Radical Trashers

The more Italy's Communists try to prove their respectability, the more they enrage the nation's youthful radicals. Last week Luciano Lama, Communist boss of Italy's largest trade union, appeared on the campus of Rome University and scolded them for their "destructiveness." That word had scarcely been uttered when a mob of masked extremists charged the red cloth-draped podium. Pitching Molotov cocktails, iron bolts and even paving stones, they sent Lama and his brawny aides scurrying for cover. The toll: 60 people injured, and a new victory for Italy's increasingly pugnacious extreme left wing.

The growing attacks on Communists are a change from the earlier tactics of the young, hard-core radicals, who number perhaps 2,500, supplemented by 10,000 sympathizers. Until recently they had concentrated their wrath on the comfortable bourgeoisie. Calling themselves autoriduttori (self-appointed price cutters), the youths have burst into theaters without paying, vandalized supermarkets and shops and run out on high tabs at chic restaurants. Typical of their antics was a raid on Bologna's elegant, century-old Caffe Zanarini one evening two weeks ago. Chanting derisive slogans, a dozen masked youths smashed glass showcases, scooped up food displays and fled after throwing a heavy, metal pastry tray back into the half-demolished shop.

Savage Attack. On another occasion, during a protest in Rome, a phalanx of autoriduttori yanked masks over their faces and pipes from their pockets, split off from their student allies and trashed two shops in a savage attack on the evils of "the consumer society." Last month 100 autoriduttori, angered by Pop Singer Giorgio Gaber's refusal to hold a special concert at cut-rate prices, stormed Padua's stately Verdi Theater, hurling ball bearings and Molotov cocktails. Beaten back, they retaliated by attacking shops and cars. In Milan, 2,000 of them clashed with police in an attempt to disrupt an opening-night performance of Otello at La Scala.

The reason the young radicals have now turned upon the Communists, their natural allies, is the realization that Italy's organized Communists have turned away from revolutionary Marxism. The decision of the Communists to help prop up Premier Giulio Andreotti's minority government after last June's elections unleashed the extremist fury. Spokesmen for Communist Party Leader Enrico Berlinguer denounce the hoodlums as "petty bourgeois," but, with Italy's inflation rate running at 22%, the autoriduttori have a sympathetic audience among the nation's 700,000 unemployed youths. "The young have no future," says a 17-year-old militant. "They've got to conquer."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.