A survey of stragism in Italy

Benedetta Tobagi, Le stragi sono tutte un mistero
[The Massacres Are All a Mystery], Laterza, 2024

I remember that as a teenager, it seemed like every day the news reported attacks by terrorist groups from both the right and left. This book, by the daughter of Walter Tobagi, a journalist killed by an extreme left-wing group, is an investigation that has lasted for years into the little-known phenomenon of terrorism in Italy between the 1960s and 1980s. Tobagi’s focus, as a scholar and lecturer, centers on three attacks, allegedly carried out by far-right terrorists. Piazza Fontana in Milan on December 12, 1969, which resulted in 17 deaths and 88 injuries, with the motives and perpetrators still unclear despite three trials and numerous convictions; Piazza della Loggia in Brescia on May 28, 1974, which resulted in 8 deaths and 102 injuries; and the Bologna train station bombing on August 2, 1980, with 85 deaths and 200 injuries.

The author reconstructs and weaves together the painful and uncertain pages of Italy’s recent past. To help with her authorship, she had the rare opportunity—often only very recently—to access documents, investigation reports, and police records that had been classified confidential for decades. These are now available on the website of the Archive Network (www.memoria.san.beniculturali.it). As the president of the Bologna Victims Association says, there are no mysteries, which belong to faith, but only secrets that must be uncovered.