[Reader-list] Sanguinetti on 'Terrorism and the State'
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
shuddha at sarai.net
Sat Nov 1 16:14:55 IST 2008
Dear All,
I am writing in response to Jeebesh's suggestion that we all think of
and forward, 'difficult and intriguing texts' and run commentaries on
them.
I think Jeebesh's suggestion is very welcome.
In keeping with his request for a 'difficult but intriguing text' am
forwarding a text that I find very interesting and relevant
particularly in the light of the recent occurrences and ghastly
terror attacks that have either left us speechless or made us
garrulous. I am personally, left more or less speechless by the
magnitude of horror in bombings like what happened two days ago in
Assam, or have happened say, in Islamabad, (or Delhi, Bangalore,
Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Malegaon, Modesa, Tripura, Imphal, or anywhere)
that have jolted us in recent days, weeks, months.
The text I am referring to is by the Italian Situationist writer,
Gianfranco Sanguinetti, titled, 'On Terrorism and the State'. It is
available from a web archive of Sanguinetti's writings at <http://
www.notbored.org/on-terrorism.html>
Although written to respond to the specifically Italian situation of
the 70s and 80s of the last century (called the 'Years of Lead' in
Italy). I think it reads almost like a parable for India today. It is
a long text, and has several numbered notes, so please read with
patience. The patience, let me assure you, is well rewarded. For best
results, I recommend that you copy, paste and print out the text, or
at least the numbered notes at the end (otherwise it might be
difficult to follow the references that the notes elaborate on, and
they are sort of crucial to fill in the wider context that this text
is located in.)
For more on Sanguinetti, see - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Gianfranco_Sanguinetti>
For more on the Situationist International, see - <http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International>
For more on the 'Years of Lead' in Italy see - <http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy)>
I hope that you will all find this text, and some of these
references, enlightening to read. In darkening times, we need all the
illumination that we can get.
best
Shuddha
--------------------------------
http://www.notbored.org/on-terrorism.html
On Terrorism and the State
(Chapter X of Remedy to Everything)
by Gianfranco Sanguinetti
"The wily Shafts of state, those Juggler's Tricks
Which we call deep Design and Politicks
(As in a Theatre the Ignorant Fry,
Because the Cords escape their Eye
Wonder to see the Motions fly) . . .
Methinks, when you expose the Scene,
Down the ill-organ'd Engines fall;
Off fly the Vizards and discover all,
How plain I see thro' the Deceit!
How shallow! and how gross the Cheat!. . .
Look where the Pully's ty'd above!
Oh what poor Engines move
The Thoughts of Monarchs, and Design of States,
What pretty Motives rule their Fates!. . .
Away the frighted Peasants fly,
Scar'd at th' unheard-of Prodigy. . .
Lo, it appears!
See, how they tremble! How they quake!"
Swift, Ode to the Honourable Sir William Temple, 1689.
All acts of terrorism, all the outrages which have struck and which
strike the imagination of men, have been and are either offensive
actions or defensive actions. If they form part of an offensive
strategy, experience has shown for a long time that they are always
doomed to fail. If, on the other hand, they form part of a defensive
strategy, experience shows that these acts can expect some success,
which, however, is only momentary and precarious. The attempts of the
Palestinians and the Irish, for instance, are offensive acts of
terrorism; on the other hand the Piazza Fontana bomb [1] and the
kidnapping of Moro [2], for instance, are defensive acts.
However, it is not only the strategy which changes, according to
whether it is a matter of offensive or defensive terrorism, but also
the strategists. The desperate and the deluded resort to offensive
terrorism; on the other hand it is always and only States which
resort to defensive terrorism, either because they are deep in some
grave social crisis, like the Italian State, or else because they
fear one, like the German State.
The defensive terrorism of States is practised by them either
directly or indirectly, either with their own arms or with others. If
States resort to direct terrorism, this must be directed at the
population -- as happened, for instance, with the massacre of the
Piazza Fontana, that of the Italicus [3] and with that of Brescia.
[4] If, however, States decide to resort to indirect terrorism, this
must be apparently directed against themselves -- as happened, for
instance, in the Moro affair.
The outrages that are accomplished directly by the detached corps and
parallel services of the State are not usually claimed by anybody,
but are each time, imputed or attributed to some or other convenient
"culprit" like Pineilli or Valpreda. [5] Experience has proved that
this is the weakest point of such terrorism, and that which
determines the extreme fragility of it in the political usage that
one wants to make of it. It is starting from the results of the same
experience that the strategists of the parallel services of the State
seek, from now on, to lend a greater credibility, or at least, a
lesser verisimilitude, to their own either by claiming them directly
through such-and-such initials of a ghostly group, or even by making
them claimed by an existing clandestine group, whose militants
apparently are, and sometimes believe themselves to be, extraneous to
the designs of the State apparatus.
All secret terrorist groupuscules are organised and directed by a
clandestine hierarchy of veritable militants of clandestinity, which
reflects perfectly the division of labour and roles proper to this
social organisation: above it is decided and below it is carried out.
Ideology and military discipline shield the real summit from all
risk, and the base from all suspicion. Any secret service can invent
"revolutionary" initials for itself and undertake a certain number of
outrages, which the press will give good publicity to, and after
which, it will be easy to form a small group of naive militants, that
it will direct with the utmost ease. But in the case of a small
terrorist group spontaneously formed, there is nothing in the world
easier for the detached corps of the State than to infiltrate it and,
thanks to the means which they dispose of, and the extreme freedom of
manoeuvre which they enjoy, to get near the original summit, and to
substitute themselves there, either by specific arrests activated at
the right moment, or through the assassination of the original
leaders, which, as a rule, occurs after an armed conflict with the
"forces of order," forewarned about such an operation by their
infiltrated elements.
From then on, the parallel services of the State find they have, at
their disposal, a perfectly efficient organism to do as they please
with, composed of naive or fanatical militants, which asks for
nothing other than to be directed. The original little terrorist
group, born of the mirages of its militants about the possibilities
of realising an effective strategic offensive, changes strategists
and becomes nothing other than a defensive appendage of the State,
which manoeuvres it with the utmost agility and ease, according to
its own necessities of the moment, or what it believes to be its own
necessities.
From the Piazza Fontana to the kidnapping of Moro, only the
contingent objectives that defensive terrorism obtained have changed,
but what can never change in the defensive is the goal. And the goal,
from December 12th 1969 to March 16th 1978, and still today, has in
fact always remained the same, which is to make the whole population,
who, nowadays, can no longer suffer, or is struggling against, this
State, believe that it has at least an enemy in common with this
State, and from which this State defends it on the condition that it
is no longer called into question by anyone. The population, which is
generally hostile to terrorism, and not without reason, must then
agree that, at least in this, it needs the State, to which it must
thus delegate the widest powers so that it might confront with vigour
the arduous task of the common defence against an obscure,
mysterious, perfidious, merciless, and, in a word, chimeric, enemy.
In view of a terrorism always presented as absolute evil, evil in-
itself and for-itself, all the other evils fade into the background
and are even forgotten; since the fight against terrorism coincides
with the common interest, it already is the general good, and the
State, which magnanimously conducts it, is good in-itself for-itself.
Without the wickedness of the devil, God's infinite bounty could not
appear and be appreciated as is fitting.
The State, along with its economy, weakened to the extreme by all the
attacks it has been undergoing daily for ten years, from the
proletariat on the one hand, and from the incapacity of its managers
on the other, can thus silence both in solemnly taking upon itself
the staging of the spectacle of the common and sacrosanct defence
against the terrorist monster, and in the name of this holy mission,
can exact from all its subjects a further portion of their tiny
freedom, which will reinforce police control over the entire
population. "We are at war," and at war with an enemy so powerful
that all other disagreement or conflict would be an act of sabotage
or desertion: it is only in order to protest against terrorism that
one has the right to resort to a general strike. Terrorism and "the
emergency," a state of perpetual emergency and "vigilance," these are
the only existing problems, or at the very least, the only ones with
which it is permitted and necessary to be pre-occupied. All the rest
does not exist, or is forgotten and in any case is silenced,
distanced, repressed in the social unconscious, in the face of the
gravity of the question of "public order." And faced with the
universal duty of its defence, all are invited to partake of
denunciation, baseness, and fear: cowardice becomes, for the first
time in history, a sublime quality, fear is always justified, the
only "courage" which may not be despicable is that of approving and
supporting all the lies, all the abuses, and all the infamies of the
State. Since the present crisis spares no country of the planet, no
geographical frontier of peace, war, freedom or truth any longer
exists: this frontier lies within every country, and every State is
arming itself and declaring war on truth.
So-and-so does not believe in the occult power of the terrorists?
Well he will have to change his mind in view of the subtly-filmed
images that show three German terrorists about to board a helicopter,
and who are so powerful that they even succeed in then escaping from
the German secret services, more skilful at filming their prey than
in capturing it.
So-and-so does not believe that a hundred or two hundred terrorists
have the capacity to deal a mortal blow to our institutions? Well let
him see what five or six of them are capable of doing in a few
minutes to Moro and his escort, and he must then admit that the
danger for the institutions (so much loved furthermore by more than
50 million Italians) is a real and terrible danger. Perhaps there is
still somebody else who may wish to maintain the contrary? He's an
accomplice of the terrorists! Everybody will agree then that the
State cannot let itself be brought down without defending itself:
and, whatever it may cost, this defence is a sacred and imperative
duty for everybody. And this because the Republic is public, the
State is for all, everyone is the State and the State is all, because
all enjoy its advantages, so equally shared out: isn't that
democracy? And this is why the people is sovereign, but beware if it
does not defend it!
Are you convinced? Or perhaps you still believe, after Moro, poor
citizens in want of critique, that it is still and always the State,
as from the time of the Piazza Fontana, which carries out these
outrages? Vile suspicions! This impairs the dignity of the
institutions: Zaccagnini weeps, here's his photograph, Cossiga as
well, watch him on the news, and cease once and for all putting all
the blame for everything on those who never hesitate to sacrifice
someone else's life in the name of the defence of our very democratic
institutions! Or perhaps you may still believe, poor citizens, that
we ministers, we generals, we secret agents of Anti-terrorism -- by
antiphrasis -- would be likely to sacrifice Aldo Moro, this
remarkable statesman of the highest sentiments, this example of moral
rectitude, our friend, patron, protector, and, when this was
necessary, our defender? [6]
This is precisely what every good citizen, who never doubts, always
votes, who pays, if he is not rich, and who, in any event, remains
silent, should think. Suspicions about the State are allowed in
connection with the Piazza Fontana, because the victims were ordinary
citizens: but surely one could not also suspect the State when the
victim is its most prestigious representative! Kennedy? That's a
thing of the past.
It is uniquely for this reason that Moro's agony lasted such a long
time, in order that everyone should have the possibility to follow at
leisure the entire spectacle of the kidnapping, and the feigned
discussion about the negotiation, in reading pathetic letters and
merciless messages of the ghostly Red Brigades (RBs) which channelled
the indignation of simple people and the poor in spirit, thereby
giving the whole story some vague verisimilitude, and a reason for
the collective psychodrama to manifest itself, contemplation and,
most importantly, general passivity continuing to hold good.
If Moro had been killed at the same time as his policemen, in the Via
Fani, everybody would have thought of a settling of accounts, of
which history is full, between capitalist gangs and rival centres of
decision -- as actually took place. In this case, the death of Moro
would have been judged like that of Enrico Mattei, [7] neither more
nor less. No-one has yet noted however, that if today some power-
group or other was to find itself, out of its own necessities or
interests, in the position of having to eliminate an Enrico Mattei,
or a Kennedy, it would certainly not do it as it did it then, but it
would attribute it to, or make such an assassination claimed by,
securely and with the greatest of ease, such-and-such secret little
terrorist group. [8] That is why, then, this long kidnapping had to
be staged, stressing sometimes the pitiless nature, sometimes the
pathetic, sometimes the "firmness" of the government, and, when it
was judged that people must be finally convinced of the
"revolutionary" origin and the responsibility of the "extremists,"
only then did Moro's jailers get the "green light" to dispose of him.
And you, Andreotti, [9] who are less naive than unembarrassed, don't
come and tell me that all this seems new to you, and don't play at
outraged virtue, if you please!
The dust cloud stirred up in the country, which revolved around the
question of knowing whether or not to negotiate -- a question that
still delights cretins -- was the thing which should have succeeded
the best, and was that which, on the contrary, failed the most: it is
here that the artificial aspect of the entire machination, barely
staged in the wings, appeared better than the production. The party
which rejected negotiation, namely the leaders of the DC [10] and the
PCI [11], rejected it because it knew very well that the staging of
the drama foresaw the epilogue to it which we were effectively
presented with, and because they also knew that, given the situation,
it ought not to miss the opportunity of appearing, una tantum,
inflexible at another's expense: and that is why we have been able to
behold Zaccagnini and Cossiga, Berlinguer [12] and Pecchioli
revelling unrestrainedly in the dignity of the Republican
institutions -- already so well-represented moreover by the president
of the time, Leone. [13] The leaders of the party which rejected
negotiation knew, furthermore, that they ought not to miss the
opportunity of having a dead Moro, so much less dangerous to them now
than a live one, since a dead friend is worth more than a living
enemy. If in fact, as a hypothesis, Moro had been set free, something
quite impossible however, the Stalinists and the Christian Democrats
were fully aware that they would have had to deal with a triply-
dangerous man because of his popularity being reinforced by his very
adventure, having been discredited in all manners by his friends
whilst he was unable to defend himself, and therefore hereafter an
open enemy of his friends and Stalinist ex-allies. Therefore, given
the situation, no-one has the right to blame Andreotti and
Berlinguer, as they were only acting in their own interest; what they
can be reproached for, in any case, is for having done it so badly,
in other words in such a manner as to have brought about more doubts
and suspicions than applause in their sudden and unexpected
conversion to an inflexibility which -- not possibly issuing either
from their character or from their past, or from the pretended will
to safeguard the institutions, which they flout in their deeds at
every turn -- must forcibly issue from their unavoidable interests.
