‘We have been mistaken for terrorists’: Italy’s most controversial rap group fight persecution
For P38-La Gang, everything changed on 1 May 2022, Labour Day. The Italian rap group were performing at the club Arci Tunnel in Reggio Emilia. The location appeared to be no coincidence. It is the city that birthed the Red Brigades, the far-left terrorist group that shocked Italy with kidnappings, kneecappings and more than 80 political assassinations in the 1970s and 1980s – a period of social turmoil known as the “Years of Lead”. On stage that day, the four-piece covered their faces with balaclavas and made a three-fingered gesture representing the P38 gun – the symbol of the 70s leftist movement Autonomia Operaia. As usual, the group flew the Red Brigades flag at the back of the stage – the title of their 2021 debut album, Nuove BR, translates as “new Red Brigades”.
Until then, the Bologna-based band had been considered one of the most bizarre and original newcomers in the Italian trap scene: angry, funny, outrageous, paradoxical, even a novelty act, depending on who you asked. Mixing bad taste with offending politicians and talkshow reporters, making fun of terrorism and dictatorships, P38-La Gang showed a face of Italy that few people want to see: the anger of workers paid €3 an hour and of a generation defeated by the class struggle who are surviving on memes and desperate irony.
The group, whose members are between 25 – and 33 and hail from across Italy, describe the idea behind the group as “very simple: creating a far-left and communist form of trap.” They speak as one in an email interview: a counter-narrative to the “individualistic, gangsta-mafia and misogynistic” themes of Italian trap. “The nonsense is that most trap artists and fans live first-hand the most bitter living conditions created by capitalism: they come from the suburbs, they have in front of them a shitty future for them and their loved ones.” This reality, they say, means their work isn’t exactly gentle. “This genre derives much of its effectiveness from being extreme.”
The media and politicians – such as rightwing prime minister Giorgia Meloni and the social democrat Stefano Bonaccini – would interpret those extremes differently. A complaint had already been filed in April 2022 after a P38-La Gang concert in Pescara, by
Bruno D’Alfonso, son of the carabiniere Giovanni D’Alfonso, who died following a kidnapping carried out by the Red Brigades in June 1975. Public outrage ballooned after their Labour Day performance. Their concerts were routinely cancelled, with venue managers fearing police reprisals: Marco Vicini, then president of Arci Tunnel, was accused of incitement to commit a crime and then removed from his position. (When the club announced its new board in October, Vicini responded: “I continue to defend the decision to organise that concert and to stand against censorship and for freedom of expression. I have failed to effectively protect the Arci Tunnel from enemy attacks and from a vast repressive campaign against me and Arci Tunnel.”)
On 25 November, the band members – who go by the stage names Astore, Jimmy Pentothal, Dimitri and Yung Stalin – were identified by police and had their homes searched. They are currently under investigation by the Turin prosecutor’s office, accused of instigation to commit a crime, with an aggravating circumstance for terrorism, that dates back to the band’s formation in September 2020. The case is still in the investigation phase, with a trial set to begin in a few months: if found guilty, they risk a sentence of more than eight years.
The group deny the association. “We believe that Turin’s prosecutor has mistaken us for a terrorist group when we are actually a music group,” the band says. “Certainly in our songs we say strong things … perhaps unacceptable in some respects. But we are not hoping for the return of armed struggle. We are clumsily trying to do something artistic. Which has, of course, a political connotation, as does any artistic work.”
P38 have paused musical activity and started a crowdfunding campaign to aid their legal expenses, raising more than €16,000 in a week. They maintain that their lyrical explorations of historic terrorists, freedom fighters and repressive regimes are an “artistic work”, citing the 80s Italian “pro-Soviet punk” band CCCP as an influence. Their lyrics are populated by figures such as Ho Chi Minh, Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci and the Italian anarchist Gaetano Bresci: a chaotic and provocative collage that brings together the ideals and horrors from the history of the left. Asked where they stand on these matters, the band says: “Our political opinion on each of these individual events, organisations and people is not very important.”
Another song, Nuove BR, references the kidnapping and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. His daughter, Maria Fida Moro, has also denounced the band. P38 says it has compassion for Moro’s family. “It is normal for them to feel indignant. But we did not and we don’t want to kill anyone. The murder of Aldo Moro is a historical event that has marked the history of our country.”
Emilio Gatti, the deputy prosecutor of Turin, admits that this is an “extremely rare case” and that it “is not a common occurrence” for a band to be investigated on such grounds. Apart from their fans, and some underground musicians and music magazines, very few have publicly expressed solidarity with P38-La Gang. The Italian journalist and writer Christian Raimo shared a video interview with the band accompanied by the comment: “Repression very well explained.”
“We believe that ours is an absolutely unique situation,” the band says. “What has mobilised the media and law enforcement is just our music, our concerts, our lyrics. While the Italian music scene is overrun by very explicit references to rape, the trafficking of largescale narcotics and mafia crimes in lyrics sung by the most listened-to artists, we are the ones being investigated because we refer to the Years of Lead.”
with Hardy’s protagonist, the sexual encounter which led to her pregnancy is murky, and its particular violence is left obscure until the play’s final revelations. • History Keeps Me Awake at Night by Christy Edwall is published by Granta. To help the Guardian and Observer, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.