Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to cool people who
Speaker 1: did cool stuff. You're a weekly reminder that when there's
Speaker 1: bad things happening, people try to confront those bad things
Speaker 1: in various ways, lots of various ways. One of the way,
Speaker 1: not just a person. One of the people who's also
Speaker 1: on this podcast with me is Robert Evans, my guest.
Speaker 2: Hi, that's right, I'm Robert Evans, and uh, I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: That's me. Well, I brought you on because you're an
Speaker 1: expert about Italy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I know several things about Italians, Margaret
Speaker 2: number one, number two.
Speaker 1: Spice, here's where we Italian.
Speaker 2: Whatever the hat is that they that the that the
Speaker 2: chefs wear in those kind of racist caricatures. Look, it's fine.
Speaker 2: We all decided that it's okay with Italians now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, despite the huge trial that we talked about last
Speaker 1: time about anti ty and prejudice in the United States.
Speaker 2: Look, if they'd been I have the opposite position of
Speaker 2: that guy. I'm fine with the murder. If they'd been
Speaker 2: on trial for being Italian, I would have said, fucking yeah,
Speaker 2: hanging you know, yeah exactly, hang am I.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe upside down maybe, Uh, that's a dead Mussolini joke,
Speaker 1: which is which is gonna happen in today's episode. A
Speaker 1: lot of people are gonna try. Give the old college try.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Sophie. Hi, Sophie, it's me. I'm Sophie High.
Speaker 1: I realized when I got my podcast you listened to
Speaker 1: the most in twenty twenty four that four of them
Speaker 1: were Sophie podcasts. The loyalties unmatched, unmatched.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit surprised that that not all five were.
Speaker 1: But I think the problem was that the Pathfinder podcast
Speaker 1: I listened to is really long. Episode need one raised
Speaker 1: like five? Yeah, you need one break for me?
Speaker 2: We should do a Pathfinder podcast, Margaret.
Speaker 1: I would love to do a live play podcast.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll reach out to the guy who created Pathfinder
Speaker 2: and listens to our podcasts talk to him about that.
Speaker 1: I would love that guy who created Pathfinder. Y'all are
Speaker 1: great and your system rules and I play it anyway.
Speaker 1: So but yeah, no, cools on media needs a live
Speaker 1: play podcast, That's all I'm saying. And if you listener agree,
Speaker 1: bug these people on the internet about it. And then,
Speaker 1: because I needed more podcasts to be on whatever, I
Speaker 1: don't care.
Speaker 2: There's a shortage of podcasts. I don't know if you're
Speaker 2: aware of this. Yeah, but the CDC has said that
Speaker 2: it's probably the largest threat to our national collective health.
Speaker 1: Well, it's the only thing that they're trying to put
Speaker 1: a tariff on that everyone's in favor of, is that
Speaker 1: they're trying to make it harder for people to make podcasts.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. All podcast mics, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that actually is good. Most of the podcast mics are
Speaker 1: probably not made in the US. Whatever I got mine,
Speaker 1: I have no idea.
Speaker 2: I have no idea where they make our microphones. Margaret, No, no,
Speaker 2: I do not.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyway, this is part two on a two part
Speaker 1: episode about people trying to kill Mussolini. Later, we'll probably
Speaker 1: talk about the people who've succeeded. It took a whole war,
Speaker 1: but some people tried to just cut to the chase
Speaker 1: and circumvent the need for the war. And we've already
Speaker 1: mentioned several of them, but we're going to talk a
Speaker 1: lot more of them today. First, we're gonna talk about Rory,
Speaker 1: who's our audio engineer. Hi Rory, Hi, right, Hy Rory,
Speaker 1: And that our theme musical was written force by unwoman,
Speaker 1: and that Gino Lucetti was born working class in the
Speaker 1: year nineteen hundred in Karra, Tuscany. You ever heard of Carra.
Speaker 2: I've heard of Tuscany because the Tuscan coast is pretty famous.
Speaker 2: I've never heard of Carra other than that. It makes
Speaker 2: me think of that song that goes Tara Ra boom da,
Speaker 2: which I don't know what that's a reference to.
Speaker 1: Is that a slur? I have no idea.
Speaker 2: I should probably look into that song see if there
Speaker 2: was anything fucked up. It's like celebrating a genocide. That's
Speaker 2: often the case with old songs. What a lovely tune?
