«Non saremo noi i soldati delle vostre guerre, alle armi andateci voi, noi organizzeremo i disertori!»
With this uncompromising declaration delivered at the Festa dell’Unità in Reggio Emilia, Virginia Libero, secretary of the Young Democrats, ignited a fierce political storm across Italy.
Echoing Boris Vian Against Military Posturing
The linguistic choice to brand oneself a “deserter” intentionally echoes Boris Vian’s classic pacifist anthem, deliberately weaponizing a negatively connoted word against an era fixated on military posturing and geopolitical brinkmanship.
Critics quickly invoked the memory of the Italian Resistance, suggesting that such appeals undermine the historic fight against fascism. Yet, as commentators note, drawing a direct parallel to the partisan struggle ignores a fundamentally altered geopolitical context. Modern conflicts rarely carry the clear moral imperatives of national liberation, instead frequently emerging as the downstream effects of supranational policies disconnected from the everyday security of ordinary citizens.
Constitutional Framework and Article 11
This skepticism finds a solid legal anchor in Article 11 of the Italian Constitution, which explicitly repudiates war as an instrument of offense against the liberty of other peoples and as a means for resolving international controversies.
The constitutional framework does not demand absolute pacifism or surrender in the face of direct aggression, but it draws a sharp, undeniable line against initiating hostilities. Balancing this legal mandate with the hard realities of state sovereignty requires maintaining reliable military deterrence, yet it leaves ample room to imagine an alternative international order.
Intellectual Pedigree and Norberto Bobbio
Pacifism carries a long, intellectual pedigree spanning from Immanuel Kant and Henry David Thoreau to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Italian figures like Aldo Capitini and Giorgio La Pira.
In his 1979 volume Il problema della guerra e le vie della pace, philosopher Norberto Bobbio confronted this exact dilemma, writing that humanity must learn to resolve conflicts without organized collective violence or risk complete self-destruction.
Kant, Rain Dances, and Global Military Spending
Opting for nonviolence does not rely on the illusion that adversaries will immediately lay down their arms. Instead, it operates on a Kantian categorical imperative: acting according to a maxim one wishes to see universally applied, regardless of whether others follow suit immediately.
In the face of critics who dismiss peace marches as archaic rituals comparable to rain dances—an argument Bobbio famously answered in the pages of La Stampa on September 20, 1995, by noting that while farmers cannot force rain, universal participation in peace would inevitably banish war—the debate remains profoundly unsettled.
