Middle Nation Book Discussion | Killing Hope by William Blum (Chapter Two)

Okay. Because my Internet has been bad, we're not doing this as a live reading, but I'm just gonna record it. This is Killing Hope by William Blum, the, 2012 edition, I believe. And this is chapter two begins in the PDF copy on page 41. Chapter two, Italy 1947 and 1948, free elections, Hollywood style.

Begins with a quote. Those who do not believe in the ideology of The United States shall not be allowed to stay in The United States, declared the American attorney general Tom Clark in January 1948. In March, the justice department over which Clark presided determined that Italians who did not believe in the ideology of The United States would not be allowed to emigrate to or even enter The United States. This was but one tactic in a remarkable American campaign to ensure that Italians who did not believe in the ideology of The United States would not be allowed to form a government of a differing ideology in Italy in their election of nineteen forty eight. Two years earlier, the Italian Communist Party, the PCI, one of the largest in the world, and the Socialist Party, PSI, had gathered, had together gathered more votes and more seats in the constituent assembly election than the Christian Democrats.

That was in 1946. But the two parties of the left had run separate candidates and thus had to be content with some ministerial posts in a coalition cabinet under a Christian Democrat premier. The results, nonetheless, spoke plainly enough to put the fear of Marx into the Truman administration. For the nineteen forty eight election scheduled for April 18, the PCI and the PSI united to form the Popular Democratic Front, FDP, and in February, won municipal elections in Pescara with a 10% increase in their vote over, 1946. The Christian Democrats ran a poor second.

The prospect of the left winning control of the Italian government loomed larger than ever before. It was at this point that The US began to train its big economic and political guns upon the Italian people. All the good old 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, quote unquote. Pressing domestic needs in Italy, such as agricultural and economic reform, the absence of which produced abysmal extremes of wealth and poverty, were not to be the issues of the day. The lines of battle would be drawn around the question of democracy, quote unquote, versus, quote unquote, communism.

The idea of capitalism remaining discreetly to one side. But of course, capitalism is anyway synonymous with democracy in the American mind. The fact that the communists had been the single most active anti fascist group in Italy during the war undergoing ruthless persecution, while the Christian Democrat government of 1948 and other, electoral opponents on the right were riddled through and through with collaborators, monarchists, and plain, unreconstructed fascists. This too would be ignored, indeed turned around. It was now a matter of communist, quote, unquote, dictatorship versus their adversary's, quote, love of freedom.

This was presumed a priori. As one example, a group of American congressmen visited Italy in 1947 and casually and arbitrarily concluded that, quote, the country is under great pressure from within and without to veer to the left and adopt a totalitarian collective national organization. To make any of this at all credible, the whole picture had to be pushed and squeezed into the frame of the, quote, American way of life versus the Soviet way of life, a specious proposition which must have come as somewhat of a shock to leftists who regarded themselves as as Italian and neither as Russian nor as American. In February 1948, after non communist ministers in Czechoslovakia had boycotted cabinet meetings over a dispute concerning police hiring practices, the communist government dissolved the coalition cabinet and took sole power. That's in 1948.

The voice of America pointed to this event repeatedly as a warning to the Italian people of the fate awaiting them if Italy, quote, unquote, went communist and used as well, by anticommunists for decades afterwards as a prime example of communist duplicity. Yet by all appearances, the Italian Christian Democrat government and the American government had conspired the previous year in an even more blatant usurpation of power. In January 1947, the Italian premier, Alcide de Gaspari, Gasperi, visited Washington at The United States invitation. His overriding concern was to plead for crucial financial assistance for his war torn, impoverished country. American officials may have had a different priority.

Three days after returning to Italy, De Gasperi unexpectedly dissolved his cabinet, which included several communists and socialists. The press reported that many people in Italy believed that De Gasperi's actions or his action was related to his visit to The United States and was and was aimed at decreasing leftist, principally communist influence in the government. After two weeks of torturous delay, the formation of a center or center right government sought by Degasperi proved infeasible. The new cabinet still included communists and socialists, although the left had lost key positions, notably the ministries of foreign affairs and finance. From this point until May, when Degasperi's deputy, Ivan Lombardo, led a mission to Washington to renew the to renew the request for aid, promised loans were frozen by The United States for reasons not very clear.

