Daniele Bolelli is an Italian historian, professor, and author who also hosts the podcasts History On Fire and The Drunken Taoist. He grew up during the Years of Lead, a fraught pair of decades from the 1960s into the 1980s when extreme political violence was common in the Land of Caesar.
The story of the Years of Lead is rich in conspiracy fuel, involving Licio Gelli’s P2 Masonic lodge, NATO’s Operation Gladio, false flag attacks staged by the ‘right’ to discredit the ‘left’, political assassinations, running street battles, and a reductive “red or black” cultural discourse that still echoes in that sun-kissed Mediterranean nation today.
As a professor in California, Daniele sees parallels between Italy back then and what is happening in the United States today. Across the political spectrum, violence is increasingly a feature of American society.
A recent Politico poll found that 55% of Americans expect political violence to increase, with 50% of respondents saying they found it ‘very likely’ or ‘somewhat likely’ that “a political candidate gets assassinated in the next 5 years”.
There is also a generation gap when it comes to political violence, with “[m]ore than one in three Americans under the age of 45” agreeing that violence is justified versus only 7% of those over the age of 65.
In short, Daniele is onto something. Younger generations have a higher tolerance for and a higher expectation of political violence, while the partisanship of America’s two-party system has become supercharged, leading to wild pendulum swings in fear and discontent depending on who is in the White House.
When that is thrown into the mix with “the paranoid style in American politics”, the plate tectonics of economic inequality and catabolic collapse, historic racial wounds, elite nest-feathering, kakistocracy, and interference by foreign actors eager to see America tear itself apart, the result is a dynamic and highly flammable brew.
In this conversation, Daniele and I explore his experience of the Years of Lead, the similarities he sees in the American situation, the nihilism and myopia of cheering on divisive political violence, the decline of personal connection in the digital age, and the ways he stays motivated and positive.
For more, you can read Daniele’s description of the Years of Lead on his Substack, listen to the History On Fire episode about that period, follow him on X, and visit his website.
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