Alessandro Orsini
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449864
- eISBN:
- 9780801460913
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449864.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter describes the life of a revolutionary. Discipline is essential in the Red Brigades, with every moment of the brigadist's life subjected to a series of rigorous rules. The Red Brigades do ...
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This chapter describes the life of a revolutionary. Discipline is essential in the Red Brigades, with every moment of the brigadist's life subjected to a series of rigorous rules. The Red Brigades do not possess anything, not even their own thoughts, and are completely subject to the rules of the group. The place in which they live is like a barracks. They are forbidden to have children, nor are they allowed to create ties of friendship or love with people outside the group. They have given up everything: friendship, human relations, habits, and amusements; they spend their days with the nightmare of being discovered and recognized or running into an informer. Their path towards bloodshed involves a complex process of interaction that can be divided into four stages. These include: (1) social marginality (disintegration of social identity stage); (2) acquisition of “binary code” mentality (reconstruction of social identity stage); (3) entry into a political–religious group or “community of absolute revolution” (integration in the revolutionary sect stage); and (4) detachment from reality (alienation from the surrounding world stage). The aim of this model is to reconstruct the “marginal” individual's route toward revolutionary behavior, of which the most intense expression is the willingness to give and receive death.Less
This chapter describes the life of a revolutionary. Discipline is essential in the Red Brigades, with every moment of the brigadist's life subjected to a series of rigorous rules. The Red Brigades do not possess anything, not even their own thoughts, and are completely subject to the rules of the group. The place in which they live is like a barracks. They are forbidden to have children, nor are they allowed to create ties of friendship or love with people outside the group. They have given up everything: friendship, human relations, habits, and amusements; they spend their days with the nightmare of being discovered and recognized or running into an informer. Their path towards bloodshed involves a complex process of interaction that can be divided into four stages. These include: (1) social marginality (disintegration of social identity stage); (2) acquisition of “binary code” mentality (reconstruction of social identity stage); (3) entry into a political–religious group or “community of absolute revolution” (integration in the revolutionary sect stage); and (4) detachment from reality (alienation from the surrounding world stage). The aim of this model is to reconstruct the “marginal” individual's route toward revolutionary behavior, of which the most intense expression is the willingness to give and receive death.
Alessandro Orsini
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449864
- eISBN:
- 9780801460913
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449864.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter discusses one of the typical traits of the Red Brigades' mentality, the sacralization of politics. The Red Brigades have the task of redeeming people, showing them the way to salvation. ...
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This chapter discusses one of the typical traits of the Red Brigades' mentality, the sacralization of politics. The Red Brigades have the task of redeeming people, showing them the way to salvation. Like all self-respecting saviors, they are the guardians of an absolute truth that contains the “formula” for eliminating every form of human suffering. This formula consists of the destruction of the present world through revolutionary violence, which means that the future of humanity depends on politics. The Red Brigades practice a “new” politics that aspires to a metapolitical aim: the perfect society. Human conduct is meaningful only in the service of the revolution. Someone who does not espouse the Marxist ideal is not even a person.Less
This chapter discusses one of the typical traits of the Red Brigades' mentality, the sacralization of politics. The Red Brigades have the task of redeeming people, showing them the way to salvation. Like all self-respecting saviors, they are the guardians of an absolute truth that contains the “formula” for eliminating every form of human suffering. This formula consists of the destruction of the present world through revolutionary violence, which means that the future of humanity depends on politics. The Red Brigades practice a “new” politics that aspires to a metapolitical aim: the perfect society. Human conduct is meaningful only in the service of the revolution. Someone who does not espouse the Marxist ideal is not even a person.
Alessandro Orsini
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449864
- eISBN:
- 9780801460913
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449864.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter attempts to reconstruct the genesis of the Red Brigades. It suggests that Red Brigades was a consequence of the social mobilization process and of the accompanying dislocation in postwar ...
