If in order to allow me to read [a letter from] you, it was necessary that [Aldo] Moro was kidnapped, this kidnapping at least had this utility! And if, so that I can speak to you again freely, ten scandals or a revolution was necessary, I could not ask for better. Unfortunately, only yesterday I received your letter of 21 April[1] and met with the Doge,[2] who was abroad for a long time. The preceding silence, which had lasted three long seasons[3] so saddened me that it made me sick for the whole time. And this idiot Paola told me by telephone that she also had a letter for me, but that she still had not sent it. This girl is so slow in everything that she only now has left her husband!
On 16 March [1978], the day Moro was kidnapped, I was in Milan, where I met with the Doge in the afternoon. In the morning, when the news of the event in Rome rebounded from all the corners of Italy, chance had it that in the street I encountered Pietro Valpreda,[4] whom I immediately asked if this time he could produce a better alibi than the previous time. Since he told me that he didn't have any, and neither did I, I responded to him that nothing better could happen for me than being seen together on that morning: because no one would bother me if I could prove, for whatever possibility that could arise, that I was with a completely burnt person, and thus no one would dare to trouble me a second time. He then invited me to his place, to hear the first news, and it was there that I proposed to him -- since he is so well-known in the whole world in relation to the provocation of [19]69 -- to immediately make a magnificent public and printed-up declaration in which, in a completely sarcastic tone, he cheerfully "claimed" [responsibility for] this new provocation, since it clearly came from the same person who bombed the Piazza Fontana. I even wrote a short text for him, but you know that he is not the boldest man in Milan, nor the most lucid, and thus he refused in a categorical manner, with the argument that he had had his fill of prison boots, police and provocations. He offered me a small bottle of Barbera, which was the only thing he could offer me, other than an alibi. And several days ago, he was condemned without appeal to 10 months in prison for having insulted the public minister [Vittorio] Occorsio (who was later killed in Rome, officially by neo-fascists, but who had been one of those who had juridically organized the accusations against Valpreda). And thus he returned to prison without glory after being released without personal merit; and the fact of having full boots did not save him from this last beffa[5] that our "justice" made of him!
As for my particular position in this troubled epoch, if in 1969 I had thought that it was quite dangerous to not live in clandestinity, in 1978 living in clandestinity would be the most dangerous thing that I could do. In fact, from the first moment, after Moro's kidnapping, anyone being sought after but not immediately found had the right to a big photo in the newspapers, with all that that can involve. Thus I returned as soon as possible to the countryside, where I now live in voluntary relegation, so to speak, and where no one can be clandestine, everyone seeing everyone else; and I have not failed to make myself seen every Tuesday at the market, where the carabiniers prowl around, without ever budging from here. In brief, I have "cultivated my garden" and my olive trees, like any gentleman,[6] cazzo,[7] must do in the country.
The choice was good and, if I have not avoided being bored, as you can imagine, I have certainly avoided more serious troubles. In contrast, many Leftists have gone into clandestinity, due to stupidity or mythomania concerning the "repression" and are now sought-after and arrested all the time, without any better reason than their absence.
Your analysis of 21 April is the thing that most resembles the famous letter that Messer Niccolo [Machiavelli] wrote from Marignano,[8] I believe, to Bartolomeo Cavalcanti and corresponds perfectly to what I have conceived and begun to write, although in a less compact fashion, in the form of a short pamphlet, under the title Ultimo Avvertimento al signor Giulio Andreotti sul terrorismo -- ovvero contributo al disintossicare l'opinione del pubblico circa il rapimento di Aldo Moro, e gli attentati che seguiranno.[9] For several reasons, I have not published it or even finished it. Among others, I would provide this "proof": that if it truly was a Leftist who did this, then this means that for the first time the Italian State is not lying to us in matters of terrorism, but this idea -- being unheard-of -- must be excluded. And, in any case, I would say that even if Andreotti or Berlinguer had proof that this coup was executed -- what do I know? -- by the Mafia or German "skin heads," what would they say that is different from what they are saying? etc. And, as for the Stalinists, since they speak through counter-truths, always evoking a "conspiracy hatched by the reactionary labor unions," when it is actually a question of a spontaneous and general proletarian revolt, as in Rome and Bologna in 1977, it is completely normal that they never speak of this conspiracy precisely when it is a question of artificial provocations such as that of '69 or those attributed to and claimed by the Red Brigades. And, concerning the RBs, who are quite capable of shooting bosses in the legs, even killing one occasionally, they cannot be capable -- I do not say incapable of accomplishing a similar attack -- but not even imagining it. Etc. etc. As the title announces, the end of this short pamphlet must be a threat against Andreotti (avvertimento is a word from the malavita[10]), a vague but all the more gloomy threat, if he does not stop these terrorist practices. This thing, presenting itself as an upside-down terrorism or an anti-terrorism, much more worrisome than routine terrorism, will certainly create a scandal, all the more so because I was jailed for threatening the President of the Council, calumny and diffusion di notizie false e tendenziose atte a turbare l'ordine pubblico,[11] and perhaps even for having kidnapped Moro. It is truly a shame that I did not do it, but when I tell you that I was sick, this is not a rhetorical flair.