On several occasions during this period, the Italian left asserted their belief that the aid was being held up pending the ouster of leftists from the cabinet. The New York Times was moved to note, some observers here feel that a further leftward swing in Italy would retard aid. As matters turned out, the day Lombardo arrived in Washington, De Gasperi, again dissolved his entire cabinet and suggested that the new cabinet would manage without the benefit of leftist members. This was in this indeed is what occurred. And over the ensuing few months, exceedingly generous American financial aid flowed into Italy.

In addition to the cancellation of the nation's $1,000,000,000 debt to The United States. At the very same time, France, which was also heavily dependent upon American financial aid, ousted all its communist ministers as well. In this case, there was an immediate rationale, the refusal of the communist ministers to support premier Rometiers Rometiers in a vote of confidence over a wage freeze. Despite this, the ouster was regarded as a, quote, surprise and considered bold in France. An opinion was widespread that American loans were being used or would be used to force France to align with The US.

Said said, a little of our independence is departing from us with each loan we obtain. Here you see this whole experience, it it just gets repeated again and again and again in country after country after country. Exactly the same formula of promising aid to a country on the basis of whether or not your government will be the government that we want and whether the government that we want will consistently and comprehensively align itself with our priorities, with American priorities, with American interests, and with loyalty to America. If you do that, we will give you aid, and we'll even, as in Italy, we'll even cancel your debt. Because, anyway, it doesn't matter.

We can cancel your debt because we're doing nothing but get you in more and more debt, with every passing day. So that's fine. We can cancel the debt of the past because there's no danger of you being debt free. But it's interesting to note that they were doing this with their own so called allies, their own so called partners, their own so called co westerners. That America this is what I've said many, many times.

There isn't a Western fraternity. There isn't a white fraternity. There isn't an Anglo Saxon fraternity between The United States and anybody else. United States is about The United States. And when I and and when I say that The United States is about The United States or about the interests of The United States, their own interests, obviously, I'm not talking about the national interests.

I'm talking about the interests of the elite in that society. So when you see that, in fact, it's nothing new for them to be, aggressive and interventionist and, bullying even with their own kind, their own, as I say, co westerners in Italy and France. And we'll see throughout this book in other other examples in Europe. You see, this isn't a new thing, And it's it's really remarkable that anyone believes that The United States actually has what you can really call allies. They don't have allies.

They have subjects. So there's just a question of whether you're going to be an American subject or not. And if and they have they have they don't have allies. They have either subjects or they have enemies. They have subjects or they have targets.

Targets for destabilization and subjugation and subordination and so on. So if you're not if you're not gonna be subordinate, then you're gonna be subjugated. Continuing with the book, as the last month of the nineteen forty eight election campaign began, Time magazine pronounced the possible leftist victory in, Italy to be the brink of collapse. Quote, it was primarily this fear, William Colby, former director of the CIA has written, that had led to the formation of the office of policy coordination, gave the CIA the capability to undertake covert political propaganda and paramilitary operations in the first place. So they the the this the the origin of this, the the capacity of the CIA to engage in covert political propaganda and paramilitary operations was based on what was going on in Italy and the fear that Italy would elect a so called leftist or, pro communist, pro socialist government in 1948.

The the they they gave this power to their intelligence apparatus, the CIA, not for any genuine security threat, not on the basis of any genuine security threat to The United States whatsoever, but for purely ideological and economic reasons. Most importantly, because the ideological reason is actually just sort of a packaging, and it's a cover up, as I say, for the the the practical economic intentions that The US had. Because here you have you have to understand, when they talk about, I've I've I've mentioned this before, when they talk about communism and as the Italians here, the Italians didn't consider themselves to be pro Russian or pro American, they consider themselves to be pro Italian. So that's what most so called leftists and so called communists and so called socialists around the world, especially in the global South, that's what they actually meant when when when they use the term communist or they use the term leftist or they use the term socialist. What they really meant was pro our people.

We don't wanna be subjugated neither by the Soviet Union nor by The United States. We want our own sovereignty. Now I think that it it in with the nonaligned movement, they came up with a better term to just say nonaligned. We wanna have a nonaligned policy. But until then, you had these these were the big ideologies that existed in the world and you kinda had to choose one or the other.

