Clashes in Turin and attacks rekindle the terrorism alarm. Between accusations of authoritarianism and memory of the Red Brigades, what is really happening in Italy
The clashes in Turin over the eviction of the Askatasuna community center and the attacks on the railway network in Bologna and Pesaro have raised the terrorism alarm again. Both the Minister of Justice, who mentioned the Red Brigades, and the Minister of the Interior spoke about it. The opposition in turn responds that the government tends to exaggerate the facts in an attempt to repress democratic protests and impose an authoritarian turn. In short, on the one hand the fear of a return to the Years of Lead, on the other the fascist danger, in a game of contrasts between right and left that seems to never end.
In reality we are faced neither with a terrorist drift nor with a twist towards an illiberal regime. The attempt to protect the police, who risk ending up in the dock every time for having done their duty, is a measure to protect policemen and carabinieri, so that they can operate in the interests of citizens without remaining entangled for years in the meshes of slow and ineffective justice. And, at the same time, the 12-hour preventive detention, which must in any case be validated by the judiciary, serves to prevent violent people from taking part in demonstrations in the streets and sparking new clashes. Both measures have already been adopted by other European countries, but it does not appear that Denmark or Sweden have become dictatorships as a result.
On the other hand, if it is wrong to talk now about a return of the Red Brigades, it is instead absolutely necessary to look with concern at that antagonistic gray area that could fuel political violence. I even heard on TV some authoritative magistrates denying that terrorism had connections with the protest movements that arose at the end of the 1960s and, again on a talk show, I heard again the fable that the Red Brigades were born against the PCI and more generally against the left, a statement which brought to mind the adjective with which intellectuals and journalists (from Umberto Eco to Giorgio Bocca) for years defined the Red Brigades: self-styled. That is, an organization behind which the deviated services were probably hidden.
The armed party, however, took root at the end of the 1960s precisely in the left and, in part, in the committed Catholic world. The first nucleus was formed in Reggio Emilia and included young people from the Fgci, the youth organization of the PCI. Tonino Paroli, Prospero Gallinari, Alberto Franceschini, Lauro Azzolini, Franco Bonisoli, constituted the so-called apartment group, twenty-year-olds who, after having participated in the anti-American protests for the war in Vietnam, influenced by the myth of the Resistance, decided to move on to armed struggle. The first operational meeting, after some sabotage actions, took place in Chiavari, at the Stella Maris hotel, where the Emilians, in contact with a former partisan commander, joined the Trentino group led by Renato Curcio. They were left-wing, they dreamed of revolution and had the overthrow of the state as their goal.
But, in addition to denying that those young people came from the area of protest, those who maintain that the Red Brigades were against the PCI and the traditional left are telling a colossal lie. In fact, it is enough to scroll through the list of victims to realize that the Red Brigades and their followers were fighting the servants of the State and moderate intellectuals. Many law enforcement officers, many magistrates and just as many journalists ended up under their blows. But here too, just scroll through the names of the victims: Walter Tobagi, Carlo Casalegno, Indro Montanelli, Vittorio Bruno, Emilio Rossi, to stay with the best known.
Usually, when we talk about that period, to support the thesis that the Red Brigades were mainly enemies of the PCI and of the left in general (therefore functional to an alleged strategy of tension) we cite Guido Rossa, the CGIL trade unionist killed in Genoa by the Red Brigades. It’s a shame that we forget to say two or three things. The first is that the Italsider worker was murdered in 1979, that is, at least ten years after the birth of the armed party. The second is that Rossa was shocked for having denounced the organization’s “postman”, i.e. the person who distributed the Red Brigades’ press releases in the steelworks departments. After a dramatic meeting of the works council, Rossa’s companions, i.e. exponents of the CGIL and the PCI, refused to sign the complaint and the worker was left alone to sign it, exposed to the risk of reprisal, as then happened. I repeat, this happened in 1979, after the Moro kidnapping. Third oversight: the commando that killed Rossa was led by Riccardo Dura, a former militant of Lotta continua, and in the hideout in via Fracchia in Genoa, where the carabinieri identified and eliminated the members of the so-called Ligurian column, there were a former trade unionist from Fiat Mirafiori, Lorenzo Betassa, and a delegate from Lancia di Chivasso, Piero Panciarelli. In short, they came from the left and the union. Were they comrades who “made mistakes”? They were certainly not provocateurs or even “enemies of the working class”. They wanted to overthrow the State – not the PCI – and in fact they struck, with two or three exceptions, men of the State. Everything else, with which they want to disguise reality, is a historical falsehood, which serves to hide who are those who today throw Molotov cocktails and cobblestones and injure the policemen with the hammer.■