Afterwards, things became complicated. The Doge, coming to find me during Moro's captivity, reminded me of the phrase that you said to him in Florence, that is to say, "in Italy today, everything is possible"; and he added to this his thought that "we Italians are not good at anything, but we are capable of everything." Thus the sequel to the story of Moro and its ending have led me to not exclude any hypothesis. And though what you have written to me is completely probable and rational, [and] it is true that this is what I have also thought, I will try here to envision this story in the inverse perspective: you will see that truly anything is possible. Nevertheless, I do not do this as an academic, like the sophist who praises Helen[12] despite what any Greek thinks of this whore, nor as an aesthete, like the altar boy with respect to Kennedy, from his tranquil little corner of Brussels.[13] I am in all senses in the middle of the field of this obscure battle, and perhaps this even permits me to see better or pushes me to deceive myself more. But since I live in Italy, serva e pericolosa,[14] for me there is the great urgency to not be deceived, neither believing one thing nor excluding it a priori: questione di vita o di morte,[15] as one says here.
Here is my reasoning and my hypothesis. You will pardon me, I hope, for the length, but it would be necessary for me to have more time to say it better. The Italian Leftists are very stupid, obviously. But this very stupidity, which on one side is not completely sufficient to render them incapable of whatever, on another side is quite sufficient to convince them that terrorism can be a good thing. And you know that the Italian Leftist, unlike the French Leftist, is not contemplative with respect to theory, but with respect to practice: he is more Edouardian than Salvadorian,[16] and, as the French make an ideological monster from the contemplation of theory, the Italians make a terroristic monster from the contemplation of practice. The statement by Goethe ("nothing is worse than active mediocrity"[17]) seems to have been made with the Italian Leftist in mind. In fact, the same stupidity that has long hindered him from understanding from where came the blow of '69, can very well have acted later on -- when its provenance became confusedly clear to him -- so as to "theorize" that one responded to the terrorism of the State with "proletarian" terrorism. It is an unquestionable fact that there are many Leftists in Italy who became terrorists in the last few years, and a number of young workers among them (the known groups only number around a hundred); it remains to be seen if a similar coup is beyond their reach or not. One knows, for example, that the German and Spanish Leftists have accomplished the Schleyer coup[18] as well as the one that struck Carrero Blanco.[19] I agree that the Spanish have a long experience with clandestine and guerrilla activities, and that the Germans are probably better organized. But in the hypothesis that I am advancing, this is not the problem, but seeing against whom they fight: the "advantages" of the Germans and the Spanish over the Italian terrorists are compensated by the advantage constituted by the incompetent stupidity of our various police forces, which are always in competition with each other to see which one merits the award for most imbecilic. Our terrorists are not eagles, but our secret services are non-existent (having been crushed under the weight of their coup in '69; by the arrests of Catanzaro; and finally by being dismantled[20] by Andreotti himself); and, as for the efficacy of our police and carabiniers, "to pose the question is already to respond to it," to make use of your phrase.
