6 ms·

Operation Gladio

123 points by zeusly 4y ago

nextstep 4y ago
The US has a massive budget for regime change, both overt and covert, and has for almost 7 decades. And we wonder why right wing politics seems to be flourishing?
- LtWorf 4y ago
  Let's not forget financing the sicilian mafia to keep the farmers at bay.
mach5 4y ago
gladio never stopped, it just came home
- cbreezyyall 4y ago
  you say lone wolf mass shooter, i say domestic gladio.
  - adultSwim 4y ago
    I say reverberations of the Iraq War
hackandthink 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daowxbaeurw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daowxbaeurw Oktoberfest Bombing München 1980, Operation Gladio from time to time in german media: the police stopped investigating Neonazi involvement.
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  Not sure if Daniele Ganser the best source for this…
  - hackandthink 4y ago
    me neither, I read this mostly in Sueddeutsche Zeitung
areoform 4y ago
If you are wondering how it got so far off the rails, then look no further than the fact that they hired, trained, and equipped former Nazi SS officers. Not Wehrmacht grunts. Nor enlisted SS grunts. But SS officers. Less than three years after the Nuremberg trials. The trials where a sitting Supreme Court justice took time off to act as Chief Prosecutor on behalf of the US to condemn their bosses to death. They did it despite plenty of contemporaneous objections to the contrary. > Some of the newly released documents show that between 1949 and 1955, the CIA organized "stay-behind" networks of German agents to provide intelligence from behind enemy lines, should the Soviet Union invade western Germany. > One network included at least two former Nazi SS members -- Staff Sgt. Heinrich Hoffman and Lt. Col. Hans Rues -- and one was run by Lt. Col. Walter Kopp, a former German army officer referred to by the CIA as an "unreconstructed Nazi." The network was disbanded in 1953 amid political concerns that some members' neo-Nazi sympathies would be exposed in the West German press. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/06/AR2006060601555_pf.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/0... The CIA has an uncanny talent for arming and training future and former enemies of the US and most of the world.
- scaramanga 4y ago
  That's nothing, wait until you find out that the Japanese LDP was founded by class A nazi war criminals that the US released from prison :) If you think it's shocking that the US works with fascists, it can only because you know nothing at all about US foreign policy and how it works. The idea that it's "off the rails" rather than something that repeats so ofte it's not even interesting is _buck wild_ :)
  - areoform 4y ago
    I try to look towards the better angels of everyone’s nature. Being jaded and cynical rarely solves problems.
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      "The CIA can't seem to stop itself from training and supporting fascist movements" is actually a useful pattern to notice if the problem you're trying to solve is "where do these fascist movements keep coming from??" Considering that cynical is a judgment that I don't think is very useful here. It also assumes there is some valid, correct, non-cynical view of the CIA that assumes they don't do this. Which is fantastical, at least as useless a way to approach the world as cynicism.
LtWorf 4y ago
Ah yes. Bringing democracy democracy, but also arming terrorists just in case people vote incorrectly. How not to be grateful for this?
- MonkeyClub 4y ago
  There are many ways to be ungrateful, the best ones end with drone strikes in your vicinity /s
- scaramanga 4y ago
  Oh yes, when the CIA was formed to interfere in Italian elections, "democracy" was definitely on the mind of US foreign policy officials :)
- warinukraine 4y ago
  Better dead than red.
rainworld 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabant_killers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabant_killers
- joenot443 4y ago
  This was a wild read, thanks for the link. Is the consensus in the EU that Gladio was involved, even if they never came out and admitted it?
  - smetj 4y ago
    The suspicion of such a link existed and has been officially investigated but never proven. Also worth noting that despite intense police investigations (still ongoing) not a single person was able to be charged for these heinous crimes which ripped apart and ruined families for no reason. The public consensus is that (a part of) the police/gendarmes/government/state security apparatus back then was involved and probably still is given the borderline comical incompetency making any official progress in the investigation. If I'm not mistaken, the investigation will be dropped in 2025 if no new elements come to light. https://bendevannijvel.com/ https://bendevannijvel.com/ contains interesting information and works well with Google translate.
- xanathar 4y ago