As for Berlinguer in particular, he did not miss the opportunity of
proving himself to be, once again, as if everybody was not already
convinced of it, the most inept politician of the century: in fact it
was as clear as daylight from the start that the kidnapping of Moro
was, above all, a fine coup carried out against the "historic
compromise," not of course by left-wing extremists -- who in any case
would have kidnapped Berlinguer to punish him for his "betrayal" --
but by a power-group with interests which are irrationally hostile to
the compromise with the so-called Communists. And I say irrationally,
because such a policy could certainly not be a breach of the
interests of capitalism: but obviously the diligent Berlinguer has
not yet managed to convince all political sectors, military circles
and power-groups of this, in spite of the fact that he has dedicated
himself to this task, and to this task alone, for a lustra. Thus Aldo
Moro, already designated for a long time as the maker of the
government "of national unity," paid the price for it just when he
was about to bring the enterprise safely into port: "whence one may
derive a general rule, which never fails or at least rarely: that he
who causes another to become powerful brings about his own ruin," as
Machiavelli says, and it is not by chance, where he speaks De
principatibus mixtis, in the same way as the present majority in the
government is mixed. With Moro's disappearance, all the other
political leaders partisan to the Christian Democrat or other
"overtures," were at the same time warned: because those who decided
upon and put into action the kidnapping of Moro have, by this same
token, shown that they could, at any moment, do worse. Craxi [14] was
the first to understand this, but all politicians understood it. And
Berlinguer, instead of denouncing this straight away, instead of
admitting that this was the fatal blow to his policy, preferred once
again to remain silent, pretending to believe all the official
versions, making a show of his zeal in the witch-hunt, inciting the
population to informing, nobody knows about what or whom, continuing
to spin out his own lies, supporting the intransigence of the
Christian Democrats, and hurling invectives against the extremists,
with the naive illusion of thereby reassuring these occult sectors
which had kidnapped Moro. But the strategists of the Via Fani
operation were jeering at Berlinguer's abstract goodwill against
subversion, because they knew that he knew, and because they also
knew that when it is a question of real subversion, of that which
harms the economy, Berlinguer can no longer prevent anything at all
that wild-cat workers do. It is not enough to want to defeat
subversion, Berlinguer, you must show that you can defeat it: the
laurels of abstract will are made out of dry leaves which were never
green, you imbecile!
In fact, as everyone has been able to verify, the PCI has not ceased,
since then, to endure the bitter consequences of its own stupid
dishonesty: during the kidnapping, it was wildly accused by the
bourgeois press of being, in a word, the one responsible, for having
nourished in its militants all manner of illusions about social
revolution, obtaining these fine results; then it lost the elections;
after that the abject Craxi (who already during the abduction, was
ogling the side of the party of negotiation, which he knew to be
impossible, but which permitted him to differentiate himself from the
others) went over to the offensive in accusing the Stalinists of
everything, but disguising everything in hazy ideological disputes
serving as pretexts, which are even more laughable because they issue
from a man of his intellectual and cultural standing. But, every
time, the one who lost out in this was always Berlinguer; and the
PCI, because it did not wish to be fought by its allies in the
government, also unlearnt how to fight; and, at every defeat it
endured, one witnessed the fairly comical scene where Piccoli and
Andreotti would caress Berlinguer's neck, advising him not to
despair, and above all, to continue in this way. And yet, in spite of
all these set-backs, the Stalinists still continue today stubbornly
pretending to believe that Moro was killed by left-wing extremists:
so one could say that the never-ending series of failures that the
PCI incurs is really merited, as it is a non-entity as a "party of
struggle," and non-existent as a "party of government." [15] What to
me seems less comprehensible and more unjustified than all the rest
is the fact that the Stalinists bemoan this unashamedly, and always
pose as victims, without ever saying of what they are the victims --
in other words of their own incapability on the one hand, and of the
intrigues of their enemies on the other: enemies who are much less
incapable and undecided than they, as the operation of the Via Fani,
amongst others, attests and certifies.
The party of negotiation, however, outlived its defeat, deriving some
strength from the weakness of the opposite party, and is represented
by Craxi, for reasons of mere convenience, and by Lotta Continua
[16], by reason of its extremist stupidity that prevents even these
militants from noticing that they are an integral part of the
spectacle that they want to fight, and from which, however, they
nourish themselves in large handfuls. Around this party of
negotiation assembled, naturally, many intellectuals, whose
perspicacity is known and whose depth of thought does not have to be
shown: to which characteristics is added, in this case, the most
crass ignorance of history, even less excusable furthermore on the
part of those who have their word to say about everything and do
business out of their own supposed knowledge. I shall explain: what
unites, above all, bourgeois reactionaries, the good souls of the
progressive bourgeoisie, fashionable intellectuals, contemplative
supporters of armed struggle and the militants who complain about it,
is precisely the fact of believing that, in connection with Moro, and
for the first time on the matter of terrorism, the State did not lie;
therefore, for all these fine people, the kidnapping was the work of
revolutionaries, about whom the dismal Toni Negri [17] said that "we
have underestimated their efficiency. . . . We are willing to do our
own self-criticism," for having "underestimated" their "efficiency."
So they are all, voluntarily or involuntarily, the victims of this
nth lie of the State: the extra-parliamentarians and left-wing
intellectuals certainly admit that the State always makes use of
terrorism, post festum, but they cannot conceive that it resorts to
terrorism by killing its "most prestigious" representative. And this
is why I speak of historical ignorance: not one of them knows, or in
any case, not one of them has remembered the infinite myriad of
examples where States in crisis, and in social crisis, have
eliminated precisely their most reputed representatives, with the
intention and the hope of raising and channelling a general but
generally ephemeral indignation against the "extremists" and
malcontents. To only cite one of thousands of these historical
examples, I shall recall here that the Czarist secret services, the
redoubtable Okhrana, feeling (with terror and not without reason) the
revolution of 1905 coming, had no less a person than the Minister of
the Interior, Plehve, killed on 28 July 1904, and, as if that did not
seem sufficient for them, shortly after, on the 17th February 1905,
they had the Grand Duke Serge, the Czar's uncle, a very influential
man and head of the Moscow military district, killed. These outrages,
perfectly undertaken, were decided upon, carried out and claimed by
the "Combat Organisation" of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the
leadership of which the well-known Azev had just acceded to, a truly
ingenious engineer and Okhrana agent, in replacement of the
revolutionary Guerchuni, conveniently arrested a short while
beforehand. [18]
I cite this unique but admirable example of provocation because, if
one were to cite all the notorious examples of the last century, five
hundred pages would not be enough; and I have also chosen it because
the Italy of 1978 exhibits a vague but real resemblance to the Russia
of 1904-5. And, in any case, it must again be noted that every power
in difficulty always resembles any other power whatsoever in
difficulty, in the same way as their behaviour and their manner of
proceeding always resemble each other.
The logic that the strategists of this spectacle follow nowadays is
simple, plain and ancient: provided one does not recognise what
precisely their real difficulties are, and what the irremediable
contradictions are in which this old society flounders, the masters
of the terrorist spectacle flatly offer us the most contradictory
things: that the terrorism of 1978 was the inevitable consequence of
the proletarian revolts of 1977, [19] and that the bombing of the
Piazza Fontana was the logical result of the burning year 1969.
Nothing could be more false! The revolts of 1977 are the consequence
of the Hot Autumn, and the kidnapping of Moro is the follow-up of the
provocation of the Piazza Fontana. History proceeds through
dialectical contradictions, but the spectacle, like scholastic
philosophers, flatly proclaims: post hoc, ergo propter hoc, after
this fact therefore because of this fact; the fault is ascribed to
the fact. In 1977, the young proletarian generation rose up in
rebellion against its misery? Well then in 1978 these same enraged
young people kidnapped Moro! And it is of little consequence that the
Red Brigades had nothing to do with the revolts of 1977, which they
accuse, on the contrary, of "spontaneism": the young proletarians of
1977 were subversive, the RBs are made up of young people, the RBs
are the subversive elements of 1977. In no way, gentlemen of the
government! And you, the general officers of the parallel services,
since you always deceive yourselves, you would like the whole world
to be like you! And whosoever denounces your provocations is straight
away accused of being himself the provocateur, because reality is
always upside down in the spectacle.
The truth is that, as in 1977, your armchair began to shake under
your ass, gentlemen of the government, and the earth under your feet,
you, yes, you indeed: you passed onto the counter-offensive in
killing one of yours this time -- and exactly that one of yours whom
you (and your secret auxiliaries) considered the most likely to rouse
popular indignation (no-one would have blinked an eyelid if Rumor
[20] had been kidnapped or even Fanfani), and that the one who was
the most responsible for the present "political framework" -- who, as
you can see, does not please all the capitalist sectors which you and
your military organisms are called to defend. So it could be said at
this juncture that Moro was the Italian homologue of Allende: [21]
and behind the accusation of serving the interests of the bourgeoisie
and capital, instead of those of the proletariat, there was in fact,
and badly camouflaged, the inverse accusation, namely that of not
having served capitalist interests as well as some capitalists would
have liked it.
On the 16th March last year, the day of the Via Fani operation, I
could not refrain from immediately thinking of two things: first of
all of the fact that finally the secret services had been
reorganised, and that they had recovered a little after the affair of
the 12th December 1969, and from the humiliations which ensued (and,
here too, and once again, reality is inverted by the spectacle: the
success of the coup of the Via Fani is in fact attributed to the non-
existence of the secret services). And secondly I thought of that
passage in Candide where it is affirmed that "in this country it is
good to kill an admiral from time to time to give courage to the
others."
Sciascia, [22] who is the most well-known Italian reader of Voltaire,
is certainly not the most astute one since, having forgotten this
passage and the whole reality, loses himself in such or such phrase
from Moro's letters, without discovering further the entirety of the
facts, which no detail observed under the microscope could show or
give an inkling of. And, in fact, even today Sciascia believes that
Craxi or others really had an interest in, or the intention of,
having dealings with "the revolutionaries," and he gets indignant,
with a verve worthy of a better pleading, about the little friendship
displayed for Moro by his friends, which is an irrelevant detail,
instead of reserving his indignation for the essential -- namely for
the fact that with this provocation not only he, but the entire world
have been deceived, police laws have been passed, as well as the
hypocritical and infamous appeals of intellectuals and the Pope
against "extremism," a hundred innocent people are in prison forever,
and so forth. Tell me something, Sciascia: what importance can there
be for history or even for truth in the fact that Aldo Moro had had
also, amongst other misfortunes, that of being surrounded by
unfaithful or dishonest "friends"? Is it perhaps something new that
the Roman political world should be made up of scoundrels and
assassins? Have you never read, Sciascia, what the Cardinal de Retz,
who was a finer pamphleteer than you, had remarked three centuries
ago, namely that "there are many people in Rome to whom it would be
pleasing to assassinate those who are fallen"? New Emile Zola, you do
not accuse the enemies of Dreyfus, but his calumnious friends, you do
not accuse the criminal and responsible ones, but those who did the
simple wrong of calumniating and dishonouring the victim, post
festum, amongst which also abound the chroniclers of Corriere, a
newspaper in which you nevertheless write, to say the least. And if
you regret, Sciascia, the fact that Moro had the friends he had, why
then don't you start to set a good example yourself, by ceasing, for
instance, to fraternise with the indecent and unspeakable Bernard-
Henri Levy?
But I have already said the unsayable about intellectuals, and to add
anything else is superfluous.
As for little groups with extremist pretensions, who have all flung
themselves with abandonment into theological dissertations on
violence and the strategy of "revolutionary" terrorism, I shall
merely recall that their comprehension of reality had already proved
itself several years ago, beginning with the Piazza Fontana, then
next at every subsequent occasion, like when they rejoiced at the
assassination of Calabresi, [23] without pausing too much to think
that the commissioner had been eliminated by his own bosses, for whom
he had become cumbersome from then onwards (he had participated in
the coup staged against Valpreda, the assassination of Pinelli, and
something else: a few weeks before being killed in his turn, it was
Calabresi himself who "recognised" Feltrinelli [24] in the
unrecognisable corpse of Segrate, for which all the newspapers
congratulated themselves for his "memory, his sagacity," etc.,
without one of them ever wondering whether it was a matter of memory,
and sagacity, or on the contrary of quite another thing).
These alienated extra-parliamentarians always lose themselves in all
that the Stalinists say on the subject of terrorism, because they do
not know that the PCI is capable only of lying, and the only thing
they can never believe is the simple truth: for instance that the RBs
are teleguided, that Moro was eliminated by the parallel services,
and that they themselves are fatheads, good for being thrown into
prison each time this is useful. [25]
The Stalinists, after the "red trail" of the Piazza Fontana collapsed
miserably, and although they did not protest against the fact that
Valpreda was imprisoned for three years, brought out of their bag the
"black trail," and then we had our extra-parliamentarians making
exactly the "black trail" their own, and running behind the
Stalinists to scream that "fascism shall not pass." Of course I do
not exclude at all that some fascist or other may have participated
in such or such terrorist act, "black" or "red": but this fact is of
no importance, because we all know that in the same way that our
State makes use of notorious fascists in the capacity of generals,
prefects, [26] magistrates and police commissioners, it makes use of
them as much in the capacity of secret agents, infiltrated elements
and terrorist manpower -- and this without this State and this
terrorism being defined as "fascist". [27]
The Stalinists, starting from the time when they could not be accused
of not knowing what is fascist, nor of being incapable of
distinguishing what is merely relating to the police from that which
is fascist, must therefore be accused of having lied in saying that
the provocation of the Piazza Fontana was "fascist-style" -- and of
having lied clumsily because they did not say "it is fascist," but
"it is fascist-style." The fact that General Micelli, today openly
fascist, was already so when he was head of the SID [28], is
certainly not what determined his action when he was directing the
secret services: since the secret services receive orders and carry
out what politicians tell them to do. But the Stalinists' lie, on the
subject of the Piazza Fontana, was certainly not without motive for
being clumsy: because they wished to silence what they knew perfectly
well, and because they also found themselves attacked -- and one
knows with what violence -- by wild-cat workers, they had to sanction
in 1969 the ghostly "fascist peril," in the face of which they could
reconstitute "the unity of the working class" under their directives.
A week after the 12th December, the metal-workers of the private
sector, who were the avant-garde of the movement and its most
resolute part, were compelled to renounce all strikes, starting with
the one declared for the 19th December, and to accept the contract
imposed by the trade-unions. Longo and Amendola were fully aware that
if they had told the truth on the spot, on the 13th December 1969 the
civil war would have begun, and they know very well even today that
those who ask, like they, to be invited to eat at one end of the
State's table surely cannot say in a loud voice that the plates are
dirty: thus they can, on the other hand, say secretly in a hushed
voice "the plates are dirty, we know: if you invite us we shan't say
anything," as effectively happened.
