Overview

Formed in 1970, the organization sought to create a “revolutionary” state through armed struggle, and to remove Italy from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Red Brigades attained notoriety in the 1970s and early 1980s with their violent attempts to destabilise Italy by acts of sabotage, bank robberies, kidnappings and murders. Models for the Red Brigades included the Latin American urban guerrilla movements and the World War II Italian partisan movement, which was itself a mostly leftist, anti-fascist revolutionary movement. The group was influenced by volumes on the Tupamaros published by Feltrinelli, “a sort of do-it-yourself manual for the early Red Brigades”, and was influenced by and saw itself as a continuation of the Italian partisan resistance movement of the 1940s, which was interpreted as an example of a youthful anti-fascist minority using violent means for just ends.