The policy that criminalizes nonviolent civil disobedience by climate activists

2023 began a few hours ago when, on the morning of January 2, before the Senate even resumed work, three climate activists sprayed washable paint on the facade of Palazzo Madama:arrested red-handed thanks to an aggravating circumstance provided for by the Salvini-bis decree, they are now at large awaiting trial for damage, despite the walls of the building being cleaned again within a few hours.The following week, on January 10, Simone Ficicchia, national spokesperson for Ultima Generazione, appears before the Milan court to be heard in his defense:the police headquarters had in fact requested the application of special surveillance for him, a police measure provided for by the anti-mafia code.

The judge decided to reject the request, but the repression against those who decide to undertake civil disobedience actions does not stop.The League has in fact presented a proposal to Parliament bill, with Claudio Borghi as the first signatory, to tighten the crime of "destruction, dispersion, deterioration, disfigurement, soiling and illicit use of cultural or landscape assets".The proposal, assigned to the Senate Justice Commission chaired by Giulia Bongiorno, explicitly provides for arrest in flagrante delicto and also includes among the protected cultural assets "display cases, cases and other structures used for display, protection and conservation", i.e. the only objects damaged in the actions of Just stop oil, Extinction Rebellion And Latest generation.

Added to this is the proposal by the Brothers of Italy, signed by Senator Lisei.According to the previews of releases, with this intervention we would like, on the one hand, to broaden the application of the crime of damage also to cases in which the goods are not permanently defaced (therefore, precisely, in cases of soiling with washable paint), and, on the other, provide for forms of urban Daspo, with an administrative ban on approaching buildings subject to cultural protection, with fines of 500 to 1,000 euros in case of violation of the measure.

These attempts at repression they represent the political, regulatory and judicial outlet of a rhetoric that condemns environmentalists engaged in similar actions, sometimes representing them as eco-vandals, other times portraying them as somewhat hypocritical idealists.In this way, however, in addition to criminalizing dissent, a method of action is delegitimized which deserves to be known in more depth:nonviolent civil disobedience.

From literature to history:civil disobedience as protest and proposal

The history of civil and social conquests is full of acts of civil disobedience:from conscientious objectors to military service to the refusal to swear loyalty to a regime, from the salt march during the campaign for Indian independence to the boycotts against racial segregation in the United States, passing through the strike, an activity which, today, in Italy, it is a right but which, depending on the places and times, can even be a crime.

Also due to its spontaneous diffusion and its potential effectiveness, civil disobedience is the protagonist of memorable pages of literature and philosophy.From Antigone, who since Sophocles' Greek tragedy has become a symbol of rebellion against totalitarianism, for her intransigent refusal of the king's law, which prevented her from burying her brother, as prescribed by the laws of the ancestors and the gods, to Albert Camus, who defines "the man in revolt" as someone who says no but who, "if he refuses, still does not give up:he is also a man who says yes, from his first move."Civil disobedience is in fact distinguished from the simple violation of a rule because it is simultaneously protest and proposal, denial and affirmation:in the rejection of a law it poses the demand for a different law, irreconcilable with the one imposed and violated.

Beyond the history of activism and philosophical reflection, which can be started from the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude and Thoreau's essay on Civil Disobedience, it must be remembered that the law does not replace conscience, nor is it necessarily an instrument of justice:in short, obedience to a law also depends on the law.“No one has the right to obey”, as a famous motto by Hannah Arendt says, and there is no shortage of them legal arguments on the existence of a right of rebellion and resistance to oppression, a right contained in various constitutional charters, sometimes explicitly, as in the French and German ones, or in other cases implicitly, as in the Italian one.

The questions on the current application of acts of civil disobedience are different, and deserve an answer that is anything but obvious:Are the egregious actions of environmentalists really acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, as activists claim?Isn't it violent to deface buildings, block traffic, that is, impose one's protest?And, above all, are these actions effective in saving us from climate catastrophe?

