[Media-watch] EU "anarchist" letter bombs.

[Stephen McKee]

It always seemed highly unlikely to me that Italian anarchists would be 
behind the recent letter bombs.  Not least because of the possibility of 
injuring or killing postal workers or others.  Furthermore, the claimed 
motive behind the bombings were "increased migration and EU integration".  
These do not sound like anarchist motives (anarchists are pro open borders, 
and are internationalist in outlook).  And quite apart from the fact that 
anarchists abhor coercion, and renounce terrorism, the effect of these 
bombings is likely to be an EU-wide crack down on anarchists.  
Counter-productive to say the least. Why, I wondered, are the press so ready 
to accept that this is the work of anarchists?

So I was interested to read this today, from one of the UK anarchist 
organisations:

---original message---

A statement from the National Secretary of the Anarchist Federation 
(IAF/IFA) on the recent letter bombing campaign and it's attribution to 
Italian anarchists.

Anarchist Federation – IAF/IFA
c/o 84b Whitechapel High Street,
London E1 7QX
info at afed.org.uk
www.afed.org.uk


As an anarchist I am disgusted by the recent attempts to link Italian 
comrades to the current bombing campaign against targets connected to the 
EU, including Gary Titley, a New Labour MEP in Manchester. These outrageous 
claims should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with the Italian 
State’s shameful history of provocations and attacks against it’s own 
civilians, the most infamous of these being the ‘strategy of tension’ 
employed by the Italian state during the late 1970s.

In this period worker’s struggles were becoming increasingly numerous and 
militant. Italian fascist groups, with the backing of sectors of the Italian 
State, responded with a bombing campaign, which was then blamed on 
Anarchists, and designed to incite a breakdown in public order and enable 
sectors of the Italian State to crush rebellious sections of the Italian 
working classes. The most horrific of these bombings took place in Bologna 
in 1980, in which a bomb was detonated at a rail station killing 85 people 
and injuring over 200. The ‘strategy of tension’ is well documented – a 
report from the Italian parliamentary committee of inquiry into the bombings 
reported that ‘some Fascists in the group of terrorists in question worked 
for the Carbinieri (Italian Paramilitary Police), that others had contact 
with the army or the police and that they received valuable and timely 
information in the progress of investigation into their activities’ (1). 
Similar well documented provocations and brutal restrictions of the rights 
of Italian citizens occurred as recently as July 2001 during the anti-G8 
demonstrations in Italy.

I cannot help but notice the similarity between these horrific attempts and 
the current bombing campaign. Yet again resistance to the Italian state and 
capital is growing, with anarchists at the forefront of this fight. Whilst 
the EU, European Parliament and European Central Bank are oppressive 
institutions there are many worse offenders. For example Italian anarchists 
and workers see Berlusconi’s government as a much greater threat to freedom. 
If it really is anarchists behind these attacks why didn’t they attack 
Berlusconi and his government, which are so much more relevant to their 
daily lives? Why were the bombs so amazingly ineffectual? A well known 
fascist, Gabriele D’Annunzio, wrote the book used to hide the bomb sent to 
Romano Prodi this is not the kind of action anarchists would take. Is it 
just an amazing coincidence that the ludicrously named ‘Informal Anarchist 
Federation’ has claimed responsibility? No Italian Anarchist group has ever 
heard of this organisation before and unsurprisingly, for those who are 
familiar with the Italian State’s history of provocations, the acronym 
(F.A.I.) matches that of an ‘above-ground’ revolutionary organisation, the 
Italian Anarchist Federation (F.A.I.), an organisation strongly opposed to 
both terrorist tactics and the terrorism of governments and capital.

These attacks throw up more questions about the Italian state and its 
history of provocations (which I urge all anarchists to familiarise 
themselves with) than it does about the anarchist movement in Italy. I thus 
call for an immediate end to harassment and insinuations against Italian 
Anarchists. If the investigators are serious about stopping this latest wave 
of terrorist attacks they could do a lot worse than investigating Berlusconi 
and the Italian State.


National Secretary
Anarchist Federation – IAF/IFA

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