US 'supported anti-left terror in Italy'

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Sat Jun 24 11:19:04 PDT 2000


Revelations about CIA funding and support, of sectors of the Italian far right, date back to at least 1990, when "Operation Gladio, " was first reported on. The Italian far right, in the Italian Social Movement and other groups, was to be used to destabilize the constitional state, in what was called the "strategy of tension". The most notable occurance of the terror deployed was a train station bombing, that if memory serves, killed over fifty people, in Turin. One of the ironies, is that the far right, wasn't even, as a whole "pro-American". Currents influenced by Julius Evola and Francis Parker Yockey, advocated (and Yockey, actively, as a courier and propagandist, in the Cold War period after the anti-semitic Slansky Purge Trial in 1952, in Czechoslovakia), an anti-American Red-Brown, hard left/far right joint effort. In more recent times, these forces on the European far right have called themselves, "Third Position, " (Slogan, "Hitler and Mao United In Struggle!) and harken back to the Strasser brothers in the early Nazi movement, and others, like Karl Radek in the Comintern, that in the late twenties, advocated a "National Bolshevism"

Currently reading a book by Kevin Coogan on Yockey, "Dreamer of the Day, " that reveals many East German intelligence officials, that in the fifties, had substantial dealings with West German neo-fascists in the National Democratic Party. The book is over 600 pages, so for those less into arcana about the extreme right and/or intelligence agencies, find an article Coogan co-wrote for Mother Jones in 1986, with fellow lefty, Martin A. Lee. Lee has a an excellent book on post WW-II, neo fascism, "The Beast Reawakens, " that builds on the work of such as Christopher Browning and Russ Bellant on the CIA and the far right.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make, is that both the US and the Soviets, and their client states, made alot of alliances of convenience, and the opening of the archives, on both sides, is bound to make both post-war empires, with their "democratic" and "revolutionary" facades, equally, subject to question. And, if this starts a thread/flame, please no lectures on the millions dead from US supported death squads from Indonesia to Guatemala and beyond. I think all of us cut our teeth on works like Chomsky's, William Blum and Michael McClintock, that at great length expose the blood spilled to support the hegemony of the US. Geo-politics and power projection, are a cold, bloody game.

Michael Pugliese



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