Strategy of tension

The purpose is to create a general feeling of insecurity in the population and make people seek security in a strong government.

[11] According to the sociologist Franco Ferraresi, the term "strategy of tension" was first used in an article on the Piazza Fontana bombing in The Observer newspaper, published on 14 December 1969.

[12][13] Neal Ascherson, one of those responsible for that article, later clarified that the expression had been suggested to him by the journalists Antonio Gambino and Claudio Risé, both of L'Espresso, who had been in conversation with him in the days immediately following the explosion of the Piazza Fontana bomb.

Aldo Giannuli [it], a historian who worked as a consultant to the parliamentary terrorism commission, wrote that he considered the Left Democrats' report as dictated primarily by domestic political considerations rather than historical ones: "Since they have been in power the Left Democrats have given us very little help in gaining access to security service archives," he said.

[16] Ganser also alleges that Operation Gladio, an effort to organize stay-behind guerrillas and resistance in the event of a communist takeover of Italy by the Eastern Bloc, continued into the 1970s and supplied the far-right neo-fascist movements[example needed] with weapons.