Massacres in Italian history between the 19th and 20th centuries. Some itineraries of a crime of common danger through violence

Abstract

The essay traces the theoretical, legislative, and jurisprudential aspects of the crime of massacre between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the violence of massacres has seemed to represent the most horrific moments in Italian history. In the Zanardelli Code, common massacre, against public safety, was absorbed into that against public order, with a ‘unitary’ crime: «massacre», «devastation», «looting», «incitement to civil war». Anarchists, enemies of the liberal state and society, were accused and convicted, including through recourse to the exceptional laws of 1894 on the use of explosives; the Rocco Code distinguished between common massacre and the more serious political massacre, intended to attack the «personality of the State». The essay focuses specifically on the trials for the Piazza Fontana massacre in Milan in 1969, which was blamed on anarchists, then neo-fascists, at the instigation and/or cover-up of the so-called «deviant» intelligence services. It considers that Ordine Nuovo leaders and militants were convicted for the Piazza della Loggia massacre in Brescia in 1974. It recalls that, for the Bologna train station massacre in 1980, in addition to the neo-fascists, several instigators were convicted, including Licio Gelli. The difficult trials, which continue to this day, have highlighted the tragedies of a period that Norberto Bobbio has defined as one of «invisible power and violence», of «violated democracy».