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, Well, Carrara is famous for two things.
Speaker 1: It is famous for its marble quarries. It produces some
Speaker 1: of the finest marble from which the most iconic buildings
Speaker 1: and statues in the world are made. There's a whole
Speaker 1: list of them, and I forgot to write them down.
Speaker 1: But like, think of an old Italian statue from Rome,
Speaker 1: Old Rome, and the marble might have come from Carrara.
Speaker 1: It has like blue veins. I spent way too long
Speaker 1: reading about this marble.
Speaker 2: It's good ass marble. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing the Carrara is famous for is anarchism.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 1: When my anarchist friends took me through Italy, when we
Speaker 1: were near Carrara, they pointed out and they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: that's that place was an anarchist stronghold for a long
Speaker 1: long time among the Stonemas, and who put that town
Speaker 1: on the map enough so that I was like double
Speaker 1: checking this today. I was like, Carrara, that sounds familiar, right,
Speaker 1: And I was looking at a mainstream tour company's website,
Speaker 1: Carrara Marble Tour, and they offer an anarchic Carra tour.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, really double dipping? Yeah, I mean, and that's
Speaker 2: you know, because there's so many it's like you and
Speaker 2: I always say, Margaret, with so many anarchistsinnar audience, you know,
Speaker 2: every there's nothing that goes together like anarchism and marble quarries. Yeah,
Speaker 2: two great tastes that taste great together.
Speaker 1: You know. That's why.
Speaker 2: By the way, let's have a word for our sponsor,
Speaker 2: Big Marble Marble. Maybe we could use it again for
Speaker 2: some stuff.
Speaker 1: Marble. One time a statute of limitations ago, I had
Speaker 1: to empty all the marbles out of my pocket before
Speaker 1: a mass arrest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, marble, if you use it to make all of
Speaker 2: your streets and sidewalks like they do in Greece, it
Speaker 2: makes things incredibly treacherous in the rain, actually horrible, horrible.
Speaker 1: Material to use the way that they use it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty though. Yeah. Years and years ago, my
Speaker 1: dad told me this spooky story that he wrote called
Speaker 1: the thirty seven Marble Steps, and I was like a kid,
Speaker 1: so I was just assuming that these were steps with
Speaker 1: marbles embedded in them. But Gina Lucetti was from Carrara
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen twenties. There are factory occupations all
Speaker 1: over Italy. I don't know enough about these yet, but
Speaker 1: they've come up a bunch of times, and they'll probably
Speaker 1: be one of their own episodes at one of these points.
Speaker 1: And I know that in the end of these factory occupations,
Speaker 1: the socialist parties kind of gave up and gave power
Speaker 1: back to the bosses, which made an awful lot more
Speaker 1: anarchists from those socialists who you know, had just seized
Speaker 1: the means of production and were like, but isn't this
Speaker 1: our goal. Isn't our goal that the workers control the
Speaker 1: means of production? Why would we give them back. I
Speaker 1: don't know enough about the ins and nights out of
Speaker 1: that struggle, but a lot of people were mad. Gina
Speaker 1: Lucetti was at these occupations and somewhere along the way
Speaker 1: he got into a gunfight with the black Shirts. He
Speaker 1: got a guy in the ear who got him in
Speaker 1: the neck in return. And okay, this second time we've
Speaker 1: had an anti fascist get it in the neck and
Speaker 1: survive on the show. The other one was George Orwell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's uh. I mean, I'm not gonna say
Speaker 2: but that that's very lucky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Don't get shot in the neck.
Speaker 2: The neck is very low on the number of places
Speaker 2: in your body you would want to get shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not a good tourniquet spot. It turns out.
Speaker 2: Hard to turniqit and neck unless you're Google AI, which
Speaker 2: has told me repeatedly that you can turnikate the neck.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, that's just a hanging, folks. You're just strangling
Speaker 2: someone to death. Oh my god, don't turniquit next.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems self evident, but an AI is not
Speaker 1: does not have our best interests in heart.
Speaker 2: No, it just sees well, there's fucking there's fucking arteries there.
Speaker 1: Turn it, get away. Yeah, yeah, it detaches a limb.
Speaker 1: If a head is a limb, the appendage, I don't
Speaker 1: know whatever. Whatever a head is anatomically, I guess it's
Speaker 1: a head. So he couldn't find a doctor in Italy
Speaker 1: to get the bullet out. I do not know why.
Speaker 1: So Comrades smuggled him to France, where he was finally treated,
Speaker 1: and he was like, you know what, I don't need
Speaker 1: to be in Italy right now. They are in the
Speaker 1: middle of a fascism and I am in the middle
Speaker 1: of just got shot in the neck by a fascist. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was a large political refugee scene in France at
Speaker 1: the time. Anarchists, socialists and communists had formed a popular
Speaker 1: front against fascism there, not only just in general in France,
Speaker 1: but like specifically the Italian refugees had. They were like,
Speaker 1: all right, look all that stuff going on in Russia,
Speaker 1: we're all mad at each other, but right now Italy
Speaker 1: is being taken over by fascists. We got to do
Speaker 1: something about that, right, And they all agreed what needed
Speaker 1: to be done was kilmusse. And this action was intended
Speaker 1: to be anything but a propaganda of the deed action,
Speaker 1: which is I think actually a really important point for
Speaker 1: kind of what we were ended on talking about last week. Right.
Speaker 1: As a libcom dot org article put it, quote, propaganda
Speaker 1: of the deed attacks were supposed to inspire the working
Speaker 1: classes to rise, and in this they were entirely unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: In this instance, however, the urge to kill Mussolini was
Speaker 1: the expression of a convergence of opinion among many popularly
Speaker 1: representative political groupings and was commonly perceived as a necessity
Speaker 1: at that point in time. So it wasn't like, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna spur on the revolution and radicalize people by
Speaker 1: showing them that, you know, our opponents are made of
Speaker 1: flesh and blood. It was like, no, Mussolini is basically
Speaker 1: the enemy war leader that we're in a war against.
Speaker 1: You know, one word that has never been successfully applied
Speaker 1: to anarchists is cowardice. Gino agreed to do the deed.
Speaker 2: And I mean it's the thing that you come across
Speaker 2: over and over again when you read about like militant
Speaker 2: movements and like civil wars and where there are anarchist groups,
Speaker 2: is that the anarchists are always very brave. Not always
Speaker 2: the best fighters, yeah, but always very brave.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And specifically other groups like putting us in the front. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's an aspect of it. Yeah. I remember when
Speaker 1: I first became an anarchist. I was like just going
Speaker 1: to protest and things twenty seven years ago, and my
Speaker 1: roommate in college was like, you anarchists, You're just the
Speaker 1: berserkers of the protest movement. People just throw you in
Speaker 1: the front to like soak up off the damage. And
Speaker 1: I was like, no, he was a little bit right,
Speaker 1: at least in terms of how people perceive us and
Speaker 1: use us. So of course, when they're like, who's going
Speaker 1: to go risk their life to go do this, an
Speaker 1: anarchists volunteered and twice he returned to Italy to meet
Speaker 1: with comrades there to plan the assassination. And they met
Speaker 1: aboard a ship at sea, which is esthetic as fuck
Speaker 1: off the Tuscany coast, and this time there were no
Speaker 1: informants among them. He had several co conspirators worth mentioning.
Speaker 1: Stefano Vadieroni was an anarchist tinsmith from Rome who was
Speaker 1: the secretary of the library. The fucking librarian was in
Speaker 1: on this assassination. The secretary of Mussolini's library supplied all
Speaker 1: of the details including Mussolini's routes by car. Vaderoni funded
Speaker 1: the thing by selling his family's land near Carrara. Another anarchist,
Speaker 1: Leandro Sorrio, was a waiter who was planning to finance
Speaker 1: the group's escape from the country. But then they all decided. Basically,
Speaker 1: they were like, well, we're actually just all going to
Speaker 1: get arrested in stand trial. There you go, we want
Speaker 1: to make a statement. Maltesta, the anarchist guy who's old
Speaker 1: at this point, was briefed on the plan and signed
Speaker 1: off on. So this wasn't a like spur of the
Speaker 1: moment attack. This was a you know, huge conspiracy across
Speaker 1: borders to try and kill this guy. Our Mangino went
Speaker 1: back to Italy and he went to Rome. He waited
Speaker 1: for Mussolini's car and then he threw a pineapple grenade
Speaker 1: at it. The grenade had been made by his cousin,
Speaker 1: and he threw it into the windshield. Famously, grenades are
Speaker 1: on timers, not like pressure sensitive. They like don't explode
Speaker 1: on impact, no, because.
