Howls for Sanguinetti: from State terrorism to Western despotism

Abstract

The life of Gianfranco Sanguinetti (1948–2025), a prominent member of the Situationist International (SI), was marked by uncompromising criticism of the society of the spectacle. His most notable intervention was “Operation Censor” (1975). Using the method of “subversive imposture,” Sanguinetti published an anonymous pamphlet exposing the Italian state intelligence services use of “false flag” terrorism in the repression of the “hot autumn” of 1969. This denunciation was later taken up again in his polemical On Terrorism and the State (1979), published after the defeat of the 1977 movement. In his final years, Sanguinetti returned to publishing political essays in the European alternative press, denouncing the emergence of a new form of domination: “Western despotism,” originating from the dissolution of the USSR and the simultaneous death of the constitutional state in Western countries.