Since the Stalinists said nothing in 1969, the "party with clean
hands" [29] had to then continue to say nothing and lie about all
further provocations and assassinations perpetrated by the secret
services of this very State whose recognition they are today
demanding to obtain for their omerta, [30] and of which they want to
share the crumbs with the Christian Democrats.
For a long while, the Situationists were the only ones, in Europe, to
denounce the Italian State as being the exclusive author and
beneficiary of artificial modern terrorism and all its spectacle. And
we had designated Italy to the revolutionaries of all countries as
the European laboratory of counter-revolution, and as the privileged
field of experimentation of modern police techniques -- and this
starting exactly from the 19th December 1969, the date of the
publication of our manifesto entitled Is the Reichstag Burning?
The last sentence of this manifesto, "comrades, don't let yourselves
stop here," is the only thing, without exception, which has been
contradicted by history: this movement ceased exactly on that day,
and it could not have been otherwise, starting from the moment when
we were the only ones to have been fully aware of what the operation
of the Piazza Fontana meant and to say it, without having any other
means at our disposal than a "stolen roneo," as has been mentioned in
the manifesto quoted. [31] As the people say, "those who have the
bread do not have the teeth, and those who have the teeth do not have
the bread": and all those courageous extra-parliamentarians of that
time who had newspapers and rags did not have the teeth and did not
publish anything pertinent about this massacre, preoccupied as they
were, and as they are, with the search for the "correct strategy" to
impose on the proletariat, which, for them is only good for being
directed, and what's more by them!
Because of their incurable inferiority complex vis-a-vis the PCI's
capacity for lying, effectively superior to their own, the extra-
parliamentarians thus accepted on the spot the version of the facts
claimed by the PCI, according to which the bombs were "fascist-
style," and therefore could not be the deeds of the secret services
of this "democratic" State, so democratic even that it is never
worried about what they recount, that they are the only ones to be
considered "dangerous" for the spectacle, of which they are the ill-
rewarded but indispensable confederates. Their false explanation of
the facts was, however, in perfect agreement with the veritable
ideology of these groupuscules, all infatuated with Mao, Stalin and
Lenin then, as they are nowadays with Guattari, Negri and Scalzone,
or with their miserable "private life" and their ridiculous
"brothels." Since, therefore, these pretended "extremists" did not
want to tell the truth, and did not know how to accuse this State
openly of being the terrorist, they did not know how to combat it
with any tangible result whatsoever: because to say that this bomb
was "fascist" was as much of a falsehood as to say that it was
"anarchist," and all lies, as opposite as they might appear, are
always bound up in the sabotage of the truth. And only the truth is
revolutionary, only the truth is capable of causing harm to power,
only the truth has the capacity to stir the fury of the Stalinists
and bourgeois. And the proletariat, forever deceived and betrayed by
all, has learnt to seek the truth all alone, and it is impermeable to
lies, however "extremist" they may claim to be. In the same way, and
by the same guilty ineptitude, all the extra-parliamentarians of 1978
happily fell into the trap of the kidnapping of Moro, "work of
comrades who make mistakes." Can't you perceive, you great ninnies,
that you are the only "comrades who make mistakes," again this time?
But your epitaph, brave extra-parliamentarians, has already been
written by Dante:
But you bite the bait, so well that the hook
of the old adversary pulls you towards him;
and thus to brake or to remember has little effect.
Victims of their own false consciousness, which always expresses
itself in ideology, the extra-parliamentarians could not however
avoid for long the questions posed by spectacular terrorism, and so
from 1970 onwards they began to consider the question of terrorism in-
itself, in the empyrean of ideology, in a wholly metaphysical manner,
completely abstracted from the reality of things. And when the truth
about the massacre of the Piazza Fontana at last came to light, when
all the lies adopted on this subject had fallen one after the other,
neither the good souls of the intellectual-progressive bourgeoisie,
nor the scarecrows of Lotta Continua and consorts were capable of
posing the questions once and for all in its real, that is to say
scandalous, terms: that the democratic Republic did not hesitate to
enact a massacre when this seemed useful to it, because when all the
laws of the State are in danger, "there only exists for the State one
sole and inviolable law: the survival of the State" (Marx). And this
is precisely what this famous "sense of the State" is that was
saddled onto Moro and with which the philistines are now decorating
his corpse. In ten years no one has wanted to unleash a "Dreyfus
affair" concerning the behaviour of our secret services, whose chiefs
were stealing in and out of prison with the general indifference of
all the privileged owners of the "sense of the State," this sublime
sixth sense with which our politicians are endowed, unlike common
mortals, who are mutilated by it, like those who were mutilated, but
by another thing, in the Agricultural Bank, and who did not die. Or
perhaps there is somebody who is convinced that this mysterious
"sense of the State" is something other than I have said it to be?
"Moro had the sense of the State" and "Berlinguer has the sense of
the State": if this does not mean what I have said, they are empty
phrases, which is the same as saying that such girl has "the sense of
the cunt" and myself that of my balls, and that Tina Anselmi [32] has
no sense even if she creates a sensation.
Since the extra-parliamentarians at first did not believe they knew,
then knew without believing, and finally believed without concluding
that the State itself inaugurated terrorism in Milan, the entire
country entered this period of apparent madness and mad appearances:
the entire question of terrorism became the object of academic
diatribes and ardent invectives, which led some, the bourgeoisie and
the Stalinists, to hypocritically condemn terrorism "whatever colour
it may be" -- and if it was not precisely they who had encouraged and
shielded it by giving it each time the colour which was the most
convenient -- and others, those who believed themselves to be
"extremists," to toy with the idea that "State terrorism is to be
answered with proletarian terrorism." And this comes just at the
right time for our secret services: the first small clandestine
terrorist groups, the RBs and NAP [33] had scarcely been formed when
the police, the carabinieri and the detached corps vied with each
other to be the first to infiltrate these little paramilitary groups,
either with the aim of forestalling their acts, or with that of
teleguiding them, according to the necessities and desiderata of the
moment and of the powerful.
Thus everyone was able to see how the NAP were radically wiped out,
either by arresting their members in order to exhibit them afterwards
in ignoble fashion in such-and-such a trial, or else by directly
doing some target practice on them, a much sought-after spectacle
where the "forces of law and order" displayed themselves for the
pleasure of the most lurid of bourgeoisies. [34]
However this happened in a different manner with the Red Brigades:
only two of the infiltrators of this group are known, that is to say,
Posetta and the Christian Brother Girotto [35], who, although crass
enough as agents provocateurs, were capable of making Curcio [36] and
the other members, of what is fitting to be called the "historic
group," fall into the trap -- all militants with no experience of
clandestinity, and also barely "ferocious" as terrorists.
Notwithstanding this the RBs were never dismantled after having been
decapitated, and this certainly not because of the prudence of the
other militants, who are not any less naive than their leaders who
fell into the first trap set, but by the decision of their new
leaders. So then why should the State, already in difficulty for
other reasons, have lost this golden opportunity which presented
itself to dispose thenceforward of a terrorist organism having an
autonomous physiognomy and appearance, well-infiltrated and
tranquilly directed from afar? I do not believe at all that General
Dalla Chiesa [37] is the "warrior genius" of whom Karl von Clausewitz
used to speak, but he had certainly read Clausewitz with more
attention and profit than Curcio, and he has greater means to put at
the disposal of his talents. General Dalla Chiesa, along with his
colleagues in SISDE, SISME and CESIS [38], jeers at all the
proclamations of ideologues of armed struggle about their affirmed
intention of "carrying the attack to the heart of the State," above
all because he knows that the State has no heart, not even in
metaphor, and next because he knows full well, like Andreotti and
Berlinguer, that the only attack capable of fatally wounding the
State is today uniquely that which consists of denouncing its
terrorist practices, and violently denouncing them -- as, for
example, I am doing at this moment.
General Dalla Chiesa, although he may be more well-up on tactics than
on strategy, and though he confuses strategy with stratagem,
substituting guile for the art of war, nevertheless knows perfectly
well that terrorism is the substitute for war in a period where great
world wars are impossible, or at any rate, no longer permit making
one proletariat massacred by another in exhausting and bloodthirsty
battles. Our general and the other strategists of the high political
police also know that spectacular terrorism is always anti-
proletarian, and that it is the pursuit of politics by other means:
pursuit, however, of the anti-proletarian politics of all States.
That this State has need of modern artificial terrorism is proved
above all by the fact that it is precisely here, in Italy, that it
was invented ten years ago -- and it is known that the Italian
bourgeoisie replaces in invention what it lacks in capacity: it was
again the Italian bourgeoisie which invented fascism, which then had
so much success in Germany, Spain, Portugal etc., everywhere where it
was necessary to crush a proletarian revolution. And the terrorist
spectacle has already had an immediate success with the German
government, which does not envy our situation, but envies our
imagination (in other words, that of our secret services, as in the
1920s, when it envied us for Mussolini), which permits our government
to sail in the shit without drowning in it.
That this State has need of terrorism is on the other hand something
which each of its representatives is quite convinced of from now on,
by experience if not by reasoning, and this since the happy outcome,
immediate and miraculous, of the operation of the Piazza Fontana. The
proof of it is that if there has not been any "Dreyfus affair"
concerning this, this certainly does not arise from the fact that the
matter was less scandalous, but rather from the fact that all the
parties, for different reasons, have understood that if this bomb had
saved the State, which each of them defends in their own fashion, the
truth about this bomb was itself alone capable of destroying it
definitively. And if there has not been any "Dreyfus affair," this
also arises from the fact that, in our enslaved intelligentsia, no
Emile Zola "in attendance" ever requested or wanted to exact a
truthful conclusion about the Piazza Fontana: Giorgio Bocca modestly
made his book on terrorism start from 1970, and, as for the other
mandarins of culture, they have always preferred, faced with the
blinding light of the Reichstag burning, to look for glow-worms, like
Pasolini and Scaiscia, without even finding any, obviously, but while
always discoursing about the responsibilities of pollution in this
disappearance, and advancing deep lamentations against it,
"polemising" amenably, without ever denouncing the terrorist
pollution, of which they are all thus accomplices and victims at the
same time.
I should like the parallel services and generals -- who will read
Remedy to Everything [39] attentively, and at any rate the chapter
which concerns them -- to lend their attention for a moment to two
things I am going to tell them about the frailty of their strategy:
first of all, Dalla Chiesa, take good note of what Clausewitz has
taught you, in the chapter he dedicates to the ruse:
In as much as one would like to imagine . . . that generals
fight with dissimulation, ruse and perspicacity, one must still admit
that these qualities are little evident in history. . . . The reason
is not difficult to find . . . in reality it is dangerous to distract
considerable forces for a long period, in the sole aim of deceiving
the enemy: since there is always the danger of its being done in
vain, these forces subsequently failing to be there at the crucial
moment. This sober truth, which must always be present in the mind of
the one who conducts war, robs perspicacious military leaders of all
desire to engage in the double game of deceitful mobility. . . . In a
word, the pieces on the strategic chess-board lack this mobility
which would be the indispensable condition for the success of the
ruse and the stratagem . . . [the ruse] does not harm, if it does not
exist to the detriment of other qualities of the heart -- which is
all too often the case.
The second thing to consider, in connection with a strategy which is
founded upon provocation, is as old as the world: Seneca already
remarked -- and if I quote him, it is because, being Nero's
counsellor, he was well-up on State terrorism and provocations --
that it is "easier not to embark upon this path than to stop, once
embarked upon it." Like a drug, artificial terrorism needs and
requires to be administered in always more massive and more frequent
doses,
because the future ill appears slighter than the one already done
as Dante would say. So do your sums again, politicians and generals,
and you will see that they are wrong.
If then, as I have shown, the State needs terrorism, it also needs
not to be caught red-handed every time, so as to then keep up a good
front as its ministers, like Rumor and Tanassi, did at Catanzaro,
equalled in this only by Generals Malizia, Maletti [40] and Micelli.
And what better opportunity for the State, than that offered by a
group like the RBs, decapitated and available, with its former
leaders in prison and in ignorance about everything? I will still
remark that, even if the former leaders were free, since two
infiltrators sufficed to bring about their downfall, one alone, less
vulgar than Brother Machinegun and Pisetta, would have sufficed to
order them about wherever it was wanted for them to go, and without
them ever suspecting anything. I know very well that the infiltrators
known up to the present, as well as the major part of agents
provocateurs in office, have never set the Thames on fire; but our
clandestine militants, as one has seen, are not more astute than
they. And even if they were all Lenins, as they imagine themselves to
be, it should still be noted that the Bolsheviks were widely
infiltrated and on several occasions: Roman Malinovski, worker and
Okhrana agent, was part of the Bolshevik Central Committee, profiting
from the most blind trust on Lenin's part, and despatching hundreds
of militants and leaders to Siberia -- and, to a suspicion voiced by
Bukharin, Lenin replied that that was "unworthy of a conscientious
militant: if you persist it is you who will be denounced as a
traitor," according to what Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaia, said.
But Malinovski's case was not an isolated one: in 1917 opening the
secret archives of the Okhrara, Lenin was dumbfounded, not without
reason, at discovering that, of fifty-five professional provocateurs
officially on duty, and regularly appointed, seventeen "were working"
amongst the Social Revolutionaries, and a good score were sharing out
amongst themselves the control of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, and
of course not amongst the rank-and-file militants! And Lenin had the
bitter surprise of having to note that the provocateurs were always
exactly these very "comrades" to whom he, who was so wise and so
expert on the matter of clandestinity, used to accord the greatest
esteem and the greatest confidence as a result of services rendered
and the daring shown on several occasions.
Nowadays, those practices that, in those times, passed for extremely
refined sophistication's of the Okhrana, are no longer much more than
primitivism's: the modern parallel services of the State, of every
State, have a quantity of means, and personages from every class and
of all social appearances at their disposal, well-equipped in the use
of arms and ideas, often much more capable than the naive militants,
who also bear the brunt of it. The organisational form of the party,
always hierarchical, is in fact that which lends itself best to
infiltration and manipulation -- exactly the opposite of what the
bourgeois press says: all the cells at the base, formed of
clandestine militants, are kept apart and in ignorance of everything,
without any possibility of dialogue and debate, and everything
functions perfectly thanks to the most blind discipline and to the
most opportune orders given by an inaccessible summit, which is
usually lodged in such-and-such ministry or power-group. And if ever
some provocateur arouses suspicions, always some providential arrest
occurs, placed well in the limelight by the press, which extricates
him from danger and absolves him of all suspicion -- then he is even
put into action again, thanks to an incredible and "heroic" escape.
