News stories about anarchists do not deserve to be hidden; they are there to remind us what it means to fan the flames

Are they four Molotov cocktails or four signals? In internal intelligence reports, the threat considered to be among the most dangerous to our country’s future security is the one most underestimated by a significant section of the Italian public. It is a unique threat, one that is often met with derision, as its full scope is not understood; and although it may appear ephemeral, it has the power to hold together – with a single thread that is woven, intertwined, knotted and tightened – all the main extremist impulses sweeping through Italy. Anti-militarist rhetoric, hatred of Israel, the demonisation of the defence of Ukraine, and the suspicion that, in certain protests, a link may be forged with radical Islamism.

On 4 March, the Annual Intelligence Report – also presented by the Director of the AISI, Bruno Valensise – clearly stated that little had changed over the past few months: “Anarcho-insurrectionist activism is the most tangible threat” to Italy. In mid-July, Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, also highlighted in its annual report – amidst general indifference – a shift in violent anarchist extremism across Europe, emphasising the aspect that most concerns the Italian security authorities: the ability of anarchist groups to absorb different conflicts and causes within a single framework – broadly and traditionally anti-imperialist, anti-militarist, anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist – and the corresponding ability to find numerous opportunities to mobilise. The figures for Italy, from this perspective, are striking: of the twelve attacks classified by Europol in 2025 as left-wing and anarchist terrorism across the entire European Union, eleven took place in Italy – ten were carried out and one failed. The picture painted by Europol is the same one that worries the Italian security services: a fragmented landscape, made up of small groups, informal networks and seemingly unconnected individuals, determined to act not necessarily with a major operation in mind but by sending – perhaps without a single coordinating body – messages to the state through acts of sabotage, arson, vandalism and limited-scale actions, with the police often finding themselves at the centre of these incidents. The reports from the relevant authorities contain a number of recent incidents that have transformed what appeared to be a fleeting issue into one of the most significant threats to our country’s security. The latest case occurred yesterday in Pesaro, where the public prosecutor’s office investigated four young men who, according to investigators, are alleged to have made several Molotov cocktails in February and tested their destructive potential inside an abandoned industrial warehouse. Preventive measures, of course, make less of a news story than those that arise when prevention fails. But within the narrative of low-intensity destabilisation, there is more to it than that. And the scenes – just to stick with 2026 – are numerous.

There is the scene from 25 July in Val di Susa, involving the storming of the Turin–Lyon construction sites. There is the scene from 20 July in Bologna when, following the death of Abderrahim Fakir during a police operation in the Pilastro district, some of the protesters moved towards the prefecture and the police headquarters, where violent clashes broke out with the police: an incident within the wider protest movement that cannot be attributed indiscriminately to the anarchist faction alone. Then there is the incident on 18 April, when 200 people chose to take part in a march in Rome to show solidarity with the anarchist Alfredo Cospito, during which a plainclothes police officer was injured. There are the graffiti that appeared in Sarzana, in the province of La Spezia, in February and which, by April, had led to searches of the homes of three individuals linked to the anarcho-insurrectionist movement, featuring messages in solidarity with Cospito and against Leonardo, Fincantieri and Elbit. There were also the threats that appeared in Rome on the night of 20–21 March, following the deaths of two anarchists in a cottage in the Acquedotti Park: “Our revenge will be terrible”, “Hang all the Carabinieri”. Then there was the arson attack at the construction site of the Sant’Anna School’s science campus, accompanied by an anarchist statement claiming responsibility for the attack: “Every modern war begins in a laboratory”. There was also the electrical sabotage in Carnia on 25 March, for which an anarchist group claimed responsibility. There are the two anarchists who died in Rome on 20 March following an explosion at the cottage in the Acquedotti Park where, according to investigators’ hypotheses, they were handling a homemade explosive device. There is the scene of the fires and damage to railway lines between Rome and Florence and between Rome and Naples on 14 February 2026, during the Winter Olympics. Seven days earlier, two incendiary devices were found at Castel Maggiore; one detonated, damaging the railway cables, while the other failed to explode. Almost simultaneously, a fire broke out at the signal box controlling a railway point in Pesaro. There were clashes in Turin on 31 January during the demonstration in support of Askatasuna, with a police vehicle set alight, an officer surrounded and beaten, 29 police officers taken to hospital, and a diverse group of anarchists, autonomists and activists, some of whom had travelled from abroad.

Anarchist, autonomous and antagonist movements – which, according to the security authorities, tend to operate most freely in three cities in particular: Turin, Bologna, Padua – naturally have their own obsessions, but they are also fuelled by generalised extremism, often circulated by various figures, such as politicians, intellectuals and activists, who, without realising it, pepper their tirades against the very same targets as the anarchists, using language similar to that which the anarchists themselves would employ. The presence of an anarchist threat must not be allowed to restrict the freedom of expression of political parties, leaders and intellectuals; and however dangerous extremism may be, it is also a right to hold inflammatory ideas, provided those ideas remain just that. But in the face of an anarchist threat which, whilst flirting with the worst forms of Italian extremism, feeds on anti-imperialist rhetoric, anti-militarist narratives, anti-colonial demagoguery, hatred towards Ukraine, sympathies for Putin and the demonisation of the Jewish people, it would be worth at least asking ourselves – from right to left – whether having a political agenda on certain points that is not too dissimilar from that of the anarchists is a good or a bad thing for the future of our democracy.