Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades)

Founded in 1970 by Renato Curcio, Alberto Franceschini and others from the radical left student and worker movements, the Red Brigades sought to destabilize the Italian state and prevent what they saw as a drift toward authoritarian, US-aligned centrism, through a strategy of armed 'propaganda of the deed' — kidnappings, kneecapping shootings of businessmen, judges and journalists, and assassinations. The organization reached the height of its notoriety on 16 March 1978, when a commando kidnapped Christian Democrat leader and former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in Rome, killing his five bodyguards, and held him for 55 days before murdering him on 9 May 1978 after the Italian government refused to negotiate. The killing of Moro, who had been architect of the 'historic compromise' between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party, discredited that strategy and hardened state resolve; a sustained police and judicial campaign, aided by the 'repentance' (pentiti) of captured members, dismantled the organization's operational core through the 1980s, with its historic leadership largely imprisoned or in exile by 1988.

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