Campo Anti-imperialista
Campo Anti-imperialista ( Italian: "Anti-imperialist camp") is an association of political groups of the radical left in Italy, as part of the transnational alliance " Anti-imperialist coordination ".
The name is ambiguous: "Campo" means both a strategic unit as a "political camp" and a "tent camp" or "camp".
Emergence
The alliance is supported by two organizations: on the one hand the international movement International Leninist Current (ILC), which emerged from Trotskyism , represented in Italy by the group Direzione 17 , on the other hand the Movimento per la confederazione dei comunisti (Movement for the Confederation of Communists).
After 1990, the ILC has increasingly distanced itself from Trotskyism and developed in the direction of supporting national liberation movements. The Movimento per la confederazione dei comunisti is mainly represented in Tuscany and is based on a cadre of a minority current of the former Democrazia Proletaria (DP). The DP had joined the Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) in 1992 ; the minority group around Leonardo Mazzei and Giuseppe Bacciardi left the party in 1997. Your attempt to reorganize through the Movimento per la confederazione was unsuccessful. This group has close ties to the Slai-Cobas grassroots union which played a role in struggles in the automotive industry in the mid-1990s. She is also close to the philosopher Costanzo Preve , who is strongly committed to the Campo Anti-imperialista .
The two groups began to work together with the aim of reforming a revolutionary opposition based on strong anti-imperialism, particularly directed against the USA . On the one hand, international small organizations from the traditions of Stalinism and Maoism (e.g. Communist Party of Greece / Marxist-Leninists, Russian Maoist Party) took part in the summer camps in Assisi .
Iraq war
The Campo Anti-imperialista hit the headlines in the course of 2003. Shortly before the beginning of the Iraq war , an appeal “Peoples smash America” was published, which was signed by around 1500 people, including opposition PRC members such as the philosopher Domenico Losurdo . On the signature list were some supporters of the extreme right such as the French Holocaust denier Serge Thion . The management of the Campo stated that, given the large number of signatures, they had not been able to check all of them, deleted the unwanted names and rejected the accusation that they were operating a “red-brown alliance”.
resonance
In addition to the bourgeois media, the activities of the Campo also documented and commented on the activities of the two large left-wing daily newspapers Il manifesto (independent of party) and Liberazione ( PRC ) with sharp criticism - which conversely strengthened the Campo in its conviction for the only real system opposition to the pro-American united front to stand, part of which is the established and parliamentary left.
In December 2003, only about 400 people took part in a demonstration Con il popolo che resiste (“With the people who resist”) for solidarity with the military resistance in Iraq. A media campaign by “Zionist circles” was blamed for the low participation. The Campo Anti-imperialista organized the international fundraising “10 euros for the Iraqi resistance”.
In July 2005, the Campo web server in the USA was shut down and 44 members of the US Congress asked the Italian government to stop the Campo’s activities . At the end of August 2005, seven supporters of the Campo (including two Germans from Duisburg) went on a hunger strike in order to enforce entry visas for representatives of the Iraqi resistance to participate in a solidarity conference. A call to this effect was also signed by the philosopher and European politician Gianni Vattimo , who belongs to the moderate left .
Web links
- Campo Anti-imperialista , multilingual
- La quadratura del cerchio, ovvero: Infiltrazioni o progetto politico? Critical article on the links between the Campo Anti-imperialista and the forces of the right, in Italian