February 1999

Presentation of Luther Blissett's

Enemies Of The State. Criminals, "Monsters" and Special Laws in the Society of Control

In March, the LBP will also put out a lengthy essay (about 300 pages) titled "Nemici dello Stato. Criminali, "mostri" e leggi speciali nella società di controllo" [Enemies Of The State. Criminals, "Monsters" and Special Laws in the Society of Control].

The publisher is Rome-based "autonomous" collective Derive Approdi, the same as Toni Negri's. After the controversial Lasciate Che I Bimbi (1997), that generated two civil trials, a libel suit and an official ban request, we're ramming another anti-copyright fist into the stomachs of magistrates, cops, priests and "law & order" politicians. We examined the series of liberticide "emergency laws" [in German: "Notstandsgesetze"] that started in the mid-Seventies in order to repress "Terrorism", reached new heights with the 1980's 'anti-mafia' and the "totale mobilmachung" known as the Clean Hands Inquiry (1992-96), then stretched out to some early 1990's law against "football hooligans" and "nazi skinheads", till the recent 'Act on Child Pornography and Pedophilia' and the Church-driven mass hysteria on "Satanic cults" and "crazy sects". Our thesis is that early emergency laws were suitable to the crisis of Taylorism/Fordism and the disciplinary society, while the most recent ones perfectly fit a society of control based on a "molecular" prevention of social conflict.

In the 20th anniversary of the "7 Aprile" inquiry (which took into prison the whole Autonomia Operaia movement and must be considered the very paradigm of everything followed), the LBP looks into the political/juridical/media mechanisms by which the political establishment and the judiciary have started a perpetual, authoritarian screw turn. As Liberal jurist Italo Mereu put it in his book "Storia dell'Intolleranza in Europa" (1979), this perennial state of emergency is based on the 'Catholic [juridical] Model', i.e. that of the Holy Inquisition (e.g. the use of so-called "pentiti" [repentants, i.e. former "terrorists" or criminals who became narks], the use of torture, "preventive detention" as a way to extort confessions etc.).
We admit that the book is somewhat scary, including as it does many sad stories of witch hunt journalism, judicial horror, liberticide law, police abuse, censorship and Catholic revanche. A "state of freedom" report from this sector of Southern Europe, as well as an explanation of Q's dark allegories.

This will be the last book signed by the Italian milieux of the LBP before the Big Seppuku. We'll commit a symbolic suicide in January 2000 and stop adopting the name, so the Project will jettison the last piece of ballast and perhaps flourish elsewhere (the Spanish are doing fucking fine, for example).