(Here is a relevant anecdote, but I could cite a thousand others, more instructive, which less concern me personally. They came to find me on 12 May [1978], when the body of Moro was quite cold, but after having searched the house of my sister in Rome, as well as that of the other [sister]. As if this was not sufficient to put me on my guard, the day before their arrival they thought to come at 4 o'clock, in plainclothes and in a normal car, for an inspection of the place, by feigning to be hunters, when hunting season is closed here as everywhere else. Being on a walk on my podere,[21] I did not see them, but they were recognized by the Sardinian shepherd, whom they saluted and who recognized one of them. Ten minutes later, he told me. The next morning, at 7:30, there arrived 18 (sic!) carabiniers, in several cases military as well as civilian; me, who had been waiting for them on firm footing for two hours, I knew from a peasant that their cars, with a carabinier and a military radio [inside], had been surveilling my house from afar since 6 AM. They were armed to the teeth, with bullet-proof jackets, [and] descended all together from their cars with their submachine guns pointing towards the house. It seemed to me, looking at them, like watching a film and I believe that they believed that they were in one. The captain who commanded the operation was completely inept, because if he had made such a display of strength and the radio was ready to call for reinforcements, he must have believed that he was dealing with a terrorist, or several of them, but in such a case he should not have arrived (with 18) on the same side of the hill at the summit of which my house is located! To what use was the inspection of the day before? And, even if I did not expect their visit, which was impossible, they would have awoken me with the noise of their five cars: and, if I had been a terrorist, with two bombs in hand, standing at the window, there would have been 18 deaths in the blink of an eye. Then this valiant captain lost five long minutes while he encircled my house with 10 of his men, in a very iconographic or choreographic -- but very stupid -- maneuver, because the door facing them was wide open. I had left it open precisely to "de-dramatize" the situation that I expected, but since they did not know that I expected them, they profited from it. From what the captain said, this ridiculous operation had at least the result of cleansing me of the suspicion of being a terrorist and, if I had wanted to appear to not be one [when I actually was one], I would have had 15 hours to get rid of or hide whatever I needed to. Finally, although they remained a long time, they quite simply forgot to search my large stables, which they did not even open, nor the cellar. And they could even say that they had come for a different reason, because the mandate from the magistrate, who had authorized them to search, even during the night, said that I was suspected of having committed crimes "contro la personalita dello Stato,"[22] id est Moro. Everywhere else the police have also conducted themselves in a maladroit fashion. I close this parenthesis by saying that the only result of this operation was that the peasants were very excited by what took place here, which from one mouth to another has reached the outskirts of Arezzo, enlarged and distorted; I have heard from people who do not know me that one finally found the leader of the RB, and [I have heard] from others that I was "discovered" and arrested.)
The Italian secret services have long been sure of being the only ones to commit terrorist acts, that, when a[n act of] real terrorism is committed, they are completely taken by surprise. And, as for our police, which are only prepared for operations that concern public order -- while they are especially incapable from the "investigative" point of view (80% of crimes remain unpunished) -- they have always been instructed since [the era of the] deceased [police inspector] Calabresi in the fabrication of false evidence against fake guilty parties, [and] with respect to any real fact or concrete crime normally finds itself paralyzed. In the inquest into the Moro Affair, one has not even sought to find false guilty parties, which might demonstrate that they believe that they can find the real ones. If they still have not found them, this again proves their incapacity, but it also proves that the task is not easy. (Furthermore, the Germans still have not been successful at finding Schleyer's kidnappers, and their prisons, so trustworthy, have not been sufficient from preventing two good women from freeing a terrorist -- although one can, in this case, suspect that this escape was teleguided by the security services, precisely to try to lead back to Schleyer's kidnappers through the escapee; but, if this is the case, one will soon see.)
In Italian society, in which the only stable thing is its very instability, in which nothing is solid and nothing functions, one need not be astonished if very small terrorist groups can, for a certain time, profit from the fragility of the system so as to appear as the only solid thing and to function in the very panorama of social and political setbacks of which they are the products and which assures them of success. But one can also say that, up to a certain point, this success against the system does not truly harm it.
