Oreste Scalzone (born 26 January 1947) is an Italian Marxist intellectual and one of the founders of the communist organization Potere Operaio. [1]
Oreste Scalzone (born 26 January 1947) is an Italian Marxist intellectual and one of the founders of the communist organization Potere Operaio. [1]
Scalzone was born in Terni, Umbria. In 1968, he came to know Franco Piperno, and on 1 March 1968 he took part in the clashes against Italian police at Valle Giulia. A few days later, his vertebral column was seriously injured by a desk thrown from a window by neo-fascist students, mostly belonging to the Italian Social Movement, that were occupying the faculty of Law of the Sapienza University of Rome. [1] About the 1968 movement, he said: "What did we want? That everything changed ... that universities were to be collectively managed, that there was no selection, that the Vietcong won the war, that culture changed, but most importantly that this extraordinary movement, that changed our daily life, could stand up." [2]
With Piperno and Toni Negri, Scalzone founded Potere Operaio in 1969. On 7 April 1979, he was arrested, along with Negri, Piperno, and others members of the autonomist movement, and accused of planning armed attacks and plotting to overthrow the government. [1] In 1981, he managed to flee first to Denmark, then to Paris, [1] [3] where he remained protected from extradition thanks to the Mitterrand doctrine. [4] Scalzone revealed that his escape was helped by actor and friend Gian Maria Volonté. [5] In 1983, he was sentenced to 16 years' jail, reduced to nine in 1989. [1] While in France, Scalzone worked for a political solution to the "Years of Lead" that could lead to an amnesty to political refugees and prisoners. [3] [6]
In 1998, scalzone briefly and secretly came back to Italy passing through Corsica; a photographic service by the newsmagazine L'Espresso later revealed the episode. [1] In 2002, he went on hunger strike in protest against the extradition of Paolo Persichetti. [4] A 17 January 2007 ruling of the Court of Milan declared his crimes ("subversive association and member of an armed organization") prescribed. [3] [7] He announced he had come back to Italy to "fight, under new conditions, an old battle". [3]
Corriere della Sera is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average circulation of 246,278 copies in May 2023. First published on 5 March 1876, Corriere della Sera is one of Italy's oldest newspapers and is Italy's most read newspaper. Its masthead has remained unchanged since its first edition in 1876. It reached a circulation of over 1 million under editor and co-owner Luigi Albertini between 1900 and 1925. He was a strong opponent of socialism, clericalism, and Giovanni Giolitti, who was willing to compromise with those forces during his time as prime minister of Italy. Albertini's opposition to the Italian fascist regime forced the other co-owners to oust him in 1925.
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Potere Operaio was a radical left-wing Italian political group, active between 1967 and 1973. It should not be confused with "Potere Operaio Pisano" which was one of the components of a competing revolutionary group, Lotta Continua. Among the group's leaders were Antonio ('Toni') Negri, Nanni Balestrini, Franco Piperno, Oreste Scalzone and Valerio Morucci, who led its clandestine armed wing. It was part of the "workerist" movement (operaismo), leading to the later development of the Autonomist movement.
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The Primavalle fire was a political arson-attack that occurred in Rome in 1973. It resulted in the death of two people.
Autonomia Operaia was an Italian leftist movement particularly active from 1973 to 1979. It played an important role in the autonomist movement in the 1970s, alongside earlier organisations such as Potere Operaio, which was created after May 1968, and Lotta Continua.
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In Italy, the phrase Years of Lead refers to a period of political violence and social upheaval that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism and violent clashes.
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In the First Italian Republic, after the Second World War, several armed, paramilitary, far-right organizations were active, as well as far-left ones, especially during the Years of Lead.
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