The Red Brigades ( , often abbreviated BR) were an Italian far-left Marxist–Leninist militant group. It was responsible for numerous violent attacks during Italy's Years of Lead, including the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro in 1978, a former prime minister of Italy through the organic centre-left. The assassination of Moro was a national shock in Italy, as was that of left-wing trade unionist Guido Rossa in January 1979. Sandro Pertini, the then left-wing president of Italy, said at Rossa's funeral: "It is not the President of the Republic speaking, but comrade Pertini. I knew [the real] red brigades: they fought with me against the fascists, not against democrats. For shame!"
Formed in 1970, the Red Brigades sought to create a revolutionary state through armed struggle, and to remove Italy from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The organization attained notoriety in the 1970s and early 1980s with their violent acts of sabotage, bank robberies, the kneecapping of certain industrialists, factory owners, bankers, and politicians deemed to be exploitative, as well as the kidnappings or murders of industrialists, prominent capitalists, politicians, law enforcement officials, and other perceived enemies of the working-class revolution. Nearly fifty people were killed in its attacks between 1974 and 1988. According to the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the BR was a "broadly diffused" terrorist group.
Models for the BR included the Latin American urban guerrilla movements and the World War II era Italian partisan movement. The group was also influenced by volumes on the Tupamaros of Uruguay published by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, which in the words of historian Paul Ginsborg became "a sort of do-it-yourself manual for the early Red Brigades".Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy 1943–1988, Penguin 1990 p. 361–362 Other influences included the Algerian National Liberation Front and the Viet Cong.
In the 1980s, the group was broken up by Italian investigators, with the aid of several leaders under arrest who turned pentiti and assisted the authorities in capturing the other members. The group had a resurgence in the late 1990s to the 2000s. Although Italy was not the sole country to experience years of terrorism, the BR were the most powerful, largest, and longest-lived post-World War II left-wing terrorist group in Western Europe. Like-minded organizations were the Red Army Faction in Germany, the Irish National Liberation Army (with their political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party) in Ireland, and, in Spain, the Basque left-wing nationalist group ETA. Countries hit by terrorism included France, Germany, Ireland, and Spain.
Throughout their existence, the BR were generally opposed by other far-left groups, such as Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio, and were isolated from the Italian political left, including by the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which they opposed for their Historic Compromise with Moro and Christian Democracy. With the kidnapping and murder of Moro, they were instrumental in blocking the PCI's road to government. In the words of historian David Broder, rather than causing through their actions a radicalization of the Italian political landscape as they had hoped, it resulted in an anti-communist blowback and a decline for the extra-parliamentary left, which has sometimes prompted accusations that the Red Brigades were infiltrated by anti-communist or governmental entities seeking to undermine the group, especially in regard to the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro.
1970: First BR generation The Red Brigades were formed in August 1970.Alexander p. 194 Its founders were Renato Curcio and Margherita Cagol, who had met as students at the University of Trento and later married, and Alberto Franceschini. Franceschini's grandmother had been a leader of the peasant leagues, his father a worker and anti-fascist who had been deported to Auschwitz.Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1988, (London: Penguin, 1990) p.361.
The formation of the Red Brigades took place in the context of social struggles in the late 1960s. Workers' strikes shook factories, Pirelli and Siemens in particular, which led part of the labour movement to adopt "armed propaganda" as a method of struggle. The first actions, such as the destruction of foremen's vehicles or sequestration of executives, reflect the social composition of the armed groups. Among the 1,337 people convicted of belonging to the Red Brigades, 70% were workers, service sector employees or students.
The fear of a far-right power grab in Italy, like the regime of the colonels in Greece and the military dictatorship of Chile led by Augusto Pinochet, in a country still scarred by its Italian fascist past, partly explains why far-left terrorism has developed in Italy more than in any other European country. Sergio Segio, one of the figures of the Years of Lead, said: "I grew up with the idea that they were planning a coup, like in Greece or Chile. And that they would have killed us. In fact, they had already started." Between 1969 and 1975, attacks and political violence were mainly attributable to right-wing groups (95% from 1969 to 1973, 85% in 1974, and 78% in 1975).
