The strategy of tension (Italian: strategia della tensione) is a way to control and manipulate public opinion using fear, propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, agents provocateurs, false flag terrorism actions and even terroristic actions.
The term was coined in Italy during the trials that followed the 1970s and 1980s terror attacks and murders committed by neofascist terrorists (such as Ordine Nuovo, Avanguardia Nazionale or Fronte Nazionale). The terrorists were backed by intelligence agencies, the P2 masonic lodge and Gladio, a NATO secret "stay-behind" army set up to perform guerrilla and resistance activities should Italy be successfully invaded by the Soviet bloc (there were equivalent armies in most Western states), which due to its clandestine nature was largely unmonitored and so unchecked by civilian agencies and began to pursue its own right wing, anti-communist agenda using the rather violent means at its disposal including false flag terrorist attacks.
The suspected aim of these crimes was to make the public believe that the bombings were committed by a communist insurgency, to promote the formation of an authoritarian government, and to prevent the growing Italian Communist Party (PCI) from joining the ruling Democrazia Cristiana (DC) in a government of national reconciliation ("historical compromise").
Piazza Fontana's bombing, in December 1969, marks the beginning of the "strategia della tensione", which ends with the Bologna railway station bombing in 1980 or soon afterwards. In 2000, a Parliamentary report from the Olive Tree coalition concluded that the strategy of tension followed by Gladio had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI, and to a certain degree also the PSI, from reaching executive power in the country".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tensionSo, what is it when RW'ers here in America chastise fellow Americans for criticizing a war?
Look at Ann Coulter, and then look at the definition of Strategy of Tension above, aren't there some similarities?
And remember Bush's almost addiction to propaganda and secrecy?
Propaganda, extremist pundits, a never-ending war, fear, can anyone look at this and say that the RW is not trying to pull of a Strategy of Tension against the United States?