A world of intrigues in Italy

Summer 1980 – forty years ago. Dramatic times. Times of death and mystery. The Itavia Dc9 destroyed in the air as it flew over the island of Ustica on its way to Palermo: 81 dead. And, a few months later, the bomb blast at Bologna station: a massacre that left 85 dead and 200 wounded. Against the backdrop of an “Italy of intrigues”, as the effective title of Fabio Isman’s new book puts it. The book is published by Il Mulino in the wonderful “Ritrovare l’Italia” library with “great-name itineraries”. Isman starts from the bomb in Piazza Fontana on 12 December 1969, planted by neofascists with the complicity of elements of the state, and he goes through the cases of far-right and far-left terrorism, with the dramatic page of the assassination of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades and the political cover-ups by many forces, both Italian and international. He tells the story of the intertwining of interests between politics, business, the subversive P2 freemasonry lodge, the mafia, and the wheeling and dealing of the financier Michele Sindona, protected by top men in Christian Democrat-led governments. Plots and crimes designed to weaken Italian democracy. And Isman rightly concludes: “Though wounded, democracy was not subdued, though far too many wanted it to be.”

Andare per l’Italia degli intrighi
Fabio Isman
Il Mulino, 2020