\u201cThe impression was that the Americans would do anything to stop Italy from sliding to the left.\u201d
\n\u2014General Giandelio Maletti, Head of Italian Counter-Intelligence in the early 1970s.[1]<\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe Pentagon has turned the Italian peninsula into a launching pad for future wars in Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.\u201d
\n\u2014David Vine, author of\u00a0Base Nation<\/em>.[2]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\u201cWe wanted to export democracy. We exported fascism instead.\u201d
\n\u2014Victor Marchetti, former CIA Case Officer.[3]<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThere was a coup in Italy last year\u2014January 2021\u2014a soft coup but a coup nonetheless. Rome was \u201cregime changed.\u201d And nobody blinked. It is a familiar trick though\u2014block the Italian Left whenever it threatens the United States of America.<\/p>\n
Some 77 years after Mussolini and the Nazis\u2014the Right\u00a0continues to have a firm grip on Italy.<\/p>\n
It is as if the 1945 liberation never happened\u2014as if the 79-year presence of the U.S. military in Italy has been the guarantor of fascism rather than the destroyer of it.<\/p>\n
This is the problem: the connection between the U.S. war machine and Italy\u2019s version of \u201cgod, the nation and the family.\u201d<\/p>\n
The liberation of Italy did not mean the end of fascism in Italy. As events unfolded, it meant the birth of a new fascism\u2014a fascism with American characteristics.<\/p>\n
In other words, the U.S. was not, and is still not, a force of liberation in Italy.<\/p>\n
The latest Italian version of \u201cMussolini\u201d is\u00a0Fratelli d\u2019Italia<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0(Brothers of Italy<\/em>). This new right-wing party is the \u201copposition\u201d in today\u2019s Italian parliament. And after the next general election it is expected to be in government.[4]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
The current Italian government, however, is already full of \u201cMussolini\u201d types. The two right-wing parties,\u00a0La Lega<\/em>\u00a0(The<\/em>\u00a0League<\/em>) and\u00a0Forza Italia\u00a0<\/em>(Come on\u00a0Italy<\/em>!), are key parts of the present administration, which is led by an unelected banker\u2014Mario Draghi.<\/p>\n
This arch-capitalist\u2014Mario Draghi\u2014was parachuted into government after the January 2021 coup. The Italian President\u2014Sergio Mattarella\u2014\u201cinvited\u201d him to take power.<\/p>\n
\n
- \n
Sergio Mattarella [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Draghi is the man who destroyed Greek democracy in 2015, when Athens was attempting to re-negotiate its international debt. At the time, Draghi was President of the European Central Bank.[5]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
As Italy is the home of much of Europe\u2019s bad debt\u2014Rome is in a similar \u201cGreek fix\u201d: It is in the crosshairs of financial capital. In June,\u00a0\u201cItaly\u2019s public debt set a record high of 2.69 trillion euros (3.17 trillion U.S. dollars).\u201d The\u00a0creditors\u2019 point man\u2014Draghi\u2014is now in charge.[6]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
As well as being a former European Union executive, Draghi is a former Wall Street executive. He is a Goldman Sachs man. He therefore personifies Atlanticism\u2014that \u201cBrussels and New York\u201d ideology which chains Europe to America.<\/p>\n
As an \u201cAtlantic\u201d insider, Draghi knows what the Western power elite want in Italy: more neo-liberalism. His job is to roll back the Italian state and to open up the country to predatory capitalism. This means giving \u201cAtlantic capitalism\u201d the laws it wants, the taxes it wants and the labor it wants.<\/p>\n
And it means giving \u201cAtlantic capitalism\u201d the foreign policy it wants. In the words of the\u00a0Financial Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n
\u201cDraghi said his new government would be strongly pro-European and Atlanticist, in line with Italy\u2019s historical anchors, marking a break with the foreign policy of Giuseppe Conte, the previous prime minister, who had aligned the country more closely with China.[7]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
When Italy was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic\u2014March 2020\u2014\u201cBrussels and New York\u201d stood by in silence. This prompted the then-prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, to accept aid from China and Cuba. By doing so he shamed the Atlantic establishment.<\/p>\n
