Pushing Past The Night: Coming To Terms With Italy's Terrorist Past

December 15, 1969, was the most important day of Mario Calabresi's life, although he would not be born for another year. On that date, the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli fell to his death from a window at the Milan police headquarters, where he was being... Read more

December 15, 1969, was the most important day of Mario Calabresi's life, although he would not be born for another year. On that date, the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli fell to his death from a window at the Milan police headquarters, where he was being questioned about his role in the Fontana Square Massacre, the most infamous episode of domestic terrorism in Italy. A bomb explosion at the National Agrarian Bank claimed the lives of sixteen people and wounded eighty-four, inaugurating the period of terrorist attacks in public places and "revenge" killings by extremists on both ends of the political spectrum that would become known as the Years of Lead.
Police commissioner Luigi Calabresi, Mario's father, was in the building, though not in the room, at the time of the accident. This didn't stop the rumors that Pinelli had been killed by Calabresi. These suspicions kicked off "a ferocious lynching, albeit in slow motion" -as the Italian paper "La Repubblica "characterized it-that culminated in the murder of Luigi Calabresi outside his home one morning in 1972. He left behind his pregnant wife and two young sons.
In this memoir, Mario Calabresi explores the personal and political fallout of Italy's era of domestic terrorism in a poignant and very personal account of a major public event. His grief at the murder of his father is balanced by a desire to overcome the divisions that still scar Italy today. This is a powerful project in a book that, while describing the effects of terror, calls not only for accountability but also for redemption. Less