Скачать или смотреть Years of Lead: the Moro Affair

In the spring of 1978, something unusual happened in Rome.




citations:

Robert Katz - Days of Wrath: this was the single most important source for my research. It's a great work of journalism, thorough and engaging. Published in 1980, it is only limited by the fact that much of the story was still obscure at the time.

Balestrini and Moroni - The Golden Horde: while this did not cover the Moro affair (its scope ends in 1977), it is a great primer for the Years of Lead.

Beatrice de Graff - Evaluating Counterterrorism Performance: there's a great chapter in here on the negotiation of this crisis, and its relatively recent publication affords a more complete recounting of the era. Having been written well after the revelations of Operation Gladio, it offers important perspective of the motivations and relevant players in the affair.

Richard Drake - The Aldo Moro Murder Case: another important look at this crisis, about fifteen years removed. Understanding of the affair had matured by 1995, but this book also had a pronounced anti-Communist lens that I found distracting. Even so, this book provided the best look at the Red Brigades during and after the affair.

Assassination and Murder in Modern Italy, edited by Gundle and Rinaldi - there is a very useful chapter on the Moro Affair written by Tobias Abse, which addresses some of the most obscure questions of the crisis.


music:

Precipitando and Report - Musica Di Sottofondo, both by Panoram


footnotes:

first, a blanket apology for my poor pronunciation of any Italian words and names
5:42: see the Nazi Maoists of Forza Nuova, who wanted to establish a Fascist dictatorship of the proletariat
6:20: what I say here is insubstantial, but stepping deeper into the mechanics of Operation Gladio would take another 45 minutes (and someone a lot more knowledgeable than me)
9:28: this is a pretty forward statement that I would not feel comfortable making if it was not so explicitly outlined in de Graaf's chapter on the Years of Lead
13:00: I put this plane backwards in Blender, so the footage is inadvertently mirrored
13:15: "Via delle Botteghe Oscure" ... very cool name. Don't remember why it's called that
14:22: to delineate the DC leadership: Andreotti is the Prime Minister of the Republic, Zaccagnini is the National Secretary of the Christian Democrats, and Moro is the President of the Christian Democrats. Moro served several terms as Prime Minister in the 60s and 70s, but was not in an executive role in 1978
17:06: another dramatic claim... see more here (https://www.theguardian.com/world/199...) and in a chapter on the Moro Affair by Tobias Abse in Assassination and Murder in Modern Italy edited by Gundle and Rinaldi
20:34: she was more generally known as Eleonora Chiavarelli, her maiden name
24:17: I don't know what exactly Zaccagnini did to earn this reputation, but almost every source that mentions him describes him in this way
29:39: there was a cycle of local elections in May 1978, but not national elections
37:06 I have no idea what happened to me when I tried to speak this sentence, but the French PM in question is Mitterrand. The famous Mitterrand Doctrine from the mid-1980s sheltered left-wing Italian terrorists from arrest in France; it remains in effect today
41:50 the topic of P2 is too complex to get into here, and I had a difficult time accessing reputable sources related to it, but there is some relationship between this lodge, Pecorelli, Andreotti, the Mafia, and the Moro Affair
43:36: the various entities that called themselves the "Red Brigades" throughout the 90s and 2000s were basically discontinuous from the original outfit
44:37: it is absolutely possible that there were international entities directing, encouraging, or facilitating these activities, and this has been the subject of conspiracy theories spanning the political spectrum since 1978, but no link between the affair and any foreign governments or left-wing cells has ever been firmly demonstrated
43:50: this final quote is directly lifted from how Robert Katz concluded Days of Wrath


Hope you liked the video. Special thanks to my girlfriend Vicky for her helpful feedback throughout the process!