„Between Revolution and Nihilism”: European Left-Wing Terrorism in the 1970s as a Crisis of Modernity. An Analysis of the Socio-Political Sources of Radicalisation in Affluent Societies

Abstract

This article explores the roots and dynamics of political radicalisation in post-war Western Europe. The authors set out to explain how, even in affluent societies with stable institutions, steady economic growth, and expanding welfare systems, groups as extreme as the Brigate Rosse, the Rote Armee Fraktion, and Action Directe could emerge. The analysis points to the disillusionment following the ‘68 movement, the sense of being left out by the “consumer society”, and the sharpening of Cold War rivalries. The authors argue that the turn to radicalism among students and the educated young was a reaction against the gap between lofty promises of emancipation and the everyday reality of bureaucracy, conformity, and technocratic control over social life. From a wider socio-political perspective, terrorism in the 1970s was more than just a political phenomenon: it reflected a deeper crisis of modernity, exposing the faltering of emancipatory narratives, and the shift from utopian revolutionary ideals to darker, nihilistic forms of violence.