  There are some striking similarities with the White Uno Gang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Uno_Gang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Uno_Gang
rizoma_dev 4y ago
Little domino tile: following the end of WWII, the US installs terrorist cells in Europe in fear of a communist takeover Big domino tile: Silvio Berlusconi becomes prime minister of Italy in 1994
- MonkeyClub 4y ago
  Silvio is also tied to the P2 lodge, right?
  - rizoma_dev 4y ago
    Sure is. He was also sentenced for a ludicrous amount of tax evasion while in office and he is still in politics
  - sph 4y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due Usually one doesn't have to go very deep into secret societies and political ties before landing on the actual and often-memed-about Freemasons. This variant of the story ties nicely with Gladio, Italian intelligence and secret services, politics, far right groups and mysterious deaths in the 70s and 80s. Oh, and of course Silvio Berlusconi. P2 is the Italian version of the 9/11 conspiracy theories. Not saying it's bollocks, just wanting to point out how widespread it is in Italy, but I don't think it's very well known outside of it.
    - xanathar 4y ago
      Well, Licio Gelli (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licio_Gelli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licio_Gelli) is not just a "theory". Then, one can theorize whether there is more about P2 than it has been said or not, especially when it comes to well known politician names, but I wouldn't rule it out as a conspiracy theory: there were official prosecutions, a special commission (whose words incidentally say clearly "[P2] cannot be considered as just another political scandal. This is way different." (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissione_P2 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissione_P2)) and special laws that were written/changed for this precise reason. Then of course when "freemasons" are named, people imagination roams wild, but it was "something" not just pure fantasy/speculation.
Dhareck 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtd7TeT2U0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtd7TeT2U0Q It's a good summary, in Italian, of the Gladio operation in Italy
formerly_proven 4y ago
For “in case of soviet invasion break glass” cases you would’ve wanted a contingency like this, could just do without literal nazis, war criminals (plenty of opportunities for that once the soviets invaded, I imagine) and terrorists. Oh and maybe manage to keep it secret from the enemy, Germany. JFC sometimes I wonder if there is anything German security services don’t fuck up, the distrust from NATO allies is and was certainly well earned.
- adultSwim 4y ago
  Seeing this pattern come up so many times, working with the most extreme elements of a country, it appears deliberate. I imagine we picked it up from the British, and other imperial powers.
  - zardo 4y ago
    Who else is going to sign up for the job? Especially as it moves from sabotage in case of Soviet invasion to terrorism and murder against Italian communists, and against the general public while framing Italian communists.
motohagiography 4y ago
It's easy to kick up at the US and its spectacularly disreputable IC, but it's worth recognizing that totalitarianism is a virus that preys on the morally weak and subordinates them to dissolving their own socities and cultures. These movements operate as trivial pyramid schemes of betrayal and suffering, and that's what makes them stupid enough to scale. The communist flavour of these movements is by every measure as evil as the nazi one the allies had only just defeated, and a few extra casulties against its instigators to prevent them from taking hold and instituting their policies of mass starvation, mass imprisonment in labour camps, confiscation, and executions seems like an act of both charity and mercy. I don't see how anyone who laughed and cheered watching the movie Inglourious Basterds (which was undeniably fun) could really object to any similar operation against the vanguard of their communist equivalents. The countries that failed to stop the expansion of that movement are remembered for their killing fields, their famines, their mass executions of people trying to leave, their national bankruptcies, and their meth dealing god emperors.
- warinukraine 4y ago
  Thank you for this. Damn right.
Slava_Propanei 4y ago
[dead]
UltraViolence 4y ago
I'm vehemently against these "stay behind" sabotage troops. When you look at how they fared in WWII you'll notice they didn't make a difference militarily, but did lead to enormous casualties amongst the civilian population, mostly from reprisals. I believe we should fight to win or lose and give up. Fighting a guerilla war when you country's occupied will not make any difference in the end. Worse still, these so-called paramilitaries often branched out into crime and human rights abuses. They might even turn against the government that created them.