More
This chapter attempts to reconstruct the genesis of the Red Brigades. It suggests that Red Brigades was a consequence of the social mobilization process and of the accompanying dislocation in postwar Italy. Their foundation was a declaration of war on an entire system of values (competition, individualism, etc.) carried by the wave of modernization. In other words, the Red Brigades were the “victims of the great transformation.” They were suffering from a psychological unease that had a social origin. The first members of the Red Brigades saw their present condition as a nightmare and were firmly decided to change it. They felt victims of injustice, abandoned to a painful and hopeless fate. “Emptied” of value, uprooted from their original communities, subjected to the “merciless” laws of capitalism, they felt like outsiders in the hated and despised “new world”.Less
This chapter attempts to reconstruct the genesis of the Red Brigades. It suggests that Red Brigades was a consequence of the social mobilization process and of the accompanying dislocation in postwar Italy. Their foundation was a declaration of war on an entire system of values (competition, individualism, etc.) carried by the wave of modernization. In other words, the Red Brigades were the “victims of the great transformation.” They were suffering from a psychological unease that had a social origin. The first members of the Red Brigades saw their present condition as a nightmare and were firmly decided to change it. They felt victims of injustice, abandoned to a painful and hopeless fate. “Emptied” of value, uprooted from their original communities, subjected to the “merciless” laws of capitalism, they felt like outsiders in the hated and despised “new world”.
Alessandro Orsini
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449864
- eISBN:
- 9780801460913
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449864.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter explains the ideology of the Red Brigades. The Red Brigades conceived revolutionary action as a mission and not as a simple profession to be performed and paid for. Their first task is ...
More
This chapter explains the ideology of the Red Brigades. The Red Brigades conceived revolutionary action as a mission and not as a simple profession to be performed and paid for. Their first task is to learn to think differently from the “common” person, to embrace a new vision of the world in order to grasp what others cannot see. True brigadists cannot and must not tolerate opinions other than theirs. Those who oppose the revolution are “pigs” who must be killed or disabled for the rest of their lives. To kill for the revolution is the noblest of gestures, a demonstration of love to humanity awaiting redemption. The Red Brigades reject the values of the society in which they live. Their aspiration for a better world clashes with a reality that appears impossible to change through reforms and good intentions. For them, violence is a compulsory route.Less
This chapter explains the ideology of the Red Brigades. The Red Brigades conceived revolutionary action as a mission and not as a simple profession to be performed and paid for. Their first task is to learn to think differently from the “common” person, to embrace a new vision of the world in order to grasp what others cannot see. True brigadists cannot and must not tolerate opinions other than theirs. Those who oppose the revolution are “pigs” who must be killed or disabled for the rest of their lives. To kill for the revolution is the noblest of gestures, a demonstration of love to humanity awaiting redemption. The Red Brigades reject the values of the society in which they live. Their aspiration for a better world clashes with a reality that appears impossible to change through reforms and good intentions. For them, violence is a compulsory route.
Alessandro Orsini
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449864
- eISBN:
- 9780801460913
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449864.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The Red Brigades were a far-left terrorist group in Italy formed in 1970 and active all through the 1980s. Infamous around the world for a campaign of assassinations, kidnappings, and bank robberies, ...