Conte\u2019s embrace of communist assistance\u2014together with his state-led policies within Italy\u2019s financial, transport and technology industries\u2014did not win him friends in \u201cBrussels and New York.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Despite his genuine popularity\u2014Conte, was representing the \u201canti-establishment\u201d Movimento 5 Stelle<\/em>\u00a0(5 Star Movement<\/em>)\u2014his days as Italy\u2019s leader were numbered.<\/p>\n
In January 2021, the liberal part of Conte\u2019s coalition government\u2014Italia Viva\u00a0<\/em>(Italy Alive<\/em>)\u2014withdrew its support for the regime and therefore paved the way for the \u00fcber-Atlanticist: Mario Draghi.<\/p>\n
The man who collapsed the government of Conte\u2014Matteo Renzi, the leader of\u00a0Italia Viva<\/em>\u2014was once the golden boy of Italian politics. When he was Italy\u2019s youngest ever Prime Minister (2014-16), he was sold as the \u201cthird way\u201d and the \u201cpost-ideological\u201d future of Italy\u2014a version of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. In fact, like them, he was and is ideological to the core.[9]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
In an interview with the\u00a0Financial Times<\/em>, Renzi could not hide his delight in bringing down the popular Conte:<\/p>\n
Renzi maintains that the plan all along was to create an opening to bring in Draghi. \u201cThe possibility to be led by Mr. Draghi was an unbelievable hope,\u201d he said. \u201cI did a good job, and now I have to remove myself, step aside, and now it is time for the captain of the team, Mario Draghi.\u201d[10]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Renzi was acting on behalf of a \u201cteam\u201d rooted, not in Italy, but in \u201cBrussels and New York.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Renzi, himself, obliquely captured the politics of this \u201cteam\u201d in a comment he made to\u00a0the Guardian<\/em>\u00a0in 2015, when he was Italy\u2019s Prime Minister:\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t think people who want to get out of NATO\u00a0want to win elections.\u201d[11]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
In other words, NATO ultimately decides who gets power in Italy.<\/p>\n
So What Then Is NATO?<\/h2>\n
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)\u2014set up in 1949\u2014is the guardian of U.S. interests in Europe. NATO is code for the United States. It may conjure up the \u201cshared values\u201d of the North Atlantic\u2014Atlanticism\u2014but what it boils down to is U.S. militarism \/imperialism inside Europe.[12]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
At the beginning\u20141949\u2014NATO\u2019s official purpose was to defend Western Europe against the supposed threat of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Its unofficial purpose, however, was to lock Western Europe into the burgeoning U.S. Empire.<\/p>\n
For the U.S. Empire to take root after World War Two, NATO was essential. America\u2019s capture of Europe\u2019s imperialist and fascist networks ensured that the U.S. inherited \u201cthe white man\u2019s burden\u201d and all the loot that this implied.<\/p>\n
The U.S. absorbed the British, French, Belgian, Dutch and Portuguese empires and, at the same time, sheltered the remains of fascism in West Germany and Italy. The institutionalization of all this geopolitics resulted in NATO.<\/p>\n
This U.S. process was based on grand economic plans. NATO (1949) was the military wing of the Breton Woods Agreement (1944) and the Marshall Plan (1948)\u2014which together rebuilt capitalism and imperialism after the Second World War.<\/p>\n
The end result in Europe was the Treaty of Rome (1957)\u2014the treaty which created the European Economic Community\/the European Union. NATO therefore accompanied and guaranteed U.S. investments in Western Europe and in the colonies of Western Europe.<\/p>\n
This organic link to U.S. business and finance explains why NATO is still around today and expanding\u201430 years after the demise of the USSR. Indeed, in 2018, NATO moved into new headquarters in Brussels.<\/p>\n
Aerial view of NATO headquarters in Brussels. [Source:\u00a0commons.wikimedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n NATO is not going away because U.S. capitalism and U.S. imperialism remain omnipresent. As a consequence, NATO lurks ominously in the background of Europe.<\/p>\n
In other words, the U.S. is a menacing part of Europe\u2019s contemporary political structure. And it has been so since 1945. Italy is the evidence.<\/p>\n
Italy Is Key<\/h2>\n
