Few cities have contributed as much to Europe's civilisation as Bologna but the sinister side of modern Italian politics has once more thrown a shadow over its admirable history. The murder in Bologna of Mr Marco Biagi, an adviser to the government of Mr Silvio Berlusconi, has been claimed by a group linking itself to the Red Brigades. The possible return to action of this violent organisation has, once more, put extreme pressure on Italian democracy.
The intellectual powerhouses of Italian society, including the great University City of Bologna, have contributed immeasurably to western society. They have also, from time to time, spawned political thinking of an extremely dangerous nature. Italy is unusual in that political violence has stemmed, not from the atavism of national or religious differences, but from intellectual attitudes developed in the hothouse atmosphere of the universities.
Bologna has suffered more than most in this respect. In 1980, an extreme right-wing organisation murdered 85 people by planting a bomb in the city's main station, the most important hub in Italy's rail network. The latest attack appears to be the work of the extreme left. Mr Biagi had been strongly involved in a proposal to make it easier for employers to sack their workers. The long, rambling statement placed on the internet attempting to justify the murder was laced with the jargon of the extreme left. It attacked "the imperialist bourgeoisie" which had "redefined its means of exploitation" in order to "maintain its profit margins."
A number of politicians who support Mr Berlusconi's government have attempted to use the murder as a stick with which to beat the democratic centre-left opposition. Attempts to capitalise on the brutal killing of Mr Biagi are not only cynical in the extreme, they may also serve to polarise Italian politics even further and lead to a return of the gory days of the 1970s and 1980s. Memories of the kidnap and murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978, the Bologna Station massacre, the explosion at the Piazza Fontana in Milan that killed 16 people in 1969 have been revived. It is a time for Italians of all mainstream views to join forces and ensure that evil minorities on the right and the left are kept out of the political equation.