More
The Red Brigades were a far-left terrorist group in Italy formed in 1970 and active all through the 1980s. Infamous around the world for a campaign of assassinations, kidnappings, and bank robberies, the Red Brigades' most notorious crime was the kidnapping and murder of Italy's former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. In the late 1990s, a new group revived the name Red Brigades and killed a number of professors and government officials. The Red Brigades and their actions raise a host of questions about the motivations, ideologies, and mind-sets of people who commit horrific acts of violence in the name of a utopia. This book contends that the dominant logic of the Red Brigades was essentially eschatological, focused on purifying a corrupt world through violence. Only through revolutionary terror, Brigadists believed, could humanity be saved from the effects of capitalism and imperialism. The book's “subversive-revolutionary feedback theory” states that the willingness to mete out and suffer death depends on how far the terrorist has been incorporated into the revolutionary sect. The book makes clear that this political–religious concept of historical development is central to understanding all such self-styled “purifiers of the world.” From Thomas Müntzer's theocratic dream to Pol Pot's Cambodian revolution, all the violent “purifiers” of the world have a clear goal: to build a perfect society in which there will no longer be any sin and unhappiness and in which no opposition can be allowed to upset the universal harmony.Less
The Red Brigades were a far-left terrorist group in Italy formed in 1970 and active all through the 1980s. Infamous around the world for a campaign of assassinations, kidnappings, and bank robberies, the Red Brigades' most notorious crime was the kidnapping and murder of Italy's former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. In the late 1990s, a new group revived the name Red Brigades and killed a number of professors and government officials. The Red Brigades and their actions raise a host of questions about the motivations, ideologies, and mind-sets of people who commit horrific acts of violence in the name of a utopia. This book contends that the dominant logic of the Red Brigades was essentially eschatological, focused on purifying a corrupt world through violence. Only through revolutionary terror, Brigadists believed, could humanity be saved from the effects of capitalism and imperialism. The book's “subversive-revolutionary feedback theory” states that the willingness to mete out and suffer death depends on how far the terrorist has been incorporated into the revolutionary sect. The book makes clear that this political–religious concept of historical development is central to understanding all such self-styled “purifiers of the world.” From Thomas Müntzer's theocratic dream to Pol Pot's Cambodian revolution, all the violent “purifiers” of the world have a clear goal: to build a perfect society in which there will no longer be any sin and unhappiness and in which no opposition can be allowed to upset the universal harmony.
Alessandro Orsini
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449864
- eISBN:
- 9780801460913
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449864.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to tell the story of a pathos that became a political movement and kept an entire country under siege for almost twenty years, leading ...
More
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to tell the story of a pathos that became a political movement and kept an entire country under siege for almost twenty years, leading it to the brink of civil war. The story of the Red Brigades and their homicidal fury is the story of a sociopsychological process that strips the victim of humanity. This process is called the “pedagogy of intolerance.” The book attempts to see the world through the eyes of professional revolutionaries. It reconstructs the Red Brigades' mental universe, which “sees politics as indivisible from the use of force” and is based on the “denial of reality.” Renato Curcio, Alberto Franceschini, Margherita Cagol, Mario Moretti, Mario Galesi, and Nadia Desdemona Lioce, to cite just some of the more famous names, are all part of a shared history: the history of revolutionary gnosticism and of the pedagogy of intolerance—the educational process that turns the rebel into a professional revolutionary.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to tell the story of a pathos that became a political movement and kept an entire country under siege for almost twenty years, leading it to the brink of civil war. The story of the Red Brigades and their homicidal fury is the story of a sociopsychological process that strips the victim of humanity. This process is called the “pedagogy of intolerance.” The book attempts to see the world through the eyes of professional revolutionaries. It reconstructs the Red Brigades' mental universe, which “sees politics as indivisible from the use of force” and is based on the “denial of reality.” Renato Curcio, Alberto Franceschini, Margherita Cagol, Mario Moretti, Mario Galesi, and Nadia Desdemona Lioce, to cite just some of the more famous names, are all part of a shared history: the history of revolutionary gnosticism and of the pedagogy of intolerance—the educational process that turns the rebel into a professional revolutionary.
Alessandro Orsini
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449864
- eISBN:
- 9780801460913
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449864.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter examines the thoughts and political practices of other revolutionaries, namely Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot. Lenin is considered the greatest purifier of the world known to history. ...
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This chapter examines the thoughts and political practices of other revolutionaries, namely Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot. Lenin is considered the greatest purifier of the world known to history. He achieved power and set about regenerating humanity. His political actions have enabled the effects of the gnostic recipe to be verified “in the field.” The Bolshevik Revolution also demonstrates what happens when professional revolutionaries gain power. Mao Tse-tung was one of the staunchest critics of bureaucracy, the new state bourgeoisie, corruption, and betrayal. Similar to Robespierre, Mao stood for radical catastrophism, the binary-code mentality, the obsession with purity, the identification of the Devil, and the doctrine of purification, according to which your enemies can only be exterminated. Pol Pot was a firm supporter of the Leninist organization of the Khmer Rouge. He was convinced that only a political party based on a rigid hierarchy and a fierce ideological determination would be able to transform the present world.Less
This chapter examines the thoughts and political practices of other revolutionaries, namely Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot. Lenin is considered the greatest purifier of the world known to history. He achieved power and set about regenerating humanity. His political actions have enabled the effects of the gnostic recipe to be verified “in the field.” The Bolshevik Revolution also demonstrates what happens when professional revolutionaries gain power. Mao Tse-tung was one of the staunchest critics of bureaucracy, the new state bourgeoisie, corruption, and betrayal. Similar to Robespierre, Mao stood for radical catastrophism, the binary-code mentality, the obsession with purity, the identification of the Devil, and the doctrine of purification, according to which your enemies can only be exterminated. Pol Pot was a firm supporter of the Leninist organization of the Khmer Rouge. He was convinced that only a political party based on a rigid hierarchy and a fierce ideological determination would be able to transform the present world.
Alessandro Orsini
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449864
- eISBN:
- 9780801460913
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449864.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter focuses on the illustrious predecessors of the Red Brigades. They belong to a politico-religious tradition that, in its most complete form represented by the Jacobin revolution, boasts ...
More
This chapter focuses on the illustrious predecessors of the Red Brigades. They belong to a politico-religious tradition that, in its most complete form represented by the Jacobin revolution, boasts at least two centuries of history. Although the core event was Robespierre's ascent to power, the historic rise of revolutionary gnosticism started with the Protestant theologian Thomas Müntzer, the first to accomplish a revolution in the attempt in install paradise on earth. He represents an “anthropological type” that still exists today. The chapter also considers John of Leiden who, between 1534 and 1535, helped establish a theocratic-communalistic republic, based on the massive and systematic use of totalitarian terror; François-Noël (Gracchus) Babeuf who organized a rebellion, “the Conspiracy of the Equals,” to implement communism against the Thermidorian Reaction that had overturned Robespierre; and Karl Marx who sought to remedy the evils of capitalism and build a “new world” where men would have been free and happy forever.Less
This chapter focuses on the illustrious predecessors of the Red Brigades. They belong to a politico-religious tradition that, in its most complete form represented by the Jacobin revolution, boasts at least two centuries of history. Although the core event was Robespierre's ascent to power, the historic rise of revolutionary gnosticism started with the Protestant theologian Thomas Müntzer, the first to accomplish a revolution in the attempt in install paradise on earth. He represents an “anthropological type” that still exists today. The chapter also considers John of Leiden who, between 1534 and 1535, helped establish a theocratic-communalistic republic, based on the massive and systematic use of totalitarian terror; François-Noël (Gracchus) Babeuf who organized a rebellion, “the Conspiracy of the Equals,” to implement communism against the Thermidorian Reaction that had overturned Robespierre; and Karl Marx who sought to remedy the evils of capitalism and build a “new world” where men would have been free and happy forever.
Umberto Eco
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195161625
- eISBN:
- 9780199849666
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195161625.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
This chapter analyzes why in the 8th century a Spanish monk set out to write a mammoth commentary on a few pages of St. John's Book of Revelation, making it more obscure and ambiguous than it ...
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This chapter analyzes why in the 8th century a Spanish monk set out to write a mammoth commentary on a few pages of St. John's Book of Revelation, making it more obscure and ambiguous than it originally was, and why this salmagundi from different sources had an unprecedented success. The 1970s were in Europe the years in which the political springtime of 1968, after a short and very hot summer, entered an ambiguous fall in which the first terrorist movements started to show up, from the Bader Meinhof group in Germany to the Red Brigades in Italy. The original leaders of the Red Brigades did not come originally from a Marxist background but were on the contrary born Catholic. This chapter shares, in passing, some of the book's historical reflections, which are perhaps also introspections.Less
This chapter analyzes why in the 8th century a Spanish monk set out to write a mammoth commentary on a few pages of St. John's Book of Revelation, making it more obscure and ambiguous than it originally was, and why this salmagundi from different sources had an unprecedented success. The 1970s were in Europe the years in which the political springtime of 1968, after a short and very hot summer, entered an ambiguous fall in which the first terrorist movements started to show up, from the Bader Meinhof group in Germany to the Red Brigades in Italy. The original leaders of the Red Brigades did not come originally from a Marxist background but were on the contrary born Catholic. This chapter shares, in passing, some of the book's historical reflections, which are perhaps also introspections.
Peter Robinson
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199273256
- eISBN:
- 9780191706370
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199273256.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter forms a consideration of the poetry that the New Zealand poet Allen Curnow wrote about his overseas experience. The poetry occasioned by his various sojourns in England, America, and ...
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This chapter forms a consideration of the poetry that the New Zealand poet Allen Curnow wrote about his overseas experience. The poetry occasioned by his various sojourns in England, America, and Italy is explored, and in particular how an outsider addresses the political realities of places visited. There are discussions of Curnow's poems about the Kennedy era, and about the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades in 1970s Italy. The chapter concludes with a section on ‘mental travelling’ and on long-distance flying.Less
This chapter forms a consideration of the poetry that the New Zealand poet Allen Curnow wrote about his overseas experience. The poetry occasioned by his various sojourns in England, America, and Italy is explored, and in particular how an outsider addresses the political realities of places visited. There are discussions of Curnow's poems about the Kennedy era, and about the kidnap and murder of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades in 1970s Italy. The chapter concludes with a section on ‘mental travelling’ and on long-distance flying.
Eitan Y. Alimi, Lorenzo Bosi, and Chares Demetriou
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199937707
- eISBN:
- 9780190236601
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937707.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change, Social Movements and Social Change
This book advances a theoretical synthesis to explaining radicalization. Treating radicalization as a process along which a member organization of a broad social movement shifts from predominantly ...
More
This book advances a theoretical synthesis to explaining radicalization. Treating radicalization as a process along which a member organization of a broad social movement shifts from predominantly nonviolent tactics to predominantly violent tactics, the book moves beyond a focus on dispositions and opportunities for aggression triggered in response to environmental stimuli, or on violence-prone ideologies and cultural templates. It conceptualizes the emergence and intensification of political violence (targeting non-state actors) as unfolding within complex webs of relational patterns that shape and are shaped by interactions among multiple parties involved in contentious politics, as well as by surrounding, at times contingent, events and circumstances. A relational approach, namely, a focus on patterns and trends of contacts, ties, bargaining, negotiation, and exchange of information allows for a dynamic understanding of how and when environmental and/or cognitive factors gain and lose salience in processes of radicalization. Utilizing a mechanism-based research strategy, the book traces processes of radicalization across a diverse set of episodes of contention. It demonstrates how despite undeniable political, cultural, social or geopolitical differences across episodes, prime of which are al-Qaeda, the Red Brigades, and EOKA, similarities are found in the key role of relational mechanisms, such as intra-movement competition for power, social disconnect, or upward spirals of political opportunities. Also offered are analyses of how the relational, comparative framework benefits the identification of meaningful dissimilarities in similarities and how this framework enhances understanding of possibilities of de-radicalization and instances of non-radicalization.Less
This book advances a theoretical synthesis to explaining radicalization. Treating radicalization as a process along which a member organization of a broad social movement shifts from predominantly nonviolent tactics to predominantly violent tactics, the book moves beyond a focus on dispositions and opportunities for aggression triggered in response to environmental stimuli, or on violence-prone ideologies and cultural templates. It conceptualizes the emergence and intensification of political violence (targeting non-state actors) as unfolding within complex webs of relational patterns that shape and are shaped by interactions among multiple parties involved in contentious politics, as well as by surrounding, at times contingent, events and circumstances. A relational approach, namely, a focus on patterns and trends of contacts, ties, bargaining, negotiation, and exchange of information allows for a dynamic understanding of how and when environmental and/or cognitive factors gain and lose salience in processes of radicalization. Utilizing a mechanism-based research strategy, the book traces processes of radicalization across a diverse set of episodes of contention. It demonstrates how despite undeniable political, cultural, social or geopolitical differences across episodes, prime of which are al-Qaeda, the Red Brigades, and EOKA, similarities are found in the key role of relational mechanisms, such as intra-movement competition for power, social disconnect, or upward spirals of political opportunities. Also offered are analyses of how the relational, comparative framework benefits the identification of meaningful dissimilarities in similarities and how this framework enhances understanding of possibilities of de-radicalization and instances of non-radicalization.