And often provocateurs, too, do not come out of it unscathed.
Here is then one more reason why I would put any subversive of good
faith on his guard against organising hierarchically and
clandestinely in some sort of "party": clandestinity can be, under
certain conditions, a necessity, whilst all hierarchy is always and
only of benefit to this world is to be overthrown. Infiltration is
practically impossible, or is discovered immediately, in
revolutionary groups who do without militants and leaders, and which
are founded on the qualitative: "the only limit to participation in
the total democracy of revolutionary organisation is the effective
recognition and self-appropriation, by all its members, of the
coherence of its critique, a coherence which must prove itself in
critical theory rightly so-called and in the relation between theory
and practical activity" (Debord).
In several of the RBs "caches" were recovered (and this is not new)
an abundance of ultra-confidential material, issuing from police
quarters, central police stations and even from ministries -- which,
strangely, never were raided or ransacked by the RBs. In view of such
eloquent facts, spectacular information always claimed to explain
them by emphasising the ultra-efficient organisation of the terrible
RBs, and by adding, in order to enhance this wonderful god-send for
publicity, the fact that these clandestine militants, so hunted-down
but so tentacular, have infiltrated everywhere, even ministries and
central police stations. I have to laugh, in view of such an
explanation of such a gloomy reality, and so clumsily camouflaged.
Once more the intelligence of fifty million Italians is being abused,
who are not Germans eager to saturate themselves with the poisoned
feeding-bottle of the television, of Corriere and Unita, and those
who ascribe such stupidity to ordinary people in fact reveal only
their own -- which, for having gone so far, must certainly not be so
ordinary. Once more power speaks by means of counter-truth: it is not
the RBs who have infiltrated the central police stations and
ministries, but agents of the State, issuing from central police
stations and ministries, who have infiltrated by design the RBs, and
not only into the summit for sure!
And if for ten years the great merciless struggle against the
terrorist monster, a struggle so much glorified in words, only
resulted in hypertrophying this "monster," if the trial of the Piazza
Fontana never even veritably began, this results again from the fact,
which I do not know whether is more comical or repugnant, that those
who have always been entrusted with this merciless fight, are those
very secret services who always directed and actuated terrorism, and
certainly not due to pretended "deviations" or "corruptions," but,
truly militarily, by simply executing orders given. And all the
militants who are exhibited to the public in the cages of the law-
courts, as if they were fierce beasts, naive boys who were wished to
be watched growing old in Italian prisons, are always and certainly
the least implicated -- and this even if they are designated, in
turn, as "the leaders" and "the strategists" (nothing is easier than
to make a naive fanatic believe that he took part in such-and-such an
operation, merely because he left the tract claiming it).
And our general officers quite enjoy themselves counting up the
medals and certificates of high merit that they collect, either by
feeding terrorism, or "by discovering" at the opportune moment "the
culprits."
In this phenomenon, which can excite the virtuous indignation of
hypocrites, there is in reality nothing new, and it has repeated
itself for centuries in periods of corruption and decadence of all
States. Sallust, for instance, who is the historian of the corruption
and the crisis of the Republic of Rome, tells how the censor Lucius
Marcius Filippus denounced Lepidus, a felon general, in these fine
terms to the Senate:
I should like above all, O senators . . . that criminal designs
should be turned back against their authors. And yet the entire
Republic is shaken and disconcerted by these seditious provocations,
and precisely by the action of those who should have been the first
to prevent them . . . and you, in giving doubtful and irresolute
growls, in entrusting yourselves to the words and verses of auguries,
you desire peace instead of defending it, and you do not understand
that with your flabby proclamations you strip yourselves of all
dignity, and him of all fear . . . for when scoundrels are rewarded
it is not easy to remain upright without any returns . . . I do not
know then if I must call your behaviour fearfulness, baseness or
madness. . . . And you, Lepidus, traitor to all . . . you claim to re-
establish by such a war this concord which is rendered null and void
by the very means with which it was obtained. What impudence!
That is it exactly: the social peace that terrorism can procure "is
rendered null and void by the very means with which it was obtained,"
with this difference that today the impudent ones are all MPs of the
republic and orators who inveigh against terrorism, extending it thus
as well into their discourses, always affecting not to know what the
entire country is saying since this famous year 1969. Listen a bit to
what a modern Lepidus says, the honest Leo Valiani, who was not
ashamed of regretting, in July 1978 in the Corriere, the "too lenient
sentences" pronounced against some executants:
[These sentences] encourage subversives to persevere, to always
dare more. We are not asking the judges" -- Valiani valiantly
continues -- "to convict someone without being convinced of his
guiltiness. But when the Republic is, as it is at this moment, at
grips with clandestine organisations such as these who have sown the
seeds of death in the Piazza Fontana. . . any indulgence regarding
those who have militated in such subversive organisations is suicidal.
And what indulgence can surpass, Godammit, that of this Valiani, an
expert in Stalinist and bourgeois terrorism, fellow-traveller of
these two terrorisms and accomplice of all the lies on this matter,
who still affects not to know, and he is the only one in Italy, that
the "clandestine organisation which sowed the seeds of death in the
Piazza Fontana" is none other than the organisation of Admiral Henke,
who was then in command of the famous SID -- which, out of decency,
that is to say out of indecency, has now had its name changed? And
they still want to carry on, for the next ten years, with the same
twaddle of Valiani's, this time about Moro's execution? What
parliamentarian, what honourable scoundrel, amongst all those who
reproach each other for their own "indulgence," speaking without
rhyme nor reason about the "safeguarding of the Republic," has up
till now dared expose himself, by accusing and naming the assassins
of ten years ago?
The fact is that, precisely, the safeguarding of this criminal
Republic hereafter depends solely upon their capacity to still cover
up these assassins and those of Moro -- along with those of
Calabresi, Occorsio, Coco, Feltrinelli, Pinelli, etc., and this our
ministers and honourable parliamentarians know quite well, they who
continue to say nothing in order to collect new remuneration's which
will go to complete their already substantial share.
Our regime, since the great scare of 1969, has always bestowed
immense confidence on its high political police, and in its capacity
for always finding technical and spectacular solutions to all
historical and social questions: our regime therefore is in the
process of committing the same error as the Czarist regime, which
consecrated all its attention and care into building the best and
most powerful secret police in the world, as was the Okhrara in its
time; this allowed the Czar to continue to survive on a daily basis
and without anything changing for one decade more, but his fall was
all the more violent and definitive. As a bourgeois thinker, Benjamin
Constant, used to say,
"only an excess of despotism can prolong a situation which is
tending to break up, and maintain under the same domination, classes
that everything is conspiring to separate. . . . This remedy, even
more harmful than evil, no longer has any durable efficacity. The
natural order of things avenges itself for outrages that it has been
made to undergo, and the more violent the compression was, the more
terrible the reaction proves itself to be."
And in Italy, ten years of high police politics are beginning to make
themselves felt, including their harmful and uncontrollable effects:
the State is still there, with more authority and less reputation
than ever, but its veritable adversaries have multiplied in number,
their consciousness has increased, and, with it, the efficacity and
violence of their attacks; and, in periods where it is the police who
have conducted politics, it is always a total collapse which has
followed.
Today the sinister Craxi seeks easy applause in affecting to perceive
that in Russia, a scandalous novelty, transgressions of opinion are
considered State crimes. But don't you see, poor Craxi, that here in
Italy it is State crimes that are considered transgressions of
opinions. Is this not perhaps a fact less unworthy of your virtuous
indignation? Ridiculous Craxi! Whom would you have believe that your
soul is immaculate? You who strut about with your worthy crony
Mitterand, do you think that it has been forgotten that Mitterand is
a gangster, who, a few years ago, hired other, more obscure gangsters
to simulate an attack against him? [41] No-one believes you, Craxi,
when you declare that sine macula enim sum ante thronum! [42] And all
of you party leaders, you are like Mitterand: when it is not you who
instigate the attempts, but a rival, you always keep silent, and then
you speak about firmness of the State in the face of your own
provocations!
That in Italy State crimes are considered mere transgressions of
opinion, this is what is also proved, along with all the rest, by
this simple precise fact: when, in 1975, under the pseudonym of
Censor, [43] I published the historical, and not legal, proofs that
it was the SID that committed the massacre of the Piazza Fontana, all
the newspapers and journalists reported my conclusions widely but
they were much more scandalised by the fact that an anonymous
personage, apparently near to power, should dare to openly accuse the
SID, than by the quite blatant tact that the State organised, and had
carried out, a fine massacre so as to emerge unscathed from a very
grave social crisis. And the journalist Massimo Riva has admirably
expressed the thinking of all his colleagues, in wondering in
connection with the Censor affair, in Corriere, what mysterious
manoeuvre of power it heralded: "What is behind this? The fear of
publicly speaking the truth? A warning between big pundits of the
regime?" It was not my scandalous assertions and conclusions, but my
anonymity, which provoked the scandal, or rather, the rumpus that was
made around the identity of Censor only served to mask the scandal of
what I was denouncing. All preferred to advance clumsy conjectures
about my identity, if only to avoid speaking about what I had said:
"A warning between big pundits of the regime?": this is the crux of
the question, according to Riva and the others, and what creates a
scandal is only the end of the omerta amongst the powerful, and not
the crimes committed by them.
But the best, as usual, is Alberto Ronchey, at whom we should be
amazed if he did not manage to astound us: he said about my proofs
that "whatever the responsibilities and intrigues of the SIFAR-SID or
other detached corps may be," in spite of this, "as for bombs,
kidnappings ... if one could really believe in a 'State terrorism' we
would be in the presence of a criminal system of government, and no-
one ought to have anything to do with such a power: neither the
Communists, the Socialists or the others." [44] What is really
incredible, is surely not the terrorism of the State, but Ronchey's
way of reasoning: since he, the Communists and the Socialists have
something to do with such a power, therefore, according to Ronchey,
this is a sufficient guarantee that a State terrorism is not
credible, therefore it does not exist, "whatever may be the
responsibilities and intrigues of the SID" To reason like Ronchey:
God is credible, therefore he exists. On the matter of terrorism and
the State one really has the impression of having returned to the
discussions about the existence of God and the Devil. Are they real?
Do they exist? And if they exist, are they really credible? The poet
says most wisely that
Of course it was true, but believable it was not
to those who were not masters of their reason.
I cannot manage to understand where the Roncheys hope to arrive at
with their theological logic: I never said that the secret services
were behind each outrage, given that today even a Molotov cocktail or
a sabotaging of production are considered as "outrages": but I said,
and I have been saying it for more than ten years, that all the
spectacular acts of terrorism are either teleguided or perpetrated
directly by our secret services. And it should be well noted that I
do not say "by secret services" which could belong to some far-off or
exotic country, but by ours, yes, those of Italy, whose touch and
stench, skill and clumsiness, tactical ingenuity and strategic
stupidity I always recognise.
Observe, for example, how the SID came to execute the operation of
the Piazza Fontana: by successive trial-runs and approximations. They
had decided to do a massacre amongst the population, and they
prepared for it with two general rehearsals: the bombs of April 25th,
1969 at the [trade] Fair and at the bank at Milan station, and the
bombs in the trains in August of the same year. The secret services
thus prepared public opinion with these backgrounds, [45] and
prepared themselves technically.
And what general rehearsals then did the kidnapping of Moro have? It,
too, had its general rehearsals, because our parallel services, which
could not be more recognisable, even if they change objectives,
always have the same manner of proceeding -- something for which
Machiavelli would never forgive them. In April 1977 the kidnapping of
De Martino without bloodshed was already a general rehearsal: in
their rehearsals, the secret services never want to cause bloodshed,
on April 25, 1969, no one died, nor did anyone in August. The
rehearsal, however, always indicates the objective which will be
struck: in 1969 the population, in 1977-78 a politician. The very day
of the kidnapping of De Martino, claimed afterwards by about a
hundred ghostly groups, I denounced it as a general rehearsal of the
secret services in a poster printed and distributed in Rome. [46] The
second rehearsal which indicated the chosen objective very well --
namely a politician -- was the bomb, whose publicity was so well
assured, in the office of the Minister of the Interior of the time,
Cossiga. Then came the coup against Moro, and there was bloodshed,
because it was no longer a general rehearsal.
With the thrust of the menacing revolts of the beginning of 1977, the
secret services, who for ten years have always been on their guard
and never inactive, began to stir themselves with decision in a more
precise direction: and the two provocations cited, which are not the
only ones in which they took part, are however those which best
denote the chosen objective and the outcome of events.
It can be said therefore wittingly that the kidnapping of Moro was
the least unforeseeable thing in the world, since it was the least
unforeseen where one can do what one wants, that is to say in the
realm of power. At first it was feared that De Martino, a friend of
the Stalinists, might obtain the presidency of the Republic, and by
making him part with several hundreds of millions of Lira in order to
recover his son, the reputation of this "socialist" was destroyed;
after this Moro was publicly designated as the successor to Leone,
less ransomable however than De Martino or Leone, which-is-to-say
more dangerous for being stronger; moreover Moro had the
responsibility for the agreement with the Stalinists, and, as
president of the Republic, he would have had still more. Two and two
make four, even in politics; March 16 1978: the President must die,
to parody the title of a book of Andreotti's. Six months after the
operation of the Via Fani, at a time when the anti-Stalinist politics
of Craxi were undergoing their first tests, Amintore Fanfani, who in
Tuscany is nicknamed the Ghost, was hurling his first and vigorous
attacks against the government, against the secretariat of the DC,
against the "emergency cabinet," against the "rapprochement" effected
by Moro, denouncing "the abuses of unanimism," the inefficiency of
the "equivocal" government of "national unity," and announcing the
supersession "of a political season" -- winning the applause of the
Craxists and arousing the "fears" of the Stalinists. Although Fanfani
may be the Italian politician who, after Berlinguer, has amassed the
greatest number of failures, he is not a cretin: much more
intelligent than able, and less far-seeing than ingenious, the Ghost
has only drawn the political conclusions of the Moro affair, so true
it is that terrorism is the pursuit of politics by other means.
As long as there shall exist a power separated from individuals, it
will surely not be individuals who will fail it: no functionary of
power or of capital is irreplaceable or indispensable in the
maintenance of its domination, neither Kennedy, nor Mattei, nor Moro,
nor any of those who are still alive and active. What, in a period of
troubles, becomes indispensable to a power that does not want to
renew itself, is precisely the elimination of certain men, either
because they are too implicated and too shown-up, like Rumor, or
because by wanting a "renewal," however minimal it might be, they
arouse some fear or a certain mistrust in certain sectors of power:
and it is known that the most reactionary sectors are always also the
best armed. Moro's "overtures" were thus perceived as being opposed
to certain interests and a concession to a "change" -- and this in
spite of the fact that historically it was precisely any change that
such overtures were trying to prevent, but without too much
conviction and without sufficient guarantees -- that is to say, in a
different manner to that desired by one fraction of power and by
certain of the military.
