ABSTRACT
Italy’s history was marked by a long period of violent mobilization in the post-1968 period, which clearly differentiates it from most European countries (Tarrow 1989). The so-called ‘Years of Lead’ between 1969 and 1980 were a period of violent political turmoil which caused the death of several hundred victims. After a long series of controversies and investigations, it seems incontrovertible today that most of these acts of deadly violence and terrorism were perpetrated by neo-fascist militantsthe bombings of Piazza Fontana in Milan in 1969 and Piazza della Loggia in Brescia in 1974, the blowing up of the Italicus train in the rail tunnel between Bologna and Florence in 1974, and the ‘Bologna Massacre’ which destroyed the city’s central railway station in 1980. This period was also marked by regular clashes between groups of young far-left and far-right activists, and several people were killed on these occasions. However, tension and violence have somewhat abated since then, in spite of sporadic bouts of verbal or physical violence-brawls in Parliament, the killing of several politicians and magistrates by the Mafi a, Umberto Bossi’s calls to take up ‘Padan Kalachnikovs’ (Padania is the name of an imaginary country in the north of Italy whose independence is claimed for by Lega Nord), the death of Carlo Giuliani, a young antiglobalization militant during the demonstrations against the G8 Summit in Genoa in July 2001, or the assassination of law professor Marco Biagi by members of the new Red Brigades in 2002. Admittedly, these acts were not committed by the activists of the main neo-fascist party1, Alleanza Nazionale, or its youth organization, Azione Giovani, contrary to the previous decades which saw the historical and parent movement, Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) and its youth organization, Fronte della Gioventù, regularly hit the headlines on account of their violent clashes with political opponents (Ferraresi 1993)2. Today political violence mainly originates in a loose conglomeration made up of hooligan or neo-Nazi groups.
