Identity and morality in the Italian red brigades

Bibliographic Data

ID4086944
AuthorsAlison Jamieson (corresponding author)
Year1990
Volume2
Issue4
Pages508-520
Publication date1990-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTerrorism and Political Violence (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0954-6553 • E-ISSN: 1556-1836
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09546559008427079
OpenAlexW2060903332
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited2

The article provides a brief background to the activities of the Italian Red Brigades, then examines the group's development in terms of three phases ‐ social, existential and survivalist. A perceived social and political identity in the early 1970s gave the organization an illusory security and the self‐confidence to step up the attack on the state. As the level of violence increased the BR became separated from their social base and created an auto‐identity based on self‐delusion and political alienation. Armed struggle was simplified to existential abstractions of myth and symbol. By the early 1980s the effects of legal and police repression, popular rejection and internal conflict reduced the remaining militants to a strategy of simple survival. The irreversible degeneration of the group's morality accompanied the process of social estrangement

Aesthetics · Alienation · Criminology · Existentialism · Morality · Mythology · Ontological security · Political science · Political violence · Politics · Sociology · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub