Making Democracy Unsafe for Italy
Martino, Antonio
"Making Democracy Unsafe for Italy" In the Third Reich, especially after the collapse of the anti-Hitler conspiracy in 1944, the most powerful organization was the SS. From a small array of Hitler's bodyguards the SS had grown into a...
...Who could be so blind as not to see that, in time of "emergency" like the present, the country needed a strong popular government, one that could gather the largest support possible...
...He considered himself as Hitler's potential successor...
...The breakdown of the traditional political state is wrought with all kinds of dangers...
...To add insult to injury, the Communists suggested—and most commentators agreed—that the Brigate Rosse had chosen to kid^ap Moro because he had supported the alliance between Communists and Catholics, and that, therefore, the terrorists were fighting against the Communist Party's way to power, trying to stop the "irresistible rise of the popular masses...
...The students had heard of it at 9:30, and—together with the news of the kidnapping—Italy was notified of the unions' decision to strike and to organize the rally...
...The Soviet Union is no more a prototype of the Communist, or Totalitarian, state than is the United States a prototype of the Capitalist, or Democratic, state...
...Presided over by Himmler, it had its own army, its own tank divisions, its own police force, its own national and international intelligence organizations, its prison camps...
...Their overriding interest—this is probably true of some of Carter's people too— was not money or political ideology but the maintaining and the extending of their power...
...Could anyone think of a more favorable situation for the Communists...
...It may well be that they are not imported, that there is no international conspiracy behind them...
...But the most remarkable statement in his speech was the assertion that, after Moro's kidnapping, the country could not go back to the "old normality" (i.e., PCI in opposition...
...The post-ideological era has come: As certain wags, including this writer, suggested decades ago, all the political Isms are now Wasms...
...and, just as the Dark Ages preceded the Middle Ages, these dangers may precede the emergence of a new kind of feudalism which I often think that the distant future may bring...
...today...
...In the second place, the dominant political configuration of this world continues to be a compound of nationalism and socialism...
...Its electoral gains, although steady, have been very gradual—it has taken them 30 years to go from 19 percent (1946) of the popular vote to 34.4 percent (1976...
...Rossanda, who had been a distinguished member of the PCI until she was expelled a few years ago and joined the ultra-Communist group centered around Il Manifesto, reminds us of the fact that the "logic" and the language of the terrorists are identical to those of the PCI in the 19505...
...In the United States a man such as Richard Nixon, who made his political career largely because of his reputation as an anti-Communist, eventually found it very easy to get along with men such as Brezhnev or Mao: not because he had acquired a more moderate view of ideologies but because he recognized the congenial character of his counterparts, powerful bureaucrats at the pinnacle of their respective states...
...The country has accepted the idea of Communist partnership in government as the natural and logical solution to the "crisis...
...By virtue of an agreement between "democratic" parties, the new government received the vote of confidence that afternoon with no debate in Parliament...
...V What this means is that in the 1970s we have reached a turning-point, comparable in importance to the other great turning-point in the 1870s which I earlier attempted to describe...
...What was and remains ominous in the Nixon misdeeds was not so much the petty criminality of the Watergate business but the fact that behind this grim clinging to power looms the ominous and increasing shadow (consider but Nixon's dependence on the Teamsters) of the powerful criminal...
...He thought that the opponents of Hitler's Reich would have to deal with him...
...But that would be a slow and uncertain road for the PCI to take...
...If one adds the minor parties that belong to the coalition, the "unholy alliance" leaves less than 10 percent to the opposition...
...It is worth noting that this is essentially what the BR is saying today and with the same terminology...
...16 The American Spectator June/ July 1978...
...My lecture ended at 11:15, and the students, who had been sitting in the classroom since 10:00, reported the story to me...
...In the third place—in order, but probably first in importance—we live in a transitory situation...
...Like Fascism and anti-Fascism, Communism and anti-Communism no longer mean very much...
...In the Soviet Union, beginning with Stalin's great purges in the 1930s, the convinced Communists of the ruling class were being replaced with police bureaucrats of the state apparatus, a development that has continued to this day...
...At this pace, power would not go to Enrico Berlinguer but to his grandchildren...
...Given all this, the BR is doing the Communists a great favor...
...This was explicitly stated by Bufalini, a Communist leader, at the Party's Central Committee meeting on April 17...
...Few people could deny that Moro's kidnapping provided a very timely help to the PCI...
...That the Brigate Rosse are Communists, and not—as the Cornmunists would make us believe—CIA agents intent on sabotaging the "irresistible rise of the popular masses," has been convincingly shown by Rossana Rossanda in an article in the newspaper II Manifesto...
...In the Soviet Union the bureaucracy is dependent on the police...
...He was no longer hampered by ideology...
...In both societies the police (including the state security police organizations) have been increasingly involved with criminals...
...he was interested in power...
...Moro had been kidnapped between 9 a.m...
...Besides, no matter how weak the state is today, it is still much too strong for amateur revolutionaries accustomed to the good life capitalism has granted them...
...Far from being anti-Communists in disguise, the terrorists are the natural offspring of Leninism...
...That morning I was lecturing at the University of Naples...
...All of a sudden, by contrasting the mad and absurd behavior of the terrorists with the "responsible" attitude of the Communists, the miracle had been performed: Who could now question the democratic nature of the PCI ? Who could be so callous as to deny that the Communists, being different from the terrorists, were a * For nearly two months, the Italian government refused to negotiate with the terrorists: Moro was found dead on May 9. The American Spectator June/ July 1978 15 "law and order" party...
...Bufalini even went so far as to say that since the purpose of the terrorists is to destroy the alliance between Catholics and Communists, it would not be surprising if "foreign influences" (meaning the CIA) were behind them...
