Romans-sur-Isère shot and reply. But there is also Dublin. And before that, there is the attack in Madrid against a Vox founder and the clashes in Rotterdam. The strategy of tension follows very precise patterns.
The paradigm is that of Italy in the 60s-80s, which works as follows. First, seditious environments are allowed to agitate with impunity, without intervening to extinguish the fire. This happened in Italy with insurrectionary environments of the far left, and it is happening today with jihadist environments throughout Europe.
For a long time, when these environments take action, the culprits are not identified. If it’s not possible to arrest them, they are released from prison as soon as possible. The judiciary handling their cases is always made to be very lenient. This convinces them that they are immune.
Terrorists are always a minority, even among their own people. For the strategy of tension to succeed and for them to find the support and necessary reinforcements, a “state of threat” must be created, and a scarecrow is set up for this purpose.
In 1970, in Italy, it was the attempted Borghese coup, an impossible coup that saw the same protagonists give up at the last minute but allowed the Feltrinelli gang to gather concerned people and thus give life to red terrorism.
In France, the “threat” for the suburbs has been the Zemmour phenomenon, carefully staged and given disproportionate publicity, along with incomprehensible funding.
By granting justification and a reason for mobilization to the terrorist side, we move on to the rearmament phase. The Italian far left was armed by many different actors, and the same is true for the suburbs. Rearmament has never been opposed because internal disorder favors the maintenance of oligarchies in every nation and is part of international power games.
From rearmament, we move to spectacularization that produces imitations. Crépol, on November 18, is clearly an imitation of the butchery of October 7 at the Israeli rave party.
“Killing a Frenchman is not a crime” replaces “killing a fascist is not a crime” because it is impossible that the murderers of the sixteen-year-old Thomas, who arrived in Crépol from the La Monnaie district of Romans-sur-Isère, shouting jihadist slogans and “death to whites,” have not been identified or arreste.
The meticulously constructed threat has worked because brave young people gathered to teach the murderers a lesson but were brutally beaten by the police and then got into trouble with the law, something that did not happen often to jihadist killers; in this case as well, it is evident how the velvet glove is used with the murderers of Crépol, and how the kidnapping, stripping, and torture of a boy at La Monnaie by the gang are downplayed. In reversed circumstances, they would all have been captured within a few hours and would have swiftly faced direct convictions resulting in sentences around twenty years in prison.
We are still in the patterns of the strategy of tension because terrorists must grow until it seems useful, and those who oppose them must not have freedom of movement because, due to them, a mass imitation phenomenon could occur that risks closing the game.
It is a spiral that can become disastrous. The two sides do not enjoy the same legal guarantees because terrorists, as long as they are useful, are allowed anything, while those defending their nation are brutally discriminated against. But in the long run, everyone will pay dearly, except the puppeteers.
What must absolutely not be done in this situation is to lose one’s calm. It is not possible to resolve everything with a pitched battle on mined terrain. It is necessary to keep nerves steady, assume political clarity, media savvy, and practice relationship-building that allows breaking the spiral and avoiding the forced choice between repression and surrender.
It is not at all about throwing in the towel but reflecting and not being caught off guard as always. Because so far, it’s déjà vu.
