The Years of Lead in Italy: Strategy of Tension, Operation Gladio, & the Long 1970s
Rev Left Radio
Breht O'Shea
4.8 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 November 2025
⏱️ 107 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Most people, even on the Left, only know fragments of Italy's "Years of Lead." This episode pulls the whole picture into focus: the mass worker upsurge after the boom years, the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing and the death of Giuseppe Pinelli, the rise of the Red Brigades, the kidnapping and execution of Aldo Moro, and the 1980 Bologna massacre. Alyson and Breht trace how far-right stragismo (mass bombings) intersected with far-left clandestinism, and how segments of the deep state, intelligence services, and the Cold War Gladio architecture shaped a strategy of tension that isolated social movements, kept the socialist and communist left from power, and cleared the way for the establishment of neoliberalism in Italy and beyond. Alyson and Breht then discuss what lessons we can learn from this history and if there are any similarities to the contemporary United States.
Clips for this episode are pulled from this YT documentary HERE
Check out our episode on the Italian fascist Julius Evola HERE
Check out our episode on Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political HERE
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What you're hearing now is a |
| 0:02.9 | bela chow, bella chow, bella |
| 0:07.6 | chow, chow, chow. |
| 0:09.0 | What you're hearing now is a song you may be familiar with. |
| 0:13.1 | Since 2017, Bella Chow has exploded in popularity, |
| 0:17.6 | mainly due to the Netflix series Money Heist. |
| 0:20.5 | It sounds innocent enough, a cheery marching song that makes you want to dance, but very few people know the song's dark history. |
| 0:29.6 | Originally it began as a song of protest in the late 1800s, sung by Northern Italian farmers dissatisfied with their poor working conditions. |
| 0:39.3 | However, its modern interpretation wouldn't come into being until |
| 0:43.3 | 1943 when it was adopted by the anti-fascist Italian partisans as their anthem. |
| 0:49.3 | The lyrics were modified. |
| 0:51.3 | Instead of singing about mosquitoes and harsh working life, |
| 0:56.1 | the partisans' song of death and the struggle for freedom against Mussolini and the Nazi occupation. |
| 1:02.8 | Bella Chow would go on to inspire the partisans to success in liberating Italy in 1945. |
| 1:10.6 | It is here with this song that I believe the modern Italian mindset was moulded. |
| 1:15.6 | An idea of struggle, perseverance and liberation would embed itself in the minds of all those in Italy. |
| 1:22.6 | A sense of pride for the struggle for freedom. |
| 1:25.6 | However, while these ideas of liberation and struggle |
| 1:29.2 | were adopted by everyone in Italy, some decided they would adopt one more aspect of the famous |
| 1:35.2 | song, the idea of violence, the idea of conflict and dying for a cause. It was this that |
| 1:41.5 | sowed seeds of division in Italy in the following years, and would cause |
| 1:45.6 | them to explode in what would become known simply as Gliani di I'm Alison, and I'm here with my co-host Brett, |
... |
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