Speaker 2: That would be very dangerous. Margaret, I have I told
Speaker 2: you the story about the Iraqi soldier. We're behind this
Speaker 2: berm embedded with this unit. Of the Iraqi federal police
Speaker 2: that are in this very active gunfight with some Isis guys.
Speaker 2: But they're also kind of showing off because like I'm there,
Speaker 2: and my photographer's there with the camera.
Speaker 1: And so I put the dudes.
Speaker 2: One of the dudes clips into the buttons of his
Speaker 2: like button up shirt, a grenade over each button. He
Speaker 2: like sticks the little handle arm of the grenade around
Speaker 2: and he like runs up and he like fires, and
Speaker 2: then he leans over to pick up a magazine that's
Speaker 2: like lying behind the berm, and all of the grenades
Speaker 2: fall off of his shirt and roll down directly towards me.
Speaker 1: So thankfully they're not set off by impact. Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1: In this case, it didn't get through the windshield. This
Speaker 1: is the guy who should have brought a rock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if Violet Gibson was right, you need to get through
Speaker 1: the windshield. The grenade bounced a few meters away and exploded.
Speaker 1: Mussolini's bodyguards caught up with Gino and beat the shit
Speaker 1: out of him.
Speaker 2: That sounds about right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 1: When they arrested him, they found him with a second bomb,
Speaker 1: a handgun with six hollow points poisoned with muriatic acid,
Speaker 1: which I don't know anything about.
Speaker 2: And a dagger isn't myriadic acid the thing in like.
Speaker 1: Swimming pools, isn't that chlorine? No?
Speaker 2: No, I mean I think you have mriadic acid for
Speaker 2: swimming pools too. I remember I've seen like jars one sec.
Speaker 1: I actually didn't want to google this today. That's what
Speaker 1: happened to me today is I was like, I wonder
Speaker 1: what this stuff is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you use mriadic acid to lower like
Speaker 2: pH in your pool. It's like, I'll let like a shit.
Speaker 2: Millions of Americans have this shit and like their shed.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I have no idea why you would. I
Speaker 1: either he was being really extra or like.
Speaker 2: Or he just thought it and he might have thought
Speaker 2: it was more sketchy than it was. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like this one's his acid, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when it's really no, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know much about it other than that I
Speaker 2: know I've seen it in people's like backyards because they
Speaker 2: have pools.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also like there's so much mythbuilding, both positively
Speaker 1: and negative about all of these things, you know, so
Speaker 1: it could have been like oh, he had a dagger
Speaker 1: and muriatic acid. It actually used the word dumb dumb
Speaker 1: bullets instead of hollow points, because that's what they called him,
Speaker 1: a round that expands at the time. You know. So
Speaker 1: he's tortured, he gives a false name and location, and
Speaker 1: eventually they get the truth out of him. Lucetti was
Speaker 1: given thirty years in prison, the waiter got twenty years,
Speaker 1: and the tin smith got nineteen years and nine months.
Speaker 1: Thirty years is the mac anyone's allowed to be given
Speaker 1: in Italy at the time, which again more I mean
Speaker 1: later they're going to start killing people. But yeah, for
Speaker 1: three years Lucetti was in solitary and had only a
Speaker 1: sparrow that would visit at the window for company.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, sure, yeah, his best friend, the sparrow. I
Speaker 2: mean that's sweet, actually, I know. I bet he was
Speaker 2: giving it some of his like very very rare bread
Speaker 2: that he didn't have a whole lot of because he
Speaker 2: was a nice man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he lived off of I think is just literally
Speaker 1: soup and bread, and that sounds about right. He died
Speaker 1: after seventeen years in prison in nineteen forty three. He
Speaker 1: died during a US air raid. Some claim that he
Speaker 1: was killed by the shelling, but the man who identified
Speaker 1: the body said that he had been killed by the
Speaker 1: occupying Germans during the raid. The Italian Communists tried to
Speaker 1: claim his legacy. They published that one of his fellow
Speaker 1: inmates claimed he had become a communist in his later years,
Speaker 1: but his brother and his fiancee, who kept visiting him
Speaker 1: until the end of his days, deny this adamantly. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, he was an anarchist. He died an anarchist.
