Red Brigades Research Paper

The Red Brigades were an Italian terrorist organization with a strong emphasis on Marxism. Founded in 1969 by radical left-leaning students Renato Curcio and his wife Mara Cagol, the Red Brigades’ objective was “to destabilize the country” and “to overthrow capitalism” with tactics that “included robberies, kidnappings, assassinations, and arson”. In order to fully assess the impact of the Red Brigades in Italy, it is necessary to answer the question: why were the Red Brigades so violent? The answer is not as black and white as solely a pure pursuit of communism – as the above source suggests – although that is undeniably a reason. Since the violence of the Red Brigades is closely linked to the history of Italy and the events leading up

Dr. Richard Drake, a history professor at the University of Montana who teaches classes on terrorism, states “the Italian landscape and ways of life changed profoundly during the 1960s...yet, for many of those Italians…the social and economic transformation seemed much less historically significant than the problem of terrorism”. Dr. Drake cites statistics to confirm this: in a national survey taken in the early 1980s, nearly 40% of Italians responded that they felt the issue of terrorism in their country was the most historically significant event in the preceding half-century. Based on this evidence, it seems that a significant portion of the Italian population – workers and private owners alike, one can reasonably surmise – felt fear at the terror of the Red Brigades, implicating it as a nationwide phenomenon. The fact that such a large proportion of Italians felt threatened by terrorism suggests, not implausibly, that this fear spread even to the working class – the very people whom the Red Brigades claimed to represent. In fact, Drake states that terrorism “was an issue that cut across class and regional lines, affecting the entire society”. The Red Brigades’ claim of being a pro-worker organization is compromised when one considers the effects the organization had on the whole of Italy. It, therefore, further supports the assertion that the Red Brigades had a stronger desire to commit violence than a desire for pursuing communism. There is one final point to be made; a 1988 article for The Gazette, a Montreal newspaper, states that in reference to the murder of Italian politician Roberto Ruffilli, his “state funeral…televised nationwide, attracted leaders of government, industry and the church and politicians of across the political