In history, every power always behaves like all the other powers have
behaved, and as the present police politics of provocation follows
its course, which I have already shown to be unstoppable, similarly
for its powerful strategists, semi-lucid and semi-unaware, but
completely dominated by fear, the necessity ripens of having to
dispose of, in Mafia manner, some of those very men they had still
been making use of the day before. In all this there is nothing new,
and it is a further confirmation of the old precept according to
which "he who is the cause of another's becoming powerful brings
about his own ruin"; neither Moro, nor any of his colleagues, ever
prevented the political police from becoming so powerful in the space
of ten years; not one of them ever protested against nor fought a
phenomenon that all, on the contrary, nourished: Moro was the first
victim of some importance that such a politics struck down, but he
was not the only victim. The strategists of terror had already got
rid of other personages, less important but none the less utilised
previously; we have before our very eyes several examples of this
still fresh: the liquidation of Calabresi, the distant and mysterious
death of the fascist Nardi, accused of Calabresi's assassination, the
"suicide" of a good number of SID officers, the fatal "accidents"
which happened to several witnesses at the Piazza Fontana trial, the
spectacular and simultaneous attempts against the magistrates Coco
and Occorsio, [47] which, out of a desire for symmetry ever-present
in the spectacle of "opposite extremism's," were claimed by the RBs
and the fascists. It is worth remarking that these two magistrates
were involved with terrorism and not in a small way: Coco with the
shady and incongruous affair of the kidnapping of Sossi, [48] and
Occorsio with the dirty trick staged with great showmanship against
"the human beast" Pietro Valpreda. Naturally, the entire lying media
always presents as the confirmation of the official version of the
facts precisely that which denies it: Coco "would not yield" to the
RBs, so they took their revenge -- and one does not understand why,
to avenge themselves, they did not kill the judge Sossi: I take a
hostage and I blackmail you: if you do not accept the blackmail, it
is you that I kill, and not the hostage: illogical but spectacular
logic.
As for Occorsio, he was, these last days, conducting an enquiry into
the fascists, so these latter had an interest in killing him -- but,
for mercy's sake, let nobody put forward the slightest suspicion. To
wit, that if Occorsio was taking care, last of all, of the fascists
after having taken so much care of the anarchists, but with just as
bad results, it is because somebody therefore had suggested to him to
take care of the fascists, in order next to be able to make them
claim his death, thereby giving it an explanation (one could not
quite however accuse Valpreda of having also killed Occorsio;
Valpreda is from now on a "culprit," worn-out, unusable; if tomorrow
one were to read that he killed his mother-in-law, there would be no
one in Italy who would believe it).
The judges who are busying themselves today with the Moro affair are
the least enviable people in Italy, and they should be very careful:
from now on they must take care not to get lost in their inquiries
and not to displease certain sectors of power; next they should pay
attention to all and everything, because for the State the first
opportunity to get rid of them will be the right one: and the RBs
"will claim" their death immediately, which will be explained in this
matter to public opinion. And from now on in Italy all which can be
explained is also justified -- and if the explanation is abusive,
since no one answers it back, it is an explanation without right of
appeal, a lie which is no longer contradicted and cannot be any more.
If one can contradict it, it is not contradicted, if it is
contradicted, it is not "credible," if it is not "credible" it does
not exist -- to speak like Ronchey. Few things amongst those foreseen
by Orwell in 1984 have not yet been verified; take for instance the
following passage:
In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less
susceptible to Party propaganda. Once when he happened in some
connection to mention the war . . . she startled him by saying
casually that in her opinion the war was not happening. The rocket
bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the
Government itself, 'just to keep people frightened'. This was an idea
that had literally never occurred to him.
A few extra-parliamentarians, lost behind their puerile illusions and
the fetishist theology of armed struggle, would perhaps like to
object that, since they believe in armed struggle, others more
"extreme" than they can effectively practise it and be responsible
for everything, including the kidnapping of Moro. I wish to point out
here that I have never doubted, neither in public nor in private, the
imbecility of our extra-parliamentarians taken as a whole; but it is
worthwhile observing that they never doubt what the spectacle
recounts about itself and about them. Only take heed of this, brave
alienated militants: if Moro had actually been kidnapped and killed,
as you believe, by free and autonomous revolutionaries, like the
State has told you, then it would also ensue that, for the first time
in ten years, the State did not lie on the question of terrorism. But
this, being unheard of and absurd, is to be excluded.
The sad truth is that, on the contrary, you have always believed the
lies, about Valpreda, about Feltrinelli, about the RBs and so on: and
even the official newspaper of the anarchists, Umanita Nova, hastened
to take precautions, after the Piazza Fontana, in dissociating its
"responsibilities" from those of Valpreda -- thus furnishing proof of
a courage proportional to its intelligence.
Many militants of the extreme left think they are very smart for
having understood that Pinelli did not throw himself from the fourth
floor of the Central Police Headquarters on his own; but they will
never manage to beat this record for smartness since, shortly after,
they praised our secret services when they killed Commissioner
Calabresi. Our bourgeoisie and the Stalinists, who have already given
so many proofs of their incapability, therefore have many reasons for
consoling themselves by considering the stupidity of their pretended
"extremist" adversaries, which compensates, in some way, for their
own -- even if it does not cancel it out. And in fact, in ten years
no extra-parliamentarian groupuscule has ever managed to harm this
State in the slightest, because not one was capable of encouraging in
any manner whatsoever the practical struggles of wild-cat workers,
and even less of contributing to the progress of theoretical
consciousness.
Impotent and clumsy, the militants today accuse the State of being
morally "responsible" for Moro's death for not having saved him, and
not for having killed him, in the same way as in 1970 they were
accusing the State of "moral responsibility" in the Piazza Fontana
massacre, certainly not for having ordered it, but for not having
ordered the arrest of certain fascists implicated in this affair, at
least on the judicial plane. These politicians who take pleasure in
mimicking the gestures of politicians who have "made it" continue to
ignore the fact that morality has nothing to do with politics, but
rather with the justificatory ideology of a policy, that is to say,
with all the lies which every politics normally has need of. That is
why they speak always and only about the "moral responsibility" of
the State, and thus become co-responsible for all its lies.
But let us try for one moment to consider, by means of an unreal
hypothesis, that the kidnapping of Moro was conceived and carried out
by subversives. And in this case there would be several questions to
be asked -- which are precisely the only ones the contemplative
militants have never asked themselves, busy as they are admiring
everything that they are not capable of, or else disagreeing with all
that in which they do not take part: that is to say everything.
First of all, one should ask oneself how it is possible that in two
months subversives were not capable of accusing Moro of anything else
than of serving the interests of the bourgeoisie instead of those of
the proletariat - as if that was a particularity of Moro's, as if in
Parliament there was no one else "guilty" of this "crime"! The
absurdity of such an accusation renders it totally unbelievable: Aldo
Moro never claimed nor made anyone believe that he was defending the
interests of workers, unlike Stalinists and extra-parliamentarians.
To accuse him of such a crime is the same as accusing the rich of not
being poor, or an enemy of not being your ally. If it was in order to
bring such an accusation against him that these hypothetical
"subversives" staged Moro's "trial," they could have spared
themselves the effort and killed him in the Via Fani along with his
bodyguards. But, as I have already said, behind this accusation lurks
the contrary accusation: Moro's kidnappers were in reality accusing
him of not serving the interests of the bourgeoisie sufficiently, and
certainly not for doing this too well.
Furthermore, the clumsy parody of "proletarian justice," awkwardly
staged by Moro's jailers, did not even attempt to make him spit out
the truth about the massacre of the Piazza Fontana, nor about a
hundred other facts just as scandalous, which any man of power
normally has knowledge of, facts which would have been highly
instructive for the proletariat. In connection with this, it must be
remarked that if Moro in one of his earliest letters was scared about
having to speak of "displeasing and dangerous" truths, this in no way
was disquieting to anyone in the government, which shows that our
ministers did not fear anything of all this, because they knew they
had nothing to fear. In their proclamations, Moro's kidnappers never
knew how to nor wished to address themselves to workers, to whom they
have never said anything interesting; after having affirmed with
assurance that "nothing will be hidden from the people," Moro's
jailers straightaway began, through his intermediary, a long secret
correspondence with all the men of power of the DC, for whom this
deed was a warning, and the kidnapping was to last until all were
convinced of this: the first proof they were to give of their
conviction was precisely that of not "negotiating," and they all in
fact hastened to give it. The conditions for the freeing of the
hostage, which would have taken place, officially, if the State had
agreed to free about fifteen imprisoned militants, only seemed to be
laid down in order not to be accepted, not for sure because they were
unacceptable, but rather because, not being of any interest
whatsoever to any sector of the proletariat, they could not claim the
support of any movement of spontaneous or only violent struggle in
the country -- a movement which, moreover, Moro's jailers did not
even purport to instigate. Where the kidnappers betrayed their
identity as agents of power, and in the clumsiest manner, was in the
acute desire they have shown for being officially recognised by all
the constituted powers, from the PCI to the DC, from the Pope to
Waldheim: this fact alone admirably proves that not only do they
recognise the legitimacy of all powers, but that they are pre-
occupied only in being recognised by them, and certainly not by the
proletariat. For their part, the party bosses betrayed themselves
when they admitted that this kidnapping had the goal of dividing the
political forces of the government, then adding that in this it would
have failed, whilst it is exactly in this that the kidnapping
succeeded: the Christian Democrats and the Craxists quickly
understood that they should part company, quietly but firmly, with
the Stalinists; if Moro's jailers had been subversives, such a
division could certainly not have interested them, because any
subversive knows that the only division liable to create disorder is
that which one should accomplish between exploited and exploiters --
and certainly not between the different parties which only represent,
in the spectacle, the different forces which serve to maintain the
same exploitation, by only changing the beneficiaries of it. Finally,
if Moro's kidnappers had been subversives, they certainly would not
have missed the opportunity to release him, since Moro, slandered by
all his friends and betrayed by his allies of the day before, would
have openly fought all those he had protected up until then. However,
by killing him, the artisans of the coup of the Via Fani conveniently
helped all the powers out of a difficulty, and particularly the DC,
to whom Moro was useful dead, but very harmful alive.
In any case, if Moro's kidnappers had been subversives they certainly
would not have chosen the freedom of Curcio and others as the object
of negotiation, giving power an excellent pretext for sending them
packing and not "to lose their honour": if they had chosen to make
unacceptable demands, they should have demanded something quite other
than the freeing of these single fifteen prisoners -- and those who
make unacceptable demands always take care that they should not be
easily refusable either, as was that of the freeing of these few
brigatisti. But Moro's kidnappers in reality did not want anything
that they were officially demanding: what they did want, they knew
quite well they could not openly demand, so as not to unmask
themselves -- and what they wanted they have obtained, today. And
shortly before Moro's jailers were to get rid of him, all the real
terms of the blackmail had become inverted with relation to the
spectacular and official terms of the blackmail towards DC; and the
real terms had become these: either you change your policy, or we
shall free Moro, and you will see that it will be he who shall change
policy. And things being thus, the Christian Democrat and "socialist"
leaders wisely preferred that it should be they who change policy at
Moro's expense, in view of the risk that it might be Moro who changes
it, but at their expense. This is the way the world goes, despite all
the flapping of wings of the Capitoline geese who claim the contrary.
All our incapable extra-parliamentarians, dazzled like primitives by
the technical success of the operation of the Via Fani, have not been
able to see beyond, in considering that those who have so many means
and tactical capacities at their disposal would surely not place them
in the service of such a poor and senseless strategy as that one
intended to be attributed to the RBs, but rather would place all this
at the service of a more wide-ranging political design. But the extra-
parliamentarians, in view of the operational efficiency displayed in
the Via Fani and by the sequel, naturally preferred to attribute this
latter to "comrades who make mistakes" rather than to enemies who do
not make mistakes, and who quietly screw them all. Here as well, our
leftists have taken their poor desires for reality, without
suspecting that reality always surpasses their desires, but not in
the manner they desire. And if they were less ignorant, they would
not overlook as much, and so wrongly, the capacities of the Italian
parallel services: they would know, for instance, that the only
really successful war operations accomplished by Italy during the
last conflict were commando actions effected by the Navy. It seems to
me to be scarcely necessary to recall how this brilliant tradition
was admirably transmitted from the Navy to the secret services,
headed at first by Admiral Henke, who was never an imbecile, then by
Admiral Casardi, who is even more capable -- with the ignominious
interregnum of a general as incapable as Vito Micelli, who in fact
had to succumb to his own incapability, and to the prudence of
Andreotti, who did not take long to perceive it. In fact Andreotti
did not have General Micelli arrested for being responsible for
"deviations" of the SID -- which had begun well before, as Andreotti
is well aware -- but he had him arrested precisely because Micelli
risked, through a blunder, blowing the lid off the great stewing-pot
of the secret services. [49] And once again Andreotti has shown
himself to be a sharper politician than he would wish to appear, in
making his attack against Micelli pass for solicitude about
constitutional allegiance, and thereby gaining expected sympathies
from the left. Andreotti's sole error, as usual, was an error of
false modesty and of vanity: he rejoiced too much after Micelli's
arrest, overplaying the simpleton and repeatedly declaring that he,
out of prudence, had never wanted to involve himself with the secret
services: a scandalous declaration for a head of government, but
necessary to someone who, being involved with them, saw "cose che'l
tacere e bello," [50] but things so scandalous that they can only be
silenced by pretending not to know of them. And Andreotti knows very
well that the scandal of ignorance is the price he must pay in order
to feign ignorance of certain scandals. He remains however like the
comic in that fable where the fox disguises himself as a lamb in
order to be better accepted amongst the wolves.
Leaving aside the admirals, it must still be noted that in Italy
there are also excellent superior officers of the Carabinieri, not
all of whom are like Micelli or Labruna [51], and it is only the
Micellis and the Labrunas who fall into the trap. Then again, there
is a more profound and more dialectical argument in favour of the
leadership of our secret services: if this period requires certain
men to practice terrorism, it is also capable of creating the men
terrorism has need of. And it should not be believed that the
operation of the Via Fani was a superhuman masterpiece of operational
capability: up until yesterday even Idi Amin Dada was able to allow
himself certain technical successes, at which the poor militants of
Lotta Continua will never cease to be amazed.
