Anatomy of the Red Brigades: The Religious Mind-set of Modern Terrorists

Chapter 3. Toward the Bloodshed

48 Chapter 3 Toward the Bloodshed To kill someone, you rely on the most responsible person because you need a very great ideological and political conviction to do it. —Raffaele Fiore Daily Life in a Revolutionary Sect Discipline is very strict in the Red Brigades. Every moment of the militant’s life is subjected to a serious of rigorous rules. The Red Brigades—explains Valerio Morucci—lead “a hidden life at all times.”1 And this life is a “nightmare.” Going underground, testifies a brigadist, “isn’t easy. You have to live a double life and keep the rules religiously and behave accordingly....Going underground is a nightmare that follows you month after month and year after year, never changing.”2 The Red Brigades member Fiore recalls: “If you wanted to carry out what they asked, you had to be very strict with yourself. This meant giving yourself rules; you needed an iron self-discipline, starting as soon as you got up.”3 “Life in the Red Brigades,” Fiore continues, “was all-absorbing and highly demanding.”4 There is no moment in the day that isn’t taken up by the obsessive thought of the revolution. The life of professional revolutionaries is subject to a suffocating control even in their own homes. 1. V. Morucci, A guerra finita, 78. 2. A brigadist called “Claudio,” in an interview by Panorama, 6 June 1978, 162. Italics added. 3. A. Grandi, L’ultimo brigatista, 82. Italics added. 4. Ibid., 57. TOWARD THE BLOODSHED 49 The internal document Security and Work Rules, presumably dating back to 1974, regulates all the Red Brigades’ movements. Particularly significant is the fact that “the house belongs to the organization, which lends it to the militant. It has to be managed according to specific and unbreakable rules, equal for all....When a comrade takes possession of an organization’s house,the first task is to create, in the minutest detail, a well-defined social character....The role that a comrade has assumed must be consistent with his or her everyday life. If, for example, a person has taken the role of craftsperson, he or she has to leave home before eight in the morning and not return until twelve thirty; he or she has to leave again at two o’clock and return at seven or later. This means that comrades have to organize a specific timetable for their work (appointments, investigations, etc.).”5 In the document, also described are the “bleak furnishings”6 allowed (“a radio or television, a first-aid box, basic living necessities for at least two militants”), how to file bills, the type of keys to use, the noises to avoid so as not to arouse the neighbors’suspicions,how to do the shopping or buy newspapers , the rules for going to cafés and restaurants: everything is governed by rigid guidelines. There are also clear instructions on looking after a car—also belonging to the organization—and on keeping it clean inside. Even how to look in the rearview mirror. Dressing, combing your hair, tending your beard, nothing escapes the all-seeing eye of the revolutionary sect. Valerio Morucci,in his Ritratto di un terrorista da giovane (Portrait of aYoung Terrorist) has described the mental dimension of the professional revolutionary through his daily dialogues. It is a flood of obsessive, maniacal thoughts and gestures, repeated ad infinitum. Day after day, always the same: What instead was incredibly stressful was having to always check everything . Have you taken your gun? Is it loaded? And have you taken the spare magazine? Have you got your identity documents? Have you put on your sham spectacles? Have you locked the door properly? Have you looked out the window before going out? And don’t look around you with that suspicious air because they only do this kind of bullshit in films; walk confidently along your way,you can check later. Have you got the car keys? Where have you parked it? Have you given all the instructions 5. Security and Work Rules. Red Brigades internal document, in Dossier Brigate rosse, 1:311–12. The first italics are added. 6. The expression is Anna Laura Braghetti’s,who recounts that the Red Brigades lived in “anonymous apartments, with bleak furnishings; we ate hurriedly with plastic plates and glasses, without worrying about etiquette or material comforts.” A. L. Braghetti, Il prigioniero, 26. 50 CHAPTER 3 on what they...