Italy: Citizens Demand Businesses Reopen - Lone Police Officer Joins Protesters (Video)

Restaurateurs, as well as other small businesspeople and various freedom fighters, rallied in several cities across Italy to protest government forced closures of businesses in the name of combating the coronavirus. In Piazza Montecitorio in Rome, demonstrators pleaded for the ability to work again, be able to pay their bills and save their collapsing businesses. Benito Mussolini’s economic system of government control of the economy has taken a stronghold in Italy again.

Among the demonstrators there are not only the workers from the food service industry and hospitality sector, but, as the participants themselves explain, “we are managers of gyms, traders, artists, we are all together asking to work”. During the protest, in fact, shouts of “freedom, freedom” were often shouted, to emphasize the request to be free to return to open their businesses. “We are normal people, workers, no to violence, the police have nothing to do with it,” said one of the participants on the microphone trying to calm the spirits of the angry crowd.

One lone police officer removed his helmet and joined his fellow Italians fighting for their right to conduct business and work:

“The right to work is written in the Constitution” stated Enrico Montesano, a speaker at the demonstration. “We want to work and leave the house, we want to be in peace, we don’t want to be crushed by falsehoods. We disagree with certain choices but we don’t take rash actions. Freedom, freedom, freedom “ exclaimed Montesano.

Some clashes took place between state police officers and the freedom fighters. The tensions did not last long, in fact most of the demonstrators called for calm and not to involve the police in the protest:

As reported previously at RAIR Foundation USA, small businesses in Italy have been particularly hard hit and massively disadvantaged in comparison to big businesses. Many of the larger businesses have been allowed to stay open, whereas restaurants, gyms, small retailers, etc. have had to close for long periods of time or operate under paralyzing restrictions.

Small business owners represent everything the left despises: free market capitalism, individualism, and property rights. Small businesses are not unionized so they cannot be controlled by the left.

The joining of all powerful governments with giant corporations, where those corporations are dictated to by governments in terms of what they can and cannot do, make, sell or to whom they can provide services, was a political system invented in Italy by Mussolini in the 20th century, and is commonly referred to as “fascism”. As the fascist dictator once said,

“The Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism that denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State… If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government.