...Like Himmler or Brezhnev, Nixon progressed from ideological politics to police-power politics...
...Like a Vyshinsky or a Schellenberg, his minions, men such as Haldeman or Erlichman, had become Important Persons to whose thinking ideological attributes no longer applied: They were neither conservatives nor right-wingers, whatever their political inclinations in their earlier careers may have been...
...The danger that the rising power of the latter implies may be as great as the earlier dangers of lawlessness represented by totalitarian fanatics...
...The first, the traditional one, is sanctioned by the constitution of the Italian Communist Party adopted on January 21, 1921, at the time of the Party's founding...
...The standard answer given to this question by Communists and "non-Communists" alike was that the general strike and the mass meeting were "the people's response to terrorism," that the event proved that "it was time to be united," to show that "the country gave a united response, involving all democratic forces...
...From a small array of Hitler's bodyguards the SS had grown into a state within the state...
...By creating a sense of uncertainty and "emergency," the Communists make their inclusion in the government seem like a necessity, and anti-Communism outmoded...
...The third way is the "historic compromise," an alliance with the Catholics, that would simultaneously bring them to power and silence all opposition: The PCI and DC today poll over 73 percent of the vote...
...He tried (and often succeeded) in establishing contacts with Hitler's enemies, including American intelligence organs and even Jewish international organizations...
...As soon as the news came out, the Communist-controlled unions proclaimed a general strike...
...but it is because of its universality that this phenomenon is beginning to lose its meaning—just as one hundred years ago conservatism and liberalism had begun to lose their meanings because of their increasingly amorphous characteristics...
...By silencing dissenters, it sped up the formation of the government...
...In the first place—in order, though not necessarily in importance—all of the ideological frenzies of the 1960s and all of the double-talk about Eurocommunism notwithstanding, we live in a post-ideological era...
...He is also a member of the National Council of the Italian Liberal Party...
...If the PCI were—as many self-defined progressive intellectuals want us to believe—a democratic party, this is the way it would choose...
...The timing of this decision was disquieting...
...This is an essential difference: but we ought not take too much comfort from it...
...It should not be forgotten that the alliance was highly unpopular, both among DC members not resigned to give up anti-Communism, and among PCI rank-and-file who considered the compromise with a bourgeois party heretical...
...Antonio Martino Making Democracy Unsafe for Italy The Brigate Rosse, the terrorists who on March 16 mixed business (Aldo Moro's kidnapping) with pleasure (the slaughter of his escort), might not be—as some people claim—the tip of the iceberg, the vanguard of a wide underground revolutionary movement, but they still are politically significant.* The kidnapping took place on the very day the new government—based on an alliance between the Christian Democrats (DC) and the Communists (PCI), the first of its kind since 1947—was supposed to present itself to Parliament for a vote of confidence...
...But one thing is clear enough—they are Communist, and their action is speeding up the Communist conquest of power in Italy...
...No other strategy is consistent with democracy...
...There are three ways by which the Communists could take over Italy...
...The act of terrorism made them both swallow the fait accompli...
...Those who opposed the alliance between the DC and PCI—the tiny but prestigious Liberal Party and a large number of Christian Democrats—were silenced...
...Why a general strike...
...Yet by 1944 Himmler, as well as some of his cohorts, was no longer a convinced follower of Hitler's National Socialist ideology...
...and 9:30 a.m...
...Opposition is something the Communists don't believe in, and, for this reason, they have always scorned the "51-percent strategy...
...No one dares to question the democratic nature of the PCI anymore, given its strong commitment to fighting terrorism...
...0 * In local elections held May 14-15, 1978,the week after Moro's body was fOund, the PCI won only 27 percent of the vote...
...Only a biased and hysterical anti-Communist could continue to deny that Italian Communists are of-a different breed, that they have changed for the better, and that, together with spaghetti and Neapolitan songs, they are a typical product of our country—something we should be proud of...
...In short, they were "objectively" anti-Communist...
...No one can confidently say whether the KGB is behind the terrorists, as the Chinese Communists (and James Reston of the New York Times) claim, or if they are puppets in the hands of Peking, as the Russians say...
...a mass meeting organized in Rome, piazza S. Giovanni, at 5 p.m...
...Be that as it may, the main point is that the BR is an asset in the PCPs strategy for the conquest of power, and attempts to deny this fail to be credible...
...All of a sudden the Communists ceased to be an "anti-system" party—they are on our side in the fight against terrorism...
...And there is no guarantee that the trend will continue indefinitely...
...Above all, aiming at an electoral victory would leave room for an opposition that might be large and effective...
...In the United States the police is dependent on the bureaucracy...
...The second way to power would be an electoral victory...
...A debate—so the argument went—would have been a waste of time, and the country needed a new government as soon as possible, so that effective measures could be taken against terrorism...
...In reality, both of them are prototypes of a new combination of bureaucratic and police states...
...By giving them a chance to condemn terrorism and political violence, the BR is making the PCI appear to be part of the establishment, and thereby acceptable to the majority of the people...
...Article 1.3 of that suddenly-forgotten document reads: "The proletariat can neither shatter nor modify the capitalistic system of production relations, from which arises its exploitation, without the violent overthrow of bourgeois power...
...However, as is obvious to anyone familiar with the nature of the Italian people, the revolutionary way to power would have no chance whatsoever of succeeding in Italy...
...Moro has been kidnapped, the escort killed, a general strike proclaimed, and Antonio Martino is professor of economics and director of the Istituto economico-finanziario, University of Naples...
Vol. 11 • June 1978 • No. 8