Today there are approximately 12,000 active U.S. military personnel and seven major U.S. military bases in Italy. NATO is their cover story. But America\u2019s military planners are not focused on the Atlantic but on Africa and Asia.[13]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Map of U.S. military bases in Italy. [Source:\u00a0operationmilitarykids.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The city of Vicenza, for example, close to Venice, is the base for U.S. Army Africa. And Naples is the base for U.S. Naval Forces Africa. And from the city of Catania\u2014Sigonella Naval Air Station\u2014in Sicily, the U.S. operates drones which terrorize both Africa and the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Sicily\u2019s volcano, Mt. Etna, is the backdrop for a U.S. Air Force C-5 \u201cGalaxy\u201d and the air terminal of Italian Air Force base and Naval Air Station (NAS) Sigonella. NAS Sigonella provides logistical support for Sixth Fleet and NATO forces in the Mediterranean Sea. [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n And the U.S. Sixth Fleet, based in Naples since 1950, relentlessly targets the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea and the Red Sea. And the waters off West and East Africa. It even includes in its area of operations the landlocked Caspian Sea\u2014in Central Asia.[14]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
For Washington, D.C., all this hardware, intercontinental activity and long-term strategy necessitate the political management of the host country. It demands not just a friendly regime but an obedient regime\u2014in Rome.<\/p>\n
In other words, the U.S. dream of full spectrum dominance requires nothing less than the domination of Italy\u2019s stupendous geographical location\u2014it literally is a bridge between Europe and Africa as well as being the classic gateway to the East.<\/p>\n
The Italian Template<\/h2>\n
U.S. planners were already cognizant of Italy\u2019s strategic importance during World War Two. Italy was America\u2019s first European battleground. In 1943 the U.S. invaded Sicily and in effect began its battle for postwar dominance.<\/p>\n
In the game of global empire, which America was then beginning to dominate, Italy was ground zero.<\/p>\n
Whereas Washington had to share post-war Germany with its allies, Italy was entirely in the hands of the U.S. Britain was present on the peninsula but its power was fading rapidly. In effect then, Italy was \u201ccordoned off\u201d and became a testing ground for U.S. power brokers, a template for U.S. imperialism worldwide.<\/p>\n
To make Italy politically safe for U.S. power, the U.S. made fateful decisions\u2014decisions which were determined by capitalist class war.<\/p>\n
Rather than support organized labor\u2014the U.S. opted to support organized crime. Rather than support secularism\u2014the U.S. opted to support religion.\u00a0 Rather than wiping out the decrepit social and economic elite which gave birth to fascism, the U.S. opted to revive it.<\/p>\n
This political strategy did not betray American or \u201cAtlantic\u201d values. On the contrary, it continued the brutish system that created the old slave based Atlantic economy, the economy which spawned West Europe\u2019s empires and the United States.<\/p>\n
America\u2019s top foreign policy strategist immediately after World War Two, George F. Kennan, best expressed this reactionary logic in a 1948 top secret memo:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should cease to talk about vague and\u2026unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.\u201d[15]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
This straight-talking will-to-power shaped post-war U.S. policy not just in the Third World but also in the First World.<\/p>\n
Crime Pays<\/h2>\n
The U.S. takeover of Italian politics before 1950 involved multiple covert actions. It began inside the U.S. with Operation Underworld (1942-45), when U.S. Naval Intelligence linked up with \u201cItalian\u201d drug and sex traffickers in order to control New York\u2019s docks.<\/p>\n
Next was Operation Husky in Sicily\u2014the 1943 invasion\u2014when America\u2019s OSS (Office of Strategic Services) continued the logic of Operation Underworld: It linked up with Italian criminals to make life easier for the U.S. military.<\/p>\n
