America Is About to Enter Its Years of Lead | Hacker News Reader

America Is About to Enter Its Years of Lead

foreignpolicy.com

28 pointsAndrewBissell17 comments

Just to make a minor point clear, since it seems the article is a bit vague about it: in the "years of lead" in Italy it was mostly the far left that was engaging in terrorism and political violence.

Just one sentence that seems a bit cavalier with history:

"... the Italian Red Brigades have also pursued violent accelerationist campaigns in pursuit of social change."

The Italian Red Brigades have kidnapped, kept prisoner for 2.5 months, subjected to a mock trial and finally executed the president of Italy's relative majority party of the time, the Christian Democrats. The body was left in the trunk of a parked car. You may call it a "violent accelerationist campaign in pursuit of social change", if you will.

You may need to catch up on the news a bit, Steve Pieczenik of the U.S. State Department (common cover for CIA) admitted that he killed Aldo Moro to prevent him from divulging state secrets.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/italy-accuses-us-envoy-steve-piecz...

I would imagine some of those secrets may have had to do with other incidents where the Red Brigade and other left wing groups were framed in false flag incidents as part of the Gladio strategy of tension.

It's maybe noteworthy that the same Steve Pieczenik was pushing a larval version of the QAnon "deep state patriot" narrative in the leadup to the 2016 election: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov5kvWSz5LM

Ah, we have no shortage in Italy of people who claim to have been the kingpin of this or that plot central to the history of the nation. Whatever Pieczenik might have said there are most probably others who gave a different version (Italy's very outspoken president Cossiga, for example). Anyway, those who materially organised the kidnapping and executed the victim were communist militants- fighting against the... "imperialist state of the multi-national companies".

Oh well. Maybe they were just 40 years ahead of their time :).

Has the Italian government found any of those other claims of responsibility credible enough to open an inquiry into them?

I found this passage in the article I linked interesting too:

> The request came as prosecutors demanded that a linked probe on allegations that two Italian intelligence agents were present at the site of Moro kidnapping be dismissed.

If you're familiar with the case you surely know that Romano Prodi, who was going to become minister of the Industry a few months later (and much later became Italy's prime minister), tipped the police about the possible location of Moro after having learned about it during a spiritic seance with other high-ranking politicians. Unfortunately the only word the ghosts communicated ("Gradoli") was taken to be the name of a small village (that was thoroughly searched with no results) and not that of the street of Rome, via Gradoli, where Moro was in fact kept hidden.

This is to say that the layers of mysteries are so stacked one upon the other that I doubt there is anything resembling the truth beneath them. I don't doubt that there might have been pressures, schemings, and international interferences. In the end what remains undeniable is the stupidity and the conviction of those who materially kept him prisoner and killed him.

"Lead" here is /lɛd/ and refers to bullets and bombs. Yay heteronyms!

Bombs typically have cast iron or steel casings. WW1 Shrapnel shells were the last "bombs" to commonly use lead.

I'm presuming that he was referring to the IEDs of Italy's "Years of Lead" referenced directly in the article.

Not specifics about weapons manufacture.

It's hard to prosecute these militia groups before they are actually crossing the line to do something illegal. On the other hand, wouldn't it be funny if all the vague post-911 anti terrorism legislation was applied to them?

It's strange that this article makes reference to the "strategy of tension" in Italy without any mention of CIA and NATO involvement in Gladio (which the Italian government itself acknowledged).

In the classic model, the strategy of tension was associated with Cold War covert action and CIA interference in our allies’ domestic politics. After World War II, Western intelligence agencies really did organize “stay-behind networks”... -- TFA

Ah! Just missed that on my first read through and thought this was the only mention, thanks.

> The CIA did put its hands on the scale in the elections like Italy in 1948, when left-wing parties were portrayed as Soviet puppets and systemically kept out of a coalition government.

> Virtually every member of the Western Alliance has had its own years of lead, not only Italy but Britain during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, France as it tried to cling to Algeria and was targeted by its own paramilitary terror campaign, South America in the years of Operation Condor, Mexico’s Dirty War, and so on. America is no exception. The country has been here several times before: Bleeding Kansas during the 1850s, when slave-owners and abolitionists faced off in murderous confrontations; the birth of the first Klan after the Civil War to resist Radical Reconstruction; and the wave of violence that accompanied the rise of the Third Klan during the civil rights movement. Elements of the left from John Brown to the Italian Red Brigades have also pursued violent accelerationist campaigns in pursuit of social change. But only the reactionaries have enjoyed approval from more mainstream sources of political power. Often, they got logistical support as well as material and legal cover from security services.

Checks Wikipedia for Operation Condor...

> Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor ... was a United States-backed campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents, officially and formally implemented in November 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

Then checks Wikipedia for Mexico's Dirty War:

> The Mexican Dirty War ... refers to the Mexican theater of the Cold War, an internal conflict in the 1960s and 1970s between the Mexican PRI-ruled government under the presidencies of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Luis Echeverría and José López Portillo, which were backed by the US government, and left-wing student and guerrilla groups. During the war, government forces carried out disappearances, estimated at 1,200, systematic torture, and "probable extrajudicial executions".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Dirty_War

US intelligence agencies insisted that mass surveillance was not directed at US citizens within US borders. Then we found out differently.

In a similar way, I think many people in the US could turn a blind eye to the crimes being committed abroad in the name of the Cold War.

What goes around comes around.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...

There are quite a few when you see them listed out (looking at cold war era overthrows).

> What goes around comes around.

Unfortunately, it comes around indiscriminately. The young had nothing to do with USA's earlier crimes.

In those earlier examples, didn't conservatives make up the majority?

Left-side Antifa, Right-side counter-clowns.

Both need to be stopped. Heavy sentences need to be handed down, leads followed up, root sourced identified. It's not a coincidence all this happens in the election year.

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