Forty three years ago, on 12 December, 1969, a bomb exploded in a crowded bank in Piazza Fontana, Milan, killing seventeen and wounding eighty eight. This bomb was the first in a series of terrorist massacres performed as part of the so-called “strategy of tension,” a political climate of terror orchestrated by a variety of right-wing organizations which aimed at promoting “a turn to an authoritarian type of government.” (see Anna Cento Bull’s study on Italian Neofascism) Other major bomb massacres followed: in 1974, during an anti-fascist demonstration in the Northern city of Brescia and on a train traveling from Florence to Bologna. Bologna was also the stage of another dramatic massacre, when a bomb exploded in the waiting room of the central railway station, on 2 August 1980: eighty-five people died (including a three-year old girl), two hundred were wounded.
Needless to say, the 1970s have a bad reputation, in Italy. Notwithstanding the fact that two neo-fascist terrorists were sentenced for the Bologna massacre, there are still too many unresolved issues and (state) secrets for Italians to make amends with this difficult past. In fact, the so-called “years of lead” are known mostly for the large number of terrorist attacks carried out by both left-wing and right-wing terrorists, as well as other forms of “subversive” violence. These have given shape to a “collective trauma” which the country has failed to come to terms with, in spite of official monuments and annual commemorative rituals that really only contribute to the silencing of memories.
The lack of a commonly shared, official memory of these events might explain why there are so many cultural products that take on the issue of 1970s political violence. A number of movies produced since 2000, for example, have tried to narrate the story of the 1970s, in different ways and with different purposes.
Recently, acclaimed filmmaker Marco Tullio Giordana has attempted to visualize the traumatic memory of the Piazza Fontana massacre in Romanzo di una strage (“Piazza Fontana. The Italian Conspiracy,” 2012). The movie focuses not so much on the massacre itself but on the mysterious death of an anarchist who was arrested after the massacre and interrogated for three days, before he was thrown out of the window of the police headquarters. No legal truth has ever been reached on this incident, which was put off as a tragic accident. Giordana too fails to bring light on it, though he probably didn’t even intend to do so. Using the genres of the detective story and the Italian cop film, he presents a tale of mystery and secrets where the responsibility for the massacre is split between neo-fascists and anarchists, perhaps in an attempt to forge a symbolical reconciliation, which, instead in my judgment, only reopens the wound.
And so the phantom of the 1970s continues to haunt the country, as happened in May 2012, when the chief executive of a leading Italian manufacturer of thermoelectric power plants in Genoa was kneecapped by two men. Mainstream media instantly and dramatically called back memories of (left-wing) terrorism. In fact, the term “years of lead” primarily refers to left-wing terrorists, who used fire arms (“lead” being a metaphor for bullets) rather than bombs, and thus ignores right-wing terrorism which mostly had recourse to bombs, as in Piazza Fontana or Bologna. Of course it is not impossible, in times of crisis and social malaise, for some wannabe Che Guevara to decide to have a go at revolution again. But to talk about the return of the “subversive violence” of the 1970s is senseless. We are in a completely different social and historical context. More importantly, there has been a change of mentality which excludes any possibility of a new terrorist generation: Communism is no longer in, and most young people are more worried about how much money they have in their cell phones than about bringing down capitalism.
In fact, I think that we have been witnessing a sort of end of ideology in Italy: Mario Monti’s “technical” government responds primarily to the economic market, and the highly successful “5 star Movement,” led by comedian Beppe Grillo, explicitly has presented itself as an a-political party which promotes neither left-wing nor right-wing ideologies, but ideas. The traditional left, finally, has had its own demons to fight with: Florence’s mayor Matteo Renzi, a young and highly overestimated politician whose political views seem closer to the neoliberal right than to his own party. In a move not dissimilar to the one with which Silvio Berlusconi managed to win over the Italians in 1994, 37-year old Renzi had a go at the presidential primaries for the Democratic Party last month, promoting vague ideas about generational change and modernization. In doing so, he built strongly on the American model, with his Obama-like blouse with blue tie, tour bus and catchy slogans. Although such attempts to break with the hierarchical and rigid schemes of Italian politics is necessary, Renzi’s incapacity (or reluctance) to take discussions beyond the idea of generational change and engage in more serious political debates make him a highly inappropriate candidate. His success both among disappointed left-wing voters and right-wing voters in search of a new leader is another sign of Italy’s current struggle to define a political identity and outline a future direction, a struggle exemplified also by Berlusconi’s neoliberal right.
Over the past few months, Forza Italia has been desperately seeking a new political leader, up to the point that the party announced its own presidential primaries with some twenty candidates, an unthinkable situation when Berlusconi was still in charge, the party being constructed entirely around his figure. This has further fragmented the party, pushing right-wing voters in the direction of Renzi. However, this may also have been Berlusconi’s strategy – to create the impression that his party, and the country as a whole, cannot do without his leadership.
Berlusconi purports to be needed, motivating his umpteenth change of mind about going back into politics for the good of the country. Not very convincing, though: the day after Mario Monti’s announcement of resignation, the bond spreads rose instantly. The country risks losing the confidence of economic markets which Monti so painfully obtained. He brought the spreads down from nearly 600 in 2011, when Berlusconi resigned, to some 300 before Berlusconi announced his return, earlier this week. Now, Berlusconi seems to be building his election campaign on a new enemy: the ‘scam’ of the bond spreads.
The world no longer seems to be run by politics or warfare, but predominantly by economic markets. People too are tired of politics and ideology, and ready for a new start. This increases the tendency to talk about difficult memories of political violence in terms of stereotypes and clichés. Interpreting acts of violence like the attack in Genoa in May 2012 as the reproduction or continuation of something that happened 40 years ago reveals a lack of critical analysis, an unwillingness to take responsibility for what’s happening today, and a turning away from problems which have their roots in the present. It’s the “easy way out,” and yet another sign of how the past continues to haunt the country and obstruct the way forward.
Leave a Reply