democratic rights, it is necessary to mobilize the power of the proletariat in a sharp class struggle against the capitalist regime..

Just as we don’t use the descriptive “fascist” lightly to describe the Fratelli d’Italia, but instead analyze it in detail,^{7 we do not promiscuously throw around calls for a general strike. In the mouths of reformists and centrists, this usually means a one-day or 48-hour work stoppage plus parade: a tactic to pressure the capitalist rulers. What’s posed today, in contrast, is the need for a real, unlimited general strike, to bring the country to a screeching halt until the repressive decree is defeated and the arms build-up squelched. Rather than reformist calls for a “welfare state, not warfare state” (RdC), revolutionary Marxists counterpose a transitional program to smash a looming capitalist police state by fighting for a workers government.}

This requires above all the forging of a Leninist-Trotskyist communist party of the proletarian vanguard. Italy has never had a truly Bolshevik party, as the nascent PCI of the early 1920s had barely broken, very partially, from social democracy (and its Bordiguist variant) before it was purged and refashioned by Stalinism. This ultimately led to the policy of the popular front that sank the burgeoning Italian workers revolution during 1943-48. In periods of sharp struggle, such as we face today, the urgency of putting forward a “transitional program for socialist revolution” becomes clearer day by day, as the failure of parliamentary maneuvering and endless empty parades is evident.

The Nucleo Internazionalista d’Italia and League for the Fourth International seek to build the party that can make real the cry of revolutionary-minded workers in the Biennio Rosso to “do like in Russia,” in the Red October of 1917 under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky. ■

To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com

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