Imperialism and Terrorism, Part IV: Italy’s Red Brigades: Revolutionaries or Agents of Imperialism?

In this series on imperialism and terrorism, Modern Communism is examining some of the ways in which the imperialists have used terrorism to further their own aims. At times, this is quite evident – for example, in the first part of this series, we looked at the use of a police agent to toss a bomb into a crowd in Chicago in the 1880s. This “terrorist” act was used as the pretext to crack down on the growing revolutionary movement in the U.S.

The series has also examined the direct link between different imperialist powers and terrorist groups operating in various regions of the world. For example, the U.S., it has been well documented, provided training, arms and money to death squads that operated throughout Central and Latin American in the 1970s and 1980s.

Nevertheless, there is a lot of confusion generated in progressive and revolutionary circles on the question of terrorism. Some groups claiming to be socialist or communist carry out terrorist attacks against civilian populations. Their apologists suggest that these groups are on the side of the people and are striking a blow against imperialism, arguing that the problem is just with their tactics. However, an examination of some of these so-called revolutionary groups reveals that they are often straightforward agents of imperialism. Certainly their use of terror has been all the pretext needed by different states, on the one hand, to crack down on all progressive movements and, on the other hand, to discredit revolutionary struggles.

The youth and student movement of the 1960s gave rise to several of these groups. In Europe, one of the best known was the Red Brigades in Italy. The group, which described itself as Marxist-Leninist, advocated violence “in the service of class warfare and revolution”. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Red Brigades carried out a number of attacks against state targets; they are best known for the kidnapping and murder of the former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, in 1978. At the height of its popularity, the group claimed thousands of members and had adherents in Europe, Canada, Australia and the U.S. The group was also completely infiltrated by both Italian and American secret service agencies, and its terrorist activities were used to discredit the revolutionary movement and to justify further fascization of the Italian state.

While the Red Brigades claimed that it was a communist organization, in reality, many of those associated with the group were “visceral anti-communists”, according to British author and journalist Philip Willan. Willan reported on the Red Brigades for years and in 1991 published a book exploring the political use of terrorism in Italy. The group used a number of radical professors as a way to recruit students into its ranks. For example, Professor Toni Negri, co-author, with Michael Hardt, of Empire, was a well-known apologist for the Red Brigades. He urged his students to participate in street violence and “class war” to bring about revolutionary change. These days, however, Negri has become a post-modernist who denies the existence of the working class, talking instead about the “multitude”. Willan argues that Negri has always been an anti-communist and that he may have had ties to American and Italian intelligence agencies. He also notes that Negri’s brother was killed by Italian partisans as he was defending Mussolini’s republic, while Negri himself was a Rockefeller Foundation scholar who studied in the U.S. before returning to Italy to preach class warfare. Corrado Simioni, another prominent Italian associated with the Red Brigades and leader of the ultra-leftist Superclan faction, was in fact on the payroll of the CIA in Italy in the 1960s and had mafia connections.

While Willan notes that many of the people involved with the Red Brigades came to the group through their activism in the student movement, “a number of people involved in left wing terrorism [in Italy] appear to have been in direct contact with Western secret services.”

The aim of this infiltration of extremist groups? Willan concludes it was very straightforward: “The secret services used the extremist political and terrorist groups and guided the course of events to thwart the growing demand for political change and to undermine the rising strength of the Communist Party.” (Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy, p. 180). At crucial moments in history, Willan writes, “the secret services had infiltrators in place who … were able to steer the course of the armed struggle on their behalf.” (p. 182).

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To be continued.