Post by ElisaNap in Little Antifa Novel comments

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Hi Mauro, I've seen the game from Videogiocanda and the reply by the Lega member.
I myself have a hard time understanding political violent activism of any sorts.
I know many cases in which in my city, Turin, police was not allowed around communist "centri sociali" to patrol the zone and repel illegal drug sellers. Which are still illegal, even if many do them.

I believe that the game itself had some rather controversial points I strongly disagree with.
First and foremost, the depiction of the police, which in quality of hand of the State and Law, has to obey orders, and is by definition neutral and above all factions, therefore should not in my opinion be depicted in a pig-like way, nor insulted in any way. Many of them have moderated point of views, many tend to right, many tend to left. When they wear a uniform they are however the mean through which law is imposed, and by fighting them, you fight the law and state, not the people.
Second, I hope you realize that organizing unauthorized meetups is indeed a crime, and that there was the chance to peacefully and rightfully protest in another zone of the city in order to avoid conflict, and that that wouldn't have implied any allegation.

By fighting police members that are there to tell you you can't stay there because you did not get an authorization, you fight the law about unauthorized protests, rather than the fascist meetup.

Kudos to you for adding to the game the chance to protest the day before and the one to go to the other authorized spot, I played the game many times and those are the paths that satisfied me most when I went for them.
Game design wise, that was the choice that made me appreciate this even though I do not agree with its view. Mind I do not support fascism in any way, but I believe that all avoidable acts of violence and disobedience to rightful laws perpetrated in the name of any flag are to be considered on the same level.
This means that both an insult to police and an insult to Jews or LGBTQ+/any fascist sign should be sanctioned, or we'd have anarchy in one sense, dictatorship in the other.

This is my point of view however, but I do have a discourage about how rightful ideas are perpetrated in wrong and violent ways during this kind of battles.

Mauro Vanetti206 days ago(+1)

Hey Elisa, for some reason I missed this comment and I'm answering it only now, 5 years later. First of all, thank you for your appreciation and the time you spent playing this game.

In the real world, this was not a story a violent political activism. We were beaten by the police but we did nothing violent. In the game, you can explore different possibilities, including strict respect of police orders or active violence. Obviously, the consequences of those choices in the game reflect my opinion of those tactics, and this is debatable but there's no way a game can be completely neutral - and it's not desirable, in my opinion.

About neutrality, I don't believe the police is neutral and has the function of enforcing the law. This is the way they advertise themselves, but my experience tells otherwise. The police defends the status quo, including, to some extent, fascists and racists. Actually, most cops and carabinieri in Italy are fascists and racists, and this is not by chance; there are exceptions, particulary in the lowest ranks, and I know some cases, but unfortunately they're in a minority.

I and Chiara did not depict the cops as pigs, but as dogs. It's the Fascists that were depicted as pigs. I leave it to the player any inference from this… er… "artistic" choice.

Organising unauthorised demonstrations in Italy is not a crime. The law is more nuanced: demonstrations are a constitutional right, but you are supposed to notify the police with a little advance. They can forbid it only for serious reasons. In this case, we notified them in September (for November). The police falsified the fax date and told us that the Fascists had asked the same square before us (in the trial it emerged that they did it the day after). In any case, we did not demonstrate in the forbidden square. The police attacked us in any case because we were in the way of the Fascist march.

I believe that we did right. You say that we should fight unjust rules about "unauthorised" demonstrations, instead of breaking those rules. But what we did is actually the only effective way we had to fight that wrongful enforcement of the rules.

itch.io

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