The end result of these World War Two operations was the empowerment of America\u2019s most powerful Mafia bosses inside Italy: Lucky Luciano and Vito Genovese.[16]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Charles \u201cLucky\u201d Luciano in the Excelsior Hotel in Rome in 1948. [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n \nCalogero Vizzini [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n The U.S. government gave these international criminals a free pass in Italy and placed their local partners in positions of power. The infamous example is the post-war mayor of Villalba, in Sicily\u2014Calogero Vizzini. Indeed, this powerful mafiosi became \u201can honorary colonel in the U.S. Army.\u201d[17]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Thanks to these covert actions, the Mafia reinvented its Italian roots during and after World War Two. It was democracy U.S. style\u2014one based on criminals.<\/p>\n
The Rise of the CIA<\/h2>\n
Another secret operation that indicated America\u2019s postwar strategy in Italy was Operation Sunrise. This involved Allen Dulles\u2014the future Director (1953-61) of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)\u2014the spymaster who was, at the time, directing OSS operations in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
In early 1945 Dulles was\u2014in defiance of his own government\u2014secretly negotiating for a \u201clocal German surrender\u201d in the north of Italy. Just when the local partisans and the Red Army were closing in for the kill, Dulles wanted to save the collective neck of the Germans, in particular the neck of Karl Wolff, the Nazi boss in Italy.<\/p>\n
\nKarl Wolff [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Dulles claimed to be looking for an orderly end to Nazi rule in northern Italy. But in reality he was attempting to block the local victory of the Left. Although he failed to get a local surrender, these secret talks revealed the direction of U.S. policy, one that favored the fascists rather than the partisans.[18]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
In this pro-crime and pro-fascist environment\u2014inside U.S. planning circles\u2014the CIA came into being. Created in 1947, the CIA\u2019s first mission was to destroy Italian democracy.<\/p>\n
1948<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The demise of Mussolini and his fascist\/Nazi infrastructure in 1945 meant the liberation of working-class politics throughout Italy. Italian communists and socialists started winning free elections and, for the 1948 general election, this rising red tide formed a Popular Democratic Front (PDF). This unity signaled a coming victory.<\/p>\n
\nPalmiro Togliatti, Italian communist leader
\nwhose nickname was\u00a0\u201cIl Migliore\u201d\u2014the best<\/a>.
\nHis funeral in 1964 in Rome was attended
\nby one million people<\/a>. [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nEnter the CIA. Making use of money, lies and hysteria, the CIA sabotaged the 1948 elections. It was a defining moment: The CIA did not just interfere in an Italian election; it determined the shape of Italian and West European politics for the forthcoming century.[19]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
By blocking the organic rise of Italy\u2019s Left, the CIA not only cleared the way for the return of Italy\u2019s discredited Right but also cleared the way for the Marshall Plan and America\u2019s other postwar European goals\u2014NATO and the nascent EU.<\/p>\n
The U.S. forced upon Italy a \u201cdemocratic structure\u201d that predetermined the victory of the Right. It was a democratic paradox\u2014one which traps Italy to this day.<\/p>\n
The Roman Catholic Jihad<\/h2>\n
In Italy, in 1948, the U.S. trusted the Catholic Church. To defeat the Popular Democratic Front the Americans worked in tandem with the Vatican in Rome. On the one hand, the CIA bankrolled the Christian Democratic Party; on the other, \u201cthe 300 bishops and the 125,000 other clergy\u201d literally bombed the Italian populace with anti-communist propaganda.[20]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Like everything else about the 1948 Italian election, a pattern was emerging that would impact the world. The Vatican, after all, was a global operation which oversaw the lives of a billion or so Catholics.<\/p>\n
The Vatican, in fact, was a model intelligence agency. The Catholic Church had a 2000-year history which buttressed Western imperialism. And in the 1929 Lateran Treaty, it made a deal with fascism.<\/p>\n
Cardinal Gaspari and Premier Mussolini are shown in the center of a group of Vatican and Italian government notables posing at the Lateran Palace before signing of treaty in February 1929. [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The Vatican was right-wing. It was ultra-conservative. And it had spies (clergy) everywhere. It was a gigantic psyop\u2014a successful one which targeted both the rich and the poor.<\/p>\n
