Strategy of Tension - Italy

Italy

The term "strategy of tension" recurred during the trials that followed in the 1970s and 1980s Years of Lead ( "anni di piombo"), during which terror attacks and assassinations were committed by apparently neofascist terrorists (with such names as Ordine Nuovo, Avanguardia Nazionale or Fronte Nazionale).

It was primarily members and international supporters of the Italian Communist Party who invented and popularized the term "strategy of tension". They meant to draw attention to the crimes of the Italian Right and Far-Right parties who were allegedly supported by the foreign belligerents.

Much attention has been on Operation Gladio, Italy's branch of the secret pre-positioned NATO "stay-behind" armies of Western Europe. These armies were set up to perform resistance, partisan, and guerrilla activities in the event of Soviet invasion; equivalent units were set up by other NATO members in their states. It is claimed that Gladio units were engaged in destabilization at the behest of the United States and other Western governments, intelligence agencies (e.g., the CIA), the P2 masonic lodge, the Order of the Solar Temple, various Church-related organizations, and domestic influences such as organized crime. The claims are backed by judicial proof which establish that European fascist dictatorships of the time (the Greek junta and the secret services of Francisco Franco) were heavily involved in supporting and arming Italian neo-fascist and neo-nazi groups such as Ordine Nuovo and Avanguardia Nazionale. For instance, Avanguardia Nazionale hitman Pierluigi Concutelli used an Ingram MAC-10 SMG to assassinate magistrate Vittorio Occorsio in the 1970s. It has been proven that Avanguardia Nazionale secured the weapon from the CIA via Franchist Spain.

Carlo Digilio, an Italian neofascist codenamed "Uncle Otto" coordinated CIA activities in the Italian Regions of Veneto and Friuli from the 1960s to the 1970s, recruiting former fascists to serve the NATO and U.S. interests in Italy. He himself had been recruited in Verona by U.S. Navy captain David Carrett.

These groups began to pursue an ostensibly extreme right-wing anti-communist agenda using violent means, including false flag bombings that were then blamed on extra-parliamentary left-wing militant organizations, to discredit the political Left in general at a time in Italy when the Italian Communist Party was very close to entering government. It should be noted that the actions carried out by these extreme groups were meant primarily to agitate and control public opinion, creating fears about the Communist Party. At the time, they created massive public concern and widespread paranoia. According to the "strategia della tensione" theory, this was deliberate. Examples of such actions include the 1972 Peteano bombing, long thought to have been carried out by the Red Brigades, but for which the neofascist terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra has been imprisoned, the attempted assassination of former Interior Minister Mariano Rumor on 17 May 1973 or the Bologna railway station bombing known as the Bologna massacre of 1980.

The Guardian (UK), in an article published on June 24, 2000, reported that the parliamentarians of the Left Democrats, wrote a report to a subcommittee of the Italian Parliament about what they viewed as United States support for 'anti-left terror in Italy', and the activities of Gladio. The report by the Left Democrats claimed that the aim of this alleged support for Gladio was to make the public think that the bombings were committed by a communist insurgency, to promote the formation of an authoritarian government, and to prevent the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from joining the ruling Democrazia Cristiana (DC) in a national unity government (the "Historic Compromise" between Aldo Moro and Enrico Berlinguer, respective leaders of the DC and of the PCI).

An astonishing observation of the terrorism in Italy that was blamed on communists is that it coincided with election victories for the communists at the polls. So as the PCI was gaining popular support, the number of civilian-targeted bombings, random knee-cappings, and high-profile kidnappings blamed on communist terrorists increased markedly. Furthermore, starting with the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing and the 1972 Peteano attack, several bombings carried out by the far-right were at first blamed on anarchists (for the first one) and, for the second one, on the Red Brigades (BR) — although it was later found that neofascists, such as Vincenzo Vinciguerra, had organized them. Piazza Fontana's bombing, in December 1969, marked the beginning of the "strategia della tensione", which ended around the time of the Bologna railway station bombing in 1980.

The report from the Left Democrats of Italy to a subcommittee of the Italian Parliament apparently concluded that the strategy of tension followed by Gladio had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI, and to a certain degree also the PSI, from reaching executive power in the country". Members of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), part of the Commission on Terrorism headed by senator Giovanni Pellegrino and created in 1988, also described the Italian peninsula since the end of World War II as a "country with 'limited sovereignty'" and as an "American colony" The centrist Italian Republican party described the claims as worthy of a 1970s Maoist group. Aldo Giannuli, a historian who works as a consultant to the parliamentary terrorism commission, sees the release of the Left Democrats' report as a manoeuvre dictated primarily by domestic political considerations. "Since they have been in power the Left Democrats have given us very little help in gaining access to security service archives," he said. "This is a falsely courageous report."