And one of them gave you more sovereignty than the other, which was so called communism or so called socialism. But it's important, I think, to distinguish or to differentiate when they were talking about communism what they meant. That it what it meant to the to the common people was basically just support for the for the general public and a general control over your resources as a nation and an improved quality of life for the people and so on and not being subjugated. Returning to the book. But covert operations as far as is known played a relatively minor role in the American campaign to break the back of the Italian left.

It was the very overtness of the endeavor without any apparent embarrassment that stamps the whole thing with such uniqueness and arrogance. One might say swagger. The fortunes of the FDP slid downhill with surprising acceleration in the face of an awesome mobilization of resources such as the following. The FDP, remember, was the the main party that was created between the Italian communist and the Italian socialists. So he's saying that there was a a mobilization of resources such as the following, a massive letter writing campaign from Americans of Italian extraction to their relatives and friends in Italy.

At first written by individuals in their own words or guided by quote, unquote sample letters in newspapers, soon expanded to mass produced prewritten post, postage paid form letters, cablegrams, educational circulars, and posters needing only an address and a signature, and from a group calling itself the Committee to Aid Democracy in Italy. Half a million picture postcards illustrating the gruesome fate awaiting Italy if it voted for the, quote, dictatorship or foreign dictatorship. In all, an estimated 10,000,000 pieces of mail were written and distributed by newspapers, radio stations, churches, the American Legion, wealthy individuals, etcetera. And businesses, business advertisements now included offers to send letters, air mail to Italy even if you didn't buy the product. All of this, with the publicly expressed approval of the acting secretary of state and the post office, which inaugurated special, quote, unquote, freedom flights to give greater publicity to the dispatch of the mail to Italy, this propaganda mail.

The form letters contained, messages such as, quote, a communist victory would ruin Italy. The United States would withdraw aid, and a world war would probably result, unquote. Quote, we implore you not to throw our beautiful Italy into the arms of that cruel, desperate communism. America hasn't anything against communism in Russia, but why impose it on other people, other lands, in that way putting on putting out the torch of liberty? Quote, if the forces of true democracy should lose in the Italian election, the American government will not send any more money to Italy, and we won't send any more money to you, our relatives.

Look at that. These were by no means the least sophisticated of the messages. Other themes emphasized were Russian domination of Italy, loss of religion and the church, loss of family life, loss of home and land, scaremongering, fearmongering, telling you that if you voted for your own Italians, by the way, if you voted for your own, co citizens, your own, compatriots in Italy, Italians, saying that if you voted for Italians, not foreigners, if you voted for Italians, who were communist or who were socialist or who were even leftist, why then that's like, becoming a part of the Soviet Union. You become part of a foreign, dictatorship. But somehow, if you believe in the ideology of America, which they have said very specifically that, you won't even be allowed to come to The United States, you won't even be able to visit The United States if you don't believe in the ideology of America.

Meaning, if you come from a country, what what why they were saying that, was to, ensure that the government in Italy would follow the ideology of The United States so that, you could come from Italy to The United States under the assumption that you, are coming from a state of coming from a country that believes in the same ideology as America. Whereas if you elected a leftist or socialist or communist government in Italy, then, you would be treated as someone who does not believe in the ideology of America. So they're making it very ideological. They're they're the ones who are saying, that your government has to follow our ideology, meaning, basically, you have to be under us. But they're projecting that and saying that if you, in Italy, if you elect, socialist, leftist, communist government or what have you, then you are under them.

They're drawing the lines this way. They're the ones who are drawing the lines. The Italian communist themselves regarded themselves as Italians first, who were following an ideology that they genuinely believed was gonna be the best for Italians. And and again, as he mentioned earlier, these were the factions in Italy who fought the hardest against the fascists during the war, who fought the hardest against Mussolini in the war. And they were the, you know, they were the ones that the that the Americans helped or or used to help them to fight against the Italian fascists.

