Red Brigades And Fascism In Italy

The fascist state and fascism legacy played a central role also in the Italian left-wing terrorism. Red Brigades (BR) and other terrorists’ groups denounced the Italian state to be a “Multinational Imperialist State”12. Moreover, these groups believed to be the heir of the Resistance, as can be noticed from their names: the term brigades were used in the resistance; Nuclei Armati Proletari (armed proletarian groups, NAP) and Gruppi di Azione Partigiana (partisan action groups, GAP) recall directly the names of resistance groups. Furthermore, in Italy also right-wing terrorism was widely active, acting mostly through crowded places bombing. The right-wing terrorism, the inability (and the low effort) of the government to investigate and prosecute

Furthermore, on August 2, 1980, a right-wing bombing attack at the Bologna station took place. The public was horrified and lost his sense of security, thus the state needed to take action. Therefore, the government gave more powers to the armed forces and through the law on pentitismo, the government attracted lots of former terrorist outside the armed struggle and pushed them to collaborate with justice17 18. However, for some other years the BR continued to carry out terrorist attacks against magistrates, politicians, journalists and other symbolic figures. Moreover, Brigades’ original members, from prison, openly criticized the operate of the new members17. During the 1980s the BR and other minor terrorist groups were dismantled. However, in the 2000s the New Red Brigades were formed and carried out some actions, which however lacked the force and the symbolism of the past12 17

Both, the BR and the RAF, referred to the Marxist-Leninist tradition, however, their ideology was based more on the Trotskyian idea of permanent revolution and on the Maoist version of Marxism. Moreover, they praised the Cambodian revolutionary Pol Pot and its idea of society purification from bourgeoisie and capitalism. Furthermore, these urban terrorists wanted to be placed in the world of self-determination fighters, such as Latin American revolutionaries1 7-10. Likewise, these groups looked at Vietnam war as an example to take to fight capitalism and the USA. Finally, there was a strict link between Palestinian freedom-fighters and German and Italian terrorists. The former trained in Jordan together with Palestinians and sponsored “Black September” actions10; the latter were known to have used weapons coming from Palestinians. Other contact points concern the memory of the 2nd World War and the Nazi-fascist past, the idea to fight against an oppressive state governed by the multinationals, and against the USA and the NATO1-3 7 8