The fact that terrorism brings water to the mill of the spectacle does not prove that it is the supporters of the spectacle who direct it, nor does it prove that the Red Brigades are black, as the Stalinists say; above all, this proves that the supporters of the spectacle are still in a position to exploit what their police forces cannot manage to suppress and also proves the lack of awareness and powerlessness of the terrorist option. And this again proves that the system is incomparably more capable of putting up with these blows than preventing them. The argument of cui prodest[23] applied to terrorism in the society of the spectacle cannot be of any use, because one sees that it is combated in its intentions, at least by those who profit, but without great results; and that it is practiced by those whom it harms, but with good results. In fact, we have seen that Italian capitalism is very capable of harming itself, by itself, much better than the Leftists can harm it, and, inversely, the Italian Leftists can also harm themselves, by themselves, by giving themselves up to terrorism a bischero sciolto.[24]
And even in this apparent madness there must be a hidden rationality, since all that is real is rational (and the Corriere della Sera becomes almost theoretical in its theoretical powerlessness, when it declared on 27 April [1978] with respect to the Moro Affair: "All forms of rationality seem to drown in emotionality and spectacle. The mass media[25] unconsciously helps this process. . . ." And L'Espresso, believing itself to be finer, entitled an article Les Brigate rosso fanno proprie certe strategie della "societa dello spettacolo"[26]). The hidden rationality in this reality is that, in their apparent madness, Italian capitalism and its Leftism condemn themselves from their own movements. And the historical utility of terrorism will be to convince revolutionaries that it is useless and [to convince] the capitalists that it can even be dangerous. Because I wonder at what point it is useful for the State to let this phenomenon rise by losing all control [over it].
This State was the first to begin the terrorist game, knowing well that until now no terrorism of this nature had ever overthrown any State. But if there is in Italy someone so lucid as to always act with the same casualness, I would be surprised if he didn't also have the intelligence and culture to know that -- ever since the adventures of the priest [named] Gapone, who helped provoke nothing less than the revolution of 1905 -- the history of provocations is full of very dangerous examples of "slippage." And if the terrorist phenomenon is no longer mastered by the State, beyond the risk of living perpetually in fear, as in a kind of purgatory in which one only nourishes oneself on hope, because I strongly doubt that such and such a [government] minister or industrialist or powerful person has the stoic lucidity to console himself by dreaming that, finally, no one is indispensable to the State. And to live continually surrounded by cops, who are so official and incompetent, and so deprived and costly: questa non e vita![27] Moreover, the only message that Moro left Italy and his friends in the many letters written in his tortuous and unmistakable manner was, finally, this: it is not worth dying for this State. And who could say that he was wrong? Certainly not his friends for whom this State is only good in so far as it assures them of what [is necessary] to live and to live well, as one knows.
And since any terrorist act has its fans[28] among the same Leftists who applaud as they did -- before becoming Leftists -- their soccer teams, without wondering too much whence it comes, whence it could come or where it could lead, it is normal that terrorism also produces a recruitment and that the fan[29] sometimes becomes a player, and the phenomenon shows how a cancer that feeds upon itself always more rapidly, to the point of attaining always higher objectives that have never been attained, more due to the fact that they were not supposed to be able to be attained than for other reasons.
I would even say that, for some time, in Italy as in Germany, the terrorists are technically successful at all the blows that they try. Which demonstrates the extreme fragility of these systems with respect to the phenomenon. (It is not by chance that terrorism strikes these two countries: both have never known revolutions comparable to those in France, Spain and England; both combated with fascist terrorism the revolutions that announced themselves in 1919-1920; both lost the last [world] war; and for both "democracy" was accepted as [something] imposed as the price for such defeats.) From the military point of view, of which you know more than I, it seems to me that the terrorist act, where one cannot respond to it with general reprisals, is quite easy: it has the advantage of surprise and does not have the disadvantage of the classic attack, in which the attacking forces must be quite superior, because the terrorists do not need to occupy and hold a country, but they need to occupy the territory of the spectacle, without, moreover, knowing how or being able to truly ravage it. On the other hand, one has seen that the Germans and the Israelis obtained excellent results by adopting terrorist tactics in Mogadishu and Entebbe, respectively: so as to not succeed in operations of this kind, it seems to me that it is necessary to be fuck-ups like the Egyptians in Cyrus,[30] which is easily avoidable. And this facility can suggest quite well to the terrorists always more risky objectives.
