ABSTRACT: During the 21st Radical Party Congress of 1979 (March 29, 30, 31 and April 1 and 2, - Rome) Marco Pannella (1) brought up one of the subjects which had long been the object of controversies between the radical party and the Italian Left, and in particular the Communist Party: Via Rasella, the historical significance of this episode of the Resistance and its connections, namely with contemporary terrorism. Barely a year before that, the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro (2) had caused an earthquake in the parties of the Left. The Communist Party had joined the front of the »hardliners , while the Radical Party (and to a certain extent the Socialist Party, albeit with different tones and nuances) chose instead a line of »dialogue that could allow to explore any possible way to spare the statesman's life. The radical party refused, at any rate, to pay homage to a State which hypocritically proclaimed its inviolable prerogatives precisely at a time in which the signs of its incapacity and of its mora

l, political and historical crisis were most evident. In this framework of discussion it was only legitimate to recall the episode of Via Rasella, which occurred at the very beginning of the recent history of the communist history and of the partisan and antifascist resistance. In March 1944, in Via Rasella, in the heart of the Nazi-occupied Rome, a handful of partisans blew up a charge of explosive, killing a column of South Tirol-born SS officers. As we know, the attack triggered a German retaliation, whereby 335 political and ordinary prisoners detained in Regina Coeli were shot and then thrown into deserted pozzolana quarries along the Via Ardeatina. Wasn't that episode an act of terrorism? Doesn't it inevitably constitute a »model for the terrorism and violence that are again ravaging the country forty years later?

Pannella was unmistakably blunt. If terrorism is to be denounced and struck back at, then it is also necessary to denounce the entire history of the »leftist violence as co-responsible for this terrorism. If Curcio (3) is guilty, then the attack of Via Rasella also constitutes a condemnable form of homicidal violence.

»If the youths of the Azione Cattolica are barbarians and murderers - Pannella warned - »Curcio, who is depicted as a sort of modern Saint Gabriel or Saint Michael crushing the devil with his foot and becoming a champion of the struggle against the capitalist dragon (...) then Carla Capponi (4), a gold medal of the Resistance for having placed the bomb in Via Rasella, and Antonello (5) and Amendola (6) and all the others should also remember that bomb. If we have a relation of "intimacy" with the fascist history, we (...) have the same relation with the worst torturers, with my comrades Togliatti (7) and Curdo...".

The Communist Party reacted bitterly to this polemic. On the following day the communist daily newspaper "L'Unità" titled the account of the meeting "Pannella's line: the PCI is the enemy, Curcio is a brother". The radical strategy was also labeled globally "anticommunist". Preceded by this account, on that same morning (1 April) Pannella went to the congress of the Communist Party. The communist congresspeople's anger and indignation broke out, fueled also by aggressive speeches by Amendola and Lama (8). "Pannella's fascist speech is disgraceful. The gold medals of Via Rasella are here among us", cried Amendola. According to Lama, "the party of the partisan brigades headed by Matteotti, Sandro Pertini (9) and Riccardo Lombardi (10) cannot mingle with the party of Pannella". The audience booed the radical leader, who was wearing a blue loden coat at the congress. The following day the press described him with terms such as "vampire" and "Nosferatu".

This book contains the transcriptions of two speeches by Marco Pannella, and the opinions of people who intervened in the debate on Via Rasella, on violence and terrorism.

(»A USELESS SLAUGHTER ? - From Via Rasella to the Fosse Ardeatine - edited by Angiolo Bandinelli and Valter Vecellio - Tullio Pironti, 1982, Naples)

A year later: thoughts and remarks

by Marco Pannella

I had expressed the wish, and suggested to the Radical Party, to organize a round table on via Rasella immediately after the elections. A round table to enable both a better knowledge of the episode and to host those oral "testimonies" which risk being forever lost. And lastly, a round table to stimulate a political confrontation and a much needed dialogue. But also a round table that could enrich the debate with a new "fact" rather than running the risk of carrying it out still linked to the episode of the month of March, when the PCI made a savage attack against me.

Things have turned out differently, and the important debate opened by Q.R. is obviously affected by it.

Via Rasella? Once again I say, it is a page of "our" history...