Much less naive than extra-parliamentarians, a large number of
workers whom I have met in the most varied situations, have straight-
away come to the conclusion that "Aldo Moro, it is they who have
kidnapped him," meaning by this of course those who have power. And
to think that even yesterday such workers voted, and on the whole
voted PCI!
The rift, hereafter irreparable, which exists in the country between
all those who have the right to speak (politicians, the powerful and
all their lackeys, journalists or others), on the one hand, and all
those who are denied the right to speak, on the other, expresses
itself perfectly in the fact that the former, far-removed from
ordinary people and protected by the barrier of their bodyguards, no
longer know what the latter say and think, in the street, the
restaurant or their workplace. And thus the lies of power have flown
off at a tangent, entering some kind of autonomous orbit under the
impact of centrifugal force, an orbit which no longer touches upon
any pole of the "real country," where truth can thus make its way
much more easily since no obstacle obstructs or intimidates it.
However, the spectacle has become autistic, that is to say, it is
afflicted by this syndrome of schizophrenic psychopathology according
to which the ideas and actions of the patient can no longer be
modified by reality, from which he is irremediably separated,
compelled to live in his own world outside the world. The spectacle,
like King Oedipus, has gouged its own eyes, and blindly continues in
its own terrorist delirium: like King Oedipus, it no longer wishes to
look at reality, and, like President Andreotti, it says it does not
want to know anything about the secret services, even proclaiming
that they have been dismantled and non-existent for several years.
If, like King Oedipus, the spectacle no longer wishes to look at
reality, it is that it only wants to be looked at, contemplated,
admired and accepted for what it pretends to be. It wants thus to be
listened to, without even listening however, and it is not too much
perturbed even about no longer being listened to: what seems to
matter most to the spectacle is to relentlessly pursue its paranoiac
journey. At the very moment when it is the police who claim to make
history, any historical fact is explained by power in a police
manner. The Hungarian researcher into psychiatry, Joseph Gabel says
that, according to what he defines as the "police conception of
history," history is no longer constituted "by the ensemble of
objective forces, but by good or bad individual action," where each
event "is placed under the sign of miracle or of catastrophe":
interpretation of the event then no longer consists of its historical
explanation, but is ascribed to red or black magic. Thus, for power,
the Piazza Fontana bomb was the miracle which allowed the trade-
unions to renounce all strikes, and the State to avoid civil war; the
death of Moro, on the other hand, heralded a mysterious catastrophe
which, thanks to the skill and inflexibility of our politicians, was
averted from us. And it is of no importance that a large number "of
the plebs" -- to use here a fortunate expression of the Stalinist
Amendola -- had said, as I have heard it said thousands of times,
that "as for myself, if they kill Moro, it doesn't matter to me:
that's their business." "The country resisted, it knew how to react":
what a fine joke! The only reaction of this mythological "country"
was, most wisely, never to believe anything more of all that it is told.
In a parallel manner to the catastrophic or miraculous explanations
of history, the spectacle reaches the point of no longer knowing whom
it rules, no longer grasping reality and the thoughts it must master
urgently; and, as Machiavelli says, "where one knows the least, one
suspects the most": the entire population, and all young people in
particular, become suspect in the eyes of power. At the same time, if
artificial terrorism claims to be the only real phenomenon, all
spontaneous revolts, like those of Rome and Bologna in 1977, become
according to this "police conception of history" a plot, artificially
hatched and led by "occult forces" yet "quite identifiable" -- as
Stalinists today still maintain. Everything that power does not
forecast, because it has not organised it, therefore becomes a "plot"
against it; on the other hand, artificial terrorism, being organised
and directed by the masters of the spectacle, is a real and
spontaneous phenomenon that these latter continually feign to fight,
for the simple reason that it is easier to defend oneself from a
simulated enemy than from a real one. And for the real enemy, the
proletariat, power would like to refuse it even the status of enemy:
if workers declare themselves to be against this demented terrorism,
then "they are with the State," if they are against the State, then
"they are terrorists," that is to say enemies of the common good,
public enemies. And against a public enemy, everything is permitted,
everything is authorised.
Gabel says further that "the police conception of history represents
the most complete form of political alienation . . .:the unfavourable
event can only be explained by exterior action (the plot); it is
experienced (by the patient) as an unexpected catastrophe,
"unmerited". And so it is that any spontaneous strike becomes an
insult to the "working class," so well represented by the trade
unions, and any wildcat struggle is "provocative," "corporative,"
"unjust" and "unmerited." All this fits exactly into the clinical
framework of autistic schizophrenia: "the syndrome of external
action . . . is the clinical expression of the irruption of the
dialectic in a reified world which cannot admit of the event unless
as a catastrophe" (J. Gabel, False Consciousness). The irruption of
the dialectic corresponds however to nothing other than the irruption
of struggle in a reified world, which it is more exact to call a
spectacular-commodity world, which cannot admit of struggle, not even
in the realm of thought. So this spectacular society is not even
capable of thinking any more: someone who reasons logically, for
example, only accepts the identity between two things when it is
based on the identity of the subjects; however the spectacle, which
is para-logical, establishes the identity in basing it on the
identity of the predicates, and thus says: "the devil is black, black
is the devil" or "the Jew is bad, the bad is the Jew" or even
"terrorism is catastrophic, the catastrophe is terrorism." Leaving
aside terrorism, all the rest would be fine: unfortunately, there is
this terrorism: so what can be done about it?
If I say: "a policeman must have a clear criminal record, Mario
Bianchi is a policeman, therefore he has a clean criminal record";
the schizophrenic, on the other hand, will say: "Mario Bianchi has a
clean criminal record, therefore he is a policeman." It is thus that
the spectacle, stricken with autism, says: "Those who kidnapped Moro
are terrorists, the RBs are terrorists, Moro was kidnapped by the
RBs." No identification is a misuse, for the spectacle, except one,
which is the only one not to be, and here it is: the State has been
declaring for years that it is fighting the RBs, it infiltrated them
several times without ever attempting to dismantle them, therefore
the State makes use of the RBs, as a cover, because the RBs are
useful to this State, therefore RBs = the State. That power fears,
above all, this identification, it has confessed in a thousand ways,
for instance when it invented this neurotic and clumsy slogan:
"either with the State, or with the RBs," which is tantamount to
saying "either with me, or else with me."
Long before the advent of the spectacle, religion, which has always
been a prototype of functional ideology for all the old powers, had
invented the devil, the foremost and supreme agent provocateur, who
was to assure the most complete triumph of the kingdom of God;
religion did nothing other than project into the metaphysical world
the simple necessity of any concrete and real power. Thus, Cicero
needed to amplify the risk constituted by Cataline, in order to
magnify his own glory as saviour of the fatherland, and multiply in
that way his own abuses. For any power, the only real catastrophe is
to be swept out of history; and each power, once weakened and feeling
the imminence of this real catastrophe, has always tried to
consolidate itself in pretending to wage an unequal struggle against
a very convenient adversary: but such a struggle always was also the
last oration pro domo sua [52] that this power would declare. History
is full of similar examples.
Just as scandal is necessary for the greater glory of God --
says Paul-Louis Courier --, so are conspiracies for the maintenance
of the political police. Hatching them, stifling them, setting up the
plot and discovering it, this is the high art of office; these are
the ins and outs of the science of statesmen; it is transcendent
politics perfected only a short while ago at home, that the jealous
Englishman seeks to imitate and counterfeit, only vulgarly. . . .
Ministers, as soon as it is known what they want to do, suddenly
cannot or nor longer wish to do it. Politics known is politics lost;
State affairs, State secrets. . . . Decency is obligatory in a
constitutional government. [53]
Courier was speaking thus in 1820, in the height of the Restoration;
today, out of fear of a new and more formidable revolution, the same
practices as then are used, on a much larger scale, in order to
obtain a preventative restoration. The "transcendent politics" of
those days is the immanent politics of the spectacle, which always
presents itself, like Dante used to say about God, as "the adversary
of all evils" -- and therefore all that opposes the spectacle is
evil, according to its autistic logic. And in view of this unpitying
preventative restoration, in view of this infamous series of
provocations, massacres, assassinations and lies that seek to
camouflage a reality which is as clear as daylight, in view of all
this here we have sociological "studies" on terrorism multiplying,
and all the servile and progressive journalists, who care more for
their security than for plain reality of the facts, rivalling each
other in the expression of a "certain sympathy" for "armed struggle"
and clandestinity, as the unspeakable Georgio Bocca said, under the
pretext that it reminds him of his epic struggle in the Resistance.
Men like Bocca are, so to speak, "legitimised" when, under the reign
of fear, they declare they have some sympathy for this terrorism,
because they earn 4 or 5 million Lira a month and because they feel
that this terrorism will ensure for them that this will continue. But
the one who has nothing is deceived by these men, who always lie, for
the sake of peddling their filth unbothered, at other people's
expense: people like you, Bocca, don't get killed, that would be
doing them too much honour! Nobody wants to see you die, but, for my
part if I ever meet you on the street, you may be sure that I shall
teach you how to live, you fathead.
And here we have, on the other hand, the lawyer Giannino Guiso
telling us about the ideological sublimities of Curcio, and the
sociologist Sabino Acquaviva launching into grandiloquent
"explanations" about terrorism, whilst this pedant Scialoja, a
journalist with the Expresso, holds forth on the "strategies" of
armed struggle, and they all pretend to be in the know about the
secret matters of the social revolution, all seeking to lend
credibility to artificial terrorism as a prelude to the revolution:
Vous serez etonnes, quand vous serez au bout,
de ne nous avoir rien persuade du tout. [54]
I only have this to say to you, respected mystifiers: unlike you, I
have known in the last thirteen years a large part of the
revolutionaries of Europe very well -- known equally well to all the
police forces -- who have contributed the most, by theory and by
practice, in reducing capitalism to its present conditions: not one
of them, without any exception, have ever practised or even less
hailed spectacular modern terrorism -- which seems evident to me.
There are no secret matters of revolution: all that which today is
secret belongs to power, that-is-to-say to counter-revolution. And
all the police forces know this perfectly well.
From now on you may rest assured about one thing, gentlemen of the
government: as long as your State shall exist, and I am alive, I
shall never tire of denouncing the terrorism of your parallel
services, whatever the cost: for this is precisely the foremost
interest of the proletariat and of social revolution, at this time
and in this country. And this exactly because, as Courier used to
say, "politics known is politics lost." And if this criminal State
wants to go on lying, killing and provoking the entire population, it
shall be compelled from now on to cast off its "democratic" mask and
act in its own name against workers and abandon the present spectacle
of the party game in which the secret services harbour their
illusions of the existence of a few naive militants of "armed
struggle" in order to give verisimilitude to their provocations, and
then throw hundreds of people into prison, whilst our policemen do
target practice whilst awaiting the civil war.
From 1969 on, the spectacle, in order to still be believed, had to
attribute to its enemies incredible actions, and in order to still be
accepted, it had to credit proletarians with unacceptable actions,
and thereby ensure sufficient publicity so that people who allow
themselves to become frightened always choose "the lesser evil,"
namely the present state of affairs. When the real heads of the RBs
ordered that unarmed people should be shot in the legs, something
which is only befitting of police cowardice, and certainly not of
revolutionary courage, when the real heads of the RBs ordered such
attacks, which hit minor industrial leaders, they knew very well what
they wanted: to scare this part of the middle class who, not enjoying
the advantages of the upper class, do not have sufficient class
consciousness, and thus win it over in view of the civil war. The
fragility of such artificial terrorism resides however in this: once
you proceed with such politics, it becomes even more well-known, and
therefore judged, and all that had constituted the strength of this
politics now constitutes its weakness, whilst the great advantages it
assured its strategists turn into a major inconvenience.
The present President of the Republic, Pertini, a naive man, is
always and only afraid of fascism, as he only fears what he knows:
however from now on he should fear what he does not know and get to
know as quickly as possible what he must fear today: not any more an
open dictatorship but a formidable masked despotism of the secret
services, a despotism all the stronger for using its power to affirm
vigorously that it does not exist. [55] It was not at all by chance
that Fanfani, almost imperceptibly, invented in September 1978 a new
important post which had no precedent in our institutional history:
that of "advisor to the president of the Republic for problems of
democratic order and security." And neither was it by chance that, to
fill this position, Fanfani called upon Lieutenant-General Arnaldo
Ferrara, who is considered, militarily, the best officer of the
Carabinieri and one of the best in Europe. In flanking the old
Pertini with the young General Ferrara, "a man with ice-cold eyes and
refined tastes," as he has been described, Fanfani not only
institutionalised a situation of fact, in sanctioning the power
attained by the parallel services, but also made the first step to
consummate his old dream of a presidential Republic: Arnaldo Ferrara,
this intelligent and refined officer, who even recently had refused
to head the SISDE and had not yielded to Andreotti's insistence in
order not to renounce his own ambitions, this field-officer who "has
penetrated into the most secret secrets of the State and the men who
represent it" -- as Roberto Fabiani assures us -- is in fact the new
president of the Republic. Furthermore, Ferrara today holds powers
that no president of the Republic ever had in the past -- powers that
his function of "adviser," which is honorary only in appearance,
guarantees him in reality much more and better than any other office,
assuring him at the same time a freedom of action whose limits are
difficult to determine, but easy to exceed. Faced with such a state
of affairs, the proletariat can only fight it on open ground or get
used to it, bearing all the heavy consequences.
And here is then, if one really wants to know it, the precise end
being served in bedecking the presidency of this Republic with a man
"above all suspicion": it has served to hide its goal, and its
painless transformation into a police State, whilst maintaining the
spectacle of "democratic" appearances. The honourable Pertini, since
he has always remained on the fringe of his own party, and since he
is perhaps the only politician who, never having had real power, has
always been a stranger to the practices of the parallel services, is
also therefore the man who least knows these practices, and the one
who therefore offers the best qualifications required in order to be
manipulated, without noticing it, by this occult power. The detached
corps of the State, having attained their present power, can only
continue to make use of the same tactic of infiltration used
successfully in relation to the RBs, by extending them today to all
the institutions of the State. In these conditions, not only will
terrorism not cease, but it will increase quantitatively and
qualitatively: [56] and one can already foresee that if a social
revolution does not arrive to put an end to this tragic farce, the
presidency of Pertini will mark the most deadly period of the
Republic. And don't come and tell me that what I say "is most
serious": I know that perfectly well, but I also know that to remain
silent, like all the others do, is even more serious, and that the
most serious phenomenon is that which all take part in without ever
denouncing it. There is no longer anything secret in this phenomenon,
which however still remains unadmitted in the general consciousness:
and as Bernard Shaw said, "there are no better kept secrets than the
ones everybody knows." And consciousness always comes too late.