Speaker 1: During the partisan reclamation of Italy, two different anarchist battalions
Speaker 1: named themselves after Gino Lucetti. Each was about sixty fighters.
Speaker 1: I believe, both men and women. I know one of
Speaker 1: the other anarchist battalions I'm going to talk about later
Speaker 1: was both men and women, and they helped rid Italy
Speaker 1: of fascism. So he won in a way after his death.
Speaker 1: And that is all most of us can hope for.
Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, definitely. I mean in the long run,
Speaker 2: it's all any of us can hope for, right because,
Speaker 2: as we've seen, every struggle worth fighting occurs over a
Speaker 2: long time frame.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. As for the man who made the bomb,
Speaker 1: that's a different story. About another Geno because his cousin's
Speaker 1: name was also Gino. And I want to tell you
Speaker 1: about that story. But did you know what I want
Speaker 1: to tell you about? More? Uh?
Speaker 2: Products?
Speaker 1: I love products.
Speaker 2: Services. Maybe I don't know if you'd ever if there'd
Speaker 2: ever be a service on here.
Speaker 1: I do like a good service.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, okay, fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, yeah, whatever whatever they pay me to talk about,
Speaker 1: or whatever they pay someone else to talk about in
Speaker 1: an insert into my podcast. All right, I'm really excited
Speaker 1: about here, and we're back.
Speaker 2: We are.
Speaker 1: Gina Lucetti had a cousin, Gino Bibby, very serious country.
Speaker 2: As you said, Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: Gino Bibby was from a more middle class background. His
Speaker 1: father owned a sawmill. Gino Bibby. Did you know what
Speaker 1: anarchists invented? The missile?
Speaker 2: No? Was he like a scientist being forced to do
Speaker 2: stuff by the not So I'm gonna get to it.
Speaker 2: You know what, that's got to be one of the
Speaker 2: top anarchism fails.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it didn't work out well in the end. I
Speaker 1: would say missiles.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's definitely some anarchists, you know, in anarchist
Speaker 2: related groups that have used missiles and are using them
Speaker 2: right now. But uh boy, howdie, it's a general rule,
Speaker 2: not a tool that has reduced state power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, that's an L.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: It's big L for us. And if you google, I'll
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit more later when he actually
Speaker 1: does the inventing, when I get to it. But if
Speaker 1: you google who invented the missile, you get the Nazis.
Speaker 1: But he's gonna pull out missiles, guided missiles that go
Speaker 1: twenty kilometers in the Spanish Civil War, shit missile in
Speaker 1: this case being a rocket but guided. Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And as a teen, this second Geno, Gino Bibby went
Speaker 1: around on a bicycle and distributed anarchist leaflets until fascists
Speaker 1: dragged him off his bike, beat him up, burned his motorcycle,
Speaker 1: and then burned his father's sawmill. Great, because they were
Speaker 1: a little extra the fascists. This did not make Gino
Speaker 1: less radical, It just made him more angry. He's going
Speaker 1: to have the last laugh against fascists in.
Speaker 2: Italy, as often how things go.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. He spent a while in lock up for
Speaker 1: fighting fascists in the early nineteen twenties, then fled to Spain,
Speaker 1: where he started learning how to fly in case he
Speaker 1: needed to assassinate Mussolini from the air, Okay, which is
Speaker 1: kind of like how I learned a while ago for
Speaker 1: a prison break episode that an awful lot of the
Speaker 1: prison breaks in the early aughts were it used.
Speaker 2: To be a lot easier to get a helicopter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, learned to fly. That's how you
Speaker 1: get people out of prison back in the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Come the Spanish Civil War, he worked behind enemy lines,
Speaker 1: blowing shit up and flying reconnaissance, and then he maybe
Speaker 1: designed the first missile. If you google right now the
Speaker 1: first missile, you get Nazi Germany World War two. But
Speaker 1: Gino designed missiles that went twenty kilometers and the Drudi
Speaker 1: column fired them at Francoist forces. So it started it
Speaker 1: off as a good idea, just a very Pandora's box.
