This article by Harley Schlanger will appear in the next issue of EIR. It is still in a draft form and not for public circulation.
The murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a public speaking event on Utah Valley College on September 9 has dramatically escalated the partisan anger being whipped up through sections of the U.S. population. Kirk had achieved a high profile as a prominent supporter of President Trump, through building a conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA (TPUSA), which has been credited by many with aiding Trump’s 2024 victory. With more than 3,500 chapters throughout the country, including 900 on college campuses and more than 1,200 in high schools, it is not surprising that his assassination has unleashed violent rhetoric, including forecasts of a civil war between supporters of Trump’s MAGA movement and corrupt establishment Democrats.
Despite numerous unanswered questions about the perpetrator, and the motivation for his action, the media has been featuring the most provocative statements to evoke violent reaction, by predictably highlighting comments aimed at activating “left-right” profiles. For example, from the “right,” Steve Bannon is describing the squaring off between the these two supposed sides as a “war,” and Elon Musk is attacking Democrats as the “party of murder”—and these are some of the milder comments. From the “left” are profiled charges that this is Trump’s “Reichstag Fire,” the excuse he needs to carry out an “authoritarian crack down,” to censor opposition to his policies, increase surveillance, and expand mass deportations of “unwelcome” and “criminal” aliens. In his homage to Kirk, Trump ignored the recent concerns and disagreements raised by Kirk—for example, his questioning of Trump’s support for what he described as Netanyahu’s “ethnic cleansing,” opposition to the launching of a regime change strategy for Iran, and the alleged cover-up by the Justice Department of the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein—and threatened a tough crackdown against the “radical leftists,” communists, and fascists he claimed were responsible for the climate which led to Kirk’s assassination.
The charges, taunts, and mostly unsubstantiated claims from each side are given full coverage, with the podcasters competing with the mainstream news, leaving little room for reporting of leading developments not related to the Kirk assassination. For example, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu sent the Israel Defense Forces into Gaza City, to enact a murderous assault to “finish off” Hamas—which coincided with the opening of hearings at the UN General Assembly to find a means of ending what is now generally acknowledged as a genocide—Netanyahu put on a performance, claiming that his “dear friend” Kirk maintained unwavering support for his policies. There was little coverage in the media of the growing opposition among Kirk’s TPUSA members to the rampage underway in Gaza and the West Bank by the Zionist extremists, an opposition which was disclosed by close allies of Kirk, such as Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. The media silence on the substance of comments from opponents of Kirk on the left and right allowed the Zionist Lobby to attribute their opposition to anti-Semitism, and demand a crackdown against the alleged anti-Semitism they were accused of spreading.
As this tension between the “left” and “right” is stoked, there are some who recognize this as a replication of the “Strategy of Tension” which gripped Italy from the late 1960s until the murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro in May 1978. Deadly terrorist acts were committed by the “left” and “right”, which led to tough anti-terror crackdowns. As Italian political expert Claudio Celani has reported, the terrorism ended shortly after Moro’s lifeless body was found.[1]
The Strategy of Tension
The Strategy of Tension (from Italy “strategia della tensione”) is defined in Wikipedia as “a political policy that encourages violent struggle to create a climate of fear and insecurity,” leading the public to seek security in a strong national-security state.” It involves “deployment of state or non-state actors to promote violence and chaos to manipulate public perception and political outcomes.”
To understand the multiply-connected effects of the assassination of Republican activist Charlie Kirk, the above definition is a useful starting point, but not fully adequate.
What is overlooked in this simplified theory is that the goal of those behind it was not just to establish an authoritarian government, but to do so to prevent Moro from fundamentally transforming Italian politics, by legitimizing a role in government for the Communist Party, the so-called “historic compromise.” This was an Italian version of Germany’s Ost-Politik, of pursuing detente with the Soviet Union at a moment of increasing concerns over the escalating geopolitical frictions of the Cold War.
As Celani reported, many suspected that the authors of the Italian terror wave were British and American intelligence officers (MI6 and CIA in particular), deploying terror assets operating under NATO’s Operation Gladio. These terror networks included former Nazis and Communists, who were recruited after the war, to be deployed to undermine any effort to end the post-World War II division of Europe into two competing financial and military empires. The post-war division occurred only after the British realized that Winston Churchill’s plan to invade the USSR, a plan known as Operation Unthinkable which had been drafted by the Chiefs of Staff and was ready to go by May 1945, would not succeed. (Footnote: Fulton, Missouri Iron Curtain speech and creation of NATO was the fallback option, backed by Gladio special provocations, which were used to make the Strategy of Tension a semi-permanent feature of divided Europe.)
A more dynamic conception of the Strategy of Tension was provided by American economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche in a March 24, 2004 article published in the Executive Intelligence Review, “How Must We Deal with the New Turn in this Worsening Crisis?” LaRouche was writing about two terror incidents which occurred during the period of U.S. involvement in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which had been launched as part of the post-9/11 War on Terror by the Bush-Cheney administration, with substantial guidance from the British.
LaRouche wrote:
