ABSTRACT: The Mafia, unlike other secret criminal associations, such as the Red Brigades (BR, ed.), can count on a protective network, on the complicity of widespread omertà (the code of silence, ed.) which is the product of its integration in the state system rather than the result of fear. This characteristic is the basis of its inner solidity.

(L'Espresso, April 27, 1980)

All secret societies - whatever their goals - that use crime as a method are similar not only in structure and hierarchy, but in trying to find and widen an area of silence, omertà and protection around themselves. The more a society identifies with and feels protected by the laws that a secret society wants to ignore or destroy, the less widespread will be the network of direct or indirect protection that surrounds the clandestine group. In the case of the Mafia, which is the usual touchstone for all other secret criminal societies, the protective tissue surrounding it is so varied in its intricacy and complexity, so durable and tenacious, that in the end fear appears to be a secondary element. And then, if one considers that the Mafia has never been considered - except perhaps by the Fascists - as subversive of the constituted order, but rather as a parallel or mirror system of the other and coexisting with it, if not actually integrated in it, the reasons for the protection that a society more or less

consciously accords it seem to be completely evident. And, in effect, it is this "external" condition that gives the Mafia its "internal" solidity, for which reason the revolt of anyone of its members, who may happen to "denounce" it, is objectively and even clinically considered insanity.

The situation of the BR in the Italian context is different: whatever degree of protective tissue they have managed to form for themselves can only be generated by fear; and in a reduced state of that protective tissue, only fear can be considered the element of internal cohesion. "Internal" and "external" fear: but in the moment when fear, that will not at all appear an inevitable occurrence, does materialise, presenting itself together with the possibility of clemency, the denunciation (a necessary condition for clemency) becomes, contrary to the Mafia situation, "wisdom". This "wisdom" presents itself in a light that has nothing to do with moral considerations: dictated by the instinct for self-preservation, even if generally falling into the category of betrayal, will find motivations and justifications in the conscience of any individual who accedes to it.

All men have, howbeit at different levels, in different degrees and intensities, a vital conscience determined by the most inveterate and dominant moral principles. Fanaticism may make it possible to overcome these principles in the euphoria of action and the certainty of ultimate success. But at the moment in which the action slows down, because of an external resistance or counter-offensive, and the ultimate success begins to appear in doubt, it is inevitable that the principles come to the surface and one falls into a critical reconsideration of one's personal choices. A mafioso - as Henner Hess's case demonstrates - does not know he is a mafioso: he lives in the Mafia context as inside his own skin. He lives within something that "is there". But the Red Brigadier knows very well that he is living inside something that "isn't there". And just because he sees the realisation fading of something in which he has believed, for which he has fought, for which he has killed - that something which "isn't ther

e" - he must necessarily begin to work out the accounts with the thing that "is there". Accounts, as Montaigne teaches us, always produce a difference: for many it will be the difference between life and death - and they choose life; for others the difference will be between the esteem of their associates and self-preservation - and they will choose death.