Italy - Factors Conducive to Growth
In addition to possessing a firmer doctrinal base and a more efficient operational structure, the Communist component of the Italian terrorist milieu has drawn more vitality than any of its counterparts from a general state of malaise, conducive to destabilization, that is attributable to insufficient social services, political contradictions, governmental instability, unenlightened media practices, and the teachings of the Italian Communist Party - not to be confused with the combatant Communist party the Red Brigades and sister groups wish to construct.
Each of these five principal factors can be briefly summarized as follows:
First, by l960, ItaIy had experienced the so-called economic miracle, entailing a rapid passage from post-war reconstruction to an advanced industrial posture. Italy was now the seventh most industrialized nation. Regrettably, this momentous industrial expansion, which triggered mass migrations from south to north and from rural to urban areas, was not accompanied by a parallel growth in social structures. The metropolitan centers were ultimately unable to provide adequately for the increased population in terms of housing, schools, hospitals, and other social services. These unsatisfactory material conditions facilitated subversive propaganda and recruitment.
Second, no less damaging from a psychological perspective were the contradictions inherent to the deep-rooted practices of Italy's political parties. In the absence of an absolute majority party in the Parliament, parties having discordant platforms coalesce at rhapsodic intervals, after political barter and ideological compromiise, in order to form the government (executive cabinet), which, in accordance with the Republican Constitution of 1948, musL enjoy the suppurt of Parliament to stay in office. The lack of homogeneity in the makeup of these coalitions frequently constituted a hindrance to good and efficient government, while it conversely nurtured a spoils system, based on graft and corruption, to the benefit of the coalition partners. Besides creating a state of malaise among the population at large, this situation increased the credibility of the terrorist left in the eyes of youthful extremists and Idealists.
Third, the instability of the Italian Government was made manifest by the succession of 39 executive cabinets [by 1980] since the Constilution went into effect on January 1, 1948. Governmental instability, coupled with the political contradictions, in turn produced governmental weakness and permissiveness.
A macroscopic rellection of this state of affairs is the governmental stance vis-a-vis durable trends of unruliness and violence in expressing socio-economic demands inaugurated by student and organized labor unrest in the late 1960's. The governmental response prevalent throughout most of the following decade consisted of policies and, indeed legislation that resulted in the downgrading of the educational system, the slanting of labor relations too heavily in favor of employees and the labor unions to the deteriment of the national economy, the weakening of criminal laws and procedures in favor of politicized and non politicized social deviants, the reduction of military and police efficiency, and the virtual emasculation of the intelligence services. The lowering of academic standards turned out to be particularly harmful, because it produced a larger number of graduates whose increased post-graduation expectations cannot find a receptive job market.
This climate of permissiveness has likewise contributed to emboldening the aspirations and behavior of subversive elements of the left in particular but also of other ideological persuasions. When remedial legislation and policies were resorted to in the fall of 1970, much of the damage had by then already been done.
Fourth, except for the terrorists' own journals and the press organs of sympathetic extra-parliamentary organizations, the media cannot be accused of having been supportive at any time of terrorist tactics or goals. Yet, a number of unenlightened media practices contributed to the public's disorientation, while particulary favoring the terrorist left.
In the first place, an inordinate amount of daily coverage was devoted to the terrorist phenomenon, which, in the ultimate analysis, produced fewer casualties than careless and wreckless driving, In this sense the terrorist formations, especially the intensively dynamic ones of the left, found in the media a much valued sounding board for their ideology and actions, as well as a channel for granting exclusive interviews.
Secondly, as the terrorists ranks of the left were growing in strength and boldness even professionally resptected dailies, such as Corriere della Sera of Milan and La Stampa of Turin, and major weeklies, such as L'Espresso of Rome and Panorama of Milan, cast doubt on the Marxist-Leninist matrix of specific crimes, whose perpetrators had since been identified as terrorists of Communist inspiration, According to media perceptions, instead, responsibility rested with the right disguised as the left.
