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By Marco Mezzera*
As much as Genoa represents an escalation in the (violent) measures that the elites are prepared to use in order to silence legitimate and disturbing disagreements, it also signifies a step back in time in the way the Italian state deals with political differences.
I can't help associating the brutal events witnessed in Genoa to the dark 1970s, when the shifty political maneuvering by a "rightist" state became famous as the "strategia della tensione" (the strategy of tension).
At that time, the right-wing forces within the Christian Democratic Party, which had been in power since the founding of the Italian Republic, were increasingly worried with the apparent shift within society towards the Left. Those were the years immediately following the student and emancipation movements that originated in France in the late 1960s. They were also the years when some forces within the party were starting to consider cautious openings and dialogue with the Communist Party.
What followed these first attempts to crack the monolithic political and economic structure controlling Italian society was uncompromising and reactionary. State violence infiltrated many of the movements advocating for a different political and socio-economic agenda and, beside encouraging violent confrontation with the extreme fringes of the Right, it also effectively orchestrated a climate of semi-anarchy, where bloody terrorist attempts were the order of the day and, more often than not, blamed on enigmatic communist subversive groups.
US REVIVES 'GLADIO' NETWORK
Following in the most cynical Machiavellian tradition, there were no limits
on protecting the elitist and corrupt State. Even political killings at the
highest level were not spared, such as that of the Christian Democrat Aldo Moro
who was "guilty" of considering a dialogue and perhaps even some form
of power sharing with the Left.
The whole reactionary process was keenly and efficiently supported by the US, through its various "ad hoc" agencies. The prospect that one of the countries at the heart of its NATO alliance was inexorably moving towards the Left gave enough reasons to Washington to intensify its counter-communism activities in Italy. During those years an underground network, known by the code name Gladio, and set up immediately after the end of the World War II to counter a possible advance of the Russian Army, was brought back to full life, both organizationally and militarily.
It is true that the political landscape, both internationally and nationally, has changed a lot since the 1970s and that the "red scare" belongs to the past, but it seems that some of the "old" methods used to retain power are making a vigorous comeback. Because the international component of the reactionary block has been extensively highlighted by various commentaries circulating in the past days, I would rather emphasize those domestic dynamics that played an important role at the Genoa events.
Although it is also true that the first decision to hold the G8 Meeting in Genoa, and to "fortify" the city, belongs to the previous centre-left government, I believe that all the other components bear the unmistakable mark of newly appointed Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
TURNING BACK THE CLOCK
The G8 Meeting was the first big international appointment of the new administration
and Berlusconi had done everything to be ready for it. While the government
wanted to show the rest of the world (and especially to the elites of the other
industrialized countries) that Italy was prepared to give unconditional support
to the neo-liberal agenda, it also wanted to use of the opportunity to undermine
and delegitimize those progressive forces that stood in the way and that were
blamed for the fall of the first Berlusconi government back in 1994.
Eye-witnesses' accounts of the brutalities perpetrated by the security forces, and subsequent leaks of information from within those same institutions, indicate that the violence that took place in Genoa was the result of a well-orchestrated strategy to exploit and reinforce the ideological divide that has characterized Italian society since the first decades of last century. Unfortunately, it seems that when things in Italy degenerate, the people are still prone to look "at the other side" through a strongly coloured lens and, whoever was behind the G8 events, has done an incredibly good job in bringing back to life a polarization of society that, until recently, seemed to belong to an "uncivilized" period of Italian history.
* Marco Mezzera is a research associate
with Focus on the Global South.