This essay was based on the Italian Wikipedia. The English-language
Wikipedia was not consulted. References to the English-language
Wikipedia are merely for the reader's convenience.
The New Red Brigades (Nuove Brigate Rosse) presented
themselves as the successors of the Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse), who
among other things had in 1978 abducted and mudered Aldo Moro,a top Christian Democratic politician, during the Years of Lead. The Red Brigades (RB) were an Italian far-left terrorist organization formed in 1970 to propagate
and develop the revolutionary armed struggle to attain communism. They had a Marxist-Leninist
ideology. They were the largest, the most numerous and the longest-lived left-wing terrorist
group in Western Europe after the 2nd World War.
Between 1969 and 1984, 18 left-wing Italian terrorist groups are listed. About 5 of them killed people, usually one or two each. The only big one was the Red Brigades, which
killed 86 people by 1988. Their names were: 22nd October Group, Red Brigades, Partisan Action Groups, Communist
Brigades, Venetian Political Collectives, Armed Proletarian Groups,
Revolutionary Communist Committees, Armed Communist Formations, Front line,
Communist Combat Units, Revolutionary Action, Armed Proletarians for Communism,
Communist Assault Units, Communist Combat Formations, Communist Territorial
Groups, Revolutionary Communist Movement, 28th March Brigade and Communists
Organized for Proletarian Liberation
During the Years of Lead
there was also much right-wing terrorism in Italy, which is not
mentioned here. Its purpose was to create panic in the population at large through massacres, while left-wing terrorists sought fairly precise political objectives.
The RB's decision to undertake the armed struggle was made at a conference
held in August 1970 in Vezzano sul Crostolo (province of Reggio Calabria, in
southern Italy), which was attended by a hundred left-wing extremists from
Milan, Trento, Reggio Emilia and Rome. The organization was joined by the
militants of the so-called "Reggio group", including Alberto
Franceschini, people from the University
of Trento (in northern Italy), including Renato Curcio and Margherita Cagol, and workers
and employees from the Pirelli (tire manufacturer) and Sit -Siemens
(electrical engineering) factories in Milan
 |
| Aldo Moro during captivity |
By 1988 the RB had killed 86 people, mostly police,
judges, politicians and factory owners. Its biggest action was the kidnapping in
1978 of top Christian Democrat politician Aldo Moro, whom they proposed to
exchange for RB prisoners. The government refused and Moro was eventually killed. Both the fascists and the Communists
opposed any exchange, while some politicians like the socialist Bettino Craxi proposed giving in. Aldo Moro belonged
to the
left wing of the ruling Christian Democrat party. He proposed
including the Italian Communist Party in government, a project called the
so-called "historical compromise". He was by no means comparable to
the other top hostage captured in Europe at the same time, Hanns-Martin
Schleyer, who was
kidnapped by the German Red Army Faction, held for ransim and untimately
murdered, Schleyer was the head of the German employers' association, and was a
very tough negotiator with the German
lanbopr unions. He had begun a brilliant career during the 2nd World War as a
top organizer in the SS. Although he did not actually commit any murders, he
was a hard-line Nazi, who managed to restart his career after the war after a
few years of penance. On the whoile Aldo
Moro was a sympathetic figure influenced by Catholic philosopers like Jacques
Maritain.
That fact is not reflected in the RB reports on Moro's interrogation.
"The answers Aldo Moro provides make increasingly clear the counter-revolutionary strategy that the imperialist centers are implementing; they clearly outline the contours and the substance of the "new" regime
which, in the
course of the restructuring of the Imperialist State of the
Multinationals, is being established in our country and whose pivot is the Christian
Democratic Party."
The Christian Democratic Party was much too amorphous an organization to
be the pivot for anything. It was
composed of numerouas competing wings that proposed varying policies.
Eventually in 1988 -- after 18 years -- the RB gave up
the struggle for Communism.
The New Red Brigades took up the cause of the RB in 1999 and
repeated its methods and ideology. But it was a very small group, only managed to kill 3 people, and was dissolved by the police after only
five years. The New Red Brigades assassinated two labor law scholars
who were involved in drafting Italian laws that reduced
the power of labor unions and labor court judges, allowing capitalists greater flexibility in hiring and firing. The Nuove Brigate
Rosse reasoned, and I think in hindsight that their reasoning was accurate, that greater labor market flexibility would cause more precarious conditions for workers. However everything depends on the social safety net. In Denmark bosses are free
to hire and fire, but workers who are laid off
draw generous unemployment benefits. Consequently in Denmark workers have no objection to the
arrangement, they just look for a new job, and the outcome seems to be better allocation of labor and greater efficiency. But in Italy greater labor market flexibility was apparently not flanked by any improvements in the social safety net.
From Italian Wikipedia:
1999:
murder of Massimo D'Antona
The murder
of the lawyer
and consultant for the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, Massimo D'Antona
was perpetrated by the Nuove Brigate Rosse (New Red Brigades) on the morning
of 20 May 1999 on via Salaria in Rome where, just after eight a.m., the law
professor was blocked by a commando of the New Red Brigades composed of Mario
Galesi and Nadia Desdemona Lioce, backed by three other terrorists in the role
of relays. Galesi, armed with an automatic pistol, discharged all nine rounds from
the magazine, shooting a coup de grâce
into D'Antona's heart. D'Antona was rushed to the Umberto I hospital where he
was pronounced dead at 9.30 a.m.
At the
trial for his murder, 17 people were tried on the charges of belonging to an armed
gang and of murder, and on 8 July 2005, the Assize Court of Rome imposed life
sentences on Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Roberto Morandi and Marco Mezzasalma. On 1
March of the same year, a summary trial was held against defendants Laura
Proietti and Cinzia Banelli, who had already been sentenced to life and twenty
years of imprisonment respectively. ...
2002:
murder of Marco Biagi
At 8.15 p.m. of 19 March 2002, the labor
lawyer and consultant at the Ministry of Labor and Social Security Marco Biagi
was assassinated in Bologna, killed by several gunshots before his home while returning
home from the train station on his bicycle. The commando that perpetrated the
assassination used the same gun as for the murder of D'Antona. Their crime was
greatly facilitated by the fact that Biagi had no bodyguards, since a few
months earlier his police escort had been withdrawn.
The Nuove
Brigate Rosse issued an announcement claiming the murder, which showed
several points in common with their previous announcement claiming the murder
of D'Antona. Already the first lines of the proclamation revealed the sort of
crime planning typical of the organization. As in the D'Antona case, the victim
was a government
official involved in flezibilizing
the labor market. At trial, on 1 June 2005, the Court of Assizes issued five
life sentences against Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Roberto Morandi, Marco
Mezzasalma, Diana Blefari Melazzi and Simone Boccaccini.
Remarks:
I notice the assassination operations were heavily overstaffed but poorly equipped, since they only had one gun and they used it for both
murders 3 years apart. There was no need for 3 or 4 terrorists to cut them
off on the street and fire nine shots at them. That was what led to their eventual arrest and conviction. It would have been more practical for a sniper to shoot them from a distance
and then sneak off quietly. Italian terrorists had
the same complaint as American politicians: they spent too much of their time fundraising. Perhaps if they had adopted more efficient methods they wouldn’t
have needed so much money.
