DITW: On Terrorism and the State by Gianfranco Sanguinetti (RIP)

This Wreckage

Sean KB and AP Andy

Music, Arts

4.2 • 970 Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Andy, Varn, and Alex of Antipolitika Journal read and discuss Gianfranco Sanguinetti's 1979 text "On Terrorism and the State."

A follow-up on his "Truthful Report on the Last Chances to Save Capitalism in Italy" hoax from a few years earlier, the text accuses the Italian State of arranging the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, and being behind all acts of terrorism as a short-sighted strategy of defense. The piece also condemns leftwing arm struggle as reproducing the Spectacle, ultimately proposing its own vision of proletarian insurrection.

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In the fun half we judge this thesis in the context of the post 9/11 security state, with a final autobiographical note saying farewell to Sanguinetti, who passed away in Prague as we were planning this episode.

Some obituaries can be read here: https://www.gianfrancosanguinetti.com/

https://x.com/illwilleditions/status/1975228886741868743

https://libcom.org/article/farewell-gianfranco-sanguinetti-1948-2025

Sanguinetti texts: On Terrorism and the State: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gianfranco-sanguinetti-on-terrorism-and-the-state?v=1632580307

Truthful Report: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/censor-truthful-report-on-the-last-chances-to-save-capitalism-in-italy?v=1632737089

The Orgasm of History: https://francosenia.blogspot.com/2017/10/un-orgasmo-della-storia.html

Correspondenses with Debord on SI's dissolution: https://libcom.org/article/notes-serve-history-si-1969-1971-debord-sanguinetti

Split in the International: https://libcom.org/article/veritable-split-international-situationist-international

Song: Nirvana - Dive

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to diving into the wreckage at this wreckage, podcast formerly known as Anthifada.
0:14.6	And I guess that means that we are now too fast to wreckageer.
0:20.5	And today we're talking about Sanguinetti, and I'm going to let Andy introduce this.
0:27.3	We also are missing Sean today. He's not feeling well, but we do have an additional guest, and I will let Andy introduce him as well.
0:33.9	Hey, everybody. So we're going to talk today about John Franco Sanguinetti, who we actually had planned this episode a couple weeks ago. We started talking about it after the tragic assassination of Charles Kirk and the immediate counterterrorism, oppressive measures following that.
0:56.4	And so mostly we're going to focus on a text he wrote in 1979,
1:01.6	terrorism and the state, sort of reflecting on the years of lead,
1:07.9	the strategy of tension, gladio, all that stuff in Italy. And then actually the day that
1:12.9	we had first discussed recording, we heard the news that he passed away in Prague. So rest in peace,
1:20.8	Sanguinetti will try to do his work justice today. And we have a guest who is currently in the
1:27.2	US studying Sanguinetti.
1:30.2	Her name is Alex from the Balkan Anarchist Journal Anti-Politica.
1:34.6	Hi.
1:35.2	She'll be off-camera.
1:36.6	She can tell us a lot about Sanguinetti.
1:38.4	And so I was thinking maybe we could start on the sort of background of, you know,
1:44.4	the historical background in which these texts were written,
1:47.2	unless you have anything either of you want to add before we begin.
1:50.2	No, I think it's important to just go straight into it.
1:52.5	Considering there's been a lot of years of lead talk
1:54.8	and a lot of misunderstanding of what that was,
1:58.3	you know, even comparing it to the days of rage in the United States, which is kind of misleading.
	...

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