Treading On Kings

Most of what the world saw and knows about the G8 summit held in Genoa in July 2001 is that there was violence and that one demonstrator, a 23-year-old Italian boy named Carlo Giuliani, was shot and killed by an Italian carabiniere. But the equation “Genoa = violence” is deceptive. There were an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 demonstrators in Genoa, of whom, according to various estimates, between 500 to 5,000 were violent. Violence did, however, play a crucial part in the Genoa summit, as well as in the way in which the summit was perceived and how it will be remembered.

After the summit weekend, the Italian Ministry of the Interior issued what read almost like a war bulletin: 280 arrests and 231 wounded, of whom 121 were demonstrators, 94 were police, and 16 were journalists. Of the 280 arrested, 105 were foreigners. 150 of those arrested were released almost immediately, while 130, 78 of whom were foreigners, were held pending further investigation. However, protest groups maintain that the number of wounded demonstrators was much higher, and that published statistics represent only those who received hospitalization. They also consider the estimates of injuries among the police to be too high.

When the smoke cleared from the streets of Genoa, the net result of the violence was that large numbers of peaceful demonstrators were beaten by police, while a small contingent of genuinely violent demonstrators—in particular, the so-called Black Bloc (easily recognizable because they dress in black from head to toe and generally wear black ski masks)—were allowed to rampage through certain parts of the city, breaking windows, looting stores, setting cars on fire, and breaking bank machines. Whether by design or incompetence—or some combination of both—the violence produced a clear political effect: hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters were physically intimidated by both the police and the Black Bloc, and yet at the same time were discredited in the eyes of worldwide public opinion, heavily influenced by television images of violent factions running wild through the streets.

The violence occurred in a very particular political context. The center-right coalition of Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian media tycoon-turned-politician, had recently assumed power, and the summit was seen as a “test” of the new government. In the weeks leading up to the summit, a member of the new government coalition, the “post-fascist” party Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance), anxious to solidify its place as the party of law and order, made it clear that it intended to play a major role in Genoa. Alleanza Nazionale announced it was sending a delegation of parliamentarians to Genoa as an act of solidarity with police. And Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini—the head of Alleanza Nazionale (known for his statement that Mussolini was the greatest statesman of the 20th century)—was in the command room of the carabinieri(Italy’s military police) during the weekend of the demonstration, a highly unusual political presence in what was supposed to be a purely professional context. It is difficult not to see a connection between this political presence and some of the excesses and abuses that occurred in Genoa: a number of the demonstrators who were arrested—as well as suffering severe beatings at the hands of the police—were forced to sing the fascist song Faccetta Nera, and chant Viva il Duce! and Viva Pinochet!