Speaker 2: That's pretty cool. Yeah, you know what else?
Speaker 1: The anarchist is not a products and services switch? Do
Speaker 1: you know what else anarchists invented during the Spanish Civil War? No,
Speaker 1: you ever played foosball?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is that ours? Did you ever know? An anarchist named
Speaker 1: Alejandro I forget his last name because it's not my
Speaker 1: script invented foosball?
Speaker 2: Alejandro Foos let's call it. Let's say Alan fos cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a again I'm completely off script here
Speaker 1: and going from memory, but there was a guy who
Speaker 1: was injured in the Spanish Civil War and he was
Speaker 1: like an inventor, and he was like, but I want
Speaker 1: to keep playing soccer, but I can't because I got
Speaker 1: really badly injured. I'm going to invent table soccer. And
Speaker 1: other people had invented it, but his invention is the
Speaker 1: one that people play today.
Speaker 2: Okay, So fascinating Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 1: The anarchist gave us missiles and foosball.
Speaker 2: To the two key cornerstones of the of modern civilization.
Speaker 2: Missiles and foosball.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Meanwhile, while Gino's inventing missiles and doing specop's missions,
Speaker 1: the Stalinists murdered his sister. Listen to any of our
Speaker 1: episodes about the Spanish Civil War for more about how
Speaker 1: Stalinis betrayed their comrades and started arresting folks that they
Speaker 1: didn't like and torturing people and killing them. The Stalinists
Speaker 1: actually arrested Gino two, but the anarchists in the government,
Speaker 1: which is another odd thing that happened in the spanishivil
Speaker 1: war were like oh no, fuck no, and the Stalinists
Speaker 1: were forced to let him out. When the Spanish Republic fell.
Speaker 1: Like everyone else, he fled into France and was held
Speaker 1: in a concentration camp, not a Nazi one, but a
Speaker 1: pre VG France one, where from he escaped and then
Speaker 1: he moved back to Italy and he joined the Partisans there,
Speaker 1: and he freed his own fucking hometown from fascists as
Speaker 1: part of an anarchist partisan unit. I really like this guy,
Speaker 1: to quote author Nick Heath. He died at the age
Speaker 1: of one hundred on the eighth of August nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: He was cremated with a red and black scarf tied
Speaker 1: around his neck. Ashes were interred in the anarchist corner
Speaker 1: of the graveyard in Carrara.
Speaker 2: Man, that's that's dope.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also nineteen ninety nine great year to kind of clock out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: miss missed a lot of messiness, got to see most
Speaker 2: of the good star treks.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And uh yeah. Geno Bibe, I got kind of
Speaker 1: tiary when I was writing about the life of the
Speaker 1: anarchist spy, pilot, bombmaker, engineer, partisan.
Speaker 3: An invention spilot, spilot Margaret. Oh, spilot yes, the spilot, Yes,
Speaker 3: an inventor of the guided missile system, which again not
Speaker 3: our best move. Later, I'm going to talk about a
Speaker 3: military invention, or actually a terrorism invention of the anarchist.
Speaker 3: That's even worse.
Speaker 1: Uh oh. The Irish are mostly famous for it, but
Speaker 1: it was an Italian anarchist who later became a fascist. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to our main story, people trying to kill Mussolini.
Speaker 1: Only a few months after Gino one through Gino two's
Speaker 1: grenade at Mussolini, another young hero stepped forward to give
Speaker 1: it as all, a really young hero, kind of a
Speaker 1: This is the most heartbreaking part of the story. A
Speaker 1: fifteen year old kid who had just quit the fascist
Speaker 1: youth and become an anarchist.
Speaker 2: That's good for him.
Speaker 1: Antio Zamboni. God damn, I promised you, Zamboni.
Speaker 2: Get Jamie Loftus on the horn. She needs to know
Speaker 2: about this name.
Speaker 1: I genuinely thought I was very glad that you were
Speaker 1: my guest until I got to Zamboni, and I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: if I was gonna have anyone else, it would be
Speaker 1: Jamie Loftus, also more experienced killing me. Never mind, No, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to join the bit about trying to
Speaker 1: implicate okay, just checking, no, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Until the court case is over and the grand jury
Speaker 2: rules on the new evidence brought forward in that case,
Speaker 2: we probably should keep our mouths quiet.
