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The Red Brigades were an italian marxist-leninist revolutionary organization which operated during the Years of Lead. Their work consisted mainly in the killings of fascists, policemen and capitalists. Many working class people supported the Red Brigades, even collaborating directly with them, for example by printing flyers and such. The organization also had contacts with other marxist-leninist and anti imperialist groups as the PFLP and the OLP.
Their most known action has been the kidnapping and killing of the Christian Democrat politician Aldo Moro. The "communist" party of the time, the PCI, had been following a revisionist, social-democratic way since the leadership of Palmiro Togliatti, but has reached its peak with Enrico Berlinguer, which supported NATO and eurocommunism. Berlinguer proposed the "historic compromise", in which the PCI party and the DC (Christian Democracy) party would tighten relationships in order to have parts of the revisionist "communist" party in the government, thus participating in liberal democracy and in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and further undermining class struggle.
The Red Brigades opposed PCI's moderatism and it's confluence with bourgeois politics. Moro will be killed only after having written many letters to Giulio Andreotti, which ignored him. Alberto Franceschini, a repented former member of the organization, tried to undermine the revolutionary actions of the Red Brigades by saying that Mossad was behind the assassination of president Moro; despite this, the CIA and the italian parliamentary commission of inquiry have not found evidence of this.[1][2]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ “There is no convincing evidence that the Brigades respond to orders from abroad. West German and Palestinian terrorists have provided weapons, but the Brigades do not require extensive or advanced arsenals. Training consists primarily of target practice.
Nor is there hard evidence of any external financial support for the Brigades. In the past, finances came largely through bank robberies and ransoms and, perhaps, through connections with organized crime and narcotics traffic. Italian officials say the Brigades are now hard pressed and that members have had to resort to jewelry thefts a less preferred method since the need to fence the goods raises the risk of apprehension.”
CIA (15 April 1982). The Red Brigades: A Primer (pp. Summary (iii), Funding (10) and Foreign connections (12)). - ↑ REPORT OF THE PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON THE VIA FANI MASSACRE ON THE KIDNAPPING AND MURDER OF ALDO MORO AND ON TERRORISM IN ITALY, vol. IX (Italian: RELAZIONE DELLA COMMISSIONE PARLAMENTARE D'INCHIESTA SULLA STRAGE DI VIA FANI SUL SEQUESTRO E L'ASSASSINIO DI ALDO MORO E SUL TERRORISMO IN ITALIA). [PDF]