Correspondents' Correspondence
Correspondents'Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS Red and Black Terror Rome-every new terrorist bombing on...
...The Bolognese and Roman investigators immediately claimed the attentat bore the signature of the NAR neofascist terrorists well before the evidence had been carefully sifted...
...An ideological debate, if not an outright squabble, takes place before the facts are considered...
...In fairness, it must be said that the Left is not alone in opportunistically exploiting terrorism...
...Red" magistrates and "black" magistrates denounce one another while secretly leaking damaging information to the press...
...Correspondents'Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS Red and Black Terror Rome-every new terrorist bombing on the Continent-whether in Paris against the Jewish community or in Munich at the Oktoberfest-Seems to be a pretext for yet another political dispute...
...This is the major obstacle to any meaningful official investigation of terrorist organizations and their criminal deeds...
...To the satisfaction of many old-line bureaucrats, prosecutors and policemen, suddenly its color switched from fascist black to radical Left-wing red...
...The newspapers publish whatever is dribbled their way, of course, and then are promptly accused of obstructing justice or helping the terrorist cause-further diverting attention from where it should be focused...
...Meanwhile, the perpetrators themselves melt away in the sectarian chaos...
...Small wonder that when Italy's leading politicians rushed to Bologna on August 3 to pay a massively televised homage to the victims of the bombing, the heartbroken citizens of that civilized city greeted them with hostility and contempt.-Silvio F. Senigallia...
...With the bombing last August 2 that killed 84 and wounded 200 in the Bologna railroad station, however, the familiar Leftist pieties began to bounce back...
...Nowhere, though, is the situation more depressing than in Italy, where one is repeatedly reminded of George Orwell's observation that the original sin of the Left was being antifascist without being antitotalitarian...
...In addition, every week or so some relatively responsible politician will hint broadly at the international ties of terrorism...
...Fortunately, Taviani was soon replaced and the enormities of the Red Brigades, climaxing in the kidnapping and assassination of Christian Democratic leader Aldo Moro, finally brought about a change in the official view of terrorism...
...In such an un-edifying atmosphere, where everyone is busy scoring points against political foes, what facts there might be go undiscovered or ignored, and the terrorist carnage continues to cover the streets and piazzas with innocent blood...
...Thus we hear lurid tales of Czech money bankrolling the gauchistes of Autonomia Operaia, or of Ly-bian killers actively operating on Italian soil...
...In Italy, every problem and every event is first scrutinized in terms of political repercussions, political expediency...
...In 1974, when considerable evidence already existed that extremist group-uscules had quit the "bourgeois" Communist Party (PCI) to wage armed warfare against the state, the then Minister of the Interior, Paolo Emilio Ta-viani, blithely assured Parliament that all terrorism in Italy was of neofascist origin...
...For years the drive against terrorism was weakened and delayed here by the wishful thinking of democratic Leftist politicians and intellectuals who insisted that terrorism could only be black...
...It almost appears that there is little serious desire to stop them...
...Right-wing politicians are just as quick to discern the machinations of the KGB as their opposite numbers are to spot the black hand of the CIA in the most trivial incidents...
...After six decades of Leninism, Stalinism and Brezhnevism they still watched for the totalitarian danger solely on the far Right-decrying the resurgence of neo-Nazis in West Germany and Black Shirts in Italy, but somehow never losing their composure over the red brand of fascism...
...and two days after the bombing, a marble stele placed on a wall of the Bologna station listed the names of victims who were "slaughtered by fascist barbarity...
...Even the then Prime Minister Francesco Cossiga abandoned his usual caution and spoke of "neo-Nazi connotations...
...Following each new terrorist attack, both sides outdo themselves with speculations on the politics of the alleged perpetrators and slurs against their opponents for their supposed responsibility...
Vol. 63 • October 1980 • No. 18
