On the 17th of October Milano was overwhelmed by protesters. Among the vastly peaceful demonstrators, a dangerous minority employed violent tactics against people and buildings in the city center. The city, my city, was left burnt and scarred. In this article, I make the case that political violence in democratic policy is never a legitimate and effective tool for social change.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Tra i Leoni or Bocconi University.
Between the 16th and 18th of October the streets of Milano were filled with thousands and thousands of (mostly) young protesters, lamenting the rising cost of living and stagnant salaries. Among the peaceful protesters, whose just cause I will briefly discuss later on, there was a loud and dangerous minority that employed violent tactics against people and objects all around the city center. Shops were destroyed and looted, trashcans were burnt and many had to go to the hospital at the end of the day. The economic damages have been estimated in the millions of euros, and this is a cost that will be repaid precisely by the same people that the protesters strive to protect, either by the loss of jobs or through general taxation. Fortunately, no one lost their life in those chaotic days. But the city, my city, was wounded. Milano was not built in a day, and it most certainly will not fall in one either. The good citizens of the city still stand: my home has not been burnt down, and it hopefully will never be. In the following hours, as the results of the devastation became apparent and the atmosphere of fear slowly faded, most commentators had the decency of condemning the violence, but a sizeable minority did not, and in turn exalted the events as revolutionary tools for change. In this article, I would like to make the case that what happened last weekend represented an unacceptable and undemocratic act, and that it served no purpose for the long-term benefit of the population of Milano.
Before discussing the theoretical and empirical reasons that lead me to this conclusion, I would like to first clarify two points. As I already mentioned, the cause behind which the protest was organized is not only valid, but just and absolutely necessary for Italy. Since the 1990s, real wages in Italy have been practically stagnant overall (OECD data), while the cost of living has been steadily growing, driven by the global prices of energy and the demand shock after Covid-19 pandemic. The necessity to structurally reform the Italian economy should be the most urgent priority of any government in Rome, regardless of its ideological background. Instead, nothing is done: both on the left and on the right of the political spectrum, parties have proposed and implemented fiscal stimuli, in the form a plethora of bonuses and unproductive government spending. The only result produced has been the growth of the national debt and the tax burden on all the citizens, which end up paying for the poor decisions of their representatives. Alternatives to this ineffective model of policy making exists, but they are sadly irrelevant in the political landscape. But I’ll come back to this in a while.
The second point that I would like to clarify is that in this article I do not engage with the argument that these looters and vandals were a small cell of criminals that infiltrated the protests with malignant intentions. Even though I partly believe this narrative myself, I find it hard to prove in any meaningful way, as we do not have the power to read the minds of all the people that committed these criminal acts. From now on, I will thus discuss the vandalism and the violence in the street of Milano as conducted with the explicit intent of signalling political desperation, profound disagreement with the social and economic system in place and the necessity to enact change.
The first point that I would like to make with this piece is that violent protests are completely unacceptable in a democratic context. The use of violence in the realm of politics breaks off from the democratic model of government at a fundamental level and can thus not be tolerated in our modern societies. Democracy has been defined in multiple and often confuse ways by as many scholars and philosophers as you can think of. To the core of the definition, though, there is the idea that every citizen of the democratic polity has the same equal right to participate in the political discussion and to affect the outcome of the policy making process. And this is the key, as former Bocconi professor Nadia Urbinati wrote in her book Democracy Disfigured: the democratic commitment is first and foremost to the process of political decision, not a specific political result. If a majority of people votes for a certain outcome, that outcome must be accepted as long as it is compliant to the basic values of the polity and the institutional process to achieve it was following the rules of the game that society has given itself. Using violence to impose one’s opinion, one’s priorities, on anyone else is a fundamental departure from the democratic process, compared to the peaceful expression of opinion in a protest, which is totally coherent with it. As much as the system looks to be flawed, and as much as people do not feel heard by their representatives, violence cannot be a justified answer.
