Neofascists, always handy for repression
News from Rome: the incident of Piazza Navona of 29 October is now being processed by the magistrate. That day, during an authorized demonstration against the Gelmini decree, a fight broke out. A group of neofascists entered the piazza, armed with sticks, prepared to attack the demonstrators.
Now, the magistrate has presented its hypothesis: it was not an attack, but a symmetrical fight between two groups. And therefore, 15 university students have been summoned to court. This is so obvious distortion of facts, it’s almost unbelievable. This reminds of the case from last spring, when a group of neofascists attacked students at the entrance of Sapienza: also in this case, the magistrate (and the media) tried to make it look like "a clash between opposite extremisms".
Today at Sapienza, there was a press conference about the incident and the process, organized by students themselves. "These days we’ll keep on saying ‘we are not afraid’: not afraid to affirm the antifascist quality of this movement, and not afraid of these summons. We are not afraid of a government which tries to intimidate and criminalize us with these accusations. We are not afraid, and therefore we’ll keep on producing moments of conflict and protest with intelligence and with determination, which have characterized us until now."