Giuseppe Curcio | Observatory Against the Militarization of Schools and Universities (Italy)
Selam! Dear friends, comrades and resistance fighters gathered in Istanbul, my name is Giuseppe Curcio and I’m speaking from Bologna, Italy. Thanks for this chance to share our struggle with yours. First of all, please accept the warmest and most revolutionary greetings from the Observatory against the Militarization of Schools and Universities in Italy. We send our deepest solidarity to the No to NATO Initiative and to the International Anti-Imperialist Peace Summit.
Even though we cannot be there in person, our shared struggle unites us across borders, especially now as you meet on the eve of the ominous NATO Summit in Ankara. Our Observatory was founded three years ago in Italy by teachers and peace activists with a very specific and urgent mission: to monitor and to counter the pervasive infiltration of the military apparatus into places of education and research.
Schools and universities must be laboratories of peace, critical thinking, and international solidarity—not recruitment centers or research labs for the military—industrial complex. Our path directly intersects with yours in the uncompromising struggle against NATO and Western imperialism.
· We witness how NATO is not just an aggressive military alliance operating abroad, but a toxic ideology that colonizes our domestic civil societies.
· In Italy, as in many of your countries, we see NATO’s protocols dictating educational guidelines.
· We see research funds shifted from welfare, healthcare, and education toward weapon development and NATO-aligned technological projects: NATO and the EU have committed to a collective defense spending target of 5% of GDP and the REARM Europe Programme was launched specifically for this purpose.
Fighting NATO means fighting the cultural normalization of war that starts right inside our classrooms. We share your view that imperialism is the primary threat to the self-determination of peoples and to global peace. Comrades, we are speaking to you in a moment of extreme urgency. We are facing a dangerous paradigm shift across Europe.
Governments are rapidly implementing the so-called “Total Defense” model, which comes directly from a military doctrine by NATO named “Whole of society” and aims at developing synergies between civil and military defense, just like in the Swedish model. What does it mean? It means the total mobilization of society for war. It means transforming civilian infrastructure, logistics, and crucially, the minds and the bodies of our youth, into extensions of the military machine, in the so called “hybrid war”.
They want to prepare our societies for a state of permanent warfare, erasing the line between civilian life and military necessity. We refuse to stand by and watch! To counter this dystopian drift, our Observatory has launched a clear tool of struggle: the Manifesto of Resistance against the Militarization. It was recently translated in various languages (French, Spanish, English, German in addition to Italian language) and you can find it on our website. Through this Manifesto, we call for a total and collective conscientious objection.
We urge teachers to refuse to promote military propaganda in schools. We urge researchers and universities to boycott military funds and dual-use technology research. We urge students to reject the rhetoric of the “soldier-citizen”. This is not just passive pacifism; it is an active, collective strike against the war machine. If they want a “Total Defense” model, we will oppose them with a Total Resistance model.
Furthermore, we are also working with other organizations in Italy on a national campaign named La Conoscenza Non Marcia (The Knowledge does not march), whose aim is to stop the militarization of schools and universities and submit a formal proposal through a public petition to the Parliament. Dear comrades, your meeting in Istanbul is a crucial step. The upcoming NATO Summit in Ankara will only bring more escalation, more destruction, and more subjugation of working-class people to the interests of the oligarchs of war.
We must build a powerful, internationalist and anti-imperialist counter-narrative. From the schools and the universities of Italy to the streets of Istanbul, and to the workplaces across the globe, our enemy is the same. Let’s strengthen our network! Let’s turn our schools, universities and workplaces into trenches of peace and anti-imperialism.
Down with NATO!
Down with imperialism and the militarization of our societies!
Long live the international solidarity of the peoples!
Power to your assembly, and forward together in the common struggle!
Always with Gaza in our heart!
Free Palestine!
Thank you. Güle güle !
