A great flood of books about Italian politics recently, and almost none of them willing to answer the question “Why Italy?” Why is Italy’s political culture so firmly based on conspiracy and secrecy?
A part of that answer must be Italy’s role as the premier European site of the conflict between indigenous left-wing forces and NATO, the leading anti-communist/anti-socialist alliance. That this is part of the answer may explain why so few writers in the West want to answer the question. Of the books on Italy I have read recently only Stuart Christie’s Stefano Delle Chiaie: Portrait of a Black Terrorist is willing to begin with the fact that most of the conspiracies, the terror, and the coup plotting has come from the right, and in a modern industrialised society such activities are only possible for long if the State tolerates them, or is, itself, involved in them.
Christie’s book presents great problems for this reviewer. Who, in this country, is qualified to say anything intelligent about it? Some members of MI6 maybe. This kind of parapolitical research into anything just isn’t practised here: Christie’s book is virtually without precedent in this country. So, the first thing to say about it is: buy it. It’s available from BCM/Refract, London WC1N 3XX, price £4.50.
Christie has amassed a great deal of information about the European fascist and neo-fascist movements and their links to the intelligence services of various NATO countries. Delle Chiaie is a thread running through the book but by no means its sole subject. The narrative is well held together, and Christie has a fine plain style. I read it at one sitting. There are dozens of photographs of the various dramatis personae which didn’t do a thing for me but which may be of interest to others.
If I have a criticism it would be the book’s relative lack of documentation. It’s not that I distrust Christie, or would feel inclined to try and check some of his claims. But the absence of documentation reduces the book’s impact. Here we have a mass of assertions, most of them true, no doubt. But mere assertions make me uncomfortable.
The point I began with, and which can tolerate restatement, is that Christie convincingly links the activities of fascists/ terrorists of the right to the covert activities of various states. This is visible in Northern Ireland (as Roger Faligot demonstrated, and Steve Dorril has been documenting in these pages), and appears to be true throughout mainland Europe. But in Britain?
UK parapolitical research is in its infancy. The kind of work we can manage in this country using its newspapers and journals is extremely limited. By the standards of Britain Christie is a modern master, and, footnotes or not, Stefano Delle Chiaie is an important event.
Reading Christie increases the temptation to view the Agca episode, the ‘Bulgarian connection’, as an entertaining diversion away from the activities of the Gellis and Calvis of this world. David Yallop’s In God’s Name (London 1984) has the virtue of keeping our gaze firmly on Gelli, Marcinkus et al, but relying as it does on confidential sources, it remains interesting – plausible, even – but nothing more. And for the book’s central thesis, that Calvi and/or Gelli and/or Marcinkus and/or A N Other murdered Pope John Paul I there is not a shred of evidence. (There isn’t even any evidence that the Pope was murdered at all.) Yallop actually has written a book exploring the ‘cui bono?’ question (a) without establishing that there was a crime, and (b) without noticing that, even if there were, as with the assassination of John Kennedy, there are so many plausible answers as to empty the question of its force.
And like his immediate predecessors in this new Italian ‘market’, messers Cornwell, Gurwin, Henze and Ms Sterling, Yallop fails to make the connection between Italian domestic politics and Italy’s membership of NATO. If the Italian military/intelligence are involved in all this (and they are), then so too are the Americans. If it be true, as Yallop claims, that the Vatican funnelled more than $100,000,000 to the Polish church during the days of Solidarity; if it is true that Gelli/Calvi were funnelling money into various right-wing South American regimes (and it is said to be so although there is no good evidence that I have seen yet); then somewhere the dollar and its servants will be involved.
Finally a reading list on contemporary Italian politics compiled by Richard Alexander, to whom our thanks and our apologies. Our role as sometime editors is not comfortable and we do it badly.
General Books on the Vatican in the 1970s and 1980s
- Bull, George Inside the Vatican Hutchinson, London 1982
- Greeley, Andrew M. The Making of the Popes, Futura, London 1979
- Hebblethwaite, Peter The Year of the Three Popes, Collins, London 1978
- Lo Bello, Nino Vatican Papers New English Library, London 1982
- Martin, Malachi Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, Secker, London 1982
- Nichols, Peter The Pope’s Divisions, Faber London 1981
- Thomas, Gordon and Morgan-Witts, Max Pontiff, Grenada, London 1983
- Whale, John The Pope From Poland, Collins, London 1980
General Books on the Italian Political Scene
- Amyot G. Italian Communist Party, Croom Helm, London 1981
- Davidson, A Theory and Practice of Italian Communism, Merlin, London 1982
- Earle J. Italy in the 1970s, David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1975
- Farneti, P Italian Party System, Pinter, London 1984
- Katz R. Days of Wrath, Grenada, London 1980
- Marengo F. The Rules of the Italian Political Game, Gower, Aldershot 1981
- Pridham G. The Nature of the Italian Party System, Croom Helm London 1981
- Red Notes Italy 1969-70, Red Notes London 1971
- Red Notes Italy 1977-8: Living With an Earthquake, Red Notes, London 1978
- Red Notes Working class autonomy and the crisis, Red Notes/Conference of Socialist Economists London 1980
- Red Notes Italy 1980-1: After Marx, Jail, Red Notes, London, 1981
- Red Notes: Italian Inquisition, Italy ’79 Committee London 1980
- Ruscoe, J Italian Communist Party 1976-81, Macmillan London 1982
Terrorism, fascism, neo-fascism and state terror
- Dinges J. and Landau S. Assassination on Embassy Row, Writers and Readers London 1980
- Herman, Edward The Real Terror Network, South End Press, Boston 1982
- Kruger, Henrik The Great Heroin Coup, Black Rose Books, Montreal 1980
- Sanguinetti G. On Terrorism and the State, BM Chronos London 1982
- Valpreda P. Valpreda Papers, Gollanz London 1975
- Weinberg L.B. After Mussolini: Italian Neo Fascism, University Press of America London 1982
- Wilkinson P. New Fascists, Grant McIntyre London 1981
- Anon The Italian State Massacre, Libertarian Books London 1972