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Red Brigades |
Brigate Rosse
| This is a Marxist-Leninist group whose aim is to separate Italy from the
Western Alliance. An ultra-leftist group, the Red Brigades, left its mark on
the Italian political scene of the 1970s and '80s. The organization arose
out of the student protest movement of the late 1960s. It's ideology
advocated violence in the service of class warfare and revolution. Most of
the group's attacks targeted symbols of "the establishment" such as
unionists, politicians and businessmen. In it's later period it advocated
Italy's withdrawal from NATO.
From the mid-eighties onward, the Red Brigade entered a period of decline. Internal scisms, ideological crisis, operational failures, and the arrest of many of the group's leaders undermined the organization's cohesion. Increasingly, the Red Brigades grew isolated from its working class base and from public opinion. On the operationl level, the 1981 pentiti legislation, which encouraged defection and enhanced the powers of the security forces, helped to hasten the group's flight underground. As was the case with other extremist organizations, the BR withdrew into its shell, distanced itself from political propaganda, and focused increasingly on its war against the security forces. In April 1984, four imprisoned leaders of the organization published an “open letter” in which they rejected the armed struggle as pointless: “The international conditions that made this struggle possible no longer exist,” they stated. |
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The Red Brigades were formed in 1969 out of the student movements. In 1984 the
group split into two separate organizations: the Communist Combatant Party
(BR-PCC) and the Union of Combatant Communists (BR-UCC).
The Red Brigades had the most solid and consistent ideology of all the European
extreme left terrorist organizations of 1970's and 1980's. The leaders of the BR
saw themselves as the standard-bearers of Marxism-Leninism in its purest form.
Some see the Italian revolutionary left as developing out of the dramatic
internal rift within the left in the 1960s. At that time there was an
ideological rift between the Italian Communist Party’s (Partito Communista
Italiano – PCI) reformist policy and Marxist-Leninist revolutionary ideology,
which helped shape the mentality of the party activists and the Italian
intelligentsia. This rift was eventually resolved through political and
doctrinaire radicalism.
The extra-parliamentary far left in Italy embraced two trends: Marxism-Leninism in the narrow sense of the word, and Workers’ Autonomy (Autonomia Operaia - AO). The basic difference between these two trends lay in the different emphases placed on “party” and “class,” on the “organized, aware avant-garde” and the “spontaneity of the masses.” The Marxist-Leninists clung to Lenin’s doctrine that the party clearly came first. The advocates of AO, however, interpreted Marx and Lenin differently. Although they were aware of the importance of the party as an essential stage in the revolutionary process, they stressed the importance of political organization and political awareness among the “maturing” working class, thereby reversing the Leninist relationship between party and class. The BR saw themselves as offshoots of the Autonomia Operaia movement, not so much a party as an “armed avant-garde” working within the proletariat in order to establish a party.
The Italian radical left had a number of prestigious ideologues, accepted by the intelligentsia and left-wing student activists. By far the most famous and influential was Professor Antonio Negri of the University of Padua. Despite his arrest and trial by the authorities, his direct and practical implication in terrorist events was never proved. However, his books and articles had an enormous influence on the leaders of the BR and other terrorist organizations. There is some basis to to the argument that Negri gave legitimacy to terrorist violence by depicting shooting, sabotage, strikes, subversive and even criminal behavior as legitimate tools for the “de-structuralization” of the capitalist economy.
In spite of its Marxist-Leninist base the BR was imbued with the ideology of
the New Left and neo-Marxism. Events, in the final analysis, strengthened its
anarchist orientation, so that it almost qualifies as an anarcho-Communist
organization.
Although not currently active, the group was greatly feared in the 1970's and
early '80's. In 1978, in what became a hallmark of Italian political terrorism,
the group kidnapped former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. He was held captive for
nearly two months, before his body was finally dumped in the heart of Rome.
A similar kidnapping in ended in a police rescue operation. General James
Dozier, an American who held a position with NATO in Italy was abducted by Red
Brigades operatives in 1981. The general was freed in a raid on a Brigades
hideout in northern Italy. A severe crackdown on the organization followed, in
which most of the group's leaders were arrested. Many turned informer, leading
security forces to other members and hastening the group's slide into obscurity.
At this time, the Red Brigades are thought to have no more than 50 members, and
an unknown number of sympathizers.
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