But now you turn on them. They've they had already shown during the war that they were on the side of their own people, that they were on the side of their own nation against domination and tyranny under Mussolini. And now you're trying to accuse them of being themselves tyrants and aligning themselves with tyrants and trying to bring foreign domination over Italy. Meanwhile, America is is them they themselves, Americans, the United States government is telling you, you must follow our ideology or you will be treated as an enemy. So I mean, who is the one who's actually trying to enforce their domination over someone else?

And who's the one who's trying to impose foreign control over Italy. But you see how they do. They do it literally by threats, by using people's own family members, saying that you're gonna go bankrupt, saying that we're not gonna send you any money. Our even your own family members won't send you money. You'll be disowned by your own family members, and everyone knows, especially at that time back in those days, how important family was to Italians.

Veteran newsman Howard k Smith pointed out at the time that, quote, for an Italian peasant, a telegram from anywhere is a wondrous thing, and a cable from the terrestrial paradise of America is not likely to be disregarded. Well, that's a bit pompous. The letters threatening to cut off, gifts may have been equally intimidating. Such letters, wrote a Christian Democrat official in an Italian newspaper, struck home in Southern Italy and in Sicilian villages with the force of lightning. A 1949 poll indicated that 16% of Italians claimed to have relatives in The United States with whom they were in touch.

This apparently was in addition to the friend to the friends that they had in The United States. The state department backed up the warnings in the letters by announcing that if the communists should win, there would be no further question of assistance from The United States. The Italian left felt compelled to regularly assure voters that this would not really happen. This in turn inspired American officials, including secretary of state George Marshall, to repeat the threat. Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, by the way, in 1953 for threatening people with a suspension of aid if they didn't follow what America wanted them to follow and didn't elect in the government didn't elect a government that America approved of.

That is what makes you eligible for assistance. That's what makes you eligible for aid. That's what makes you eligible essentially as a human being. A daily series of direct shortwave broadcast to Italy backed by the State Department and featuring prominent Americans was undertaken. The State Department estimated that there were 1,200,000 shortwave radio receivers in Italy as of 1946.

This probably would have spread throughout the country during the war. The attorney general went on the air and assured the Italian people that the election was, quote, a choice between democracy and communism, between god and godlessness, between order and chaos. William Donovan, the wartime head of the OSS, which was the forerunner of the CIA, warned that, quote, under a communist dictatorship in Italy, many of the nation's industrial plants would be dismantled and shipped to Russia, and millions of it of Italy's workers would be deported to Russia for forced labor. If this were not enough to impress the Italian listeners, a parade of unknown but passionate refugees from Eastern Europe went before the microphone to recount horror stories of life behind, quote, the iron curtain. Several commercial radio stations broadcast to Italy, special services held in American Catholic churches to pray for the pope in, quote, this his most critical hour.

On one station during an entire week, hundreds of Italian Americans from all walks of life developed, or delivered rather, delivered one minute messages to Italy, which were relayed through the shortwave radio station. Station WOV in New York invited Italian war brides to transcribe a personal message to their families back home. The station then mailed the recordings to Italy. Voice of America, daily broadcasts into Italy were sharply increased, highlighting news of American assistance or gestures of friendship to Italy. A sky full of showbiz stars, including Frank Sinatra and Gary Cooper, recorded a series of radio programs designed to win friends and influence the vote in Italy.

Five broadcasts of Italian American housewives were aired, and Italian Americans, with some leftist credentials were also enlisted for the cause. Labor leader Luigi Antonini called upon Italians to, quote, smash the Muscovite fifth column, which follows the orders of the ferocious Moscow tyranny or else Italy would become an enemy totalitarian country. To counter communist charges in Italy that Negroes in The United States were denied opportunities, that's black people, The VOA broadcast, the story of a Negro couple who had made a fortune in the junk business and built a hospital for their people in Oklahoma City. It should it should be remembered that in 1948, American Negroes had not yet reached the state of second class citizens, the status of second class citizens. Italian radio stations carried a one hour show from Hollywood put on to raise money for orphans of Italian pilots who had died in the war.

It was not reported, if the same was done for the orphans of German pilots. Because remember, the Italians in the war or, pilots who died in the war were pilots who were flying on the enemy side. They were the the the pilots who were shot down by Americans and British and so on, by the allied forces. So they're saying that they did that. He's he's questioning.

