Terrorism

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One thing in which I did not share the emotions of other people who posted on the Russian school massacre is surprise. A lot of people seemed bewildered, as though this represented something new in their lives. I have every sympathy for this reaction, but I cannot share it. Growing up in the seventies in Italy made you familiar with the worst kind of political violence. On August 2, 1980, Fascist terrorists murdered some eighty people in the main railway station in Bologna, as they were going on their holiday. That was only the worst of a long, long series of acts of violence from Fascist, Communist and Mafia terrorists. Those who remember those days are not surprised by any depth of abjection in political violence. And, incidentally, anyone who is idiotic enough to be nostalgic about the seventies (and seventies nostalgia is a growing industry) was obviously never there.

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OK, perhaps I exaggerated in calling everyone an idiot. But to the majority of Europe, the seventies meant terrorism (Britain - the IRA: Germany - the RAF; Italy - the Red Brigades, Fascist bombers, the mafia; Spain - ETA; if I remember correctly, there was even a terrorist group in France); to all the West, 10-20% unemployment, 15-25% inflation destroying investments and savings, oil shocks, constant political crisis, and the height of the Cold War, with three-quarters of the nations of the world aligned overtly or covertly with the Soviet Union, and both sides armed to the teeth. What I remember is seriously discussing the prospect of Europe being destroyed by nuclear war. Meanwhile the Soviet Union seemed more tyrannical and impenetrable than ever, systematically rooting out dissenters and either expelling them from the country or throwing them into psychiatric hospitals. Tyranny was on the ascent everywhere: the generation of African leaders which had led their countries to independence took the fruits of their successes in tyranny, plunder and corruption; the semi-tyranny of South Africa and the military oppressors of Latin America glowered at the Communist and semi-Communist regimes of the so-called non-aligned movement. Culturally, too, the seventies represent the addling and putrefaction of the brief but luminous golden age of the sixties. Pop music went from the genuine innovation of the sixties to the superficial show and nonsense of glam and punk (glam and punk, in my view, are brothers under the skin, both dedicated to noise and effect over substance). Fashion, let's not even talk about it - people were talking about "the decade that taste forgot" even before it was over. Everything oozed tackiness, from the light balls at discos to the medallion-men dresses. And worst of all, there was a comprehensive slide into fanaticism. Everyone became irresponsibly radical: union leaders indulging in non-stop strike and sabotage were answered by the poisoned blossom of Thatcherism, and manic extremism in feminism by the explosion of American fundamentalism. To the vast majority of those who lived through them, the seventies were a nightmare. I am glad to hear that in Norway (pop.4,000,000) they came across less atrociously.