Strategy of tension

Strategy of tension  (Social control)
At the bombing of the Bologna main station in 1980, 85 people died. Agents of the Italian intelligence services and the secret society Propaganda Due hindered the investigation by laying false tracks.
Interest of	• Richard Cottrell • Le Cercle • Operatiën en Inlichtingen • The Bombers Affair (Luxembourg)
The strategy of tension (Italian: strategia della tensione) is an umbrella term used for covert operations by governments aimed at destabilising or unsettling target populations or states.

"You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public to turn to the State to ask for greater security."

Vincenzo Vinciguerra, Gladio operative, during his trial.

The strategy of tension is carried out with a high level of secrecy and consequent plausible deniability, using organizations infiltrated and/or controlled by but not directly affiliated with the state agencies. For this reason it is often hard to prove that a government has used a strategy of tension. Nevertheless, a number of undeniable instances have surfaced since WW2.

Methods

The methods used are most obviously illegal and violent i.e. assassinations, kidnapping, paramilitary operations but also include propaganda, economic sanctions, support of civil unrest, fake grassroots movements and the escalation of formerly peaceful protests involving agents provocateurs. These are typically carried out under a false flag and combined with disinformation to demonise an uninvolved third party. If state agencies engage in staging or promoting acts of terrorism the term "state terrorism" is used, i.e. by former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

The PsyOp component of a strategy of tension

The main target of a strategy of tension is the public opinion, to manipulate votes, generate the impression of a national threat to legitimate war, to call for a strong leader or tolerate surveillance and denounce peacemakers as 'unpatriotic'. False flag terrorist attacks are just the tip of the iceberg of possible measures to achieve these goals.

In "Interdoc and West European Psychological Warfare", Giles Scott-Smith puts the strategy of tension in a broader context.

"Ultimately, Interdoc’s value comes from it being a remarkable example of the way European security services sought to engage with and manipulate the public sphere, initially out of serious concerns for the effects of peaceful coexistence on Western ideological solidity, and eventually as a means to secure a strategic advantage in the Cold War."

"Peaceful coexistence" refers to the Russian policy after Stalin, meaning the absence of a Soviet threat.

Based on official statements he shows that prolonged periods of peace are seen as a threat to Western power structures, the established order and political 'stability' by the establishment. The proposed 'solution' to this is - in the propagandists phrasing - to "raise awareness" of external threats or to "encourage a responsible citizenry as part of the process of maintaining a democratic society". The result may be called fine-tuning of democracy and included staged terror attacks under a false flag in the past.

The same rhetoric is put forward by the Joint Statement of European Ministers of the Interior after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack:

“In order to tackle the root causes of radicalization in particular of young people, the EU should consider strengthening targeted actions designed to raise awareness and promote the respect of fundamental rights and values"”
European Ministers of the Interior (2015) 

Implementation

Recognizable patterns include, but are not limited to:

• An official narrative is quickly agreed upon and blames either "Lone nuts" or the enemy du jour
• "Lone nuts" that die shortly after the event and/or have no chance to explain their side of the story
• The number of reported perpetrators, decreases as the official narrative unfolds
• Evidence which is quickly destroyed and/or made inaccessible to public or to journalists because of "national security"
• Obviously pre-fabricated statements: responses are made which are far too quick - exploiting the targets' moment of psychological shock
• Politicians and commercially-controlled media: blaming designated culprit before any investigation, hate speech, revenge, threating war or sanctions, fostering police state legislation
• Name changes or misspelling of suspected lone nuts and/or intelligence links emerge
• Imagery of low quality emerges, with mismatching details in different versions or viewing angels, time stamps and origin obscured
• Presented evidence and history of Lone nuts contains bold archetypes, letters, testaments, even passports
• Eye witness accounts are incompatible with press reports
• Lost and Found ID leads a direct trail to allow the official narrative's perpetrators to be identified
• Any ideas apart from this are termed "conspiracy theories" and dismissed by the establishment
• The commercially-controlled media is resentful of any serious criticism of its own early reporting, citing mostly sources from government, so called experts, the police or news agencies, i.e. Reuters, AP.
• Official investigation avoided, delayed or quick trial, may be flawed, i.e deaths, not answering questions, accepting bogus "proofs"
• Media blackout regarding targets' and intelligence services' foreknowledge and/or facts that don't fit the official narrative and spurious statements by attendents
• Intelligence services stick to the doctrine of plausible deniability even decades after the event

An incomplete list of implementations of the strategy of tension since WW2 may include

