CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

From Genova to Gaza — Twenty-Five Years After the State Murder of Carlo Giuliani

On July 20, 2001, in the historic port city of Genova, the global ruling class met behind the Red Zone while the Italian state showed the world exactly how far it would go to protect them. Silvio Berlusconi played host to George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and the rest of the G8. Outside, hundreds of thousands of people from every corner of the planet had gathered to declare that another world is possible. Among them was Carlo Giuliani, twenty-three years old, the son of a CGIL trade-union militant, raised in a family that understood class struggle as a living tradition.

What happened that day—and in the nights that followed—was not a “clash.” It was a deliberate, coordinated suspension of the rule of law. Italian and international police turned the streets into a war zone. Residents watched as young people on their way to the beach were beaten in clouds of tear gas. Old women and shopkeepers were attacked simply for being on their own streets. The New World Order, cornered by a rising global movement, lashed out with the ferocity of a wounded beast.

In the many conversations I have had over the years with Italians who were there that week, a common thread always emerges. They speak of a sensation that is almost impossible to describe unless you lived it: the sudden, total suspension of the basic rights of individuals to protest, to gather, even to walk the streets of their own city. The rule of law itself was set aside. Police forces were given full reign to be as violent as they wanted, with the open support of the Italian state and the world leaders gathered behind the barriers. After the Battle of Seattle two years earlier — the uprising so powerfully documented by Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn in 5 Days That Shook the World — it felt as if a lesson had to be taught to the international movement from below: a crushing blow delivered, fear deliberately instilled. The message was unmistakable: this far, and no further.

Carlo was one of those who fought back. When the Carabinieri jeep found itself surrounded in Piazza Alimonda, he picked up a fire extinguisher. A shot rang out from inside the vehicle. The bullet struck him in the head. Then the jeep ran over his body—backwards and forwards. He was left to die on the pavement while the leaders of the richest nations on earth continued their........

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