Re: Negri defends invasion of Iraq

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> I've always understood that Negri was framed with regard to the 
> accusations of being a member of the Red brigades. Some sources on this 
> would also be welcome.
>
> Einde O'Callaghan


From "What Next", No.22 2002
(http://mysite.freeserve.com/whatnext)

Whatever one makes of the murky relationship between the BR and 
Autonomia in 1977-78, Negri’s personal involvement in another kidnapping 
with fatal consequences is more than probable, if Carlo Fioroni is to be 
believed.26

Fioroni came from a left wing Catholic background, and met Negri before 
Potere Operaio was founded as a national organisation in August 1969. 
Fioroni, a weak character, easily dominated by Negri, cracked up after 
the kidnapping and accidental murder of his close friend and fellow 
Potere Operaio member Carlo Saronio on 14 April 1975. According to 
Fioroni, Negri organised the Saronio kidnapping in the belief that this 
wealthy family would pay a high ransom for their son. The kidnapping was 
carried out by Carlo Casirati, a politicised criminal of Negri’s 
acquaintance; Fioroni was one of his accomplices. It was all supposed to 
be play-acting, but went wrong when a chloroform-soaked cloth was held 
on Saronio’s face for too long, and the victim died. Saronio’s death 
broke Fioroni, who went to the authorities and told them about the 
criminal activities of Potere Operaio and Autonomia. After some years in 
jail for his role in the kidnapping, Fioroni fled first to Morocco and 
then to France where he worked as a teacher of Italian. He reappeared in 
Italy as a prosecution witness in the Metropoli Trial of Pace and 
Piperno in 1986-87, during which he had little of substance to say about 
their dealings with the BR in 1978, since he had been imprisoned at the 
time. During this trial, Fioroni also spoke about his role as a 
participant in meetings between Negri and the first BR leader Renato 
Curcio in the early 1970s. This in no way proves there was any 
connection between Negri and the BR in 1978 at the time of the Moro 
affair, during which the imprisoned Curcio was under 24-hour 
surveillance and had no possibility whatever of exerting any day-to-day 
control over the operations of the BR, but it does suggest that Negri’s 
indignant denials of any dealings with the BR should be treated with the 
utmost suspicion.

Doubtless all Negri fans will dismiss Fioroni as a liar and parrot the 
line of Do You Remember Revolution?, but there seems no real motive for 
Fioroni to bear false witness since, unlike many subsequent terrorist or 
mafia supergrasses, he appears to have gained no material reward for his 
initial confession and would have been better off (certainly materially 
and possibly even psychologically) if he had kept silent.

The charge sheet against the self-proclaimed “criminal” and “deviant” 
Toni Negri in terms of personal involvement in criminal activity, as 
opposed to mere rhetorical glorification of violence, is not totally 
dependent on Fioroni’s testimony in the Saronio murder case. A key 
witness is Giorgio Bocca, the famous Italian journalist, whose viewpoint 
is best summarised as non-Marxist centre-left, and who responded to the 
7 April case by writing a book in which he tore apart the prosecution 
claims about Toni Negri being the brains behind the BR and the principal 
organiser of terrorism in Italy during the 1970s, claims which Bocca 
mockingly described as “a global theory, an all-inclusive fresco, a 
Sistine chapel with its last judgement of subversion”.27 Bocca, an 
expert on terrorism who interviewed many BR members,28 many of whom he 
saw as misguided idealists, had no liking for Negri, whom he 
subsequently described as “that little university Lucifer” and “a 
narcissus with a subtle brain”, one of those who use “a powerful memory 
purely to assist their tricks”, remarking that Negri “knew how to copy 
well from books that had not yet been translated in Italy”. Bocca has no 
doubt that Negri, whom he sees as far more influenced by Nietzsche’s and 
D’Annunzio’s ideas about “the superman” than by Marx, lived out his 
fantasies, albeit by proxy.29

The two concrete instances he gives of Negri inciting others to commit 
criminal acts on his behalf have a definite ring of truth; they are 
precisely the sorts of crime one can imagine amoral academics engaging 
in. Firstly, when Negri lived in Milan, he used to send the young 
autonomi he regularly received in his house out to the nearest bookshop 
to steal all the books that interested him. Secondly, and rather more 
seriously, he asserted his power in Padua University by getting his 
“reactionary” colleagues kneecapped, and then used to theorise in his 
usual jargon-ridden style that “the levels of the use of force of 
counter-power have been exemplified by the punishment of teachers who 
are particularly zealous in anti-proletarian initiatives: Galante, 
Santo, etc”.30

Somebody who behaved like this was not fit to hold a university post in 
Italy or any other country. Anybody who thinks that having your 
colleagues kneecapped by hit squads in balaclavas can be placed on a par 
with, for instance, Robin Blackburn offering verbal support to some 
students who tore down gates at the LSE in 1969, has lost contact with 
the real world. Autonomia may not have been a fully-fledged terrorist 
organisation like the BR or Primea Linea, but it was renowned for its 
systematic thuggery and intimidation. Professor Negri was far too busy 
writing to have ordered all the actions carried out by these 
half-educated young thugs whom he regarded as superior to the organised 
working class, but he dictated the general line.



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