You're saying that you're, doing that for the Italian pilots or the the orphans of Italian pilots, but you didn't do it for the orphans of German pilots even though they were both fighting on the same side. American officials in Italy widely distributed leaflets extolling US economic aid and staged exhibitions among low income groups. The US Information Service presented an, exhibition on, quote, the worker in America and made extensive use of documentary and feature films to sell the American way of life. It was estimated that in the period immediately preceding the election, more than 5,000,000 Italians each week saw American documentaries. The 1939 Hollywood film, Ninocchka, which satirized life in Russia, was singled out as a particularly effective feature film.

It was shown throughout, working class areas, and the communists made several determined efforts to prevent its presentation. I'm sure that them trying to prevent it actually made people even more interested in watching it. It probably made people, it probably actually gave the film even more credibility because the communist were trying to ban it. You see how that works? When you react to something in that way, it just makes people think that you're trying to hide something.

So they probably by by their attempt to prevent it, they probably actually made more people watch it. After the election, a pro communist worker was reported as saying that what licked us was Ninochka. In other words, what defeated us was Ninochka. That film destroyed us. And I'm I'm guessing, as I said, not only the film, but your own reaction to the film, way that you dealt with it.

You made people believe that that film was telling the truth, and you were trying to hide the truth. That's my commentary. The justice department served notice that Italians who joined the communist party would be denied the dream of so many Italians, which was to emigrate to America. The state department then ruled that any Italians known to have voted for the communists would not be allowed to even enter The United States, the terrestrial paradise he calls it. A department telegram to a New York political read, voting communist appears to constitute affiliation with the communist party within meaning of immigration law and therefore would require exclusion from The United States.

It was argued that this information be emphasized in letters to Italy. Now how exactly they would know who you voted for is an open question. President Truman accused the Soviet Union of plotting the subjugation of Western Europe and called for universal military training in The United States and a resumption of military conscription to forestall, quote, threatened communist control and police state rule. During the campaign, American and British warships were frequently found anchored off Italian ports. Time, the magazine, in an edition widely displayed and commented upon in Italy shortly before the election, gave its approval to the sentiment that, quote, The US should make it clear that it will use force if necessary to prevent Italy from going communist.

In other words, The US should make it clear that they will use force if necessary to prevent the Italian voters from voting according to their own beliefs. The US should make it clear that they will use force if necessary to control the outcome of the election in Italy. The US should make it clear that they will use force if necessary to prevent democratic elections in Italy. The United States and Italy signed a ten year treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation. This was the first treaty of its kind entered into by The United States since the war, a point emphasized for Italian consumption.

A, quote, unquote, friendship train toured The United States gathering gifts and then traveled around Italy distributing those gifts. The train was painted red, white, and blue, but, of course, it was, and bore large signs expressing the friendship of American citizens towards the people of Italy. Now you don't wanna go and lose that friendship, do you, by doing what you think is right for your own country? Because the only thing that is right for your country is being an American friend. The United States government stated that it favored Italian trusteeship over some of its former African colonies such as Ethiopia and Libya, a wholly unrealistic proposal that could never come to pass in the postwar world.

The Soviet Union also, by the way, made a similar proposal. In other words, you're just telling them things that they want to hear, not something that could ever actually happen. You're trying to create, in the Italian population, a sense of what they call in the stock market FOMO, a fear of missing out. That if you vote communist, if you don't vote for who America votes for, look at what you're gonna lose out on. You're gonna lose out on the opportunity to continue your, colonial empire.

You're gonna miss out on the opportunity of all of these great gifts that America is giving you. You're gonna miss out on the opportunity of potentially visiting or even immigrating to The United States. If you vote the wrong way, why America's gonna take away your whole future. The US, Great Britain, France maneuvered the Soviet Union into vetoing for the third time a motion that Italy be admitted to the United Nations. The first time, the Russians had expressed their opposition on the grounds that a peace treaty with Italy had not been signed.

