{"id":765,"date":"2026-08-20T04:11:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T04:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=765"},"modified":"2026-08-20T04:11:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T04:11:01","slug":"meet-the-leftist-radicals-taking-on-meloni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=765","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Leftist radicals taking on Meloni"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In recent months, the Turin suburb of Vanchiglia has begun to look like Belfast at the height of the Troubles. Pairs of Carabinieri riot vans are top-and-tailed on a dozen corners. There\u2019s not a bar without a few cops either inside or out. And, to an extent, this is nothing new. Over the centuries, Turin has always appealed to radicals \u2014 and, in turn, witnessed repression. With the snowy Alps so close, the city attracted outlaws, and Jewish and Protestant refugees, who had a fighting chance to flee to France or Switzerland if the Dukes of Savoy began a hunt for scapegoats. It\u2019s also where Antonio Gramsci studied and then taught; where the Italian resistance fought the Nazis; and where, in the Seventies, unions and far-Left radicals, in groups with names like Lotta Continua and Avanguardia Operaia and Autonomia Operaia, took on the industrial might of Fiat and the Agnellis.<\/p>\n

Read more The Jason Arday delusion<\/a><\/p>\n

In the past year, Turin\u2019s latest face-off \u2014 between the state on the one hand, and an alliance of anarchic, neighborhood \u201ccitizen committees\u201d and pro-Palestinian protestors on the other \u2014 has been intensifying. Last November, one of Turin\u2019s imams, Mohammed Shahin, was arrested and sent to Sicily, awaiting expulsion to his Egyptian homeland, though his deportation was later stopped. Turin has been twinned with Gaza since 1998, and the Torino per Gaza (\u201cTurin for Gaza\u201d) organization regularly brings hundreds of thousands of protestors onto the streets.<\/p>\n

Then, on 18 December 2025, following orders issued by the Ministry of the Interior and coordinated by the chief of police, troops stormed the \u201cAskatasuna\u201d social center at the heart of Vanchiglia and expelled all its occupants. It brought to an end almost 30 years during which the squat \u2014 the name means \u201cfreedom\u201d in Basque \u2014 had become a meeting-point for environmental activists. There have been confrontations ever since. When I visited for the 1 May parade, Askatasuna supporters and the riot cops scuffled. It was shields and batons against flag-poles and beer bottles, and I took my compulsory shower from a police-van power hose.<\/p>\n

Two distinct forces are lining up against each other: the authorities receiving orders from the Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, and groups of \u201cautonomi<\/em>\u201d and \u201cattivisti<\/em>\u201d trying to plant as many Palestinian flags as possible. The clash is asymmetrical because Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is proving more durable than anyone expected. Elected in October 2022, she\u2019s only a few weeks shy of breaking the record for the longest-serving government in Italy\u2019s postwar history. Despite losing a recent referendum on judicial reform, and falling out of favor with Donald Trump, Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party seem firmly in control.<\/p>\n

Yet if the clash is uneven, the outcome isn\u2019t inevitable. \u201cGovernments are made in Rome,\u201d Turin used to boast, \u201cbut fall in Mirafiori.\u201d That\u2019s a nod to Fiat\u2019s mega-factory, south of Turin\u2019s baroque heart, which used to employ over 60,000 workers. The city\u2019s working-class heritage has vanished in recent decades, and the traditional Left is, anyway, scorned by the squatters from \u201cAska\u201d. These activists don\u2019t aspire to change a government: because they don\u2019t believe in traditional democracy or even the political spectrum as such. Instead, they are attempting a ground-level associationism that echoes some of their city\u2019s most radical traditions.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Turin is disorientating. Its overlay of four bending rivers on perpendicular boulevards makes it feel like a snakes-and-ladders board. With the Superga Basilica on the far side of the River Po, and royal palaces all around \u2014 the city\u2019s dukes became Italy\u2019s kings \u2014 it\u2019s a grandiose but slippery place. Politically, though, Turin\u2019s Left-wing credentials have always been clear, not least given the legacy of wartime resistance. Over 1,000 local partisans are buried in the \u201cField of Glory\u201d in the city\u2019s monumental cemetery.<\/p>\n

