Read Online Pushing Past the Night by Mario Calabresi - Free Book Online
Authors: Mario Calabresi
Ads: Link
have been August 11, 1967âI marched in a peace rally for at least forty-five minutes with Calabresi to my left and Pino Pinelli to my right ⦠Pinelli criticized me for telling Inspector Calabresiâpolitely, mind youâthat if he, too, would carry a protest sign, then he could continue to march beside me. Otherwise he could not, even though I was happy he was there. Pino Pinelli protested, telling me that Calabresi was a great guy.â
Luigi Calabresiâs face was also well-known because he had a soft spot for reporters. He always found the time to speak withthem, no matter how busy he was, according to Giampaolo Pansa, who had seen him a few days before the murder. They stopped to talk at the bar across the street from police headquarters. Later on he stopped to chat with another reporter closer to home.
But in the heated atmosphere of those years there was no room for truth. What flourished instead was a series of dark myths about a truth serum administered, a karate chop to the victim, a belated phone call to an ambulance, and an âInspector Windowâ who threw Pinelli to his death in the courtyard. While all these legends have long been disproved, a surprising number of people still believe them through a combination of ignorance and bad faith. And they have conveniently and deliberately ignored the essential truth, established beyond the shadow of a doubt: namely, that Luigi Calabresi was not in the room when Pinelli fell from the window and died. Five people were there, but not him. He was in another part of the building getting the chief of the political department to sign the police report. Although every scrap of evidence exonerated him, in the public delirium that surrounded the case no one seemed to care. What ensued was âa ferocious lynching in slow motion. A madness that has infected thousands of peopleââthat is how Pansa described it in
La Repubblica
.
In my heart, I am convinced that only a minority of Italians today still believe that my father could have killed Giuseppe Pinelli. My family understands this from the way people stop us on the street, the admissions that public figures from those years have had the courage to make, the letters and phone calls we receive. When faced by diehards who still insist on long-discredited theories, some people try to downplay them, explaining that there are always fringe elements who cultivate conspiracy theories, who believe that Elvis is alive or that the Twin Towers were destroyed by the United States government. Others have suggested that I should treat it as a joke.
In all frankness, I cannot laugh about it. Perpetuating false accusations is an insult to our intelligence and a disservice to democracy and civic coexistence. I am not talking about the youths that spray-paint graffiti: they donât bother me. I am talking about the intellectuals and politicians of the far left who keep the tensions alive, fomenting hatred and rancor, by skirting the truth and refusing to go on the record with a clear and unequivocal condemnation of the violence of that era.
The bomb at the Banca Nazionale dellâAgricoltura in Piazza Fontana caused sixteen deaths, and it left a trail of blood that includes Pinelli and also my father. But on December 12, 2006, the thirty-seventh anniversary of the massacre, the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Fausto Bertinotti, called Pinelli the âseventeenth victim of Piazza Fontana,â without addressing the causes of the railwaymanâs death. While there were no moral equivalencies or insults in his statement, other people were not so discreet. His words were quickly appropriated to put forward the claim that Pinelli, too, had been murdered, recycling the aspersions that had been tossed around for over thirty-seven years. In its December 17, 2006, issue, the left-wing newspaper
Liberazione
proposed that a commemorative stamp be issued for Pinelli. The paperâs editor in chief had
Luigi Calabresiâs face was also well-known because he had a soft spot for reporters. He always found the time to speak withthem, no matter how busy he was, according to Giampaolo Pansa, who had seen him a few days before the murder. They stopped to talk at the bar across the street from police headquarters. Later on he stopped to chat with another reporter closer to home.
But in the heated atmosphere of those years there was no room for truth. What flourished instead was a series of dark myths about a truth serum administered, a karate chop to the victim, a belated phone call to an ambulance, and an âInspector Windowâ who threw Pinelli to his death in the courtyard. While all these legends have long been disproved, a surprising number of people still believe them through a combination of ignorance and bad faith. And they have conveniently and deliberately ignored the essential truth, established beyond the shadow of a doubt: namely, that Luigi Calabresi was not in the room when Pinelli fell from the window and died. Five people were there, but not him. He was in another part of the building getting the chief of the political department to sign the police report. Although every scrap of evidence exonerated him, in the public delirium that surrounded the case no one seemed to care. What ensued was âa ferocious lynching in slow motion. A madness that has infected thousands of peopleââthat is how Pansa described it in
La Repubblica
.
In my heart, I am convinced that only a minority of Italians today still believe that my father could have killed Giuseppe Pinelli. My family understands this from the way people stop us on the street, the admissions that public figures from those years have had the courage to make, the letters and phone calls we receive. When faced by diehards who still insist on long-discredited theories, some people try to downplay them, explaining that there are always fringe elements who cultivate conspiracy theories, who believe that Elvis is alive or that the Twin Towers were destroyed by the United States government. Others have suggested that I should treat it as a joke.
In all frankness, I cannot laugh about it. Perpetuating false accusations is an insult to our intelligence and a disservice to democracy and civic coexistence. I am not talking about the youths that spray-paint graffiti: they donât bother me. I am talking about the intellectuals and politicians of the far left who keep the tensions alive, fomenting hatred and rancor, by skirting the truth and refusing to go on the record with a clear and unequivocal condemnation of the violence of that era.
The bomb at the Banca Nazionale dellâAgricoltura in Piazza Fontana caused sixteen deaths, and it left a trail of blood that includes Pinelli and also my father. But on December 12, 2006, the thirty-seventh anniversary of the massacre, the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Fausto Bertinotti, called Pinelli the âseventeenth victim of Piazza Fontana,â without addressing the causes of the railwaymanâs death. While there were no moral equivalencies or insults in his statement, other people were not so discreet. His words were quickly appropriated to put forward the claim that Pinelli, too, had been murdered, recycling the aspersions that had been tossed around for over thirty-seven years. In its December 17, 2006, issue, the left-wing newspaper
Liberazione
proposed that a commemorative stamp be issued for Pinelli. The paperâs editor in chief had
Similar Books