Patience in results, urgency in action, the centrality of conflict

We must immediately clarify that nonviolence is not necessarily kind:civil disobedience is not a gala dinner, rebellion does not follow the rules of good tone. Expecting the protest to be polite can even translate into a form of violence, because the request for methods of mobilization that do not disturb anyone often implies an inability to conceive dissent and address the conflict.Nonviolence, on the other hand, recognizes the value of conflict, as an unavoidable element of social reality, to be lived in a constructive way:those who reject violence do not reject conflict but valorise it, and, despite the sanctifications that often arrive post-mortem, the most famous nonviolent people were often considered, among their contemporaries, dangerous, unpleasant, polemical, annoying.

Today's environmental activists also suffer similar judgments and evidently implement nonviolent practices:the actions are publicly claimed and are free of violence against people;violence against things is reduced to a minimum, with only temporary and reversible damage, also thanks to research of washable materials and the choice of works of art protected by display cases and cases (which are however equated to works of art in the new crime proposed by the League);the public demand also includes the acceptance of the consequences of one's actions, with the peaceful waiting for the arrival of the police, towards whom at most forms of passive resistance are adopted, sitting on the ground and being carried away weight.

Similar practices, throughout history, have often been applied by minorities of people willing to make individual sacrifice to demonstrate legalized injustice.This has happened in the United States since the 1950s, when the appeals to the courts against Jim Crow laws were intertwined with civil disobedience actions against racial segregation:the gesture of the activist Rosa Parks, in December 1955, with the subsequent Montgomery bus boycott for more than a year after his arrest, the freedom rides, trips by mixed groups of whites and blacks, between the internal borders of the States, to violate segregationist laws, and even cases of sit-ins, in the literal sense of the term, that is, blacks who sat in places forbidden to them, often paying for their actions with arrest.

Martin Luther King was also taken to prison, on more than one occasion, and on one of these occasions, from Birmingham prison, in 1963, he wrote a letter still relevant:to the (white) reverends who, while sympathizing with him, criticized civil disobedience and demonstrations, arguing that segregation should be patiently dismantled in the courts, Martin Luther King responded by explaining that justice achieved too late is justice denied.The theme of the urgency of action and the legitimate impatience of the oppressed is a topic that is often found in King's speeches and which, with all the differences involved, also concerns the environmental question, in light of the irreversibility of the damage and the short period available to reverse the political trend.

From the center to the multitude:the problem of unshared acts of disobedience

This urgency clashes, at least apparently, with the patience that characterizes nonviolent action, a type of political struggle that focuses on means, as well as ends:those who use this method, in fact, know that they do not have exclusive power over the actual realization of an objective, and that they can at most choose the means with which to aim for it.In this sense, activists protest, even in a sensational way, hoping for the reaction of others (and politics), but starting from themselves:to use the words of Aldo Capitini, philosopher of nonviolence, it can be said that nonviolent action "is carried out by a centre, which can be of a person or of a group of people;but it is presented and offered affectionately at the service of all:it is a contribution and an addition to everyone's life.This spirit is fundamental in nonviolence training:feeling at the center makes you modest and patient, it takes away the fever of wanting to see results immediately, it takes away the distrust that the action means nothing.Even if you don't see everything, nonviolent action is like a stone that falls into water and causes waves that go far."

For an act of civil disobedience to be "affectionately at the service of all", however, it is not enough that the aim is collective well-being (as in the case of social climate justice and the salvation of the human species, for example), but it is necessary to increasingly involve the community , so that nonviolent actions are not simple group performances.In the nonviolent method, in fact, we recognize the need to evaluate the means, to choose them in relation to the reality in which we intend to act, graduating them with respect to the rights we already have and looking for sympathy among the people who might join the cause.

Nonviolence, in fact, even if it starts from a centre, that is, from the personal choice of the individual who acts, is always potentially collective, has a vocation for the multitude:the fight against racial segregation can certainly start from Mamie Till, or by Rosa Parks, or by Martin Luther King, but it resonates and makes history when the streets of Selma fill up for the big marches.

The sensational and individual act can have results, especially when it serves to gain visibility, but the same act can stop being fertile if it does not broaden the basis of pressure, if it ends up being the object of attention, without changing the power dynamics.