Today, though, anti-fascism lacks definition beyond the obvious, and is anyway politically unhelpful: you can\u2019t build the future on a negation. Besides, the mushrooming of citizen assemblies throughout Turin, not least in Vanchiglia, suggests the city\u2019s radicals are now less inspired by Gramsci than David Graeber. The American anthropologist at the forefront of the Occupy protests, Graeber envisaged \u201ca new, open-ended, pragmatic anarchism\u201d, and spoke of occupied buildings as \u201can exercise in the politics of mutual aid, solidarity and caring. A simple, unauthorized act of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many ways, Italy pioneered autonomous spaces both in theory and practice. The first CSAs \u2014 \u201ccentri sociali autogestiti<\/em>\u201d or \u201cself-run social centers\u201d \u2014 were political squats organized by far-Left radicals in the Seventies. But as well as social centers, they also experimented with \u201cback-to-the-landism\u201d. As anti-mafia prosecutors began confiscating mob buildings and farms, many radicals won tenders to set up rehabs and farm shops.<\/p>\n

But if Italy has been at the forefront of anarchic congregationalism, it has also pioneered repression. In Genoa, in 2001, one man was killed and a school was raided by riot police looking for an illusory anarchist \u201cblack block\u201d. Now, Meloni has increased the pace of the crackdown. In August 2025, in Milan, the Leoncavallo social center was evicted on its 50th anniversary. In Genoa the previous summer, the Burrida, a similar center named after a local seafood stew, was raided and evicted too.<\/p>\n

Meloni may well be feeling pressure here from Roberto Vannacci, a former army general and looming threat on her own Right flank. Yet whatever the cause of her sweeps, it\u2019s clear that the Askatasuna case is different, not least in how it\u2019s long been at the frontline of protest far beyond Vanchiglia. Central to this activism is opposition to the so-called \u201cTAV\u201d. The Italian acronym for \u201chigh-speed train\u201d, the project eventually promises a new rail link between Turin and Lyon. But with the Alps in the way, the pristine mountain valleys around Turin have been roiled by unrest, with pitched battles between \u201cNo-TAV\u201d activists and riot police resulting in thousands of arrests.<\/p>\n

Perhaps because of its environmental tinge, the No-TAV movement has also gained supporters beyond the radical Left. One insider, Martina, describes it as \u201ctruly popular\u201d, bringing together \u201cmayors, Catholics and ordinary people\u201d. In recent years, meanwhile, the war in Gaza has also fueled local outrage. The criminalization of protest \u2014 with certain words banned altogether \u2014 means that many Torinesi<\/em> are furious. \u201cWhat have we got to do?\u201d asks an activist named Karim. \u201cWait until they\u2019re all dead before we say it\u2019s a genocide?\u201d<\/p>\n

Turin\u2019s distinctive architecture provides gathering places for these varied if overlapping groups. Because of mass immigration from the South during Turin\u2019s postwar boom, this most industrial of cities has dozens of so-called case di quartiere<\/em> (\u201csuburb halls\u201d), as well as a gaggle of circoli operai<\/em> (\u201cworkers\u2019 clubs\u201d) and case del popolo<\/em> (\u201cpeople\u2019s houses\u201d).<\/p>\n

Askatasuna\u2019s former building is only a two-minute walk from the banks of the Po. A vast, cherry-colored palazzo<\/em>, squarely facing the buzzing traffic on the Corso Regina Margherita, it\u2019s surrounded by schools. Given the intense police presence, that forces parents and children alike to cross through checkpoints every day. Yet the area behind the building is pedestrianized, and it\u2019s here, flanked by walls decorated with portraits of anti-fascist martyrs, that Askatasuna still does its outreach.<\/p>\n

Riccardo arrived in 2006, 10 years after Askatasuna was first occupied. \u201cThis is where I found hospitality,\u201d he says. He\u2019s at the end of an open-air \u201claboratorio<\/em>\u201d about reimagining education. Thirty people \u2014 from children to pensioners \u2014 have sat in a circle all day. The Carabinieri, Italy\u2019s militarized national police force, rev their engines at both ends of the pedestrianized zone, making it hard to hear.<\/p>\n

At the end of the workshop, Riccardo describes Aska as a kind of \u201cbring-us-your-needs\u201d listening point, what he and his comrades call a sportello<\/em> (\u201chelp desk\u201d). People drop by with a problem, and the group helps to find a solution. A woman who can\u2019t afford to fix a leak is put in touch with a pro-bono plumber. A victim of eviction is found emergency housing.<\/p>\n

