The Oligarch Ruling Class "Strategy Of Tension"

Terrorizing Us Into Acceptance

In George Orwell’s book 1984, the state of Oceania is always in a state of war with Eurasia and Eastasia. The Party controls all of the media and continuously spreads stories of external and internal threats to create fear and hatred within the populace to keep them compliant. We are not far away from such a reality in the present, most especially in the US with the hold of the oligarchy over the state and media, practising what was termed as a “Strategy of Tension” within Italy in the post-WW2 decades. This will not change with a Trump administration (or a Starmer one as we have seen, or with any other Western nation); the only change will be that some of the “enemies” may be different.

Since around the turn of this century, the Western oligarchic ruling classes have engaged in a new “Strategy Of Tension” that is designed both to cow the general population into submission to their policies and to sow division within the general population to remove any focus from themselves. This is a repeat of the policies that were carried out in post-war Europe to stop truly progressive parties from becoming part of the government; for example, the Communist Party in Italy and the 25 “years of lead”.

The vassal oligarchies and the security states that they dominated, working with the US security services, both sponsored European terrorist groups and engaged in acts of terrorism against the general population. While laying blame on left wing, and to a lesser extent right wing, groups (some of them security state front organizations). This is a history that we must understand if we are to understand the present.

In 1976, the Italian communists (PCI) won a historic high of 34% of the vote, and Aldo Moro a previous prime minister and head of the centre-left Christian Democrats (DC) proposed a DC-PCI-PSI (PSI was the Italian Socialist Party, democratic socialist) coalition which would for the first time bring the communists into the Italian government.

This was of course directly against the interests of the US and the Italian oligarchy. Only 13 days after an attempt at linking Moro to the Lockheed Bribery Scandal in 1978 failed, Moro was kidnapped by the terrorist Red Brigade and eventually murdered. The circumstances of this are extremely questionable, but the outcome was not; no more talk of bringing the communists into the government. Italy remained “safe for democracy”; i.e. with no possibility of communists in the government.

Two years later the worst terrorist atrocity in Italy took place, the Bologna train station bombing of 1980, that killed 85 and wounded over 200. Italian Assize Court judges described the bombing in 1980 as “a political massacre, or more accurately a State massacre” as they handed down a life term to Gilberto Cavallini - the fourth member of the neofascist NAR jailed for the bombing.

In 1992 the whole edifice of the oligarchic Italian establishment was brought down as both of the establishment DC and PSI parties were destroyed due to a massive corruption scandal that engulfed them; called Tangentopoli (Bribesville). While at the same time the Cosa Nostra was being substantially defeated. Sadly, the timing was terrible for the communists as the collapse of the Soviet Union has absolutely delegitimized communism. Instead, a new style of right-wing oligarch, the media-tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, came to power and the neoliberalisation of Italy started in earnest; together with widespread corruption, the use of the state for personal motives, and the famous Bunga Bunga sex parties. The Years of Lead had held off democratic communist rule long enough, and delivered Italy to a new neoliberal oligarchy.

With the 2011 Global Financial Crisis, Berlusconi was removed and an unelected banker Mario Monti was put in place for two years to carry out the next leg of intensified neoliberalism; austerity and deeper labour market “reforms”.

In the post-WW2 United States the same strategy of tension was used through such things as regular “duck and cover” exercises for children amid a state-propagandized ever present possibility of nuclear war.

And propaganda about “communist infiltration” in an era of McCarthyism.

Repeated post-9/11 with the changes to “terrorist risk levels” announced by the US state, together with a state-propagandized ever-present “terrorist threat”. Such state tactics are designed to create a willingness of the populace to accept a strong state, including limitations on personal freedoms and a state domestic control apparatus, and a munificently funded military. A notable case is that of the 1948 War Scare designed to facilitate a massive increase in funding for the US airforce, so that the US airplane industry would not have to face the much lesser peacetime profits. Also, to “discipline” some European nations into alignment with US foreign policy aims.

As Frank Kofsky states in his book Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948:

One of the most obvious of the new developments was the Truman administration’s penchant for governing by what Richard Freeland has aptly called “crisis politics”. Rather than encouraging a rational discussion of the issues by an informed electorate, the president and his chief lieutenants found it more convenient to proceed by deceit and manipulation, using, as we have seen, baseless claims of an impending Soviet military offensive to stampede Congress and the citizenry. Anyone who has lived through the years of the U.S. war in Southeast Asia or, to take a more recent example, the 1991 war against Iraq, will not have to be told how readily later presidents have emulated the kind of chicanery by the Truman administration in 1948 … Nineteen forty-eight was the last year in which it might have been possible to devise an escape from the iron grip of the Cold War. By following the path charted by Clark Clifford and like-minded political henchmen, however, Truman ensured that such a result would not come to pass … not only did it pave the way for later and less scrupulous demagogues such as Joseph McCarthy, but - most reprehensible of all - it foreclosed for decades any chance of reaching accord with the U.S.S.R. After 1948, the very idea of negotiating an end to hostilities with the Soviets was guaranteed to call down charges of “Appeasement” on the head of anyone so naive and foolhardy as to advance it.

