Anatomy of the Red Brigades

Alessandro Orsini, J. Nodes Sarah

Description

The Red Brigades were a far-left terrorist group in Italy formed in 1970 and active all through the 1980s. Infamous around the world for a campaign of assassinations, kidnappings, and bank robberies intended as a "concentrated strike against the heart of the State," the Red Brigades' most notorious crime was the kidnapping and murder of Italy's former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. In the late 1990s, a new group of violent anticapitalist terrorists revived the name Red Brigades and killed a number of professors and government officials. Like their German counterparts in the Baader-Meinhof Group and today's violent political and religious extremists, the Red Brigades and their actions raise a host of questions about the motivations, ideologies, and mind-sets of people who commit horrific acts of violence in the name of a utopia. In the first English edition of a book that has won critical acclaim and major prizes in Italy, Alessandro Orsini contends that the dominant logic of the Red Brigades was essentially eschatological, focused on purifying a corrupt world through violence. Only through revolutionary terror, Brigadists believed, could humanity be saved from the putrefying effects of capitalism and imperialism. Through a careful study of all existing documentation produced by the Red Brigades and of all existing scholarship on the Red Brigades, Orsini reconstructs a worldview that can be as seductive as it is horrifying. Orsini has devised a micro-sociological theory that allows him to reconstruct the group dynamics leading to political homicide in extreme-left and neonazi terrorist groups. This "subversive-revolutionary feedback theory" states that the willingness to mete out and suffer death depends, in the last analysis, on how far the terrorist has been incorporated into the revolutionary sect. Orsini makes clear that this political-religious concept of historical development is central to understanding all such self-styled "purifiers of the world." From Thomas Muntzer's theocratic dream to Pol Pot's Cambodian revolution, all the violent "purifiers" of the world have a clear goal: to build a perfect society in which there will no longer be any sin and unhappiness and in which no opposition can be allowed to upset the universal harmony. Orsini's book reconstructs the origins and evolution of a revolutionary tradition brought into our own times by the Red Brigades.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Western Europe
• Terrorism
• History of Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801460913
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

ANATOMY OF THE RED BRIGADES

AN

ATOMY OF THE RED BRIGADES

T HE RE L I GI OUS MI NDSE T OF MODE RN T E RRORI STS

A l e s s a n d r o O r s i n i

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN BY SARAH J. NODES

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Originally published in Italian as Alessandro Orsini, Anatomia delle Brigate rosse: Le radici ideologiche del terrorismo rivoluzionario,by Rubbettino Editore S.r.l., Viale Rosario Rubbettino n. 10, 88049 Soveria Mannelli (CZ), Italy.

Copyright © 2009 by Rubbettino Editore, www.rubbettino.it

English translation copyright © 2011 LUISS University of Rome “Guido Carli”

English translation first published 2011 by Cornell University Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Orsini, Alessandro, 1975–  [Anatomia delle Brigate rosse. English]  Anatomy of the Red Brigades : the religious mindset of modern terrorists / Alessandro Orsini ; translated from the Italian by Sarah J. Nodes.  p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801449864 (cloth : alk. paper)  1. Brigate rosse. 2. Ideology. 3. Terrorism. I. Title.  HV6433.I82R436313 2011  363.3250945—dc22 2010047281

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing

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Co nt e nts

Introduction 1 1. The Pedagogy of Intolerance 9 The Revolutionary Vocation 9 Violence as the Only Way 14 The “Binary Code” Mentality 17 Political Violence and Social  Marginality 21 Eschatological Politics 26 2. The Sacralization of Politics 30 The “Fanaticism of a New Religion” 30 Radical Catastrophism 33 The Revolutionary Sect and the  Obsession with Purity 36 The Hatred of Reformists 42 3. Toward the Bloodshed 48 Daily Life in a Revolutionary Sect 48 The Red Brigades’ Organization Plan 54 The Blood Crime and Its “Story” 58 The Path to Bloodshed 66 Shedding Blood and the Role of the  Revolutionary Sect 83 The Detachment from the Surrounding  World 89 4. The Genesis of the Red Brigades 93 The Red Brigades’ Social Roots 93 The “Cultural Lag” Theory 108 When Were the Red Brigades Born? 118

vi CONTENTS

The Red Brigades: “Imbeciles” or  Real Revolutionaries? 122 Antonio Gramsci and the “Hour  of Redemption” 125 The Italian Communist Party’s Role in  the Genesis of the Red Brigades 131 An Oxymoron: The “Leninist  Reformist” Party 147 5. The Masters of the Red Brigades Illustrious Predecessors: Thomas  Müntzer 155 John of Leiden, King and  Revolutionary 162 The English Revolution and the  Puritan Movement 165 The French Revolution and the  Jacobin Experiment 170 Babeuf: “The world has plunged  into chaos” 184 Karl Marx’s Pantoclastic Dream 187 The Revolutionary Tradition of  Russian Populism 196 6. The Purifiers of the World in Power Lenin and State Terrorism 208 The Bolshevik Revolution and the  “Victims of the Victims” 213 The Gulag, or The Promise Kept 217 Mao and the Myth of the “New Man” The Cambodian Revolution 237 Not a Conclusion: Portrait of a  Red Brigadist

Appendix: Red Brigades and Black Brigades263 A Note on Method285 Bibliography289 Index of Names313

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ANATOMY OF THE RED BRIGADES

Introduction

It is a frightening idea that envy, resentment, and hate can sometimes have a decisive effect on the course of history. A rational vision of politics, in which the actors’ choices are always based on a 1 costbenefit calculation, is much more reassuring. In this book I tell the story of a pathos that became a political movement and kept an entire country under siege for almost twenty years, leading it to 2 the brink of civil war. We’re talking not about an army but about a handful

1. J. Coleman,Foundations of Social Theory. 2. According to the comparative analysis of modern terrorism by G. Chaliand and A. Blin (“Dal 1968 all’islamismo radicale,” 243), “Italy was by far the country most affected by terrorist activities between 1969 and 1985.” The latest figures on terrorist violence in Italy in the 1969–2007 period are given by L. Manconi,Terroristi italiani,22ff. A total of 333 people were killed in attacks and massacres in Italy between 1969 and 2007. Of these, 144 can be ascribed to leftwing terrorism, 54 to right wing terrorism; 135 were killed in massacres. Victims of international terrorism are not included. No less impressive are the statistics concerning damage to things and violence against people. Between 1969 and 1980 12,690 political attacks were recorded. Of these, 4,035 were carried out between 1969 and 1974, and 8,655 from 1975 to 1980. Out of a total of 362 victims, 92 (25 percent) died during the first period, 270 (75 percent) in the second. Between 1969 and 1974, 63 people were victims of rightwing and 9 of leftwing terrorist attacks, and 10 were killed in shootouts with the police; for the remaining 10 the identity of the attackers is unknown. Between 1975 and 1980, 115 people were killed by rightwing terrorists, 110 by leftwing ones, 29 by the police, and 16 by unknowns. The least blood was shed in 1971 (6 deaths), the most in 1980 (135 deaths). The great est number of people were wounded during the late seventies (551, including 200 in Bologna alone in 1980). At least 75 people had been “kneecapped” up to December 1978. See M. Galleni, ed.,

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