As for those who began the terrorism and provocations in Italy, the least one can say is that they have not weighed this statement by Seneca, according to whom "it is much easier to not begin than it is to stop" along such a route; and yet one knows that Seneca, as Nero's counselor, knew something of provocations and terrorist practices. Thus if these kinds of attacks can serve certain forces of the State, as we know, the chain reaction that was unleashed after 1969 can even be dispensed, at the first moment, by the forces that directly organized it. But when everything proceeds automatically, this is a new problem that these forces cannot manage to master in the second stage. And in my opinion, we have already arrived at this second stage.
It is impossible to understand this new phenomenon, because it is in a new context, if one does not know the theory of the spectacle: and the proof is that even the bourgeois -- when they speak of terrorism in Italy -- speak of the spectacle and say that your book (of which a new pirate edition was made, I believe, for purely speculative reasons, in the common, economic sense of the word, several months ago) is, from what Panorama said last week, one of the best-selling books in Italy. Never has a book been so often pirated, during the lifetime of its author and for so many different reasons, as yours has in Italy over the course of the last 10 years! (This would be the time to publish the real first edition, correct and perhaps augmented by a preface that explains this phenomenon.) It seems to me that there are few epochs in history during which the greatest thoughts and the most important theories are diffused with as much rapidity as the greatest events: and this derives from the simple fact that these epochs understand and consider these thoughts and theories to be the greatest events; something that -- it alone, as Gondi says -- is capable after a certain period of time of producing events grandissimi.[31]
You cannot even imagine, from afar, the precise point to which things have gone in Italy in the escalation of madness, on one side, and the degradation of all that exists in general. And even what I have advanced about the terrorist phenomenon was not advanced according to flights of fancy without any support in reality. Perhaps you remember a piece of shit [une bordille] from Naples or Rome, who came one day to Caldaie,[32] and who showed so much pleasure when you caressed the cat on all fours; perhaps you recall that she had a brother who was hardly better than her on the level of morality, because they were both equally incestuous and didn't even hide it. It so happens that this brother encountered a known terrorist, but who name he did not want to tell me and, moreover, I do not even recall his name or that of his piece of shit of a sister. And the brother told me that, despite his dubious morality he had been surprised by the insane casualness that reigns in this ready-for-everything milieu, which is capable of many things, but useless for our ends and too spectacular, in as much as they believe themselves returned to the times of Nechaev and Dostoevsky. Moreover, it is better for us -- who still believe in certain principles -- to not get mixed up with shit, incest and terrorists!
Do you know this remark on Italy by Alfieri,[33] which Stendhal cited? "What would I say? Modern Italy, arrived at the height of nullity and debasement, demonstrates to me again (great God! must I say it?) by the execrable and yet sublime crimes that one sees committed each day, that -- even today and more than in any other country in Europe -- it is full of ardent souls, above all fear, to whom nothing is lacking to immortalize themselves than a field of battle and the means of acting." Since Alfieri said this, in 1786, in France one has had five revolutions, five republics and two empires, [while] we Italians [have had] the Cinque giornate of Milan, the miserable Risorgimento,[34] a sciammannato reign, Mussolini and the epic Resistenza from which was born our first, surprising Repubblica, but we have not had a real field of battle nor a real means of acting. This could also explain the current suicidal activism of our terrorists.
The point of departure for each of these Leftists is the lack of money; they begin with some hold-ups,[35] then they kidnap a rich bourgeois; then, when they have plenty of money, they do not know how to use it "for the cause"; and so they prepare the infrastructure for terrorism properly speaking: apartments, cars, weapons, radios, etc. And this simple reasoning: what I have done so far has been quite easy, but no one speaks of it; we should do something that everyone is obliged to speak of and that strikes the class adversary. And, among all the things that everyone is obliged to speak of, in the field of class struggle, the terrorist act is obviously the one by which one achieves this result at the least cost. But it does not assure this result only the majority of times. The spirit of the modern terrorist is not practice, in the sense that it is not the spirit of someone who has landed a blow so as to enjoy the advantages that he draws from it or from the real effects that he unleashes; he has, rather, the spirit of the voyeur who puts a mirror on the ceiling to see himself fuck [someone], or lacking this, see himself getting fucked. All that he does, he does to see it deformed and exaggerated in the mirror of the spectacle. Since killing a Moro or a Giscard makes more noise than stabbing a Caesar in person, anyone can believe himself to be greater and more fearful than Brutus. This fact, in addition to the fact that there are today more Moros than Caesars, puts the role of Brutus within the reach of everyone.
