Italy, Brescia massacre: "The new investigation leads to the NATO command in Verona"

Today in Italy, we commemorate the massacre of Piazza della Loggia in Brescia in 1974

It is a massacre on which the judiciary is finally shedding light, after a very long time.

There were three levels to that massacre.

First level of the Brescia massacre: the neo-fascists, the bomb.

Second level: the secret services.

Third level: the NATO command in Verona (Italy).

At the Eirene Festival, during the debate on Angelo Baracca's book "NATO and the Mysteries of Italy" (Left, 2023), we tackled the thorny issue of the "third level" of the terrorist strategy in Italy, namely international cover-ups

The massacre of Brescia in 1974, but the same applies, for example, to the massacre of Bologna in 1980, involves the involvement of the secret services, which for a long time we referred to as "deviant services."

But were they deviated by whom? By the neo-fascists?

That massacre cannot be explained simply by the actions of the neo-fascist "foot soldiers," duly mentioned today by President Sergio Mattarella as "right-wing subversion." There was a second level, which involved the cover-ups within the secret apparatus of the State, and then the highest level that provided protection to all: the NATO FTASE command in Verona. It is not conspiracy theorists from the extreme left who say this today, but rather the 280,000-page investigation documents. That extensive documentation leads to the Allied Land Forces Southern Europe (FTASE) command of NATO, located in Verona.

Can we still speak of secret services "deviated" by the neo-fascists? Of officers nostalgic for the Duce? Or was there instead a strategy of destabilization that did not look to the past but to the geopolitics of that time, specifically the imposing presence of the largest communist party in Europe? To the welding together of that reality with the broader democratic and progressive framework that was forming with the labor movement and the student movement?

These questions can be the basis for political assessments and reflections.

However, what we emphasized today at the Eirene Festival, on the day of the Piazza della Loggia massacre in Brescia, is the objective role played by the political-military alliance of NATO. Thanks to the new investigations carried out by the judiciary, the truth is getting closer.