It is appropriate, at this point, to recall the object or the occasion of that distant speech with maximum accuracy. I tried to explain to the PCI and to the establishment - both intent on fighting terrorism by all means, tempted to provide a demonizing or arbitrary interpretation of the episode and to combat it with terrorist methods and means - that it was relatively easy to find antecedents, misunderstandings, beliefs and choices in the history of popular (and therefore political) Catholicism and in the communist and democracy history as well, that could at least objectively help us understand the itinerary of "terrorism" in order to "change" it and consequently defeat it. For years, after 1968, in an overt (and apparently isolated, desperate, doomed) controversy with the new theorists and practitioners of the various "revolutionary" "violences" or "counterviolences" (whether of "Il Manifesto" (11), "Potere Operaio", "Lotta Continua" (12) or "Unione") but even before that, on the subject of the war of lib

eration in Algeria (which I nonetheless took a stance on) and then on the Vietnam war, I had been repeating myself. For years I had been struggling and arguing against what appeared to me and what I defined as the eternal return to nihilism, and I suggested a "subjective" interpretation of the perpetrators of the violences based on elements taken from Dostojevski's works or from the psychoanalytical culture, particularly Reich's theories.

In the preface to Andrea Valcarenghi's book, "Underground a pugno chiuso", in 1973, or to Appignani's book in 1976, while I never mentioned via Rasella, I had already found equally sacralized behaviours and positions. By calling Via Rasella a necessary, but no doubt tragic and painful "page" of the book of the Resistance, by insisting on the fact that it is a page of "our" history, by warning that we, more than others, were "fascists" (and not just "violent" or "Stalinists") seven times a day, attributing pain and grief to the authors of that...terrorist war action, by calling Carla Capponi and the other authors of the attack "our" comrades: all this showed the extent to which I wanted to avoid any gratuitous or instrumental controversy on the past for reasons related to the imminent elections or to the life of the party. My appeal was to arm ourselves today against the "murderous" "brothers" and "comrades". It was, if anything, an attempt to speak first of all to them; to speak to the daughter-in-law of the

Pci, so that the mother-in-law of terrorism (and even the mother-in-law of the organized and more openly violent "Autonomia Operaia") could understand.

On the other hand, I cannot exclude that this has largely occurred. A few hours after pronouncing my speech came the medieval anathema of the PCI from the palace of congresses. That day the palace had almost become a new Coliseum, with ten thousand people standing and cheering frenziedly, with phenomena of collective hallucination (Pannella-Nosferatu supposedly wearing a black cloak...) pronounced by the supreme pontiffs of the Unions and of the Party - Lama and Amendola. However, the senseless initiative by Trombadori and Amendola to sue me...with the allegations of insulting the armed forces (obivously referring to the armed forces of the Resistance) constitutes, at this point, the most enlightening episode of a position which is still ideologically pro-terrorist.

...but not a "motive of glory"

Taking for granted that I had "criticized" or "offended" the action of Via Rasella, Amendola and Trombadori said this episode was, per se, a motive of glory and the very essence of the "epic" of the Resistance. Not, therefore, a tragic, forcible, contradictory action, as always for war and the killing of the "enemy" which is subjectively innocent - the anonymous soldier, not the minister or tyrant or General. The episode was not this, therefore, but the emblem of the right thing, of a "good" deed, also with respect to the doubt which I expressed on the possibility of it having a different result, in lieu of the predictable and preannounced result of causing the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine. And even less so a possible and legitimate mistake...

And so the matter becomes ever up-to-date and controversial, if we consider also a PCI which has been practically inactive for thirty years against the fascist codes, and which now enthusiastically supports the Reale (13) and Cossiga (14) laws, which are, if possible, worse than the fascist ones.

At this point I have a few doubts. What is the truth about Via Rasella? Was the action decided as a "necessity in times of war", or "a necessity for the party", as someone suggests? Is it true that most of the antifascist and also the communist leaders who were not directly part of the PCI and that the official command of the Resistance itself opposed the hypothesis of a terrorist action, and criticized the subsequent behaviour of the leaders of the communist party? Why has the subject remained a taboo? Why have democratic historians not further analysed the episode? Why is today's public opinion so ill-informed about it?

