Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

The Interwar Years /413
cut down anyone who successfully defe nds the workers and earns their trust, no matter
what colours they may fly ....
Anybody making any serious efforts to defend himself and use violence in legitimate
self-defence soon found that the security fo rces would wade in on the side of
the fa scists and against the victims. That which, in the fa scists' case, has been endorsed,
abetted, tolerated or benevolently contained, is violently, savagely repressed
in the case of subversives ...
In weighing up the violence of the two sides involved in this guerrilla warfare,
the greatest mistake would be to consider only the bloody encounters that have
claimed the odd victim. Although the latter may be many, they represent exceptions
to the rule. The worst violence, the type that leaves the worst legacy of resentment
behind it, is the day to day sort that kills, not one or two or three people, but rather
threatens an entire class, the use of the cudgel offending the human dignity which
many cherish more than life itself, destroying through its destruction of a workers'
body or cooperative the economic standing or well-being of an entire group, trampling
the most basic elements of everybody's freedom, banishing all security and
striking terror, not in a few more or less responsible figures, but in whole populations,
in members of the working class or people who refuse to join the Fascio, even
should these people be politically inactive , indifferent or na·ive. And this sort ofviolence,
with its less lethal, less bloody aftermath, surfaces daily just about everywhere
and is almost exclusively the handiwork of the fascists. In certain districts it has become
so run-of-the-mill that it is no longer the subject of complaint or comment and
is not even mentioned by the subversive press.
If we add such violence to the other sort. to the more murderous violence upon
which the press is more inclined to concentrate, then any comparison between fascist
violence and worker violence becomes impossible ...
In its program fascism sets out its aspiration to govern Italy, to install a strong
sovereign state to revive and protect the social fu nction of private ownership. So it is a
program of struggle not just against revolution but also against socialism and against
the proletariat which strives fo r equality and freedom, liberation from wage slavery
and an end to the exploitation of its labour. by any route ...
Whether or not this program brings success to this party which owes its origins
and name to fa scism, out and out fascism as we know it today-which consists of systematically
destroying and smashing the proletariat's political and economic organizations
by one means or another, especially by violent. bullying means-the fascism
which is peculiarly dear to the ruling classes, which fe eds upon their aid and protec-