After the signing in 1947, they said that they would accept the proposal if other World War two enemies such as Bulgaria, Hungaria, and Romania were also made members. So in other words, the Russians had opposed Italy being admitted as a member of the United Nations because there had been no peace treaty with Italy. And then in when the treaty had been signed, they said that they they still opposed letting Italy into the United Nations because Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania were not also being invited to become members of the United Nations. And they and they vetoed it because they thought that was unfair and partial. The same three allied nations proposed to the Soviet Union that negotiations take place with a view to returning Trieste to Italy, formerly the principal Italian port on the Adriatic Coast bordering Yugoslavia.

Trieste had been made a quote, unquote free city under the terms of the peace treaty. The approval of the Soviet Union was necessary to alter the treaty, and the Western proposal was designed to put the Soviets on the spot, to put the Russians on the spot. The Italian people had an intense sentimental attachment to Trieste, and if the Russians rejected the proposal, it could seriously embarrass the Italian communists. A Soviet acceptance, however, would antagonize their Yugoslav allies. The US, prodded the Russians for a response, but none was forthcoming.

From the Soviet point of view, the most obvious and safest path to follow would have been to delay their answer until after the election, yet they chose to announce their rejection of the proposal only five days before the vote, thus, hammering another nail into the FDP coffin. And again, I'll just repeat, the FDP was the sort of leftist coalition party that included the, so called communist and the so called socialist Italians. A quote, manifesto of peace to freedom loving Italians, unquote, calling upon them to reject communism was sent to premier de Gasperi in its signatories included two former US secretaries of state, a former assistant secretary of state, a former attorney general, a former supreme court justice, a former governor of New York, the former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt herself, and many other prominent personages. This message was presumably suitably publicized throughout Italy, a task which was made easy in the extreme in so much as an estimated 82% of Italian newspapers were in the hands of those unsympathetic to the left ist bloc. More than 200 American labor later labor leaders more than 200 American labor leaders of Italian origin held a conference out of which came a cable sent to 23 daily newspapers throughout Italy, similarly urging thumbs down on the reds.

At the same time, the Italian American Labor Council contributed $50,000 to anti communist labor organizations in Italy. The CIA was already secretly subsidizing such trade unions to counteract the influence of leftist unions. But this was standard agency practice independent of electoral considerations. According to a former CIA officer, when in 1945, the communist came very near to gaining control of labor unions first in Sicily, then in all of Italy and Southern France, cooperation between the OSS and the mafia successfully stemmed the tide. In other words, the forerunner to the CIA, the OSS, collaborated with the mafia to undermine leftist influence in trade unions in Italy and in Southern France.

The CIA by its own later admission gave $1,000,000 to Italian, quote, center parties, a king's ransom in Italy in 1948. Although another, report places the figure at 10,000,000. The agency also forged documents and letters purported to come from the PCI, the Italian Communist Party, which were designed to put the party in a bad light and discredit its leaders. Anonymous books and magazine articles funded by the CIA told in vivid detail about supposed communist activities in Eastern Europe and The Soviet Union. Pamphlets dealt with PCI candidates' sex and personal lives as well as smearing them with the fascist and or anti church brush.

So here you see the CIA was putting out propaganda to slander the character of particular candidates from the Italian Communist Party, detailing personal scandalous stories about them and so forth. This is again something that they use all the time. An American group featuring noted Italian American musicians traveled to Rome to present a series of concerts. President Truman chose a month before the election as the time to transfer 29 merchant ships to the Italian government as a, quote, gesture of friendship and confidence in a democratic Italy. These were Italian vessel vessels that were seized during the war and others to replace those seized and lost.

These were what was returned to Italy or what was sent to Italy were Italian vessels that were seized during the war, And then there were others that were sent along with that that were to replace Italian vessels that were seized and lost during the war. Four days later, the House Appropriations Committee acted swiftly to approve $18,700,000 in additional interim aid funds to Italy. Two weeks later, The United States gave Italy $4,300,000 which was the first payment on wages due to 60,000 former Italian war prisoners in The US who had worked, quote, unquote, voluntarily in the allied cause. This was a revision of the peace treaty, which stipulated that the Italian government was liable for such payments. Six days before the election, the state department made it public that Italy would soon receive $31,000,000 in gold in return for gold looted by the Nazis.

