Hate Speech of the Opposing Extremisms During the Years of Lead
Nicola Guerra · 2023
This chapter analyzes 33 slogans inciting violence against political opponents that were shouted during far-right and far-left demonstrations in the Years of Lead. The analysis of the themes and language characterizing the slogans is important to understand the so-called phenomenon of opposing extremisms. The language of political hatred that is expressed collectively during the demonstrations makes it possible to determine two different models of political violence, the direct violence of the extreme left based on the practices of militant anti-fascism and the indirect violence hoping for an authoritarian regime of the extreme right. The phenomenon of opposing extremisms is reconstructed not only in its intense succession of violence and murders but above all within the national political framework and in its functionality to the Strategy of Tension. Even the attempts at a late truce between young militants of the extreme left and extreme right that take place in Rome are reconstructed and exemplify the awareness of the radical forces of the role that the opposing extremisms assumed within the broader political-institutional strategy of destabilizing public order to stabilize the political one.