Tribune. Is it possible to face the story, to work on his traumas, to heal his wounds, by posthumous arrests? Isn’t obsessive justice the real obstacle to rebuilding the past and promoting open debate?
The recent move by the Italian government, which has demanded the extradition of a handful of women and men who have been refugees for decades in France, has the sour flavor of revenge and the bitter taste of revenge. As if the delivery of their bodies, to be locked in the walls of a prison, was the means of placing a tombstone, the seal of a stigma on this chapter of Italian history.
A dark continuity
Briefly, we use the label “years of lead” to indicate a complex period, marked by concerns and tensions, but also rich in ferments and new hopes.
Just as Germany emerged from Nazism, Italy was rebuilt from the rubble of fascism – except that there was resistance and civil war among us. But in either case, there remained a grim continuity. And not just because the former fascists held positions in prefectures, police stations and administrations.
When my generation, that of the 1970s, opened its eyes to the faults of fathers, extreme violence began. I remember as if it was yesterday the massacre in Piazza Fontana [à la suite de l’explosion d’une bombe dans le hall de la Banque de l’agriculture qui fit 16 morts et 80 blessés], December 12, 1969, of which the anarchists were immediately accused. This was the “strategy of tension”: putschist plots, hijacking of the secret services, collusion of state apparatuses, violence and neofascist bombs, which enjoyed cover. Here, yes, there is still a lot to be clarified. So 1968 was not enough.
We who recognized ourselves in partisan Italy mobilized. And I speak personally, because I was then part of a group of the extra-parliamentary left and of the feminist collective of my faculty of letters and philosophy in [l’université] Sapienza from Rome. It was a season of political struggles and decisive cultural battles.
It must be admitted: in Italy, on the left, there was a great revolt, perhaps the most important and the most widespread in the western context of the post-war period. It was very radical, with strong libertarian and anarchist traits, on which political philosophy has yet to reflect. It enjoyed a broad consensus, that is undeniable. In some areas it degenerated into an armed struggle, harmful and, in many ways, suicidal. The Red Brigades, which came in part from the workers’ movement, turned from a vanguard into a clandestine organization.
You have 54.8% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.