The fact that only a few years earlier, Italy had been the, quote, unquote, enemy fighting alongside the Nazis was now but a dim memory. Water under the bridge. Two days later, the US government authorized two further large shipments of food to Italy, one for $8,000,000 worth of grains. A number of a number of the aid ships upon their arrival in Italy during the election campaign had been unloaded amid ceremony and a speech by the American ambassador. A poster prominent in Italy at the time read, the bread that we eat, 40% Italian flour, 60% American flour sent free of charge.

The postman neglected to mention whether the savings were passed on to the consumer or served to line the pockets of the baking companies. Four days before the election, the American Commission for the Restoration of Italian Monuments announced an additional series of grants to the Italian Ministry of Fine Arts. April 15 was designated free Italy day by the American sympathizers for a free Italy with nationwide observances to be held. The American ambassador, James Clement Dunn, traveled constantly throughout Italy, pointing out to the population on every possible occasion what American aid had meant to them and their country. At the last unloading of food, Dunn declared that the American people were saving Italy from starvation, from chaos, and possible domination from outside.

The irony. You are literally emphasizing right now how you are dominating Italy from outside and saying that you dominating Italy from outside is, saving rescuing them from being dominated from outside. His speeches, usually received wide coverage in the non left press. By contrast, the Italian government prohibited several of its own ambassadors abroad from returning home to campaign for the FDP. In his historic speech of 03/12/1947, which came to be known as the Truman doctrine, president Harry Truman proclaimed, I believe it must be the policy of The United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

I believe that we must assist free people to work out their own destinies in their own way. He might have added, as long as that way is our way. It scarcely needs to be emphasized how hypocritical this promise proved to be, but the voices which spoke out in The United States against their government's crusades in Italy very were were few and barely audible above the roar. The Italian American Committee for Free Elections in Italy held a rally to denounce the propaganda blitz declaring that, quote, thousands of Americans of Italian origin feel deeply humiliated by the continuous flow of suggestions, advice, and pressure, being put on Italians as though they were unable to decide for themselves who to elect. The progressive party also went on record stating, as Americans, we repudiate our government's threat to cut off food from Italy unless the election results please us.

Hungry children must not go unfed because their parents do not vote as ordered from abroad. The party's candidate for president 1948 was Henry Wallace, the former vice president who was an outspoken advocate of genuine detente with the Soviet Union. History did not provide the opportunity to observe what the reaction would have been amongst those who saw nothing wrong with what The United States was doing in Italy if a similar campaign had been launched by the Soviet Union or by the Italian left in The United States on behalf of Wallace. Think about that. This is always a good exercise.

Whenever you see the Americans doing something, whenever you see the The US doing something abroad and the statements that they make abroad, and the the activities that they're engaged in and the type of influence and the interference that they engage in abroad, just ask yourself, could the country that they're interfering in do the same thing in The United States and have it, be similarly applauded and act and and presented as if it was good and righteous, and freedom loving and democratic democratic and so forth? No. America look, any any suggestion of Soviet interference in the elections, any any suggestion of Chinese interference in American elections, of Iranian interference in American elections, And by interference, they actually just mean, even though there hasn't been much actual evidence of it, what they actually just mean is, for example, social media posts. You know? Promoting posts on Facebook or or or other social media platforms that support this candidate against that candidate if the origin of that the origin of those posts is coming from from abroad.

Well, look at what The United States does. They don't do anything but that, and it and it's far more than social media posts. I mean, just look at what they did in Italy. It's an absolute avalanche of propaganda, of funding, of bribing, of threatening, of extortion to try to get the result that they wanted. If any country had tried to do that in The United States, it would have been the even when they weren't doing it, it was they pretended that the communists were trying to take over America, that Soviet Union was trying to take over America, that anyone who was a communist or a leftist or a socialist in America was a Soviet agent trying to undermine and subvert the country and take over the country even if they had no connection whatsoever to the Soviet Union.

They still treated that like, it was a foreign interference and foreign, agitation, foreign instigation to try to, rise up and overthrow the government and impose a communist regime in The United States even when they weren't doing infinitesimal infinitesimal fraction of what America was doing openly, overtly, and covertly in Italy. Though some Italians must have been convinced at times that Stalin himself was the FDP's principal candidate, the actual Soviet intervention in the election hardly merited a single headline. The American press engaged in speculation that the Russians were pouring substantial sums of money into the communist party's coffers. However, a survey carried out by the Italian bureau of the United Press revealed that the anti communist parties spent seven and a half times as much money as the FDP on all forms of propaganda. The Christian Democrats alone, spending four times as much as the FDP.