123 points by zeusly 4y ago

The US has a massive budget for regime change, both overt and covert, and has for almost 7 decades. And we wonder why right wing politics seems to be flourishing?

LtWorf 4y ago
Let's not forget financing the sicilian mafia to keep the farmers at bay.

mach5 4y ago

gladio never stopped, it just came home

cbreezyyall 4y ago
you say lone wolf mass shooter, i say domestic gladio.
- adultSwim 4y ago
  I say reverberations of the Iraq War

hackandthink 4y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daowxbaeurw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daowxbaeurw Oktoberfest Bombing München 1980, Operation Gladio from time to time in german media: the police stopped investigating Neonazi involvement.

pantalaimon 4y ago
Not sure if Daniele Ganser the best source for this…
- hackandthink 4y ago
  me neither, I read this mostly in Sueddeutsche Zeitung

areoform 4y ago

If you are wondering how it got so far off the rails, then look no further than the fact that they hired, trained, and equipped former Nazi SS officers. Not Wehrmacht grunts. Nor enlisted SS grunts. But SS officers. Less than three years after the Nuremberg trials. The trials where a sitting Supreme Court justice took time off to act as Chief Prosecutor on behalf of the US to condemn their bosses to death. They did it despite plenty of contemporaneous objections to the contrary. > Some of the newly released documents show that between 1949 and 1955, the CIA organized "stay-behind" networks of German agents to provide intelligence from behind enemy lines, should the Soviet Union invade western Germany. > One network included at least two former Nazi SS members -- Staff Sgt. Heinrich Hoffman and Lt. Col. Hans Rues -- and one was run by Lt. Col. Walter Kopp, a former German army officer referred to by the CIA as an "unreconstructed Nazi." The network was disbanded in 1953 amid political concerns that some members' neo-Nazi sympathies would be exposed in the West German press. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/06/AR2006060601555_pf.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/0... The CIA has an uncanny talent for arming and training future and former enemies of the US and most of the world.

scaramanga 4y ago
That's nothing, wait until you find out that the Japanese LDP was founded by class A nazi war criminals that the US released from prison :) If you think it's shocking that the US works with fascists, it can only because you know nothing at all about US foreign policy and how it works. The idea that it's "off the rails" rather than something that repeats so ofte it's not even interesting is _buck wild_ :)
- areoform 4y ago
  I try to look towards the better angels of everyone’s nature. Being jaded and cynical rarely solves problems.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    "The CIA can't seem to stop itself from training and supporting fascist movements" is actually a useful pattern to notice if the problem you're trying to solve is "where do these fascist movements keep coming from??" Considering that cynical is a judgment that I don't think is very useful here. It also assumes there is some valid, correct, non-cynical view of the CIA that assumes they don't do this. Which is fantastical, at least as useless a way to approach the world as cynicism.

LtWorf 4y ago

Ah yes. Bringing democracy democracy, but also arming terrorists just in case people vote incorrectly. How not to be grateful for this?

MonkeyClub 4y ago
There are many ways to be ungrateful, the best ones end with drone strikes in your vicinity /s
scaramanga 4y ago
Oh yes, when the CIA was formed to interfere in Italian elections, "democracy" was definitely on the mind of US foreign policy officials :)
warinukraine 4y ago
Better dead than red.

rainworld 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabant_killers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabant_killers

joenot443 4y ago
This was a wild read, thanks for the link. Is the consensus in the EU that Gladio was involved, even if they never came out and admitted it?
- smetj 4y ago
  The suspicion of such a link existed and has been officially investigated but never proven. Also worth noting that despite intense police investigations (still ongoing) not a single person was able to be charged for these heinous crimes which ripped apart and ruined families for no reason. The public consensus is that (a part of) the police/gendarmes/government/state security apparatus back then was involved and probably still is given the borderline comical incompetency making any official progress in the investigation. If I'm not mistaken, the investigation will be dropped in 2025 if no new elements come to light. https://bendevannijvel.com/ https://bendevannijvel.com/ contains interesting information and works well with Google translate.
xanathar 4y ago
There are some striking similarities with the White Uno Gang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Uno_Gang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Uno_Gang

rizoma_dev 4y ago

Little domino tile: following the end of WWII, the US installs terrorist cells in Europe in fear of a communist takeover Big domino tile: Silvio Berlusconi becomes prime minister of Italy in 1994