The almost unanimous reaction of the "leftist" or "democratic" press was deliberately or unwillingly deceitful. What does the PCI's reaction want to cover?

We need to know more, and not just about via Rasella, but also, for example, about the massacres in Trieste and in Venezia Giulia. We want to know which "side effects" of the terrible, murderous behaviour of the foreign leadership of the Italian communist party, and namely of Togliatti (15) during the years of the Stalinist massacres (if possible worse than those of the "terrorists" because they were not committed by nihilist and Dostojevskan "extremists") have come from leaders that are still in power, and who are oddly defended (through violence and deception) by those who rule the PCI.

We need to better assess how much of the noble and dutiful sympathy on the part of non-communists are degraded to particularly serious and symptomatic complicities which constitute the "present", if they exist, and not the "past".

An antifascist leading class which is the heir of the fascist culture

The time has come to honour the Resistance by saying the truth. The Resistance must be defended in its grandiose and tragic history and truth. The "mystery" of an "antifascist" leading class of the resistance which has become, historically speaking, the heir of the fascist structures and often of the fascist political and constitutional culture, which increasingly violates the republican and antifascist constitution, could - it seems to me - be better unveiled. The year elapsed from the clash on "Via Rasella" has continued to confirm my doubts that there have been forms of "objective" and practical cooperation between today's terrorists and "murderers" and yesterday's.

I wonder whether these notes have dispeled any doubts or unsettled the certainties of Ernesto Galli Della Loggia (16). I do not believe his is a light criticism. If it is grounded, then I share it. If non-violence becomes ideology or utopia, then I reject it and fear it. If I have even faintly suggested to share the "progressivist", neo- or proto-positivist approach of a certain part of the European and Italian left, the celestial (or animal, »Qui veut être ange est bête , Pascal) and the Irenism of dear friends and brothers who have passed from supporting the prestigious CEI (Bishops' Conference) to some squalid peripheral section of some other church, then I must be completely demented. I don't believe in "virtues". To me, nonviolence, as freedom and love (you will agree, Galli Della Loggia) are a "possible" choice, a dialogical, social, collective creation. Therefore, it is a political, not a moral, "lifestyle". I have always shown respect for the equally "moral" and "legitimate", albeit different, positi

on based on what I consider, historically speaking, non-values, or values that are the opposite of mine: authority vs. freedom, war and violence vs. peace and dialogue.

Owing to a generational fact, we all have a touch of historicism and Hegelism that should make us immune from certain dangers which Galli Della Loggia identifies instead as characteristic of my action. Or, if he prefers, "historical materialism". Nor, I confess, am I concerned about the end of human history after having achieved a nonviolent or libertarian or socialist perfection. No more than I believe in the opposite pseudo-rationalist pessimism of the detainees of real-politik, and of pseudo-historicist justificationism.

I too, like Galli Della Loggia, mistrust any form of irenism and utopianism, but also in the name of the "values" of utopia and happiness for those who, consciously and historicistically, reasonably believes them to be valid and feasible "for themselves and for others". Is this enough to accuse us of seeking new, vital and lively contradictions instead of being covered, I too, by the fetid and decaying ones of our official culture - the culture of the state, of the "Party", of the Church, of the Sect, of the Red Brigades and other terrorists?

Stame: a case of political voyeurism

I have also constantly feared the much touted, civil sense of humour; and irony too. But when I read Federico Stame (17) I sometimes feel sorry he lacks even a touch of it. "Caesarism"? Is even a slight signal that can be mistaken - out of political voyeurism - for use or wish for power, for any power, enough to accuse us of "caesarism", "Bonapartism", "Gollism"?

I am sorry, Stame. But if someone needs to live or die as a Brutus, I won't be the one to give him the opportunity or the possibility. On "Mondo Operaio", Claudio Martelli, in his analysis of the risks that could unsettle me and unsettle our "policy", evoked the risk of a Don Juan who penetrates people's conscience as well as parliaments and parties, through the media, thus monstrously mizing love with politics. I confess this phantasy strikes me as more fascinating and less unlikely. Were I not immune to any "Sturm und Drang", to any romantic suggestion, were I not radically nonviolent and concerned about the contiguity between love and life, and not between love and death, I would say that the only tragedy one might expect of me is precisely a "private" one. But I think this is not the case. I leave the cult of "tragedy" to Fortini, while I will devote myself to the cult of "drama", dialogue and life. In "politics" too.