In such conditions, the foremost duty of any conscious subversive is
to unpityingly cast out of the minds of people called to action any
illusion about terrorism. As I have already said elsewhere,
historically, terrorism has never had any revolutionary efficacity,
except where every other form of manifestation of subversive activity
had been rendered impossible by a complete repression; and therefore
where a notable part of the proletarian population had been brought
to be silently on the side of the terrorists. [57] But this is no
longer, or is not yet, the case of present-day Italy. Furthermore it
is fitting to note that the revolutionary efficacity of terrorism has
always been very limited, as the entire history of the end of the
nineteenth century shows.
The bourgeoisie, which established its domination in France in 1793
by means of terrorism, must however again resort to this weapon, in a
defensive strategic context, in the historical period where its power
is universally called into question by these same proletarian forces
its own development has created. In a parallel manner the secret
services of the bourgeois State cover their terrorism by opportunely
using the most naive militants of a Leninism completely discomfited
by history -- a Leninism that also used, between 1918 and 1921, the
same terrorist anti-working class method to destroy the Soviets and
seize hold of the State and the capitalist economy in Russia.
All States have always been terrorist but they have been so most
violently at their birth and at the imminence of their death. And
those who today, either out of despair or because they are victims of
the propaganda the regime propagates in favour of terrorism as the
nec plus ultra of subversion, contemplate artificial terrorism with
uncritical admiration, even attempting sometimes to practise it, do
not know that they are only competing with the State on its own
terrain, and do not know that, on its own terrain, not only is the
State the strongest but that it will always have the last word. And
all that which does not destroy the spectacle reinforces it: and the
unparalleled reinforcement of all the State's powers of control,
which has occurred these last few years under the pretext of
spectacular terrorism, is already used against the entire proletarian
movement, which is today the most advanced and the most radical in
Europe.
It is certainly not a question of "disagreeing" with terrorism in a
stupid and abstract manner, like the militants of Lotta Continua do,
and still less of admiring the "comrades who make mistakes," as do
the so-called Autonomes -- who thus give the infamous Stalinists a
pretext for preaching systematic denunciation -- but it is a matter
of judging it purely on its results, of seeing who benefits from it,
of clearly saying who practises terrorism, and what use the spectacle
makes of it; and then it is a matter of drawing conclusions once and
for all.
Obliging everyone to continually take a position for or against
mysterious and obscure incidents, prefabricated in reality for this
precise end, this is the real terrorism, to continually compel the
entire working class to declare itself against such and such attack,
which everyone, except the parallel services, has no part in, this is
what allows power to maintain generalised passivity and the
contemplation of this indecent spectacle, this is what permits trade-
union bureaucrats to reunite, under their anti-working class
directives, the workers of each factory in struggle where a boss
regularly gets shot in the legs.
When Lenin, in 1921, at the time of the repression of the Kronstadt
soviet, pronounced the famous "here or there with a rifle, but not
with the workers' opposition, we have had enough of the workers'
opposition," he showed himself to be less dishonest than Berlinguer,
who says "either with the State or with the RBs," because Lenin was
not afraid to declare that his sole aim was the liquidation of the
workers' opposition. Very well then, starting from this exact moment,
he who affirms he is "with the State" knows that he is also with
terrorism, and with the most putrid State terrorism ever set up
against the proletariat; he knows that he is with those responsible
for the deaths at the Piazza Fontana, on the Italicus and at Brescia,
and for the assassinations of Pinelli and a hundred others, and let
him not come and plague us any more because we have had enough of
crocodile tears about the "martyrs of the Via Fani," of provocations,
vile intimidations, assassinations, prison, the shameless hypocrisy
about the defence of "democratic institutions," and all the rest.
And as for us subversives, who are exactly with the workers'
opposition, and not with the State, let us demonstrate this above all
and on every occasion, by always unmasking all acts of terrorism by
the services of the State, to whom we will gladly leave the monopoly
of terror, thereby making shame even more shameful by consigning it
to publicity: the publicity it deserves.
When our turn comes, we shall not lack arms, nor valiant fighters: we
are not the slaves of the commodity-fetishism of arms, but we shall
procure them as soon as it will be necessary, and in the most simple
manner of all: by taking them from you, generals, policemen, and
bourgeois, because you already have enough of them to suffice all the
workers of Italy. "We have no respect; we do not expect any from you.
When our turn comes, we will not embellish violence" (Marx).
A thousand Via Fanis and a thousand Piazza Fontanas cannot profit
capitalism as much as one sole anti-bourgeois and anti-Stalinist
wildcat strike can harm it, or a simple violent and successful
sabotage of production. The oppressed consciousness of thousands are
awakening and revolting every day against exploitation: and wild-cat
workers know perfectly well that social revolution does not make its
way by accumulating corpses along its path, which is a prerogative of
Stalino-bourgeois counter-revolution, a prerogative that no
revolutionary has ever disputed.
And as for those who have joined up with alienated and hierarchical
militantism in the period of its bankruptcy, they could only become
subversives on the condition that they get out of it, and only if
they succeed in negating practically the conditions the spectacle
itself has laid down on what is today designated by the vague but
precise term "dissidence," which is by its nature always impotent.
From now on, whosoever in Italy does not use all the intelligence
they have at their disposal to rapidly understand the truth which
lurks behind each State lie, whosoever does not do this is an ally of
the enemies of the proletariat. And whosoever still claims to want to
fight alienation in an alienated manner, through militantism and
ideology, will quickly perceive that they have renounced all real
combat. It will certainly not be militants who will make the social
revolution, nor the secret services and Stalinist police who will
prevent it!
Translated from Italian into French by Jean-Francois Martos, and
published by Le fin mot de l'Histoire, January 1980. Translated from
French into English by Michel Prigent and Lucy Forsyth (T.N.), and
published September 1982 by Chronos Press. English translation
thoroughly proof-read and copy-edited by Bill Not Bored, May 2004.
Footnotes by Gianfranco Sanguinetti, except those by the original
translators (T.N.) or by Johnny Boredom [J.B.] July 2004.
[1] The bombing of a busy bank in Milan's Piazza Fontana on 12
December 1969, which resulted in 16 deaths and 88 serious injuries,
signalled the beginning of the so-called "Strategy of Tension" -- the
general aim of this strategy, developed in the face of working class
militancy, was to create a heightened sense of fear, disorientation
and atomisation amongst the general population resulting form
spectacular terrorist acts, leading to an increased identification
with the authority of the state. While some on the far-right
initially may have hoped that this would lead to a military take-
over, this strategy became a more general response by the state and
para-state agencies in periods of social unrest and political crisis
uniting fascists, conservatives, and democrats. The Piazza Fontana
bombing took place within the context of escalating class struggle
and the deepening social crisis of the "Hot Autumn" of 1969. After
the bombing, the police turned their attention to anarchist circles
with remarkable speed, backed up by a hysterical media campaign.
Anarchists, including Pietro Valpreda and railway worker Giuseppe
Pinelli, were held for questioning in connection with the bombings.
Pinelli 'jumped' to his death from the fourth floor office of the
police station in which he was being questioned. (Pinelli's murder
prompted Dario Fo to write his satirical play, The Accidental Death
of an Anarchist.) After the state's farcical attempt to pin the blame
on anarchists fell apart, the finger was pointed at fascists. The
'fascists' behind the bombing turned out to be working for the
Italian secret state. The cover-up of the Piazza Fontana bombing
would last decades. A short flyer issued by the Italian section of
the Situationist International entitled Is the Reichstag Burning? was
posted in Milan a few days after the bombing. The authors of this
text -- Eduardo Rothe and Puni Cesoni -- denounced the bombing as a
state provocation, unlike the vast majority of the Left at the time,
which generally accepted police and media lies at face value. [J.B..]
[2] On 16 March 1978, Christian Democratic Party leader Aldo Moro was
kidnapped by the Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse, "RBs" for short,
founded in 1970), in an operation notable for its brutality and
military precision. Moro was an advocate of the so-called "Historic
Compromise" in Italian politics. This was to involve a governing
alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist
Party (PCI), the two biggest parties in Italy during the 1970's. Moro
correctly perceived the completely reformist and essentially
conservative nature of the Communist Party, which was a social-
democratic party with large scale electoral support in the post-WWII
period. He hoped that this policy would temper the radicalism of the
working class by channelling workers demands through the structures
of the PCI and its unions. Powerful and intransigent factions of the
Italian ruling class, as well as the American ruling class, were
totally opposed to PCI participation in government. Moro became
increasingly preoccupied with opposition to his policy. After being
held captive for fifty five days, Moro's body was found in the trunk
of a car on Rome's Via Caetani on 9 May, symbolically halfway between
the headquarters of the Christian Democratic and Communist Parties.
Significantly, in 1964 a secret plot called "Piano Solo" (Plan Solo),
organised by the fascist, intelligence chief and carabinieri leader
General De Lorenzo, called for the assassination of Moro, who had
promised an "opening to the left" (i.e. the Socialist Party), a
precursor of the "Historic Compromise." The planned coup was called
off at the last minute due to a compromise between the Socialist
Party and the Christian Democrats. De Lorenzo went on to create a
secret organisation named "La Rosa Dei Venti" (Rose of the Winds),
which aimed at grouping together those intransigently hostile to the
PCI. This conspiracy was a direct precursor to the Strategy of
Tension and was integrated into the NATO "stay behind" networks known
in Italy as "Operation Gladio" (see note [9] below). In 1990, during
renovation of an apartment on the Via Montenevoso, Rome (a so-called
"lair" of the Red Brigades), photocopies of previously unknown
letters written by Aldo Moro during his captivity were discovered,
along with weapons and money. Despite being concealed behind a simple
panel, the cache had not been discovered during a "thorough" search
of the apartment twelve years previously. [J.B.]
[3] On 4 August 1974 a bomb was placed on an Italicus express train,
resulting in 12 deaths and 105 injuries. The bombing was carried out
by "fascists". Behind these fascists were the puppet masters of the
Masonic lodge and the effective parallel government of the time, P2
-- "Potere Due," a Masonic Lodge, the Grandmaster of which was Lucio
Gelli, whose members where drawn from all the main political parties,
except the Communists, and all the branches of the state, especially
the military and secret services (and that counted one Silvio
Berlusconi amongst its members). P2 for a time formed the effective
parallel government of Italy. [J.B.]
[4] On 28 May 1974 a bomb went off in Brescia during a trade union
anti-fascist rally, leaving eight dead and over one hundred injured.
The bombing was claimed by a previously unknown fascist group, Ordine
Nero (Black Order), which was later exposed as a secret service
front. [J.B.]
[5] Anarchists initially accused of being behind the Piazza Fontana
bombing. See note [1] above. [J.B.]
[6] Allusion to the defence of the secret services carried out by
Moro in Parliament when they were accused of supporting General de
Lorenzo's failed coup d'etat in 1964 (T.N.).
[7] Very powerful head of the State's oil enterprise (ENI) killed
before 1968, in other words before the spectacle of terrorism (T.N.).
[8] Didn't the bankrupt [Michele] Sindona, a notorious liar, quite
recently set up his own abduction in the U.S.A. (to which he had
fled) to avoid a trial where he was to answer for the bankruptcy of
the Franklin bank? A so-called "proletarian" group claimed his
kidnapping, but no one believed it, since in America the press had
not yet been so tamed in this domain as in Italy (T.N.).
[9] Giulio Andreotti (1919- ), Christian Democrat leader and many
times President of Italy. In 1990, after a series of denials, then
Prime Minister Andreotti made a partial admission of the existence of
the secret NATO sponsored "stay behind" network code named "Operation
Gladio" in Italy (after the two-sided Roman sword). In the initial
agreement that formed NATO in 1949, there was a secret clause that
required that, before a nation could join, it must establish its own
national security service capable of "Civil Emergency Planning," that
is, of "intervening effectively [...] in the event of external
socialist aggression or internal political upheavals." As a result,
Operation Gladio was formally established in 1956, involving American
and domestic intelligence organisations, as well as committed "anti-
communists." The latter group inevitably contained a significant
number of fascists. Many were drawn from the ranks of veterans of
Mussolini's last stand, the Salo Republic. Armed with weapons located
in hundreds of secret arms dumps around the country, they were
originally established to go into action in the event of an Eastern
Bloc invasion or domestic "subversion." Andreotti -- a P2 member --
attempted to legitimise the Gladio Networks, in a clear damage-
limitation exercise. Andreotti was implicated in the March 1979
murder of journalist, one-time P2 member and publisher of Osservatore
Politico Mino Pecorelli, but was later cleared in court. Pecorelli
had revealed details of the P2 conspiracy shortly before his
assassination, in an attempt to blackmail participants. The week
before his murder, Pecorelli ran the headline "Assassinations,
bombings, coup attempts -- the shadow of freemasonry hovered over
them all: from Piazza Fontana to the Occorsio murder, from the
Borghese coup to kidnappings. . ." The "Borghese coup" was the 7
December 1970 coup d'etat attempted by Prince Valerio Borghese, a
former WWII naval commander and the founder of National Front, a
right-wing group. [J.B.]
[10] Christian Democrat Party [J.B.]
[11] Italian Communist Party [J.B.]
[12] Enrico Berlinguer (1922-84), leader of the PCI during the
1970's. Advocate of so-called "Eurocommunism", meaning independence
from Moscow -- even going so far as to advocate continued Italian
membership of NATO -- and an openly reformist, social-democratic
ideology and practice. [J.B.]
[13] Who had to resign soon after for barefaced corruption (T.N.).
[14] Benito Craxi (1934-2000), anti-Communist leader of the Italian
Socialist Party (PSI) from 1973 until his resignation in 1993, due to
being implicated in the corruption scandals of the early 1990's.
Sentenced to 14 years imprisonment while in exile in Tunisia, where
he died. [J.B.]
[15] Slogan[s] of the PCI (T.N.)
[16] Extra-parliamentary Leftist group active from 1969 until 1976
[J.B.]
[17] After the publication of this book, Negri paid dearly for the
fact of having swallowed everything in connection with Moro (T.N.).