The power of everyone, between effectiveness and repression

Civil disobedience is in fact both an expression of impotence and a claim to power, since it is implemented, to quote Hannah Arendt, "when a significant number of citizens become convinced that the usual channels of change no longer work, that they are neither listened to nor following their complaints."

This is the case for the environmental issue:the scientific community has been denouncing the situation for decades, the squares have been filled with young people for the Fridays for Future, but climate denialism continues to influence politics, which involves attempts to repress those who carry out actions of civil disobedience.

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Yet the impression, also in light of the insults that activists often receive as a comment on their actions, is that littering, roadblocks, more or less symbolic forms of disobedience are not effective.Effectiveness, however, is a changing concept, closely linked to the reality in which a political action is implemented, and often does not end in the dichotomy between victory and failure, nor can it be evaluated immediately.To understand this flexibility of nonviolent effectiveness, it is enough to look at episodes of apparent defeats in the history of nonviolence.

An example is that of Tiananmen Square, in 1989:of the boy with the shopping bags in front of the tanks, alone, we know nothing for sure, but we can hypothesize that he was arrested, or killed, or made to disappear.If not on him, the repression will certainly have hit the Chinese population, both in those hours and in the following months and years.Or, even before that, with the Prague Spring, in 1968, the Czechoslovaks wanted a socialism with a human face, and tried to implement it democratically, with their own government, only to find tanks in the capital reacting;they resisted nonviolently, talking to the tank drivers, explaining their reasons, yet they lost, the Warsaw Pact prevailed and the invasion prevented democratic opening.

Were they really defeated?It is more than plausible to believe that those nonviolent actions of disobedience influenced the opinion of the international community, that that boy alone in front of the tanks inspired entire generations, that the intransigence of the Czechoslovaks influenced the development of an alternative , and that that resistance, unsuccessful in the short term, was one of the cracks in the Berlin Wall.

In an at least formally democratic context, like the one in which we live, and in which we have to deal with the climate crisis, resistance certainly requires less sacrifice than that necessary to oppose a dictatorship.But in order to have an influence, paradoxically greater consistency and creativity are needed, also to avoid forms of repression that may appear legally legitimate, while remaining politically violent.

On this reflection, and on the need to broaden the base, involving other interested and active people, the statement from the British division of Extinction Rebellion, which on 31 December 2022 announced its intention to abandon, or in any case reduce, actions to interrupt public services, to further cultivate relationships, with the hope of "becoming impossible to ignore".And, in the meantime, the great mobilization of April 22nd is being prepared, simultaneously in various cities around the world.Last generation, which, in addition to acts of civil disobedience, offers periodic open assemblies and a weekly online presentation event of the group, invites everyone to Rome, to dance, "as if there was no tomorrow”.

However, if there were a tomorrow, history would remember the activists, rather than those who criticize them or even label them as "vandals" and "terrorists".In retrospect, we know the speeches of Martin Luther King, while the paternalism of those who contested his method has been lost in oblivion;we study Gandhi's actions, but ignore the British columnists who opposed Indian independence at the time;and when we read the letter from Don Milani to the judges, the names of the military chaplains who called cowardly conscientious objectors to military service, imprisoned for their civil disobedience, are a negligible detail of history.

Grumbling against the methods of activists is everyone's freedom, but participating in the development of alternatives and engaging in political action is a more fertile way to experience one's possible criticism of other people's choices of nonviolent political struggle.And if those who carry out acts of civil disobedience assume responsibility for it, also bearing the unjust consequences that the law attributes to a just action, it is also true that a democratic state is not defined only by the presence of elections, but above all by the maturity with which he faces conflict and processes dissent.

From Borghi's proposal to Lisei's, passing through the anti-rave crime and for them aggravating circumstances of the Salvini-bis decree in the case of demonstrations, we instead witness the paradox of a democratic regime reforming, by tightening it, a penal code written in the fascist era.In short, the current political class is exhibiting its choice, both of inaction, bordering on denialism, with respect to environmental issues, and of repressive action, showing its muscles and authoritarian aspiration, towards those who dare to protest .

Preview image via Il Reformist