The risk of passing one's whole life in prison does not even trouble these young terrorists, because they think all of them will outlive this State (and who can say a priori that they are wrong on this point, given that our State is at the point of collapse at every moment?); and they have, in any case, the hope of not being captured or, if so, escaping and, in the worst case, the fact of remaining in jail for several years -- what the fuck does it matter to those who only have a choice between the certain risk of passing their lives in a factory or the dubious risk of alternating between periods in clandestinity and periods in prison? This is very precisely what they think. Certainly they are in fact very backwards in historical consciousness, knowing neither art nor the art of living, and they do not even manage to seize the simple truth that, when the people who present themselves as revolutionaries act in a manner in which the secret services can also act, their condemnation has already been pronounced. But this derives from the facts, which you have evoked, that in Italy there has not been a "Dreyfus Affair" in the aftermath of the Piazza Fontana and that no one, especially not them [the Leftists] have been capable of concluding that it was [an instance of] State terrorism. And the state of perpetual terrorism (six terrorist attacks per day in 1977) into which Italy has been plunged is the local consequence, and current terrorism appears to me the just compensation that this State merits for having done everything to prevent a "Dreyfus Affair" with respect to the attack of '69. And the worst thing is that one does not see how all this could end, if not in a social revolution, which would be the only remedy to the alienated violence of terrorism as well as all the rest. The fact that the group that kidnapped Moro did not make him spit out the truth about the attack of '69 is not as surprising as it might appear at first: this is another consequence of the "suppressed Dreyfus Affair": the question of '69 does not interest them because, if it did interest them, they wouldn't be what they are. These ideologues of clandestinity are above all clandestines of ideology and the worst one, if in this matter it is possible to have preferences: they almost never speak of ideology, but the majority of them are Stalinists, and they have no shame in declaring so. In a certain way, the Stalinism of the Red Brigades constitutes the last bloody flair-up of the disappointed illusions of a bloody Stalinism in total ruin, and the bearers of this ideology believe themselves to be justified by the failures of the Stalinism that has become "democratic," as much as in Italy as in France or Spain.
There exist other groups, with different ideologies and only have terrorist practices in common: one of these groups is even pro-situ[ationist], and I was chilled when I read the beginning of the only document that, to my knowledge, it has produced: "Debord was right when he said. . . " etc! This group, Azione Rivoluzionaria,[36] has also been the only one to fire upon a Stalinist at L'Unita. I, who live in a Stalinist municipality of 20,000 inhabitants, I regard with a certain disquiet the possible police actions and instances of summary justice if this continues, by taking us as authorities who justify terrorism against the Stalinists.
As for the political perspectives in Italy, of which I have not spoken, what you have said seems to me completely sufficient: about the weakening of the Stalinists, even from the electoral point of view; about the omerta in general (but you also see its price!); [and] about the very real possibility of a show of force, given the unheard-of disorder in which we find ourselves. I am perhaps too optimistic if, not wanting to neglect the role that the stupidity of power plays in Italy's fate, I repeat again that, since everything is possible, ci sara guerra, e presto, e malgrado la sciocchezza di codeste bande,[37] if those who can profit from it do not do so as soon as possible.
Afterwards, it will be too late. I still plan to write Rimedio a tutto,[38] but I would like to speak to you; it will be difficult for me to make up my mind otherwise; and yet I feel that it will be necessary to write it immediately or never. I lack I do not know what or, rather, I know: I lack your opinion and encouragement.
I will send you many [press] clippings and documents, some of which I have cited above, but I do not know where you will be. And, as you know, I would love to see you more than anything else in the world, but it seems to me almost impossible [for me] to cross the border into France, which must be well-guarded against the Italians, and I have broken off my relations with the driver whom you know. Perhaps you might come in questa serva Italia, non donna di provincie ma bordello?[39] 1977 was an exceptional year for Chianti. And I still have two damigiane,[40] for a total of more than a hundred liters, which I have not wanted to touch since '75, hoping to water [arroser], as the peasants of Auvergne say, our meeting in the best of conditions.