Gianluca Vitale, a lawyer who represents Mohamed Shainin and a number of No-TAV activists, says that marginalized suburbs like these \u2014 often with large immigrant populations \u2014 are being squeezed for reasons of \u201curban decorum\u201d. Turin is gentrifying fast, largely thanks to tech start-ups and tourism, and pockets of \u201cmarginality\u201d, paying low rent on precarious contracts, are easy targets for Fratelli d\u2019Italia politicians urging \u201credevelopment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Throughout all this, the activists are passionately and ideologically opposed to involving the state in their affairs. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge problem of drug-dealing and delinquency in our suburb,\u201d admits one. \u201cBut we don\u2019t call the police because I know my neighbor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more America\u2019s unstoppable Hispanic future<\/a><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

At its postwar peak, Mirafiori covered three million square meters of Turin\u2019s south side, or the equivalent of 420 football pitches. Inside, some 60,000 workers glued, soldered and riveted along almost 25 miles of assembly lines. What they made were cars: millions of them. Fiat was Italy\u2019s most important factory, and the firm\u2019s Agnelli owners were as rich as royalty. They also owned Juventus, the footballing jewel of Turin and Italy\u2019s most famous team.<\/p>\n

Born in 1943, in a small town west of Milan, Pietro Perotti left school at 11. He soon went to work in a baker\u2019s, waking at 2am and working until midday. In 1969, not much taller than he was at 11, he moved to Mirafiori, working as a repair-man on the shop floor. One day, Perotti was moving between units when he saw Southern workers start an innovative form of protest. Some, he recalls, \u201cpicked up an empty oil can and started banging on it like a drum\u201d. Others joined in, as word spread of an injury or complaint. These former sharecroppers, newly arrived from Sicily or Calabria and bewildered by Taylorist production lines, even used their tools to start \u201cmaking trumpets and whistles and musical instruments\u201d.<\/p>\n

In all this, Perotti saw a recreation of the \u201csaint\u2019s festivals\u201d in the South, \u201cwhere the sacred and the profane coexist\u201d. It was the turning point of his life, for he realized that the order of things had to be inverted through in-situ<\/em> merriment. Perotti began drawing political graffiti in the bogs. His art \u2014 Marx hung on the factory frontispiece, Agnelli with his trousers down \u2014 was made on the shop floor.<\/p>\n

But throughout the Seventies, the atmosphere darkened. During the Anni di Piombo<\/em> \u2014 the \u201cYears of Lead\u201d of extremist terrorism of both Left and Right, with the Italian secret services squatting murkily in between \u2014 many idealistic workers were drawn towards bombings and executions. Perotti, for his part, joined both Lotta Continua and Avanguardia Operaia, two groups later accused of funneling activists towards violent struggle.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere, in Mirafiori, there were seven of us in a workers\u2019 cell,\u201d Perotti recalls. He was ordered to go into hiding but refused. Five of his band of seven ended up in the Red Brigades, the most infamous far-Left group of all, which in 1978 would kidnap and murder Aldo Moro, Italy\u2019s former prime minister. As for Perotti, he stayed at Fiat until 1985, organizing invisible protests like the \u201cbodywork jump\u201d \u2014 when for every 10 cars that passed through the production line, one would be ignored.<\/p>\n

Perhaps because he saw the bloody Seventies, Perotti is frustrated by the confrontational nature of the Askatasuna protests. He instead argues that agitation needs irony, and that on the 1 May event, the protestors \u201cshould have taken the mick\u201d, finding new slogans of disdain and giving \u201cbiscuits to the children to offer the riot police\u201d.<\/p>\n

Certainly, Perotti is a wily manipulator of the contemporary political narrative. His foam puppets Trump and Meloni have often been published by newspapers, alongside the usual images of batons and tear gas. But he\u2019s not the only one trying to channel rage in positive directions. Ortensia, part of the Comitato di Vanchiglia, another grassroots \u201ccommittee\u201d, is a psychologist who says that she and her colleagues try to find words \u201cthat land with everyone, that are gentle, and not use words like \u2018battle\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the mood is darkening. Ortensia describes \u201ca polarization\u201d in which neither police nor protesters can back down. A friend of hers, an Englishwoman, tells me that, a year ago, the Comitato was only talking about flower-beds with the elderly; now they\u2019re in a militarized zone having their papers checked.<\/p>\n

