We report a contribution from the Autonomous University Collective of Turin regarding yesterday’s protest day.
Regarding yesterday’s events, all the ministers present made quite peremptory and rhetorical statements to the newspapers, as usual overturning reality and reconstructing a very imaginative scenario on what were the dynamics of the protest square.
In the first instance we find it increasingly worrying that this government criminalizes from every point of view the critical voices that try to express themselves on a public level, we see it against those who demonstrate but also through journalistic censorship which in recent days has been a cause for debate , as well as the continuous “security” meetings together with the Police who are summoned to manage the political activations that students demonstrate in schools and universities. We believe that it is necessary to implement spaces of contestation and criticism that counteract the narrowing of the spaces of democracy that the Government would like to regulate to make itself untouchable and hegemonic with respect to what can or cannot be said.
On the part of government representatives who preside over ministries linked to education, science and areas that are absolutely strategic today, we should expect the ability to go into the merits of certain issues in their substantiality and instead all they are capable of is accusing, trivializing and accuse any problematic issue posed on a political level of marginality. A fairly exemplary litmus test of how much margin for comparison there can be with a certain institutional structure.
Today we would like to respond to what we have been able to appreciate from newspapers and interviews regarding our mobilization, we are not afraid to vindicate our conduct and even less to face the political squalor that the ruling class dispenses through the press against us. We have not only the strength of our convictions, but also the armor of the truth that we can live every time we try not to passively accept everything that our ears throw up.
Let’s start with the Minister of University and Research Anna Maria Bernini:
with the march still underway he declares that “instead of protesting it would be nice to sit around a table and talk” overlooking the fact that the students were prevented from approaching the conference venue all morning through beatings, precisely to avoid rumors dissonant to the ministers’ catwalk, we ask ourselves what the method of discussion that the minister hopes for could be if everything that can be said must be authentic to their point of view without any possible room for criticism. A few hours later, on this matter, she instead recanted, claiming that there can be “no dialogue with those who raid conferences, those who attack rectories and those who attack the police”, thus demonstrating great confusion and hypocrisy. You also say that “the University does not take sides, it does not go to war, we are the children of a scientific diplomacy that brings peace”, really? Why then are most of the agreements with the Israeli universities that produce the Zionist army’s defense systems classified? Are arms industries such as Leonardo and Alenia, the most influential partners of the Polytechnic of Turin, bearers of peace? It seems to us that collaborating on war research, favoring funding for the arms industry by defunding training, being the third largest arms exporter to Israel means being already at war and having also chosen to take sides, obviously on the side of the genocidal oppressor. But Bernini continues: “to those who claim that university research is used in the war field, then we should disconnect the internet which was created for military purposes. When we go for MRIs and CT scans that save our lives, we owe it precisely to the so-called dual use”, we would not be university ministers but this statement seems like an oxymoron compared to the previous one, this appears as a way of justifying then the investment of research for war. And we add that we would like to be able to disconnect the internet, if only now everything didn’t depend on the internet and even access to essential services wasn’t discriminating based on the possibility and ability to access the internet. Let’s not kid ourselves, minister: we cannot agree to sell (literally) our knowledge to finalize the extermination of entire populations, to rob territories from water, to encourage state espionage against political dissidents and many other “peaceful” dual use lifesaver applications. As far as we are concerned, science is not neutral and therefore we choose which side to take sides and above all we want to have a say in the use that is made of science, since the University is, until proven otherwise, a public space on which the sovereign voice should be that of its users.
Obviously, to avoid any misunderstanding, Bernini clearly tells us that there will be a need to continue fighting within our universities for the interruption of deadly collaborations because “The university does not boycott but includes, we have a very effective collaboration with Israel on highly innovative projects that we will carry forward”, know then that you will always find us present because your idea of inclusion is not the one we have and we will never be complicit in this historic crime!
Tajani aligns himself with his colleagues by maintaining that he will never suspend the MAECI agreements with Israel because research is profitable and science is a neutral field.
Lollobrigida, in reference to the mobilizing students, speaks of “fascist squads”, causing a certain instrumental confusion: now whoever has an understanding with the tourists of Predappio has the nerve to define us with names of this caliber? This honestly makes us smile and the statements probably speak for themselves… perhaps the fascists are those who beat unarmed people from behind, preventing the right to demonstrate, or those who question the very use of the word “anti-fascism” on the day of liberation, like the head of his party and the government to which he refers. Meloni obviously does not fail to express himself on the incident, through the same redundant and caricatural representation of the facts as of a dimension only linked to the usual infiltrators of the social centres, in short, the arguments are lacking and we are limited to giving solidarity to the “defenders of freedom and of the safety of all citizens”, but would “all citizens” be the representatives of your government who have armored a public building to take group photos after a feast at the buffet?
The chorus of ministers then continues, expressing their hopes for peace, but it seems clear to us that this peace that they boast so much cannot be built with dual use, secret conferences or by erasing pieces of this country’s history, finding enemies in those who carry out the anti-fascist values.
The students know which side they are on and we will demonstrate it again this evening with the segment for Palestine at the torchlight procession on April 24th and on May 1st in the social segment for the liberation of Palestine and against the Meloni government.
See you tonight in Piazza Arbarello at 7.30pm, always alongside the people who resist, free Palestine!
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