Negri was arrested on 7 April 1979 and, along with dozens of other
intellectuals involved in the Workers Autonomy movement, was accused
of "armed insurrection against the powers of the State." Mass
arrestes followed over the following months. To support these
accusations, Negri's accusers portrayed him as the secret leader of
the Red Brigades -- at one point accusing him of being directly
involved in the Moro kidnapping, and even telephoning the Moro family
on behalf of the RBs! After a four-year battle, which he waged from a
jail cell, Negri was acquitted of all charges and released. When the
Italian Chamber of Deputies subsequently voted to send him back to
prison, he fled to France. In absentia, Negri was convicted of re-
instated charges under (still in-effect) emergency laws that allow
convictions solely based upon the testimony of accused persons who
have "repented" their crimes and turned State's evidence. In 1997, in
the hope that his action would bring an end to the decades-old
deadlock, Negri returned to Italy and turned himself in. Granted no
leniency whatsoever, he was sentenced to more than 13 years in
prison, a sentence he began serving in July 1997. Negri has written
his own reflections on the period in question, available in English
in a collection of his more important earlier writings -- Revolution
Retrieved (Red Notes, 1988). His more recent look at the same period
is available on-line -- Reviewing the experience of Italy in the
1970's. Some of Negri's writings can be found in English translation
at the Class Against Class website. For a more balanced, though
critical view of Negri and the Italian Autonomist movement than
Sanguinetti's, see Steve Wright's Negri's Class Analysis: Italian
Autonomist Theory in the Seventies and his book Storming Heaven:
Class composition and the struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism
(2002) [J.B.]
[18] Guerchuni, arrested of course thanks to Azev, warmly recommended
that his comrades place exactly this same Azev at the head of the
Combat Organisation, and this in view of the courage and daring he
had shown in transporting from Switzerland to Russia arms, explosives
and publications of the party, whose Central Committee was still in
exile in Geneva.
[19] Reference to the wave of class struggle, and general social
upheavals involving young workers, women and other groups. The gulf
between this movement and the Italian Communist Party -- "The Party
of Struggle," as the slogan went -- became increasingly obvious
during this time, as the Party became engaged in ever-more desperate
and futile attempts to gain access to central government. Finally,
the PCI became the 'party of repression' (e.g. in Bologna during
1977, the PCI authorities sent in armoured cars to clear barricades
set up after a young far-left militant was killed during clashes with
the police.) When the Moro assassination of the following year saw
the PCI's chances of participation in the central government
evaporate, they became the most fanatical advocates of the
persecution of the extra-parliamentary far-left, giving its full
support to the extremely repressive "emergency legislation" and
encourging party members to grass on militant workers and activists
of the far-left. Sanguinetti examines the central role of the PCI in
this judicial persecution in his 1980 Preface to the French Edition
of On Terrorism [J.B.]
[20] Mariano Rumor, a Christian Democrat politician [J.B.]
[21] Reference to General Pinochet's US-backed coup d'etat in Chile
in 1973, overthrowing the elected centre-left Popular Unity
government led by Salvador Allende [J.B.]
[22] Leonardo Sciascia (1921-89), Sicilian author of several short
novels analysing post-war Italian society and politics, notably The
Knight and Death, Equal Danger, The Day of the Owl and To Each His
Own. Also author of the essay The Moro Affair, to which Sanguinetti
is referring here. [J.B.]
[23] Luigi Calabresi, the cop who was questioning Pinelli at the time
of his "suicide," was assassinated outside his Milan home in May
1972. Initially, the finger was pointed at the extra-parliamentary
Leftist group Lotta Continua. In 1974 two fascists, Gianni Nardi and
Bruno Stefano, as well as a German woman, Gudrun Kiess, were charged
with the murder of Calabresi, but the charges are later dropped
without explanation. Nardi, the son of a billionaire industrialist
and an associate of the state asset and neo-Nazi, Stefano delle
Chiaie, was later killed in mysterious circumstances. In 1988, ex-
Lotta Continua militants Adriano Sofri, Giorgio Pietrostefani and
Ovidio Bompressi were arrested and charged with involvement in the
assassination. A series of farcical trials, convictions and
acquittals followed over the next decade. The charges were based on
the accusations of their ex-comrade, Leonardo Marino, whose testimony
was riddled with contradictions and outright lies. During the trials,
it became clear that Marino had undergone extensive coaching by the
police. The trio were eventually imprisoned for their supposed
involvement in Calabresi's murder. During a ceremony inaugurating a
bust to commemorate Calabresi outside Milan police headquarters in
1973, Gianfranco Bertoli, a self-proclaimed "individualist
anarchist," threw a hand-grenade into the crowd, killing four
bystanders. In 1990 would emerge that Bertoli had once worked for
Italian military intelligence and was a member of the Gladio
networks. [J.B.]
[24] Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, millionaire publisher with Leftist
sympathies. Killed in 1972, apparently during an attempt to blow up
an electricity pylon on his own land, as part of an Armed Partisan
Group (GAP) action. Sanguinetti is clearly casting doubt on this
version of events, suspecting, like many others, that he had been
assassinated. At the time of Feltrinelli's death, sections of the
media insinuated that the Situationists might be behind his death,
basing this disinformation on the fact that the Situationists, and
Sanguinetti in particular, had had an acrimonious exchange with
members of Feltrinelli's publishing house concerning the translation
of some situationist publications. Feltrinelli wasn't the only
publisher with radical sympathies to die in mysterious circumstances.
In 1984 Gerard Lebovici, a prominent Parisian film producer and
publisher who was personally and politically close to ex-Situationist
Guy Debord, was shot by still unidentified assassins, Needless to
say, sections of the French media lost no time in insinuating that
Debord was behind the murder of his fried. For more on the
assassination of Lebovici, see Jean-Francois Martos, Words and
Bullets: the Condemned of the Lebovici Affair (1984), and Guy Debord,
Considerations on the Assassination of Gerard Lebovici (1985). [J.B.]
[25] This has been clearly verified since the publication of this
book, by the waves of mass arrests of 7 April and 21 December 1979
(T.N.).
[26] Regional administrators (T.N.).
[27] There have been various attempts to explain state involvement in
far-right terrorism in terms of infiltration of the state by
fascists, the actions of so-called 'rouge elements', etc. Liberals
and leftists are particularly keen on this sort of apologetic
obfuscation. The Gladio revelations make clear that this is nonsense.
A more accurate picture of events would been provided by the neo-
fascist terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra: "every bombing in Italy after
1969 was linked to one group…The orders are given by an apparatus
belonging to the state, specifically by a secret parallel structure
of the Interior Ministry." It should be noted that the objectives of
far-right organisations are broadly identical to those leading the
state, and that many of the supporters and activists of fascist
organisations are drawn from the states' apparatus of repression,
makes it very easy for them to be infiltrated and manipulated by
state agents. [J.B.]
[28] Defence Intelligence Service (Servizio Informazioni Difesa). The
organisation was disbanded in 1977 after knowledge of its involvement
in the Piazza Fontana bombing and other acts of terrorism became well
known, with two organisations taking its place -- SISDE and SISMI.
For more information, see note [38] below. In September 1974, General
Vito Micelli was charged with involvement in a failed 1970 coup
attempt by the veteran Fascist Valerio Borghese and state asset
Stefano delle Chiaie's neo-Nazi Avanguardia Nazionale organisation.
During his trial, Micelli defended himself, disclosing the existence
of a "Parallel SID" formed as a result of a secret agreement with the
United States within the framework of NATO (i.e. Operation Gladio).
[J.B.]
[29] Slogan of the PCI (T.N.).
[30] Code of silence (T.N.).
[31] In January 1970 Bombs, blood, capital appeared, a tract of
Ludd's which openly accused the secret services of the massacre, the
sole exception to the general rout.
[32] Christian Democrat Minister (T.N.)
[33] Armed Proletarian Nuclei.
[34] This bloodthirsty spectacle was offered in a drip-feed, but
repeatedly: when the police waited for Abatangelo outside the
Florence bank and killed two of his comrades; when Mantini's sister
was shot down in cold-blood in her secret hide-out in Rome, and in a
dozen other cases. And they still perhaps want to have it believed
that it is by chance, and not due to infiltration, that the
"Benemerita" [Carabinieri - the national para-military police force]
achieved these successes?
[35] Salvano Girotto, an agent provocateur nicknamed "Brother Machine
Gun" [J.B.]
[36] Renato Curcio, co-founder of the Red Brigades. Arrested in 1974,
an action that allowed Mario Moretti and his strategy of constant
military escalation to dominate the group. It was suggested at the
time, and subsequently confirmed, that Moretti was a CIA-connected
agent provocateur. [J.B.]
[37] Carabineri general in charge of "anti-terrorism" and credited
with the defeat of the Red Brigades. Assassinated in 1982, ostensibly
by the Mafia, shortly after giving evidence to the commission set up
to investigate Moro's assassination. [J.B.]
[38] Three of the official secret services, to which must be added
UCIGOS, DIGOS and others secret enough for their names to remain
unknown (T.N.). DIGOS (Direzione per le investigazoni generali e per
le operazioni speciali) "anti-terrorist" police unit. SISDE (Servizio
per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democrarica -- Democratic
Information and Security Service) the secret service of the Ministry
of the Interior; SISME (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza
Militare -- Military Information and Security Service) the secret
service of the Ministry of Defence. The Italian secret services have
gone through a bewildering series of name changes in the post-war
period, in response to revelations of their involvement in domestic
terrorism and other scandals. SISDE and SISME were created in 1977,
to replace the SID (Servizio Informazioni Difesa -- Defence
Intelligence Service) the image of which had been damaged by
revelations concerning involvement in the Piazza Fontana bombing. SID
was created in 1965, having previously been known as SIFAR (Servizio
Informazioni Forze Armate -- Armed Forces Information Service), the
military intelligence service which was created in 1949. Due to their
knowledge of "subversives", many of the personnel were drawn form the
Fascist intelligence services such as SIM (Servizio Information
Militari -- Military Information Service), a pattern repeated
throughout occupied Europe. [J.B.]
[39] On Terrorism and the State is but one chapter in a much longer
book called Remedy to Everything, the subtitle of which was
Discourses on the next chances of ruining capitalism in Italy. It was
never published. The original Preface and On Terrorism were published
together in 1979 with the full title On Terrorism and the State: the
theory and practice of terrorism divulged for the first time.
According to the publisher of the French edition, Gerard Lebovici,
the sections of Remedy published as On Terrorism were "incontestably
of the greatest interest". Guy Debord, who collaborated with
Sanguinetti after the dissolution of the Situationist International,
of which they were both members, and who influenced Sanguinetti
greatly, criticised On Terrorism as being "extremely deficient
theoretically" along with its "pretentious tone...he has the
insolence to treat -- and reduce to a ridiculous schemata -- the
historical and strategic question of armed struggle in general and
the particular case of all terrorism as it has existed in many
diverse forms throughout history." [J.B.]
[40] General Gianadelio Maletti, P2 member and former head of
military counter-intelligence (SID) during the early 1970's. In 2001,
during the trial of fascists implicated in the 1969 Piazza Fontana
bombing, Maletti claimed that "The CIA, 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...I believe this is what
happened in other countries as well." Maletti obviously had reason to
focus attention on the American role in the Strategy of Tension,
thereby downplaying the role of domestic forces [J.B.]
[41] As if by some fortunate coincidence, whilst this book was being
printed in French (1980), Craxi devised an attempt against himself
(T.N.)
[42] "I now am without stain before the throne." Biblical passage
quoted by Bossuet in Oraisons Funebres. (T.N.)
[43] 'Censor' (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), Rapporto Veridico sulle
ultime opportunita di salvare il capitalismo in Italia, Milan, July
1975; second, third and fourth editions, Mursia, October 1975; also
Prove dell 'inesistenza di Censor, enunciate dal suo autore, Milan,
January 1976. These two texts have been published in French:
Veridique Rapport sur les Dernieres Chances de Sauver Ie Capitalisme
en Italia and Preuves de I'inexistence de Censor par son auteur,
Paris, Champ Libre, 1976. (T.N.) Recently translated into English as
The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy
(Flatland Books, 1997). See also NOT BORED!'s translation. [J.B.]
[44] Cf. A. Ronchey, Accade in Italia, 1968-1977.
[45] In English in the text (T.N.)
[46] Cf. Notice to the proletariat on the events of the last hours,
Rome, 7 April 1977.
[47] Vittorio Occorsio, a judge, was shot dead in June 1976. The neo-
Nazi group Ordine Nuovo (New Order) claimed responsibility, but
Occorsio's on-going investigation into "fascist" terrorism had
uncovered links between far-right groups, the secret state, organised
crime and the Italian Masonic Lodge P2 [J.B.]
[48] In their first major operation, the Red Brigades kidnapped Mario
Sossi, a right-wing Genoese magistrate, who was held and then
released without any concessions from the authorities. It was later
revealed that the secret services planned to kidnap a left-wing
lawyer in contact with the RBs, in order to force Sossi's release.
[J.B.]
[49] See note [28] above [J.B.]
[50] "Things it is good to silence" (Dante)
[51] Captain Antonino Labruna, fascist, P2 member and SID officer
implicated in "the strategy of tension." Agent responsible for
leasing directly with many of Italy's leading fascists, including the
neo-Nazi Stefano delle Chiaie. [J.B.]
[52] For its own house, for its own cause. (T.N.)
[53] Paul-Louis Courier, Pamphlets politiques.
[54] "You will be surprised, when you have reached the end, at not
having convinced us of anything." Quotation from Paul-Louis Courier,
in French in the text. (T.N.)
[55] The revelations concerning the Masonic Lodge P2 and the Gladio
networks were to confirm Sanguinetti's views. [J.B.]
[56] Subsequent events were to prove Sanguinetti's prophecy grimly
prescient. On 2 August 1980 a powerful bomb exploded in the second
class waiting room at Bologna railway station, resulting in 85 deaths
and 200 injuries. Fascists ostensibly carried out the bombing. A
series of right-wingers were later convicted (and then acquitted).
However, it soon became clear that more powerful interests lay behind
the attack. It was established that the explosives used were from a
Gladio arsenal, and subsequent investigations implicated the Masonic
Lodge P2, and its Grand Master Lucio Gelli. [J.B.]
[57] Cf. the manifesto distributed on 23 September 1977 in Bologna,
Rome and Milan, entitled Benvenuti nella citta piu libera del mondo
(Welcome to the freest city in the world).
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