("QR" no. 8-9")

Translator's notes

(1) PANNELLA MARCO. Pannella Giacinto, known as Marco. (Teramo 1930). Currently President of the Radical Party's Federal Council, which he is one of the founders of. At twenty national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty-two President of the UGI, the union of lay university students, at twenty-three President of the UNURI, national union of Italian university students. At twenty-four he advocates, in the context of the students' movement and of the Liberal party, the foundation of the new radical party, which arises in 1954 following the confluence of prestigious intellectuals and minor democratic political groups. He is active in the party, except for a period (1960-1963) in which he is correspondent for "Il Giorno" in Paris, where he established contacts with the Algerian resistance. Back in Italy, he commits himself to the reconstruction of the radical Party, dissolved by its leadership following the advent of the centre-left. Under his indisputable leadership, the party succeeds in

promoting (and winning) relevant civil rights battles, working for the introduction of divorce, conscientious objection, important reforms of family law, etc, in Italy. He struggles for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. Arrested in Sofia in 1968 as he is demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia, which has been invaded by Stalin. He opens the party to the newly-born homosexual organizations (FUORI), promotes the formation of the first environmentalist groups. The new radical party organizes difficult campaigns, proposing several referendums (about twenty throughout the years) for the moralization of the country and of politics, against public funds to the parties, against nuclear plants, etc., but in particular for a deep renewal of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all carried out with strictly nonviolent methods according to the Gandhian model - but Pannella's Gandhi is neither a mystic nor an ideologue; rather, an intransigent and yet flexible politician - h

e has been through trials which he has for the most part won. As of 1976, year in which he first runs for Parliament, he is always elected at the Chamber of Deputies, twice at the Senate, twice at the European Parliament. Several times candidates and local councillor in Rome, Naples, Trieste, Catania, where he carried out exemplary and demonstrative campaigns and initiatives. Whenever necessary, he has resorted to the weapon of the hunger strike, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in particular during the major campaign against world hunger, for which he mobilized one hundred Nobel laureates and preeminent personalities in the fields of science and culture in order to obtain a radical change in the management of the funds allotted to developing countries. On 30 September 1981 he obtains at the European parliament the passage of a resolution in this sense, and after it several other similar laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliament. In January 1987 he runs for President of the European Parliament, obtaini

ng 61 votes. Currently, as the radical party has pledged to no longer compete with its own lists in national elections, he is striving for the creation of a "transnational" cross-party, in view of a federal development of the United States of Europe and with the objective of promoting civil rights throughout the world.

(2) MORO ALDO. (Maglie 1916 - Rome 1978). Italian politician. Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party (1959-65), mastermind of the Centre-Left policy. Several times minister as of 1956, Prime Minister (1963-68, 1974-76) president of the Christian Democratic Party as of 1956, he favoured the participation of the Communist Party (PCI) in the government, outlining the hypothesis of a so-called "third stage" (after those of "centrism" and "centre-left") of the political system. He was kidnapped by the Red Brigades on 16 March 1978 in Rome and found dead on 9 May of the same year.

(3) CURCIO RENATO. (1941). Charismatic founder and leader of the Red Brigades. Sentenced to life imprisonment.

(4) CAPPONI CARLA. Communist exponent of the Resistance, took active part in the attempt of Via Rasella, where several German soldiers died, causing a German retaliation in which 300 hundred Italians died, shot at the Fosse Ardeatine.

(5) TROMBADORI ANTONELLO. Roman communist exponent, member of Parliament, essayist and writer.

(6) AMENDOLA GIORGIO. (Rome 1907 - 1980). One of the founders of the PCI (Italian Communist Party), long considered the heir of Togliatti. Architect of the agreement with the "sound productive forces", he was head of the party's reformist, pragmatist wing. Member of Parliament for many years. Author of a series of remarkable autobiographical works.