While the Trento group around Curcio had its main roots in the Sociology Department of the Catholic University, the Reggio Emilia group (around Franceschini) included mostly former members of the Italian Communist Youth Federation (FGCI) expelled from the PCI for extremist views.A Jamieson. Identity and morality in the Italian Red Brigades. Terrorism and Political Violence, 1990, p. 508-15 In the beginning, the BR were mainly active in Reggio Emilia, in large factories in Milan (Pirelli, Sit-Siemens, and Magneti Marelli) and in Turin (Fiat). Members sabotaged factory equipment and broke into factory offices and trade union headquarters. In 1972, they carried out their first kidnapping, in which a factory foreman for Sit Siemens was held for around twenty minutes whilst pictures were taken of him wearing a placard declaring him to be a fascist.R. Lumley, States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978, (London: Verso, 1990) p.282. The foreman was then released unharmed.See Giovanni Fasanella and Alberto Franceschini (with an afterword by judge Rosario Priore, who investigated Aldo Moro's death), Che cosa sono le BR ("Brigades Rouges. L'Histoire secrète des Red Brigades racontée par leur fondateur, Alberto Franceschini. Entretien avec Giovanni Fasanella". Editions Panama, 2005 a review by Le Monde.
The BR's kidnappings were different from those in Latin American or European groups in that, apart from two major exceptions, they had been pursued not for immediate practical possibilities but for symbolic ritualism, where the targeted symbol represented an action towards the symbolized entity. Initially, the BR focused on managerial staff and right-wing trade unionists from the country's largest firms, such as Alfa Romeo, Fiat, and Sit-Siemens. By 1974, with the decrease of working-class mobilization, they shifted from the factory to the state and its institutions; in 1976, they described in particular the magistrature as "the weakest link in the chain of power". Subsequently, they began targeting politicians. During the 1970s, the BR had carried out eight symbolic kidnappings. They all followed a similar path in which the victim was subjected to a summary trial, held in captivity for a period between 20 minutes to 55 days, and then released unharmed. Aldo Moro's, the ninth of those symbolic kidnappings, was the only one to result in murder.
During this time, the BR's activities were denounced by far-left political groups, such as Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio, which were closer to the autonomist movement. Those like Lotta Continua shared the need for armed self-defence against police and fascist violence but were critical of terrorist actions, which they saw as elitist and counterproductive, and condemned the BR as a catalyst rather than an answer to repression. Lotta Continua questioned the BR's claim that eliminating individual capitalists would have strengthened class organization. After its dissolution, the Lotta Continua continuity paper headlined "neither with the state nor the Red Brigades".
Frequent allegations of links between the BR and the intelligence services of Communist states were made but never proven, and were always rejected by the militants in books and interviews. In June 1974, the Red Brigades killed two members of the Italian neo-fascist party, Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), during a raid on the MSI headquarters in Padua.
1974 arrest of BR founders In September 1974, Curcio and Franceschini were arrested by General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. The arrest was made possible by "Frate Mitra", alias Silvano Girotto, a former monk who had infiltrated the BR for the Italian security services.Brigate Rosse and Moro Kidnappig: secrets and lies Curcio was freed from prison by an armed commando of the BR, led by his wife Cagol, but was rearrested sometime later.
Expansion and radicalization
After 1974, the Red Brigades expanded into Rome, Genoa, and Venice, their numbers grew drastically and began to diversify in their criminal ventures. The BR operated some high-profile political kidnappings (e.g. Genoa judge Mario Sossi) and kidnapped industrialists (e.g. Vallarino Gancia) in order to obtain ransom money which (together with bank robberies) were their main source of income. Its 1975 manifesto stated that its goal was a "concentrated strike against the heart of the State, because the state is an imperialist collection of multinational corporations". The SIM (Stato Imperialista delle Multinazionali) became a primary target.
In 1975, the Carabinieri discovered a farmhouse where Gancia was kept prisoner by the BR (Cascina Spiotta). In the ensuing gunfight, two police officers were killed, as was Cagol. That following April, the BR announced that they had set up a Communist Combatant Party to "guide the working class". Terrorist activities, especially against Carabinieri and magistrates, increased considerably in order to terrorize juries and cause mistrials in cases against imprisoned leaders of the organization. Also, since arrested members of the BR refused to be defended by lawyers, lawyers designated by the courts to defend them (difensori d' ufficio) were also targeted and killed. Amongst jurists, Professor Fausto Cuocolo was also attacked in 1979, during an exam at University of Genoa; it was the first time that the BR attacked in a school. Their weaponry came mainly from the stocks of the Italian Resistance during the Second World War.
Kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro