hydrarchist writes:

The following is a dialogue with Anne DuFourmantelle from Negri's recently published "Abecedaire Politique" (Calmann-Levy 2002), and was translated by Thomas Seay.

"B" as in Red Brigade [Brigades Rouges]

Toni Negri: One should be careful not to think of the
Red Brigade as the sum-total of the 70s movement; nor
should one think of that movement as set off in
historical parentheses, an absolutely isolated,
singular separate phenomena. In reality, the movement
was rather a trajectory, a common route taken by a
large part of my generation. There are still people --
some of them ingenuous, but more often stupid -- who
continue to present me as chief of the Red Brigade,
the malevolent brain behind the organization. Being a
professor and political activist or, better yet,
university professor and communist could mean none
other than that: the bad-boy teacher, cattivo
maestro. It's a source of consternation. Anne DuFourmantelle: Why did everything happen so
differently in Italy?

TN: Recently numerous American journalists, as a
result of Empire, the book that I wrote with the
American philosopher Michael Hardt, have asked me why
Italy was the only country that had neither resolved
nor come to terms with May 1968. It's an absurd
story. I could show you people who are today in
office in European governments who did the same things
as me. But me, I am the one in prison! Everything's
upside down. It's not my story that is particularly
interesting; rather, it is the story of a generation
that should be told in order to explain why this
matter is only coming to light in the year 2001. Some
members of the movement are in exile or in prison and
others have become men in powerful positions.

It must be understood that Italy is a Catholic
country. There was in the middle of the 70s, in
response to 1968, a perverse alliance between
Catholicism and Stalinism. It was called the
"historic compromise", between the Italian Communist
Party and the Christian Democrats who agreed to
implement a common program. In this alliance, the
communists abandoned the revolutionary ideal of
representing the poor and workers: the large-scale
repression in Italy came down on everybody who
denounced that. After 1968, in Italy as elsewhere,
there was enormous hope for change that was
accentuated by struggles -- in factories, universities,
the womenís movement, etc. It was this hope that the
historic compromise crushed. After that, there was
repression. In addition, the entire European leftist
intelligentsia supported the Italian Communist Party
because it maintained a certain independence in
relation to the USSR. But, in reality, the Italian
Communist Party paid for this freedom of criticism
through past alliances with the powers that be in the
country, and this included deaths, treason, espionage
and intrigue.

AD: Demonstrators then started arming themselves?

TN: Yes, we have already spoken of that [in "Armed
Struggle"]. In Italy between 1943 and 1945 there was a
very powerful armed resistance. Twenty-five years
later, in 1968, that was still fresh in peoples'
minds, as anti-fascism was linked to the class
struggle. The poor in Italy, at least in the North,
were antifascist. From the 60s on, the
extra-parliamentary Left was found in all strata of
society and, in particular, in the factories. The
break with the official Communist Party took place at
that level, which led the Party to drastically lose
ground, precisely because the opposition was from the
workers. Itís hard to imagine it today. Furthermore,
as the Italian Communist Party was particularly open
to western values and reactive in relation to the line
of the USSR, repressing the extreme-left meant full
entry into the official system of parties of "the free
world". At that point, people began to act. Imagine
what would have happened in France if the majority of
workers at Renault or Citroen had been on the extreme
Left. In France, during the events of May 1968, it
was the workers who did not take part. Intellectuals
led the revolt movement, not the workers. In Italy it
was the exact opposite that occurred. It was the
workers who refused the historic compromise, not the
intellectuals. The imprisoned members of the Red
Brigade with whom I was in prison during the 80s, and
since my return in 1997, are of working class
backgrounds. They really believed they were making
revolution.

AD: They didn't think that a peaceful way was
possible?

TN: Nobody thought so at the time, neither did I. I
believe that State violence continues to exist even
today. And that the response to it can be
non-violent, but surely not "peaceful". In any case,
there is resistance. Capitalism isn't peaceful
either! It can't exist without violence. We are told
that capitalism is natural, because the market and
exchange are natural forms of civil society. They
lead us to believe that there isn't another way to
imagine and realize the production and reproduction of
life's riches. So? That in itself is a form of
violence. The problem at the time was not finding a
peaceful solution. It was between choosing a form of
resistance to this violence, as I did, and using this
same form of violence, armed violence, as the Red
Brigade did.

In Italy, to defeat terrorism, the government and
police mounted two operations. The first was to
criminalize intellectuals who participated in the
struggle and the second was denouncement. The system
of "repentance", that is the juridical recognition of
denouncement, granted liberty to all those who agreed
to "confess", regardless of the charges against them.
Some of them had committed ten or so assassinations
and were immediately released! Many of them said any
old thing just to get released from prison. Those who
thought in a certain manner were put in jail and
others were used as witnesses against them. And so it
was that when militants were caught red-handed, the
police said to them: "Old chum, you can rot in jail
and risk your life or you can talk". Some people told
the truth, which was tragic enough in itself as it
would bring about dozens of arrests. Others told lies
and had innocent people arrested. Again, the majority
of the accused in my trial, the "trial of April 7",
were acquitted after six or seven years of prison.
Still today, the same method is used. Out of all the
offences committed, the police act on only a dozen or
so, using repression to make an example out of the
statistically significant ones. The police's main
task in this is to find informants. Anybody who
thinks of the police strictly as a physical force that
protects citizens is making a huge mistake. The other
police, immaterial police, create order through the
use of denouncements and informants, with consequences
that you can well imagine.