On a Saturday morning, precisely on the 18th of February, in front of the Michelangiolo highschool, six students assaulted two of the teenagers who were about to enter the school. 
Clearly, as confirmed later by Digos, the six students were leafleting for Azione Studentesca and this probably led to a verbal fight, which then transmuted into an actual physical fight. Digos is still investigating if this was a planned assault, which is one of the theories.
When reading and thinking about what happened, we should all remember a beautiful letter written by the head schoolmaster of Leonardo da Vinci highschool. Hereby I report some of the words, written by this courageous lady and then contested by the minister of instruction Valditara: “Fascism in Italy wasn’t born through mass meetings, it was born on the edge of an ordinary pavement with the victim of a beating for political reasons, who was left on his own by indifferent passersby. “I hate people who are indifferent” said the great Italian, Antonio Gramsci, who fascists, scared like rabbits by the strength of his ideas, locked up in prison until he died. (…) that moments like these are those in which totalitarianism catches on and founds their fortunes, ruining those of whole generations, in times of uncertainty, of collective distrust in institutions, with a gaze folded inside its own enclosure, we all feel the need to put trust in the future and open ourselves up to the world, always condemning violence and bullying.”
These words written by this school headmaster were criticized, as mentioned above, by Valditara who said that this letter was inappropriate, that he was sorry to have read it, that the content of it had nothing to do with reality and finally that there should be no politicization in schools.
This being said, I’d like to report a few interviews done by students of our school:
Michela Maria Duranti
Should and in what measure is politics meant to enter the school teachings?
In my opinion it is essential that politics is included in school teaching as I believe that every young student should be aware of what is happening in their country and in the world. Indeed, to me, at least one hour a week should be dedicated to politics where newspapers are viewed and commented on with class or even school debates and where basic geopolitical notions are also given to prepare the student for the future. It would also be very useful to take courses in law, economics and the study of the Italian constitution.
What can we, alone or with our teachers, do against intolerance and episodes of violence?
In my opinion, everyone must make an effort to ensure that there are no episodes of violence.
The school is the main place where tolerance must be developed since it gives a homogeneous education to all and since learning is not personal but collective; it is also the place where we students spend most of our days. It is appropriate that everyone is aware of the differences among the people but that knows how to treat them not as differences but as qualities and strengths. Professors have a duty to educate not only from a scholastic point of view but also from a moral and human point of view by speaking and debating with their students also, and above all, on current facts.
Mattia Riccardo Dusi
Are you alarmed by the general atmosphere in our country?
When, after the 25th of September, the victory of the political right configured, many of those who are part of the political left (or, to be more precise, who claim to be of such political view) lifted their fingers against a “fascist” government, even reaching the point of raising the flag of “Resistance” to defend our Constitution and our State. Such accusations are clearly baseless: nowadays, in Italy, there’s no risk such as returning to fascism through this government.
Opposition against this government certainly needs to be done, but not on a base, so fragile, of “antifascism”.
Once these conditions are put, the initial answer on the general atmosphere in our country can be confronted. On the 18th of February 15 neofascist militants, belonging to “azione studentesca”, also known as an organization near to the Meloni government, assaulted a group of students in front of the Michelangiolo highschool in Florence. Journals and media have intentionally mystified the facts, portraying it as a brawl in line with the embarrassing declarations done by representatives of Fratelli d’Italia and other politically right parties. What happened in Florence though, is something already seen, since Berlusconi’s government. In fact groups of extreme political right have since years assaulted students and political militants, benefitting from the complicity of the institutional politically right-centered, who minimize their responsibilities, if they do not directly protect them.
In consequence, do we have to worry about the general atmosphere in our country? The answer lies in the facts.
Fascism, historically speaking, is a weapon that the status quo uses to defend itself and its interests. The attack on the students of the Michelangiolo is of the same nature of the attacks that in the past months the workers of the logistics (particularly in Rome and in Prato against S.I. COBAS, a grassroots union) have received when they were striking in front of the gates of their workplaces and private bodyguards belonging to the company, along with members of the extreme political right, arrived armed with sticks and tasers.
The atmosphere in our country is of repression and violence against those who raise their voices, this happens in an extra-legal form, through the right-wing formations, but also in legal form, when the police beats students as they demonstrate, since a student died in school-work alternation, as it happened during various students mobilizations in Italy, included Rome.
Not letting your head bow to the injustices of the present is certainly an act that requires courage and overcoming the fear that can emerge in front of certain facts, but it is repaid with the knowledge that there is a future to be conquered.
What can we, alone or with our teachers, do against intolerance and episodes of violence?
The events of Michelangiolo’s highschool underline the need for a militant anti-fascist culture, which is more relevant today than ever before. All the components of the school must be protagonists of the spread of anti-fascism in the different moments that mark the school days.
What we can do, therefore, against intolerance and violence is a response that we cannot reduce to a simple, so to speak, recourse to anti-fascist culture. To get a real answer we must look at it in a deeper way, even far away from the anti-fascism that is brought to us today by the institutions, that is, an anti-fascism as a mere anniversary of what happened more than 70 years ago.
March and April are two very important months to find an answer to this question. On March 24 there is the memory of one of the most heinous crimes of fascism, namely the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine, when 335 people were killed because the Nazi-fascists wanted to take revenge for an attack suffered in Via Rasella by G.A.P.(Groups of Patriotic Action, partisan formations composed of a small number that operated in the city). This is a demonstration of the violence inherent in the fascist state. We as Socrates in primis can not forget this date as the Fosse Ardeatine are a short distance from both our headquarters and the neighborhoods surrounding our school are the same in which lived various martyrs who lost their lives on March 24, 1944. On 25 April, on the other hand, is the anniversary of the national liberation from Nazi Fascism in 1945. On this date we must remember the deeds of thousands and thousands of partisans, often young people just a little older than us, who chose not to bow their heads and, at the cost of risking their lives, took the path of armed struggle in the cities or in the mountains.
The legacy of the partisans has its roots in a historical memory that must not be forgotten because it’s not acceptable to pretend that nothing has happened.
The twenty years of fascism were marked by having forced the population to hunger and a suicide war, for having exploited the workers and banned all forms of strike and demonstration under the constant threat of physical violence, for giving birth to a society founded on the interest of the strongest man and not on the values of the collective.
The ideals that animated the partisans were above all the struggle for a different society.
Today’s society is a society where some families have to jump through hoops to get to the end of the month, where workers are being exploited for a meager pay and the unemployed are getting more and more, where those who go down on the streets to demonstrate receive only batons from the police, where the rich are increasingly rich and the poor are increasingly and increasingly poor, where an entire parliament drags the country to an international military escalation.
So, the society the partisans fought for isn’t there yet.
The most precious teaching that the partisans gave us is in the value of the topicality of the struggle carried out by them, that has not yet found its effective realization in today’s society.
The answer, therefore, to the initial question is the advancement of a culture that knows how to put the topicality of the partisan struggle. This is a method starting from which everyone can fight intolerance and episodes of violence.
Greta Fassina