MonkeyClub 4y ago
Silvio is also tied to the P2 lodge, right?
- rizoma_dev 4y ago
  Sure is. He was also sentenced for a ludicrous amount of tax evasion while in office and he is still in politics
- sph 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due Usually one doesn't have to go very deep into secret societies and political ties before landing on the actual and often-memed-about Freemasons. This variant of the story ties nicely with Gladio, Italian intelligence and secret services, politics, far right groups and mysterious deaths in the 70s and 80s. Oh, and of course Silvio Berlusconi. P2 is the Italian version of the 9/11 conspiracy theories. Not saying it's bollocks, just wanting to point out how widespread it is in Italy, but I don't think it's very well known outside of it.
  - xanathar 4y ago
    Well, Licio Gelli (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licio_Gelli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licio_Gelli) is not just a "theory". Then, one can theorize whether there is more about P2 than it has been said or not, especially when it comes to well known politician names, but I wouldn't rule it out as a conspiracy theory: there were official prosecutions, a special commission (whose words incidentally say clearly "[P2] cannot be considered as just another political scandal. This is way different." (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissione_P2 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissione_P2)) and special laws that were written/changed for this precise reason. Then of course when "freemasons" are named, people imagination roams wild, but it was "something" not just pure fantasy/speculation.

Dhareck 4y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtd7TeT2U0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtd7TeT2U0Q It's a good summary, in Italian, of the Gladio operation in Italy

formerly_proven 4y ago

For “in case of soviet invasion break glass” cases you would’ve wanted a contingency like this, could just do without literal nazis, war criminals (plenty of opportunities for that once the soviets invaded, I imagine) and terrorists. Oh and maybe manage to keep it secret from the enemy, Germany. JFC sometimes I wonder if there is anything German security services don’t fuck up, the distrust from NATO allies is and was certainly well earned.

adultSwim 4y ago
Seeing this pattern come up so many times, working with the most extreme elements of a country, it appears deliberate. I imagine we picked it up from the British, and other imperial powers.
- zardo 4y ago
  Who else is going to sign up for the job? Especially as it moves from sabotage in case of Soviet invasion to terrorism and murder against Italian communists, and against the general public while framing Italian communists.

motohagiography 4y ago

It's easy to kick up at the US and its spectacularly disreputable IC, but it's worth recognizing that totalitarianism is a virus that preys on the morally weak and subordinates them to dissolving their own socities and cultures. These movements operate as trivial pyramid schemes of betrayal and suffering, and that's what makes them stupid enough to scale. The communist flavour of these movements is by every measure as evil as the nazi one the allies had only just defeated, and a few extra casulties against its instigators to prevent them from taking hold and instituting their policies of mass starvation, mass imprisonment in labour camps, confiscation, and executions seems like an act of both charity and mercy. I don't see how anyone who laughed and cheered watching the movie Inglourious Basterds (which was undeniably fun) could really object to any similar operation against the vanguard of their communist equivalents. The countries that failed to stop the expansion of that movement are remembered for their killing fields, their famines, their mass executions of people trying to leave, their national bankruptcies, and their meth dealing god emperors.

warinukraine 4y ago
Thank you for this. Damn right.

Slava_Propanei 4y ago

[dead]

UltraViolence 4y ago

I'm vehemently against these "stay behind" sabotage troops. When you look at how they fared in WWII you'll notice they didn't make a difference militarily, but did lead to enormous casualties amongst the civilian population, mostly from reprisals. I believe we should fight to win or lose and give up. Fighting a guerilla war when you country's occupied will not make any difference in the end. Worse still, these so-called paramilitaries often branched out into crime and human rights abuses. They might even turn against the government that created them.