As far as I'm concerned, we can't put forward enough reminders of how the
U.S. government and the corporations that own it do business. Platitudes
about peace, freedom, justice, etc. aside, the land of the free is not even
remotely interested in spreading democracy. There is an abundance of
evidence to back up this assertion. For now, I offer the example of
post-World War II Italy. Mussolini was gone but the U.S. elites had no
intention of letting Italy slip through the cracks.
When the war-weary Italian people went to the polls in 1946, the Italian
Communist Party and the Socialist Party combined to gain more votes and more
seats in the Constituent Assembly election than the U.S.-favored Christian
Democrats. This was not surprising, considering that a worker- and
peasant-based movement fought off six German divisions during the liberation
of northern Italy...with the invaluable aid of the Communist party. As a
1948 election loomed on the horizon, however, the U.S. realized that certain
perceptions of reality needed to be seriously altered. "It was at this point
that the U.S. began to train its big economic and political guns upon the
Italian people," William Blum explains in Killing Hope. "All the good ol'
Yankee know-how, all the Madison Avenue savvy in the art of swaying public
opinion, all the Hollywood razzmatazz would be brought to bear on the
'target market'."
Downplaying the quite impressive anti-fascist credentials of the communists
and the potentially embarrassing record of collaboration with Mussolini
displayed by the Christian Democrats, the U.S. cleverly framed the battle
around, what Blum calls "the question of 'democracy' vs. 'communism' (the
idea of 'capitalism' remaining discreetly to one side)," and the most
powerful election issue was that of U.S. aid.
The influential American media obediently did its part with the January 21,
1947 New York Times proclaiming that, "Some observers here feel that a
further Leftward swing in Italy would retard aid." By March 22, 1948, Time
magazine was labeling a potential leftist victory in Italy to be nothing
short of "the brink of catastrophe." As the election neared, the CIA pulled
out all the stops. Blum has documented some of the steps taken in this
"awesome mobilization of resources." A few representative examples should
offer an idea of the propaganda's scope and depth:
A letter-writing campaign from Italian-Americans to their friends and
families in Italy was guided by "sample letters" provided by the U.S., that
included such passages as: "A communist victory would ruin Italy. The United
States would withdraw aid and a world war would probably result."
Short-wave broadcasts to Italy warned that "under a communist dictatorship
in Italy," many of the "nation's industrial plants would be dismantled and
shipped to Russia and millions of Italy's workers would be deported to
Russia for forced labor."
The stars of Hollywood, like Gary Cooper and Frank Sinatra, were called upon
to make Voice of America radio broadcasts and/or engage in fundraisers for
causes like "the orphans of Italian pilots who died in the war."
As for more direct aid, the CIA admitted to giving $1 million to Italian
"center parties," although Blum says the figure could be as high as $10
million. In case all the funny stuff failed, the CIA also took the
precaution of organizing Operation Gladio, a secret paramilitary group in
Italy, "with hidden stockpiles of weapons and explosives dotting the map,"
says author Mark Zepezauer. While the rationale for such intervention was
the always-handy "threat of Soviet invasion," Zepezauer reveals the actual
purpose of Operation Gladio, e.g. its "15,000 troops were trained to
overthrow the Italian government should it stray from the straight and
narrow."
They needn't have bothered because, after the circus left town, the
Christian Democrats stood as the clear winner with 48 percent of the vote.
The future course of Italy had effectively been charted.
Stop me if you've heard this one before...
Mickey Z. can be on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
If all Americans could see how much their government has been interested in undermining democracy everywhere, for the last 50 years or even longer, they might be a bit dubious of all the BS we're hearing about Iraq.
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December 09, 2006
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As far as I'm concerned, we can't put forward enough reminders of how the
U.S. government and the corporations that own it do business. Platitudes
about peace, freedom, justice, etc. aside, the land of the free is not even
remotely interested in spreading democracy. There is an abundance of
evidence to back up this assertion. For now, I offer the example of
post-World War II Italy. Mussolini was gone but the U.S. elites had no
intention of letting Italy slip through the cracks.
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