What the protests were trying to achieve was correct, but ultimately the use of violent tactics was counterproductive for their own aims. Political science research has long shown that violent protest has consistently been less effective compared to non-violent means, as discussed among many others by Stephan and Chenoweth (2008) and empirically demonstrated by Wasow (2020). But I think that looking at research is not even needed to see clearly the reasons why violent demonstrations are much less effective than non-violent ones, by looking at the example of the other major protest regarding the cost of living in Italy. The facts I’m referring to are the strikes and actions undertaken by southern Italian truck drivers and farmers: these people blocked major highways in the region and stopped the supply of food to grocery shops all over the South, in an unprecedented show of strength. The result? In a matter of days, the government has accepted negotiations and the protesters will obtain soon millions of euros in tax credits and support, precisely what they were asking. What did the looters of Via Torino obtain compared to this? Everyone is talking only about the violence, and not about the grievances behind the movement. Their actions have further polarized opinions and obscured the real and just cause for which the demonstration had been organized in the first place. Ah, and they also stole some expensive sneakers, something which has been seriously referred to as “proletarian redistribution.” I prefer the term shoplifting, but I suppose that is a matter of discussion these days.
Some of the voices justifying the violence of these days have underlined that most of the shops that were destroyed and looted were branches of enormous corporations, mainly in the luxury and fashion industries, that can easily afford the repairs. This argument has been brought forward to downplay the destruction of the looters, pinning it down as some sort of class war against the consumeristic society we inhabit. Leaving aside that so many small businesses and non-luxury shops were also targeted (are they conducting a class war against Carrefour and Decathlon?), even destroying the shop of Footlocker and Mango makes no sense for the meaning of the protest. The people that work in these shops are normal workers, precisely those slaves of the capitalistic system that the protester claim to have at heart. Their suffering during those days of turmoil, and the real possibility that the owners of the shops will have to cut their employees to face the loss in revenues are the direct consequences of the looting. We all want decent and well-paid jobs to live better, why are these people destroying and disrupting the activities of the businesses that allow jobs to exist in the first place?
More generally, I could delve into a long and frankly unfruitful historical recount of the most important revolutions and popular movements of the last two centuries. One could bring forward various examples and counterexamples, interpreting different events, and even the same events, in order to support their argument. The historical truth, if it is ever possible to draw one, is that no single outcome can be predicted from the unpredictable actions of a revolutionary mob, apart from the uncertainty itself. Violent takeover after violent takeover, stability and peaceful political and social processes are eroded, ushering entire decades of turmoil, suffering and war. One constant that I do want to put forward is that violence always breeds more violence. I truly hope that this will not be case for the current wave of protests, but I would not be surprised if it did. On Monday, when no actual vandalism was taking place, a handful of fake WhatsApp massages and AI generated images created from scratch the story that right wing gangs were going around Milano to beat up and even rape students, targeting in particular foreign people. Everything was fortunately proved to be made up, but I can tell you that not for a moment I found that story to be not plausible. It would have been an obvious and despicable response to the events of the last weeks, which have unfortunately been characterized by some nationalist voices (including the US president Trump, by the way) as driven by first- or second-generation immigrants.
Lastly, I want to clearly state believe that the use of force is absolutely justified under some circumstances, including a foreign invader or a truly tyrannical government, but in the context of a democratic state, where other means of protest and political action are feasible, it must be firmly condemned. And here I come to the final point I would like to go through, precisely because this is a key point for the future of our generation. The system, currently, is broken. As I write, my generation is being robbed of their future by a Leviathan that distributes wealth towards the elderly and does not give the youngsters any way to achieve their dreams, not here at least. Everywhere I look, from AI to climate change, from the Wars in Ukraine and Palestine to the streets of my own city, I see suffering and despair. But change is possible. An alternative is possible, if we build it together. Let’s pool all the anger and the energy of this generation, not in a violent and barbaric way, but in a peaceful and democratic force, a force that can be truly dedicated to our future. If all the people that took the street this weekend, whatever their intention and their actions, join together in a political alternative that can truly shake the foundations of our political system, I promise you that they will hear us. Everyone will hear us if organize and win triumphantly in elections. We are the State, we are its institutions and its mechanisms. And we can change them for the better if we do it together.
My name is Pietro Ferrari and I was born and raised in the city of Milan. After three fantastic years in BIG I have decided to continue my Bocconi Journey in Politics and Policy Analysis. My interests span across multiple fields but the one I am most interested in are History, Politics and International Relations. But what still makes me hopeful about the world is traveling, the only thing I consider my real passion, especially when I manage to find the time to write down my thoughts and feelings on the road.