• Greece 1944, 1950s - Battle of Athens (Dekemvriana), Greek civil war, Lochoi Oreinōn Katadromōn, Red Sheepskin
• France/Italy 1948ff - Operation Demagnetize
• Israel/Egypt 1950s - Suez Crisis
• USA 1960s - Operation Northwoods was planned but not carried out
• Germany 1960s,70s,80s - RAF terrorists are protected, infiltrated, trained and freed from prison by the Verfassungsschutz
• Germany 1970s - train station bombings in Hamburg, Nürnberg, Köln and Bremen
• Turkey 1970s,80s,90s,2000s - Gladio, 1977: Taksim Massacre, 1996: Susurluk Scandal
• Italy 1970s - Gladio - The best publicised and the origin of the term.
• Spain 1070s - Atocha Massacre
• Chile 1970s - Project FUBELT
• USA/Nicaragua 1980s - CIA promoted bloody guerrilla war
• Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Brazil 1970s, 1980s - Operation Condor
• El Salvador 1980s - El Mozote Massacre, Killing of >800 civilians by School of the Americas trained forces
• Belgium 1980s - Brabant Massacres, Operation Gladio
• France/Algeria 1990s - Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA)
• South Africa 1990s - against the ANC
• USA 1990s - OKC Bombing
• Russia 1999 - Russian apartment bombings - FSB
• USA 2000s - War on Terror
• Germany 2010s - right wing terror, NSU killings, firebombing of Muslim immigrants
• Europe since 2015
  • France Jan. 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting, July 2016 Nice Truck incident
  • Transferring large numbers of people from the Middle East to Europe, than have the commercially-controlled media report about acts of violence commited by these people or even worse announce a "crisis" introduces tension (psychological stress) in the target population. European governments rejecting this policy are pressured to comply.
  • South Germany July 2016 – Terror in Würzburg und Ansbach. In Munich a mall shooting occurs.

Wikipedia sources of interest

• http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Schmutziger_Krieg&oldid=137593413#Beispiele [Ger]
• http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Strategie_der_Spannung&oldid=137814826 [Ger]
• http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Staatsterrorismus&oldid=135942085 [Ger]
• http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Verdeckte_Operation&oldid=138170989 [Ger]
• http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Folter&oldid=138331662#.E2.80.9EKrieg_gegen_den_Terror.E2.80.9C_ab_2001 [Ger]

 

Examples

Page name	Description
"War on Drugs"	A social control strategy that provides a lot of off-the-books funding for the US Deep state in particular. As a strategy of tension, it has served to scapegoat minorities and is used as a pretext for social militarization and the removal of civil liberties.
"War on Terror"	The campaign, launched by the USA under the Presidency of George W. Bush with the support of the UK, and most NATO members (at least formally) and other Western-aligned countries. Nominally a response to the events of 11 September 2001, its stated objective is the elimination of so called 'terrorist organisations', it was in fact conceived long before by a group of terrorist experts, including his father and the groundwork laid at a 1979 conference in Jerusalem as a propaganda term used to legitimise wars of aggression and a scare tactic.
2011 Alexandria bombing	An deadly attack on a church in Egypt to stoke tensions during the 2011 regime change.
2021 Washington D.C. Riots	One of the most fortified positions in the US gets violently overrun by a group of Trump Supporters after a demonstration... without a single shot fired by the mob. Official narrative soon blamed Trump and extremists. Official opposition narrative soon blamed the democratic party trying to fraud Joe Biden into the White House. Several other governments were briefed by intelligence services that the incident seemingly "was being allowed" to happen.
Bologna bombing	A murderous attack on the Italian public, carried out by the MI6/CIA led Operation Gladio, blamed on communists, as part of a wider program to prevent their electoral success in Italy.
Brabant Massacres	A set of murders between 1982 and 1985, in which 28 people died and 40 were injured. It became Belgium's most notorious unpunished crime spree.
Cold War	The official narrative had 2 diametrically opposed systems locked in combat with one another since soon after WW2. Each of the "superpowers" and its team of allies needed to outdo each other by creating ever more and deadlier weapons, creating a kind of perpetual war for perpetual peace, with the warring parties engaging mainly in covert/proxy wars. Deep state interests blossomed in the climate of fear and paranoia.
Cold War II	A rebooting of the original Cold War, that was definitely tied to the UK deep state in late 2018.
Gladio 3.0	Possible new version of Operation Gladio 2.0.
Israeli–Lebanese conflict
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Operation Cage Action Plan
Operation Demagnetize	"The institutional hardening of Gladio", an expansion of Gladio in the late 1940s, early 1950s.
Operation Gladio/B	A development of Operation Gladio to help roll out the "war on terror" by promoting US/NATO-sponsored false flag attacks to be blamed on "Muslim terrorists".
Perpetual war
UK terror threat level	Threat of terrorism in the United Kingdom