At sunset, I stop in a casa di quartiere<\/em> in San Salvario, a district of long streets and dense postwar apartment blocks. The casa<\/em> itself used to be the old public baths, and is now another edgy village hall, all street art, table tennis, noisy teenagers, and grandmothers with pushchairs. There I meet Nicoletta, Rosa and Giulia, part of an informal organization called Mamme in Piazza (\u201cMums in the Square\u201d). These mothers \u2014 about a dozen in all \u2014 came together after seeing their children criminalized during the No-TAV protests. Their intent wasn\u2019t to excuse crime, but to understand their kids and the anger animating them. \u201cWe don\u2019t always share the practices of the struggle,\u201d says Rosa, \u201cbut we defend the struggle against repression.\u201d<\/p>\n

These mothers talk a lot about anger: anger with their children, with their spouses, with themselves, with the state and its repression. But as usually happens when mothers take to the streets, they\u2019re listened to because they have a language that, as Nicoletta puts it, \u201cisn\u2019t studied: it\u2019s emotional, instinctive, na\u00efve if you like about certain things\u201d. The women have megaphoned outside the city\u2019s prison, and have gone on countless marches with their banners. They perform regular balcony concerts. \u201cWe abstain from judgment,\u201d says Rosa, \u201cbut we do see a loop. Exaggerated and frightening repression radicalizes you. It fucks you off.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The fact that even these peaceful mothers are swearing shows the degree of anger in the city. There\u2019s a deep grievance about economic malaise and judicial persecution, and Turin\u2019s radicals have receded from any faith that mainstream politics can offer solutions. The last time that happened, 50 years ago, many frustrated revolutionaries turned into armed killers. No one expects the chaos of the Seventies to return \u2014 but the issue of violence is where the debate almost always ends up.<\/p>\n

For its part, the Right accuses protestors of a variety of crimes, pointing to the storming of La Stampa<\/em>\u2018s newspaper offices, and a January attack on a policeman, as evidence that their movement is invariably brutal. But if you put that to Askatasuna members, the reply inverts the accusation. \u201cFor us,\u201d says Riccardo, \u201c\u2018conflict\u2019 is a key term. But today, there is a system that inflicts daily violence on all the citizens living in our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meloni\u2019s much-trumpeted \u201cPacchetto Sicurezza\u201d is meant to sort it all out. This new security legislation, passed in February 2026, allows for the creation of \u201cred zones\u201d with militarized presences, and legitimizes pre-emptive arrest. Turin is key to this crusade. The first capital of a united Italy, and home to kings and Fiat, it can\u2019t be seen to fail on something as simple as \u201cpublic order\u201d.<\/p>\n

For Vitale, the lawyer, this is dangerous territory. \u201cWe\u2019re talking,\u201d he says, \u201cabout particularly sensitive topics and about the manifestation of a thought.\u201d He maintains that \u201can opinion might not be endorsed [by you] but it\u2019s an opinion. An opinion can\u2019t be punished, it doesn\u2019t represent a crime.\u201d \u201cIt seems,\u201d adds Vitale, \u201cthat in Turin we\u2019re seeing a clash between rival visions of the state: either government legislation is submitted to what is legal according to the Constitution, or else the judiciary has to obey a legislative act.\u201d<\/p>\n

That clash between judiciary and executive is ancient, but for those in Vanchiglia itself, the situation feels bizarre. When you talk to mothers outside schools, dropping off their kids, they say they\u2019re insulted by police. \u201cYou have the right to shut up,\u201d one officer apparently told Ortensia.<\/p>\n

On a street corner I bump into Alice Ravinale, a representative of the Left-Green Alliance in the regional parliament. \u201cThis is all just show\u201d, she says, pointing at two riot vans with blue lights flashing. \u201cEvery day we ask ourselves what they\u2019re scared of.\u201d The answer, perhaps, is that they\u2019re scared of people who refuse to acknowledge the need for them. That, as Perotti knows, is the best form of attack: not to take authority figures too seriously.<\/p>\n

Read more A storm is coming for Labour<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent months, the Turin suburb of Vanchiglia has begun to look like Belfast at the height of the Troubles. Pairs of Carabinieri riot vans are top-and-tailed on a dozen corners. There\u2019s not a bar without a few cops either inside or out. And, to an extent, this is nothing new. 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Pairs of Carabinieri riot vans are top-and-tailed on a dozen corners. There\u2019s not a bar without a few cops either inside or out. And, to an extent, this is nothing new. 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