Autistici Inventati forced to close after being included in the US blacklist

"A/i closes. There's no easy way to say this." Having ended up on the US blacklist of "antifa" organisations, an acronym never really specified but branded by the State Department as terrorist and subversive, Autistici Inventati, the digital backbone that has given safe digital space and tools to organisations, collectives and individuals of the Italian movement and beyond, is forced to give in.

For us – they write – remaining human is not a simple slogan. It means that, first of all, it is the users, the people who build the human networks on which we rely and the communities that have flooded us with messages and love and solidarity, who must be protected. We cannot accept a clash or lend ourselves to exploitation that endangers their lives, the lives of their loved ones, leaving them at the mercy of autocrats, fascists and agencies acting through extra-legal means."

The announcement comes with a post published on the collective's website, probably destined like all the others to disappear shortly. We will try to save what can be saved - and technical explanations will arrive on how to do it - but there is the risk of losing everything. “However, always keep in mind that, just as the autistici.org domain was closed without any warning, in the meantime there could be other problems of this kind that we are unable to foresee,” they warn.

The domain has been deleted from the general registry. Translation, 16,000 mailboxes, 10,000 blogs, 5,500 mailing lists and 1,500 sites were made unreachable without users being informed or a judge ordering it. Shortly afterwards, Paypal and Banca Etica blocked the collective's accounts, freezing the sums deposited there.

A direct effect of the fear of so-called "secondary sanctions", i.e. the possibility for a third party to obtain administrative, financial or criminal consequences in case of relationships with a sanctioned organization. But this may not have been the only reason that pushed the collective to freeze the digital infrastructure on which individual militants, associations, committees, but also bookshops and other independent activities have relied for 25 years.

“The concrete possibility of being the cause of criminal or financial consequences for someone who is close to us, or who even just interacts with us - they explain - does not allow us any other choices”. Just as the domain disappeared from the general registry, the noblogs.org platform, one of the collective's main projects, suffered a heavy cracker attack: the homepage was modified and the attacker may have had access to the database. For security, data has always been covered and encrypted, but it was an alarm signal that the collective did not ignore. And perhaps it is a coincidence, perhaps not, on August 31st an online dossier appeared on DataRepublican on the over 7 thousand blogs hosted by NoBlogs, the blogging platform managed by a/i, presented as "an international network of the militant far left".

“In this climate, continuing to offer our services is just one more danger for our users, and for all the people who are part of our communities. In a world of accusations unconnected to facts we can only expect further disproportionate repression."