Résister à la peur : les mobilisations contre les terrorismes en Italie, de 1969 à 1980

• Main Author: Grégoire Le Quang
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: École Normale Supérieure de Lyon Editions 2019-02-01
• Series: Laboratoire Italien
• Subjects: terrorism; political violence; fear; years of lead; protest; politics
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/laboratoireitalien/2653

Historiography has long focused on the causes of the radicalization of protest in Italy in the 1970s, and on the means developed by the State to react to terrorism, but the political conflict was not only a confrontation between institutions and terrorist groups. In the fight against political violence, the role of popular resistance is essential. The analysis attempts to identify the forms of such mobilizations, and in particular public demonstrations, and their developments, both in the fight against attacks linked to the “strategy of tension” and those committed by underground armed organizations of revolutionary inspiration. Particular attention is paid to factors that appear to encourage mobilizations, and in particular to the sometimes conflicting emotions that permeated the society confronted with acts of terrorist violence. The anti-terrorist mobilization is therefore a response to the desire to express indignation, to oppose fear, to demonstrate the growing distrust of the State, or to prove the isolation of terrorist organizations. In the end, the 1970s appear to be a crucial decade for the formation of a political culture of citizen opposition to violence – as evidenced by the persistence of these mobilizations on the anniversary dates of the main attacks, which structure a living memory of these events.