Two instructive examples of this media attitude relate to the abduction of Assistant State Attorney Mario Sossi in Genoa and the murder of two Italian Social Movement (MSI) activists in Padua, perpetrated in each instance by the Red Brigades in 1974.
Lastly, scoop-oriented journalists have not hesitated to print documents pertinent to ongoing police/judicial investigations into terrorist crimes before their official public release, thus jeopardizing the investigations themselves. The most notorious incident of this nature is the publication of long excerpts from the interrogation record of repentant red brigadist Patrizio Peci in May of 1980 by II Messaggero, a Rome daily.
Fifth, since the early 1970's the official Italian Communist Party (PCl) had considerably toned down its revolutionary rhetoric in order to project. an image of moderation to achieve its political ends through a broad electoral base. However, its political ends remained Communist as that party consistently refuted any equation with social domocracy. While PCI electoral strategies are of limited interest to the study at hand, its ideological and operational precedents are of significance.
The doctrine, objectives and parlance of the terrorist left were reminiscent of the PCI's more traditional hardline. Rossana Rossanda, formerly of the PCI and later of Il Manifesto, in commenting on the proclamations of the Red Brigades picturesquely stated: "It's like leafing through a family album." Likewise, the Red Brigades displayed a deep affinity for democratic centralism, an organizational principle democratic in name only that the PCI itself still refused to discard. Moreover, as the major opposition party and the foremost anti-system element within the system for over three decades, it provided not only ideological nourishment but also instructive operational precedents to the various terrorist organizations of the left.
From the standpoint of targets and tactics, various parallels may be drawn between the Red Brigades, Front Line, and other leftist terriorist bands of the past decade, on one hand, and the PCI of the 1940's, 1950's, arid 1960's on the other.
In the mid-1940's, Communist partisans who had expected the War of Liberation to usher in the "Italian Soviet Republic" stored away sizable caches of weapons for future use and organized paramilitary units. One of these, the Red Strike Force (Volante Rossa), remained active in various parts of Italy at least well into 1949. Its activities included abductions, woundings, and murders of political adversaries as well as lesser intimidatory techniques. In 1948, during the 6th PCI Congress, the Red Strike Force was brazenly used by the Party to keep order and to escort the Soviet delegates and French Communist Party leader Maurice Thorez. Other PCI card-carrying members were responsible for uprisings and raids in Ragusa and Sehio (53 murders in Sehio alone) in 1945, in other northern towns the following year, and through much of the rest of Italy after the abortive attempt on the life of PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti by one Antonio Pallante on July 4, 1948.
The following evening, Luigi Longo, who succeeded Togliatti as secretary-general and later became president of the party (a position he held until his death in 1980) stated: "Let's see how things go. If the protest wave increases, we will allow it to increase. If it decreases, we will block it." Next day, Longo, backed by Pietro Secchia, another hard liner, made the following statement before the Party's central committee: "The insurgent forces are concentrated in the large cities of the North. . . . The rank-and-file are saying, 'We have the factories in our hands: we have the cities in our hands.' But let the comrades reflect: for the time being neither the police nor the army has intervened. If they do, they have cannon and tanks against which it is impossible to resist."
Pragmatism ultimately prevailed over revolutionary fervor and incipient insurgency. A decade later, in the summer of 1960, the government of Prime Minister Fernando Tambroni, who had accepted the parliamentary support of the rightist Italian Social Movement (MSI), was overturned because of Communist street violence. Particularly affected by the Communist-inspired disorders were the cities of Genoa, Licata, Rome, Reggio Emilia, Palermo, and Catania. Eight casualties and several hundred injuries occurred during the clashes with the police.
While the relationship between the revolutionaries of the left and the PCI was not one of amity, it was difficult to challenge their joint inheritance right to the "family album" spoken of by Rossana Rossanda.
The structure and operations of the Italian terrorist groups of Communist inspiration were largely patterned after those of the Algerian National Liberation Front and of various South American urban guerrilla groups. In fact, the principles set forth in Carlos Marighella's "Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla" had been skillfully adapted to the Italian scene.
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