If America\u2019s new Intelligence agency\u2014the CIA\u2014was looking for an experienced covert ally to fight \u201cgodless\u201d communism, the Vatican was it.[21]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
CIA: \u201cCatholics in Action\u201d<\/h2>\n
It is logical then that the Vatican became a sort of \u201cschool\u201d or filter for the CIA. Some of its most senior officers began their covert careers in and around the Vatican\u2014for example, James Jesus Angleton (CIA counterintelligence chief 1954-74) and William Colby (CIA Director 1973-76 and head of the murderous Phoenix Program in Vietnam in the 1960s).<\/p>\n
\n \n
- \n
William Colby [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n - \n
William J. Casey [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/figure>\n And later, William Casey, when he was CIA Director (1981-87), regularly briefed the Polish Pope\u2014John Paul II\u2014in the Vatican.[22]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
The Vatican also filtered money for the CIA and its Mafia allies. The 1929 Lateran Treaty between Mussolini and Pope Pius XI gave the Vatican independence from the Italian state. So when the Vatican Bank (Institute for the Works of Religion) opened in 1942, it became the perfect bank for dirty right-wing money because it operated beyond state regulation. It was the model offshore bank.<\/p>\n
Starting with Nazi money, the Vatican Bank ended up laundering money for the Mafia and transporting money for the CIA, to Poland\u2019s Solidarity movement in the 1980s, for example.<\/p>\n
Indeed, by the 1980s the Vatican had become the center of a sinister web that made the Italian state redundant. Financial scandals involving the Vatican exposed the existence of an alternative \u201cItalian government\u201d known as\u00a0Propaganda Due<\/em>\u00a0(P2). Its cover story was freemasonry.<\/p>\n
This dark web included Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the American head of the Vatican Bank; Michele Sindona, the Sicilian Mafia banker; Giulio Andreotti, the Christian Democratic leader and seven-time Italian prime minister; Silvio Berlusconi, businessman and future Italian prime minister; and in South America, Jos\u00e9 L\u00f3pez Rega, the powerful politician and founder of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (a death squad),.[23]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Under U.S. direction post-war Italy evolved into one big covert operation. Nothing was as it seemed\u2014least of all the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
Money, Money, Money<\/h2>\n
After winning the U.S.-rigged 1948 election, the Christian Democratic Party stayed in power until 1994. This was not an example of democracy in action; it was simply money in action.<\/p>\n
According to Victor Marchetti, a senior CIA officer during the 1950s and 1960s,\u00a0\u201cCIA policy [in Italy was] always\u2026to finance all parties opposed to communism and first of all the Christian Democratic Party.\u201d[24]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
However, the CIA was not just financing the politics of anti-communism; it was also financing the culture of anti-communism. Marchetti adds:<\/p>\n
\u201c[In] the 1950s, the CIA spent from $20 to $30 million a year, or maybe more, to finance its programs in Italy. It supported cultural and youth organizations; newspapers; labor unions, of proven anti-Communist leanings\u2026.in the 1950s and 60s the CIA gave economic support to many activities promoted by the Catholic Church, from orphanages to the missions. Millions of dollars each year\u2026.In the 1960s, CIA expenditures in Italy went down to about $10 million a year.\u201d[25]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
According to\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, it was not just the CIA financing this anti-Communist crusade in Italy. America\u2019s huge oil companies were also paying to keep the fascists in power:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe largest oil company in the United States, Exxon Corporation, said\u2026 that it had made from $46 million to $49 million in political contributions to Italian parties from 1963 to 1972\u2026.. The Mobil Oil Corporation [also admitted to making] contributions averaging more than $500,000 a year from 1970 through 1973 to Italian political parties.\u201d[26]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Terror, Terror, Terror<\/h2>\n
Although this U.S. money bought many Italian governments, it could not buy the Italian people. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Communist Party of Italy (PCI\u2014the biggest in Western Europe) and the desire for true independence were as strong as ever in Italy.<\/p>\n
