The daughter of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, who was murdered by the communist Red Brigades, slammed a performance by a band that glorified the terrorist group at a recent concert.
Maria Fida Moro, the eldest daughter of murdered former conservative Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, slammed the band P38, who performed on May 1st at the Arci club in Reggio Emilia, claiming the group’s lyrics were tantamount to incitement to terrorism.
“Here it is not a question of freedom of thought but it is incitement to terrorism. My father was against everything in those lyrics,” Ms Moro said, adding that “[o]nly those who have gone through such pain can really understand what it feels like and can understand that even a song can have vulgar and dangerous outcomes,” newspaper Il Giornale reports.
Lorenzo Biagi, son of Professor Marco Biagi, who was murdered by the Red Brigades in 2002, also commented on the performance by the band, saying: “There is a limit to everything. Freedom of speech and thought is fine, but this does not mean that this exhibition should be allowed. I hope they will be prosecuted for apologizing for terrorism.”
P38, which is named after the Walther P-38, a pistol used during the far-left and far-right era of violence in Italy known as the Years of Lead, reacted to the comments by saying “yes, we admit it: we are on the left. Communists, some would say. And we are very angry… We’ll plead guilty without a blink.”
“Are we extreme? Yes. Are we provocateurs? Yes. All this is deliberate. The very fact that someone is outraged is, in a sense, expected. We are here to create momentum,” the band continued.
“If we really were members of a clandestine armed group, perhaps shouting it in the pieces and on the stages would not be the best strategy to adopt.”
Galeazzo Bignami, a deputy of the national-conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI), said that he would be pursuing the issue by submitting a criminal complaint to the public prosecutor’s office over the band’s performance, alleging the group praised the murder of Prime Minister Moro.
The FdI have previously suggested Italy ban Communist ideologies altogether using the same laws used to ban Fascism and Fascist political parties following the Second World War.