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
2021	“The Biden administration is revving up for a war against an enemy which the feds have chosen to never explicitly define.”	James Bovard	19 June 2021
Madeleine Albright	“There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other”	Madeleine Albright	2016
COVID-19/Panic	“People in the UK widely believed that the pseudopandemic was real, not because the scientific or statistical evidence was clear but because the government spent billions with PR firms to run “hard-hitting” media campaigns designed to convince them of it.”	Iain Davis	16 August 2022
Document:Psychological Warfare for the West: Interdoc and Youth Politics in the 1960s	“Psychological warfare has two sides: The build-up of moral strength within one's own side and the undermining of the morale of the opposing side.”	Cees van den Heuvel	1959
Document:Psychological Warfare for the West: Interdoc and Youth Politics in the 1960s	“We say to the leaders of the capitalist states: Let us try out in practice whose system is better, let us compete without war... The main thing is to keep to the positions of ideological struggle, without resorting to arms in order to prove that one is right... We believe that ultimately that system will be victorious on the globe which will offer the nations greater opportunities for improving their material and spiritual life.”	Nikita Khrushchev	1959
Fear	“There are two ways in which people are controlled: first of all frighten them, and then demoralise them. An educated healthy, and confident nation is harder to govern.”	Tony Benn
Institute for Statecraft/Purposes	“We are at war, in a hybrid war, we cannot deter it - only fight it... We need to go away and seek to change the minds within uniformed services, and move away from a mentality of peacetime, to one of wartime.”	Integrity Initiative
Institute for Statecraft/Purposes	“The UK would love it's (sic.) own ballistic capabilities, both in a sovereign sense & to enable better cooperation. The range rings represent threats themselves, even if the capabilities are not matched by intent, there is an lack of will by politicians to provide the necessary protection. Not enough political drive enough, there is significant public blindness, if the public were kept in a state of - this would be easier, however politicians would prefer to have a blithe sense of safety. This represents a start difference to Putin, who has been whipping up the fear.”	Integrity Initiative
Ron Johnson	“We met delegation after delegation of European representatives. Basically the entire conversation was about Edward Snowden, about tapping Angela Merkel's phone. But then Charlie Hebdo happened. I haven't heard a word about Edward Snowden or what the American security services were trying to do. What I'm hearing now is 'Where's America?'”	Ron Johnson	2017
Political party	“the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”	Henry L. Mencken	1918
Michael Rivero	“Once a government resorts to terror against its own population to get what it wants, it must keep using terror against its own population to get what it wants. A government that terrorizes its own people can never stop. If such a government ever lets the fear subside and rational thought return to the populace, that government is finished.”	Michael Rivero
The Road To 9-11	“(Headed by Frank Wisner, OPC's) first project was an arrangement for the creation and support of right wing stay behind groups in Europe... Gregor Geannatini (?), one of the Italian authors of this Strategy of Tension... came to America in 1961 to lecture at the Naval War College on techniques and possibilities of a coup d'état in Europe. In March 1962 the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared their own documents developing Geannatini's strategy. This was Operation Northwoods... The plan... called for innocent people to be shot on American streets. (00:45:05)”	Peter Dale Scott	2007

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:1980 Massacre in Bologna	article	6 July 2005	Thierry Meyssan
Document:Clarifications	essay	17 March 2020	Giorgio Agamben
Document:Field Manual 30-31b	Field Manual	10 March 1970	William Westmoreland Kenneth Wickham	An U.S. document describing top secret counterinsurgency tactics, including a "strategy of tension" involving violent attacks which are then blamed on radical left-wing groups in order to convince allied governments of the need for counter-action. It also points out the need for heavy recruiting among the officer corps and security forces in the host country.
Document:Gladio - The Secret U.S. War To Subvert Italian Democracy	essay	23 February 1996	Arthur E. Rowse
Document:Systemic Destabilization in Recent American History	article	24 September 2012	Peter Dale Scott
Document:The Terror Attacks in France. The Broader Geopolitical Implications	interview	10 January 2015	Umberto Pascali	Interview with Umberto Pascali – For Voice of the People, TV Sonce, Skipje, Macedonia
Document:The use of terrorism to construct world order	paper	10 September 2004	Ola Tunander

Rating

11 February 2019 Robin  An important topic
A reasonable overview of this undermentioned topic.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.