To tame these indigenous movements required not money but bullets and bombs. It required\u00a0Anni di Piombo\u2014\u201cyears of lead<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0It required countless acts of terrorism against the Italian people.<\/p>\n
Enrico Mattei<\/h2>\n
This nefarious period began in 1962 when an airplane exploded midair near Milan, killing Enrico Mattei\u2014not a communist but an oil man. Mattei was the head of Italy\u2019s successful state-run energy company:\u00a0Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI)\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0National Hydrocarbons Authority<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Mattei led Italy\u2019s post-war economic recovery. But his methods defied the power of the Seven Sisters\u2014the oil cartel which dominated the world\u2019s post-war oil industry. The aforementioned Exxon and Mobil\u2014Italy\u2019s \u201cpaymasters\u201d\u2014were key parts of this cartel.<\/p>\n
\nEnrico Mattei [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Instead of playing by the rules of these oil giants, Mattei made independent deals with the USSR and the newly independent countries of Africa. He also was negotiating with China and giving the countries of the Middle East fairer arrangements. When that plane crashed in 1962, this imaginative Italian independence came to an end.[27]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
In 1994, the significant Mafia informer, Tommaso Buscetta, admitted that the Sicilian Mafia had planted a bomb on Mattei\u2019s airplane in Catania, Sicily. He said that the American Mafia had asked the Sicilians to do it. Why? Mattei\u2019s oil policies.[28]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Aldo Moro<\/h2>\n
In March 1978 Aldo Moro\u2014the former Prime Minister of Italy and leader of the Christian Democratic Party\u2014was kidnapped on the streets of Rome. Some 55 days later, he was found with bullets in his head. Why? Like Mattei he was breaking the rules of the American monopoly\u2014not the oil monopoly but the political monopoly.<\/p>\n
Starting in 1948 the U.S. had successfully isolated Italy\u2019s popular Communist Party (PCI). So when Aldo Moro, the leader of the Christian Democratic Party, decided to reach out to the Communists in the 1970s, he was crossing an American red line.[29]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
The \u201cyears of lead\u201d\u2014years of terror\u2014disoriented Italy. The solution for Aldo Moro was a \u201cgovernment of national unity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Communists won more than 34% of the vote in the 1976 elections. For Moro, the Communists had to become a part of the Italian decision-making process. It was time for a \u201chistoric compromise.\u201d But this \u201cdecision-making process\u201d was American property. And America was uncompromising.<\/p>\n
In 1974, when Aldo Moro was visiting Washington as Italy\u2019s minister of foreign affairs, Henry Kissinger, the U.S.\u00a0Secretary of State, bluntly told Moro:\u00a0\u201cEither you cease your political line [the plan to include the communists in the government of Italy], or you will pay dearly for it.\u201d[30]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Three years later, on the very day this \u201cpolitical line\u201d was being realized\u2014March 16, 1978\u2014Moro was kidnapped and later executed. The patsy framed for the killing but had no axctual involvement was an amateurish left-wing group\u2014the Red Brigades<\/em>.<\/p>\n
However, in 2008, the American who was sent to Italy in 1978 to help negotiate with Moro\u2019s kidnappers published a book with the title\u00a0We Killed Aldo Moro.\u00a0<\/em>In it the author\u2014Steve Pieczenik\u2014claims that Moro was \u201csacrificed\u201d for the \u201cstability\u201d of Italy. The powerful in the U.S. and Italy\u2014not the\u00a0Red Brigades<\/em>\u2014wanted Moro dead.[31]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
After the killing of Aldo Moro, the \u201chistoric compromise\u201d never happened. Italy\u2019s communists continued to be locked out of power.<\/p>\n
Bologna Train Station<\/h2>\n
Italian democracy had been murdered. By whom? The terrorism which disfigured Italy during the 1960s and 1970s benefited only one group: the fascists.<\/p>\n