And, to conclude, here are the words of a madrigal from the Cinquecento,[41] of which the music is very beautiful, dedicated to the workers on your next film:
Io non compro piu speranza,I embrace you, Alice and you.
ch'egli e falsa mercanza.
A dar solo attendo via
quella poca che m'avanza.
Cara un tempo la comprai
hor la vendo a buon mercato.
E consiglio ben che mai
non new compri un venturato. . . .[42]
[1] See letter from Guy Debord to Gianfranco Sanguinetti dated 21 April 1978.
[2] Aliberti Mignoli, Gianfranco Sanguinetti's attorney.
[3] Debord has last written to Sanguinetti on 2 August 1977.
[4] Initially accused of perpetrating the bombing of the Piazza Fontana in Milan on 12 December 1969, Valpreda was arrested and finally released in December 1972.
[5] "mockery" in Italian.
[6] English in original.
[7] "fuck" in Italian.
[8] Battle at which the French took Milan; 13-14 September 1515.
[9] Final warning to Mr Giulio Andreotti about terrorism -- or, rather, a contribution to the detoxification of public opinion on the abduction of Aldo Moro and the attacks that followed it.
[10] "underworld" in Italian.
[11] "of false news and tendentious acts that disturb the public order" in Italian.
[12] Gorgias.
[13] Raoul Vaneigem.
[14] "servile and dangerous" in Italian.
[15] "a question of life and death" in Italian.
[16] Closer to Eduoardo Rothe than Paolo Salvadori: two ex-members of the Italian section of the Situationist International.
[17] Sanguinetti's citation says "mediocrity" rather than "ignorance."
[18] Hanns-Martin Schleyer, a former Nazi, a businessman and Christian Democrat who was kidnapped by the Red Army Faction and murdered on 19 October 1977 in retribution for the murder of Andreas Baader in prison.
[19] Luis Carrero Blanco, a Spanish Admiral and Francoist who was killed by the ETA on 20 December 1973.
[20] The French word used here, demanteler, can also mean "uncovered."
[21] "family homestead" in Italian.
[22] "against the personhood of the State" in Italian.
[23] "Who profits?" in Latin.
[24] "without reflection and casually" in Italian.
[25] English in original.
[26] The Red Brigades builds its strategy upon the "society of the spectacle" in Italian.
[27] "this is not living!" in Italian.
[28] English in original.
[29] English in original.
[30] On 19 February 1978, ten Egyptian commandos were killed trying to release eleven Egyptian hostages taken by gunmen after they assassinated Youssef Sebai.
[31] "on a grand scale" in Italian.
[32] The via delle Caldaie, in Florence: the location of Sanguinetti's residence.
[33] Count Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803).
[34] The "Five Days of Milan" refers the 18-22 March 1848 war of independence; Italian unification took place between 1815 and 1871.
[35] English in original.
[36] Founded in Tuscany in 1977 by Gianfranco Faina (died of advanced lung cancer in February 1980) and Salvatore Cinieri (killed in prison in 1979). "Revolutionary Action" mostly attacked the media and also Christian Democratic politicians.
[37] "here there will be war, and soon, and despite the nonsense uttered by this group" in Italian.
[38] Remedy to Everything, of which "On Terrorism and the State" (published by Sanguinetti in 1979) formed a part.
[39] "In servile Italy, not mistress of provinces, but a brothel": quotation from Dante, Purgatory, VI, 76-78.
[40] demijohns (a unit of measure).
[41] The 16th century.
[42] "I no longer buy hope / Because it is false merchandise / I only wait to see / The little that remains for me. Once I bought it dearly / Now I sell it cheap / And I counsel whomever / Never should a fortunate person buy it." These are the lyrics of a song by Marchetto Cara (1465-1525) called "Hor vendut'ho la speranza." We have located and translated another verse (perhaps the song's chorus?): "Hope is like a dream that passes into nothing / Hope is the demand that can be weighed in the wind / Hope often destroys those who dance its dance."
(Published in Editions Champ Libre, Correspondence, Volume II, November 1981. Translated from the French and, where necessary, from the Italian, by NOT BORED! August 2007. Footnotes by the translator.)