From anti-terrorist emergency to the events in Bolzaneto: torture as a means of social control

In this article we analyse the delicate issue of torture as a common thread that links the repression of Italian armed struggle activists and the events of "Genoa 2001". When torture serves a judicial purpose, it is used to extort information that will be used for the further development of investigations or that will be be used by the judiciary for accusatory statements. In this event, our first case, the torture suffered by some of the brigadists during the kidnapping of US General James Lee Dozier, who was abducted in 1981 and released in January 1982. This regime designed to replace investigative torture, represented a further stage in the development of the Italian emergency, which saw the gradual judicialisation of the forms of state of emergency, no longer controlled by the executive but by the judiciary. As for torture as a symbolic political objective, it serves to exalt the punitive power of the State. It was in this context that torture was perpetrated during the G8 Summit in 2001. The beatings that took place during this period belong to the genre of punitive torture, inspired by the primordial moral and ethical visions of the State: correct behaviour considered deviant by reaffirming the hierarchy of command. These objectives overlap in practice and in our analysis. This violence varies in intensity and periodicity, depending on the changes in social relations within the country. While in the first instance there was widespread use of investigative torture and a toughening of the prison regime, with the beatings of demonstrators, the massacre inside the Diaz school and the torture carried out in the Bolzaneto barracks during the G8 in Genoa, a gigantic punitive and intimidating operation against an entire generation was launched. More generally, over the twenty years that we have taken into consideration, it became an increasingly widespread form of Italian state repression.