At a time that the CIA was reporting that the Soviet nation was exhausted by WW2 and unable to mount any new offensive for many years, Truman created a threat from nothing to make sure that the super-profits of war would not disappear for corporate America and its owners. The same poisoning of any attempt at negotiating with Russia can be seen in the present, with Putin deemed to be a new “Hitler” and Trump in hist first term undermined by the utterly fake “Russia, Russia, Russia” narrative of Putin having some kind of hold over him.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has also been heavily into the “threat creation” business with its sting operations which time and again seem to turn relatively harmless people into dangerous terrorists through the manipulation of pliable citizens. Many of these operations create the means that the individuals involved do not posses, or even place the idea of attacks into their minds; targeting mentally ill and other vulnerable individuals through corrupt informants that are handsomely rewarded.

Aronson covers this reality in his book The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism. A more recent example was the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer which had the FBI’s hands all over it.

Then of course we have the January 6th 2021 “insurrection” that was littered with legions of state agents; from the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Capitol Police, and God knows who else. Under direct congressional questioning the heads of these agencies refused to state how many agents and paid informants they had within the crowd. This unarmed crowd, which could have been easily dealt with if proper state security staffing levels has been in place, was then typified as an “insurrection”. It was nothing of the sort, and was full of state actor provocateurs that egged on the crowd.

The oligarchy and the state that it controls does not want a reasoned discussion of policies by an informed citizenship as that would constitute actual democracy as against the purely performative version that is currently practised in the Western world. Most recently we have had fear-mongering about Iran planning to assassinate Trump, with the security services saying “just trust us” as their assertions are not backed up by any real facts. Recently I went to one of my favourite restaurants and read through the Canadian national newspapers, which I do not normally do (it is a distasteful exercise that I use to gauge the general level of propaganda). On the front page of the Globe and Mail was this gem:

Yes, Iranian government agents are wandering the streets of Canada attempting to kill a “human rights crusader” (actually a Zionist and fierce critic of Russia and Iran, and an abuser of human rights discourses for imperialist purposes, and an abuser of the fake definitions of “anti-semitism” to shut down criticism of Israel), says the Globe and Mail using an un-named source in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) who isn’t even authorized to discuss such matters. The story continues on page 4:

Perhaps the Canadian media felt left out with the invented plot to kill Trump, so they invented their own Canadian assassination plot? Perhaps the Globe and Mail should change its name to Pravda? We are also seeing more and more concocted nonsense about China “infiltrating” (very Cold War that word) Western state organizations and corporations. Next perhaps it will be a communist Fu Manchu digging a tunnel underneath the Pacific to “infiltrate” the US:

Perhaps it was Fu Manchu who cut the communications cable under the Baltic, as the Danish have boarded a Chinese ship they say may be responsible? The Danish security services are especially close to the US ones, it is they that facilitated the bugging of the previous German Chancellor’s phone for the US. The Swedish and Finnish governments doing their own version of “duck and cover”.

The orchestrated strategy of tension is being escalated, with China now increasingly being defined as the chosen “enemy”. The regular “2 minutes of hate” must be triggered by the oligarch-controlled state and the oligarch-controlled media.

From enemies within to enemies without we can see the structure of the Cold War and the book 1984 playing out in front of us. We must be terrorized into loving the authoritarian and ever watching state, while the oligarchy extracts more and more of the wealth out of our societies - aided by their well remunerated courtier class; as we the people become more impoverished and without basic rights. Only the delusional can think that this will improve with a Trump presidency, the lies designed to terrorize us will just serve slightly different ends.

The last breaths of the Biden administration are being used for an attempt at further demonizing Russia and trying to trigger a wrong move from Putin that can be used as a cause celebre for further escalation. We have the utterly mythical “North Korean troops” in Ukraine, with absolutely no real evidence provided. Then we have Biden authorizing (or at least the NY Times said he did) the use of long range missiles to target the pre-2014 Russian territory, followed immediately by an actual attack on the Bryansk region of Russia. Then Biden’s authorization of the banned anti-personnel mines for Ukraine. All supposedly in response to the utterly fabricated North Korean troops story. The two minutes of hate may be ended with respect to Ukraine by Trump, but they may be intensified with respect to Iran, the Arab defence and liberation movements (called “terrorists” by the West), and most importantly China.