(7) TOGLIATTI PALMIRO. (Genua 1893 - Yalta 1964). In Turin he cooperated with A. Gramsci, among the founders of the Italian Communist Party, which he was secretary of from 1927 until his death. Exiled in Russia, he was member of the secretariat of the Comintern, and played an important role in Spain during the civil war. Back in Italy in 1944, he launched a "national" policy based on the fact of voting the Lateran pacts, clashing with the lay forces of the country. Member of government from 1944 to 1947, also as minister. After the elections of 1948, he monopolized the opposition's role, but he also favoured a "dialogue" with the Christian Democracy and the Catholic world, without ever breaking with the Vatican. His project of an "Italian way to socialism" did not achieve its fundamental objective, and on the contrary lead to a stalemate in the political system, preventing the Left from acquiring any "alternation" in power from the Christian Democratic Party.

(8) LAMA LUCIANO. (Gambettola, Forlì 1921). Communist, secretary of the CGIL as of 1970, then member of parliament and deputy president of the Chamber. Exponent of the right-wing current (the so-called "miglioristi").

(9) PERTINI SANDRO. (Stella 1896 - Rome 1990). Italian politician. Socialist, was imprisoned and exiled during the fascist regime.. From 1943 to 1945 he participated in the Resistance. Secretary of the Socialist Party, deputy, president of the Chamber (1968-1976), President of the Republic (1978-1985).

(10) LOMBARDI RICCARDO. (Regalbuto 1901 - 1984). Italian politician. Among the founders of the Partito d'Azione, later joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), which he became president of in 1980.

(11) IL MANIFESTO. Monthly magazine (and political movement) established in 1969 by exponents of the communist party (A. Natoli, R.Rossanda, L.Pinto, L.Magri, etc.) who were later expelled. In 1971, the magazine became a daily newspaper and supported communist formations not represented in Parliament.

(12) LOTTA CONTINUA. One of the most important and widespread political movements of the extreme left, established in 1969 in Turin. In 1971 it created the homonymous newspaper, which became immediately popular. It detached the extraparliamentary Left from the laborite prejudicial, penetrating the youth and students' milieu, the conscripts, the prisons, etc. Its chief leader was the journalist and writer Adriano Sofri.

(13) REALE ORONZO. (Lecce 1902 - Rome 1988). One of the founders of the Partito d'Azione (1942), secretary of the republican party (1949-1964), deputy, minister of justice. The "Reale bill" is an emergency bill which attributed special powers to the police forces, introduced by Reale to defeat terrorism (1975). In the referendum of 1988 promoted by the Radical Party to abrogate the "Reale bill", 76% of voters declared themselves in favour of maintaining the law.

(14) COSSIGA FRANCESCO. (Sassari 1928). President of the Italian Republic from 1985 to 1992. Deputy since 1958, under secretary (1966) and Minister (1974). Minister of the Interior (1976-78) when Aldo Moro was kidnapped, he resigned when the dead body of the statesman was discovered. Prime Minister (1979-80). As President of the republic, during the second part of his term he actively promoted changes in the Italian Constitution, participating in fierce controversies with the majority of political exponents, and overcoming the limits laid down by the Constitution. For such reasons he was denounced by Marco Pannella in August 1991 for attempt on the Constitution.

(15) TOGLIATTI PALMIRO. (Genua 1893 - Yalta 1964). In Turin he cooperated with A. Gramsci, among the founders of the Italian Communist Party, which he was secretary of from 1927 until his death. Exiled in Russia, he was member of the secretariat of the Comintern, and played an important role in Spain during the civil war. Back in Italy in 1944, he launched a "national" policy based on the fact of voting the Lateran pacts, clashing with the lay forces of the country. Member of government from 1944 to 1947, also as minister. After the elections of 1948, he monopolized the opposition's role, but he also favoured a "dialogue" with the Christian Democracy and the Catholic world, without ever breaking with the Vatican. His project of an "Italian way to socialism" did not achieve its fundamental objective, and on the contrary lead to a stalemate in the political system, preventing the Left from acquiring any "alternation" in power from the Christian Democratic Party.

(16) GALLI DELLA LOGGIA ERNESTO. Historian, university professor, journalist. Of Marxian formation, he then supported liberalism and ran at the elections of 1992 for the "Lista Referendum" ticket.

(17) STAME FEDERICO. Exponent of the extraparliamentary Left in the '60s. Political theorist and essayist.