As for other Soviet actions, Howard k Smith presented this observation. The Russians tried to respond with a few feeble gestures for a while. Some Italian war prisoners were released. Some newsprint was sent to Italy and offered to all parties for their campaign. In other words, just blank newsprint for you to print your own materials on.

But there was no way of resisting but there was no way of resisting what amounted to a tidal wave of American propaganda. There is evidence that the Russians found the show getting too rough for them and actually, became apprehensive of what the Americans and the British reaction to a communist victory at the polls might be. Russia's concern about conflict with the West was also expressed within a month of the Italian elections in one of the celebrated, common form, letters to Tito, accusing the Yugoslavs of trying to involve the Soviets with the western powers when it should have been known that the USSR, after such a heavy war, could not start a new one. The evidence Smith was alluding to was the Soviet rejection of the Trieste proposal, But, by its timing, reported the New York Times, quote, the unexpected, procedure caused some observers to conclude that the Russians had thrown the Italian communist party overboard. The party's newspaper had a difficult time dealing with the story.

Washington did as well for it undermined the fundamental premise of the Italian campaign that the Italian Communist Party and the Soviet Union were indistinguishable as to ends and means. But if, that if you buy the one, you get the other as well. Thus, the suggestion was put forth that perhaps the Soviet rejection was only a tactic to, demonstrate that the that The United States could not keep its promise on Trieste. But the Soviet announcement, had not been accompanied by any such propaganda message, and it would not explain why the Russians, had waited several weeks until near the crucial end to deliver, its body blow to their their Italian comrades. In any event, The United States could only come out smelling a lot sweeter than the Russians.

The idea here is that the decision that the Soviets made with regards to Trieste was potentially them actually throwing the Italian Communist Party under the bus because they were afraid of exactly what the Americans might do if Italy actually did elect a communist government. When the Broadway show had ended its engagement in Italy, the Christian Democrats stood as the clear winner with 48 of the vote. The leftist coalition had been humiliated with a total unexpected polling of but 31%. It had been a crusade of the kind which Anir and Bevan had ascribed to the Tories. The whole art of conservative politics in the twentieth century, the British labor leader wrote, is being deployed to enable wealth to persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power.

And that's the end of chapter two. I hope that he will go on. I think that he does because he he he deals with the different decades. As you see, this was just one year in the history of Italy when Italy was subjected to a massive avalanche of propaganda and intervention and interference by the Americans. That's just one year.

So I hope that he will continue in later chapters, I believe he does, to talk about other examples of American interference and covert operations in Italy because they have been involved in Italian politics for a very, very long time, and they never got out of it, as a matter of fact. From from the from just postwar to operation Gladio to even the Berlusconi years and even Mario Draghi, They they've never not been involved in Italian politics and making sure that they can maintain control over the Italian government and what their policies will be, which has increasingly been more determined by financial institutions like the IMF, and they've they've increasingly used because back in 1948, the IMF didn't have that much power. It existed, but it didn't have that the same kind of power that it does now, and it hadn't completely formed its sort of ethos. Its policy ethos around neoliberalism hadn't been completely, solidified as yet. But, those institutions have been used, maybe more than anything else to control the politics in Italy and to make sure that the that, I mean, even Draghi himself was a former European Central Bank director.

So they they've they've always tried to keep Italy under their thumb, and it's it what they what they meant in 1948 is what they are more openly doing now, which is that it doesn't have anything to do with democracy in the American way of life. It has to do with really neoliberal politics, neoliberal economic policies, what became known as neoliberal economic policies, which again is just another name for the subjugation of an economy to foreign private sector powers. So, okay, that's the end of chapter two. We're now going to be starting on page 50 for the next reading inshallah, and that will begin to talk about Greece, 1947 and to the early nineteen fifties from cradle of democracy to client state. And I hope inshallah, we can do that with a live reading inshallah, maybe tonight or tomorrow.