If Matteo Salvini Can Win Here, He Can Win Anywhere

Time stands still above Bologna’s train station where the clock outside is set at 10:25 a.m. The names of the “Victims of Fascist Terrorism” are listed on a plaque in the waiting room where a bomb killed 85 people on a sweltering August morning in 1980.

What looks like litter on the floor is a splatter of cards featuring the images of saints left for the victims of one of the darkest chapters in Italy’s violent postwar history, when far-left and far-right extremists went on a killing spree known as the Years of Lead. After almost four decades of false trails, who really commissioned the attack remains the subject of many a conspiracy theory.