"Genoa has been a setback for those who believe in peaceful and positive protest . . . What we have seen here have been acts of stupid thuggery."
This assessment of the G8 summit in Genoa did not come from a government, police or "establishment" spokesperson. Rather it came from Mr Jammie Drummond, a spokesman for the UK-based movement "Drop The Debt".
If before this summit, commentators were talking about "two Genoas" - that of the government delegations and that of the anti-globalisation protest movement - then now it has to be acknowledged that there is a "third" Genoa. Namely, that of the violent protest movement, made up of ill-defined, little-structured anarchist movements like the "Black Bloc" (German police allegedly gave them this name) group which caused much of the unrest at the weekend.
Arriving here in Genoa and travelling through a ghost town of empty roads, shuttered-up shops, no traffic, no citizens and a suffocating police presence, you could have been forgiven for believing that you had woken up in Santiago, Chile, on the morning after Gen Pinochet's coup. Is a G8 summit worth such a massive military and financial deployment (around £80 million) everyone asked.
Walking along central Corso Sardegna during Saturday's 70,000-strong protest march, the question asked itself again. The marchers around us, of all nationalities, all seemed good natured and cheerful. Many of them were middle-aged, middleclass professional people. Trumpets sounded, drums were banged and even a local Friesian cow joined in the festive mood.
Halfway up Corso Sardegna, however, we were starkly reminded that these protesters, many of them linked to the mainstream anti-globalisation movement, were not the full picture. A branch of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro bore the dramatic signs of a visit by the "Black Bloc" the day before.
The bank had not so much been attacked as destroyed. Where there was once a front door, there was now just a gaping hole in concrete blocks. Not only had everything portable inside the bank been removed but the floors and the ceiling had both been ripped up.
Outside the door, the "cash point" had been literally smashed out of the wall, reduced to bits of broken plastic and glass. The situation was the same at the petrol station next door where the "Black Bloc" had ripped two petrol pumps out of the ground.
Even as we were assessing this damage, the sickly smell of tear gas was in the air. Back down towards the harbour front, the "Black Bloc" (and others) were in action again. The scenes were all too familiar. The rioters threw cobblestones and Molotov cocktails at the police who, from a distance, replied with tear gas. No one who had been in the Sturla area when the marchers gathered at around 11 a.m. could have been surprised. People who turn up for a demonstration wearing helmets, masks and body padding as well as wielding iron bars or heavy sticks, are unlikely to have entirely peaceful intentions. Strangely, however, Black Bloc supporters could also be seen wearing the designer labels they profess contempt for, prior to donning their `working clothes'.
The anarchist fringe seems to be against everyone and everything, the media included. As a German TV crew waited and watched on Saturday morning, they were horrified to see a couple of the anarchists walk behind a local Genoa TV crew and viciously strike the camera operator with iron bars, breaking the camerawoman's leg.
Nor is the anarchist anger directed merely at "capitalist symbols", at the police and at the media. The peaceful protest movement was also a constant target. Mr Vittorio Agnoletto, a spokesman for the Genoa Social Forum, an umbrella body that brought together many of the Italian anti-globalisation movements, was twice attacked by anarchists on Saturday and, for his own safety, changed hotels that night.
Earlier in the afternoon, Sister Mara Rossi, an Italian missionary nun based in Zambia, was just one of many peaceful protesters caught up in the fury, not of police forces, but of the "Black Bloc" who knocked her to the ground and beat her.
Prior to this summit, and again on Saturday morning, the Genoa Social Forum had issued an impassioned plea to followers to isolate the "violent elements". To some extent, Saturday's marchers made an honourable attempt to do just that, linking arms and trying to create a cordon against the "Black Bloc". In the end, however, as cars burned, windows crumpled and tear gas wafted, the effort at isolation proved futile.