Terrorism has been a plague for Western democracies over the past decade, but in France and Britain it has not been a fatal disease. Other countries have not been so lucky. The Tupamaros of Uruguay took a country that, with all its problems of inflation and corruption, enjoyed 90 percent literacy, low infant mortality, and the oldest social security system outside of Sweden and in two years, from 1970-72, drove the National Assembly to hand over the state to a brutal but effective military dictatorship. (The Tupamaros’ first triumph was the murder of US advisor Dan Mitrione, an act glorified in Costa-Gavras’s movie State of Siege.)
In the 1970’s many people believed that the Red Brigades and their extraparliamentary allies were going to have, the same success in Italy. Vittorfranco Pisano surveys the carnage wrought in Italy from 1969 to 1986 in a clearly organized and detailed book which is supplemented by appendices outlining the major terrorist acts, grouped to clarify their social and political intent. This is an excellent textbook for anyone studying one of the most impressive attempts in recent history to overthrow a democracy. Pisano never makes it clear to me, however, why the Red Brigades did not succeed. With all his accuracy and clarity of presentation, a picture of the dynamics of Italian terrorism as promised in the title is precisely what I find lacking in his account.
One significant factor was the attitude of educated Italians. Even the most intelligent bought bizarre leftist tracts and boasted in their cups, “I’m not just a Communist; I’m a Stalinist.” The fascist origin of all political violence in Italy is certain, but Pisano points out that all the trials, appellate proceedings, and retrials of the past 20 years have not established the fascist origin of the worst atrocities attributed to the right, including the bank explosion of 1969 in Milan’s Piazza Fontana (16 dead), and the bombing of the Bologna train station in 1980 (85 dead).
That Italy was on the verge of a right-wing coup was the communis opinio in the early 70’s. When millionaire Giangi Feltrinelli blew himself up with one of his own bombs in March of 1972, it was all but universally believed that he was killed by fascists (or the CIA) as an act of provocation. Not until the Red Brigade leaders proclaimed his glorious death in open trial did the intelligentsia concede that Feltrinelli had been financing the wildest and most violent leftist schemes.
Absurd and tragic tales abound. Leftists set fire to the apartment of a right-wing labor leader in Primavalle in Rome in 1973. His children were home, and one did not escape. The Rome papers were full of horrific pictures of the small child at a window, screaming helplessly. The next day the popular Communist daily Paese Sera proclaimed that the atrocity had been committed by the right as an act of provocation, and this became the accepted belief of the bien pensants. The perpetrators of the crime fled to Sweden. The Italian novelist Alberto Moravia sent a telegram to the Swedish authorities, urging them to ignore the Italian extradition request, because the suspects were “unjustly accused.” The mills of Italian justice grind slowly, and it was just this past year that the court handed down its final decision. There is no reasonable doubt that the two leftists were guilty, nor any serious evidence for “provocation.”
The atmosphere in which otherwise rational people could believe that rightwingers burn their own children alive to provoke military coups—in Italy of all countries!—was the background for the rise of the Red Brigades and their allies. Italian intellectuals and the Italian press continued to support them actively, or at least turned a deaf ear to overwhelming proof of leftist violence intended to destroy the Italian democracy.
Those who spoke out suffered the consequences. When world-renowned author Luigi Barzini told the truth about his stepson, Giangi Feltrinelli, he was reviled, and an attempt to make him editor of the Rome newspaper Messagero was blocked. Indro Montanelli is Italy’s most popular author, a combination of Bill Buckley and Will Durant. He walked out of Italy’s most prestigious newspaper, Corriere della Sera, because of leftist cover-ups, and founded his own, Il Giornale Nuovo. For much of the 70’s, to be seen reading it was to be thought some kind of a nut.
Italian public opinion did change, however. Part of it was the continuing series of murders and knee-cappings, ranging from labor leaders to Montanelli himself, Then in 1978 came the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, president of the largest Italian party, the Christian Democrats. The Red Brigadists began to talk, partly in defiance, more as pentiti, the penitents. Why this happened is not clear. My own memories of 1979 have many more of the terrorists fighting to the death than had happened earlier. It was my deduction not that the Red Brigades’ policy had changed, but that the police had decided or were under orders to stop taking so many prisoners. Whatever the reason, by late 1979 the first of the major pentiti had started talking.
That was not the end, of course. The attempted assassination of the Pope in 1981, and the massacre in the Rome airport of December 1985, show that the terrorist left is still alive and kicking. Things have improved, however. Fewer people died in 1986 as a result of political violence in Italy than in any year since 1968. There are many reasons, including the growing firmness of the Italian government. Bettino Craxi has led the Italian Socialist Party away from its long dalliance with the Communists, providing the basis for a democratic left. There is no simple picture, however. Craxi was responsible for allowing the planner of the Achille Lauro atrocity to escape. The decision brought down his government, and his reward was the Rome airport massacre. There are still many unanswered questions. Pisano provides fascinating evidence that Aldo Moro may have been held in the Czech embassy in Rome. The first journalist to formulate a Czech connection in the Moro case was murdered in 1979 under circumstances that have not yet been explained.
The rats of international terrorism are still hiding in the walls, biding their time, ready to emerge again at any sign of weakness. This Jacques Chirac discovered in the fall of 1986. There is no excuse for any constitutional government to go the way of Uruguay. The Italian political class has much to learn, and the knee-capping of Indro Montanelli and the murder of Aldo Moro were only two lessons out of hundreds. They are learning, however, a lesson that neither they nor we can afford to forget.
[The Dynamics of Subversion and Violence in Contemporary Italy, by Vittorfranco S. Pisano (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press) $18.95]
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