One act of terror, above all, sums up the meaning of the \u201cyears of lead\u201d\u2014the bombing of the Bologna train station on August 2, 1980. This explosion killed 85 and wounded hundreds. Today, the memorial plaque outside the train station simply says: \u201cVITTIME DEL TERRORISME FASCISTA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commemoration of the Bologna bombing in which the clock is set in perpetuity at the exact time the bomb went off. [photo courtesy of Aidan O\u2019Brien]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n There\u2019s no ambiguity. Bologna, the city, was attacked because it was young, educated and Left Wing. It voted for the communists. It\u2019s nickname was\u00a0Bologna la rossa\u2014Bologna the red<\/em>.\u00a0The powerful had sent Bologna a message.[32]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
In January 2021, the latest investigation of the Bologna massacre described it as a \u201cState massacre.\u201d The judges were openly suggesting that the\u00a0\u201cstate\u201d had sanctioned it\u2014the secret state and its secret services\u2014the state, that is, that merged with the Mafia, the Vatican, the CIA and NATO.[33]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Protesters in Bologna with signs saying: \u2018we know who did it.\u201d [Photo Courtesy of Aidan O\u2019Brien]<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Operation Gladio<\/h2>\n
And this secret state had a secret army (3,000 strong)\u2014whose only purpose was to fight \u201ccommunists.\u201d This was revealed in August 1990 when Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti told the Italian parliament, during a debate on terrorism, about the existence inside Italy of a clandestine NATO\/CIA paramilitary unit called Gladio.[34]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
\n[Source:\u00a0wikiwand.com<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n For many, this revelation explained the terrorism that shaped \u201cthe years of lead.\u201d The dots were being connected. Testimony which was unbelievable before was suddenly credible. For example:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 1984 a convicted neo-fascist, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, was questioned by Bologna investigators. He testified that he had been recruited for an earlier car bomb attack near Venice by Gladio, a shadow army set up by the Italian secret services in the 1950s as part of a Nato plan to create guerrilla resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion or communist takeover in Nato countries. By the time Vinciguerra carried out his attack, in 1972, Gladio was considering pre-emptive action against the increasingly popular Communist Party, according to General Gerardo Serravalle, the secret service chief in charge of the Gladio network.\u201d[35]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
In other words, NATO and the CIA waged a dirty war against the Italian people\u2014\u201cthe years of lead.\u201d Their\u00a0objective was to kill democracy by creating fear\u2014\u201cthe strategy of tension.\u201d And they succeeded.<\/p>\n
In March 2001, in an Italian court, a former head of Italy\u2019s military counter-intelligence, General Gianadelio Maletti, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe\u00a0CIA<\/a>\u2026.following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left and, for this purpose, it may have made use of rightwing terrorism.\u201d[36]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
After researching the subject in depth, Swiss academic Daniele Ganser further confirmed and was able to elaborate upon Maletti\u2019s testimony:<\/p>\n
\u201c[Gladio] had a domestic control function. This domestic control function [the obstruction of democracy\u2014the aggression toward the PCI] was carried out in a grey area in which illegal operations were planned and carried out, presumably by US military personnel from the NATO base in Verona, representatives of the CIA and SIFAR [Italy\u2019s military intelligence] in cooper- ation with Italian right-wing terrorists.\u201d[37]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
[Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Silvio Berlusconi<\/h2>\n
America\u2019s decades-long hybrid war against the Italian Left bore poisonous fruit, resulting in a festival of fascism.<\/p>\n
In 1994, the Christian Democratic Party fell apart due to corruption. This should have ushered in a period of left-wing rule in Italy\u2014the Left, after all, had been waiting in the wings since 1948. But the opposite happened. A billionaire with open links to Italy\u2019s fascistic structures took control of Rome\u2014Silvio Berlusconi.[38]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Between the years 1994 and 2011, Berlusconi was the prime minister of three Italian governments. And the political party he created overnight in 1994\u2014Forza Italia\u2014<\/em>has been a key player, if not the dominant player, in Italian politics ever since.<\/p>\n
The transition from Christian Democracy to Billionaire Democracy was seamless. Indeed it was choreographed. Berlusconi did not come out of nowhere. He was directly linked to the aforementioned secret \u201cItalian government\u201d known as\u00a0Propaganda Due\u00a0<\/em>(P2), whose main purpose was to keep Italy\u2019s Communist Party out of power.<\/p>\n
In 1981 Berlusconi\u2019s name was discovered in the files of P2 coordinator Licio Gelli, a man who infamously declared,\u00a0\u201cI am fascist and will die a fascist.\u201d[39]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Gelli\u2019s political career can be summed up in three \u201cwords\u201d: Franco, Mussolini and CIA. He was a soldier for the first two and an agent for the third. And Berlusconi was his legacy.[40]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Speaking in 1996, Gelli explained that then Prime Minister Berlusconi was carrying out P2\u2019s plans: \u201cHe\u2019s implementing my plan for democratic rebirth [sic] to perfection,\u2019 he said. \u2018He should at least give me copyright.\u2019\u201d[41]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Indeed, the evidence suggests that Gelli groomed Berlusconi:<\/p>\n
\u201c[Gelli] occasionally spoke to reporters\u2026and did not shy from professing his admiration for Mr. Berlusconi. \u2018Berlusconi is out of the ordinary, I remember that from our first meetings he had this trait: they knew how to get projects done,\u2019 he enthused. \u2018A man of deeds. That is what we need in Italy: not words, but deeds.\u2019\u201d[42]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Pier Paolo Pasolini<\/h2>\n
Pier Paolo Pasolini was Italy\u2019s greatest post-war intellectual. He was a poet, novelist, film director and journalist. He was also a communist. And he was viciously murdered outside Rome on November 2, 1975.<\/p>\n
Pier Paolo Pasolini [Source:\u00a0wikipedia.org<\/a>]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Why? He knew too much. According to\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn his [journalistic pieces], Pasolini declared that the Christian Democratic leadership should stand trial, not only for corruption but association with neo-fascist terrorism, such as the bombing of trains and a demonstration in Milan.\u201d[43]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
In Pasolini\u2019s own words:<\/p>\n
\u201cI know the names of those responsible for what\u2026.is actually a series of \u201ccoups\u201d carried out to ensure the security of power\u2026.<\/p>\n
\u2026. I know the names of that group of powerful men who, with the help of the CIA,\u2026created\u2026an anti-communist crusade\u2026.<\/p>\n
I know the names of those who, between Holy Masses, gave their directives to young neo-fascists, or, better, neo-Nazis\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026 I know the names of the serious and important people who are behind the tragic young men who chose the suicidal fascist atrocities, and the common criminals, Sicilians or whoever else, who made themselves available, like hired guns or hitmen\u2026\u201d[44]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Pasolini knew, however, that these names could only be revealed \u201cif the USA will permit.\u201d When the Italian Prime Minister in 2015, Matteo Renzi, said that \u201cItaly is a prisoner of NATO or the USA\u201d\u2014or words to that effect\u2014he was reiterating Pasolini\u2019s \u201cif the USA will permit.\u201d[45]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
Pasolini wrote that Italy consisted of two countries:<\/p>\n
\u201ca clean Country within a corrupt Country\u2026an intelligent Country within an idiot Country\u2026a humanistic Country within a consumerist Country.\u201d[46]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n
One of these Italy\u2019s was \u201cMade in Italy\u201d\u2014the PCI\u2014and the other \u201cMade in the USA\u201d or \u201cMade in NATO\u201d\u2014the Mafia, Vatican and the Christian Democratic Party. It was another way of saying that Italy was an occupied country.<\/p>\n
Mario Draghi<\/h2>\n
Today, as the U.S. prepares for World War Three, Italy is automatically included. It has no choice. It is a prisoner\u2014an occupied country.<\/p>\n
The purpose of America\u2019s dirty war against Italy was to defeat the Italian partisans which emerged triumphant from World War Two. Washington succeeded to a point. But this war for the soul of modern Italy continues\u2014
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