Speaker 1: By a mysterious person with a bad, fake Boston accent.
Speaker 1: No for anyone who he doesn't know what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of you. Well done. Way to be less
Speaker 1: terminally online. You should listen to Jamie Lobs's podcasts. You should.
Speaker 1: Antio Zamboni was born into a working class political family
Speaker 1: in Bologna. His parents were anarchists who became fascists, or
Speaker 1: at least his father had. He was never baptized. His
Speaker 1: parents only had a civil union because they refused to
Speaker 1: let the state or the church have anything to do
Speaker 1: with their marriage before they became fascists. His father, Mamolo Zamboni,
Speaker 1: when he became a fascist, the New York Times called
Speaker 1: it quote disassociating from radical action, because being an anarchist
Speaker 1: is radical, being a fascist is normal. According to the
Speaker 1: New York Times in nineteen twenty six and now, yeah,
Speaker 1: Mamolo called himself quote an anarchist and a fascist, So okay,
Speaker 1: what a guy.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of that too, unfortunately, yet
Speaker 2: could look into their I mean, he considered himself and
Speaker 2: was very angry about other like people who called themselves
Speaker 2: anarchists because he had a different attitude towards it. But
Speaker 2: the guy who wrote A Storm of Steel, Ernst Junger,
Speaker 2: was like called himself an anarch and I guess the
Speaker 2: difference is he just believed in anarchism for himself as
Speaker 2: like an individual choice, still serving the Nazi state. He
Speaker 2: was kind of an incoherent fella politically in my opinion,
Speaker 2: but wrote a very good World War One memoir.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that that sounds like approximately half of
Speaker 1: the modern libertarian party that the other half of the
Speaker 1: Libertarian party is very embarrassed about.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Antio had two brothers, one of whom was in a
Speaker 1: Fascist militia, the other of whom was in the army.
Speaker 1: Antio was a young anarchist with way better politics than
Speaker 1: his dad, and he took a shot at Mussolini while
Speaker 1: the man drove past him in an open car. He missed,
Speaker 1: he pierced the Fascist collar and the crowd killed him.
Speaker 1: Just stab this child to death. Oh, I've you know
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old either looks like a kid or
Speaker 1: an adult. Yeah, Antio is a kid. This is a child. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean every fifteen year old is a child. But
Speaker 1: the crowd knew they were killing a child. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they did not.
Speaker 2: It was not just like somebody who could have passed
Speaker 2: for seventeen or eighteen, Like they were very aware they
Speaker 2: were killing a kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he could have passed for twelve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 1: I looked at the I don't normally do this to myself,
Speaker 1: but I looked at the corpse photo because the only
Speaker 1: other photos that anyone has of him is when he's
Speaker 1: like eight, you know. And his coward fascist father tried
Speaker 1: to distance himself from the actions of his son until
Speaker 1: after the war. But we'll get to that. The New
Speaker 1: York Times reported the father walked into the police station
Speaker 1: to see the body and said, quote, I knew it
Speaker 1: would happen. It was faded. He was a strange boy
Speaker 1: with strange notions. I had a dreadful premonition that something
Speaker 1: would happen to him. Our doctor said he might go
Speaker 1: mad one day. This is the father trying to save
Speaker 1: his own ass. It's not gonna work. Then, New York
Speaker 1: Times writes a little glowing article about Mussolini playing his
Speaker 1: violin with his wife and kids at home, taking solace
Speaker 1: after the attack. Then they talk about how everyone is
Speaker 1: saying that if Mussolini stays alive, fascism will keep Italy
Speaker 1: normal and peaceful.
Speaker 2: But if he were killed, it seems like what fascism
Speaker 2: will do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, violent fascists might take over if Mussolini's killed.
Speaker 1: And on the exact same page of the New York
Speaker 1: Times from nineteen twenty six, there's a different article about
Speaker 1: fascist black shirts rating anti fascist newspapers at gunpoint. Uh huh,
Speaker 1: but you know, but like in a normal way, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: being a fascist did not protect Mamolo the father. He
Speaker 1: and his sister in law were both sentenced to thirty
Speaker 1: years for being vaguely connected to Antio. Basically, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: the kid couldn't come up with it. It must have
Speaker 1: been a plot by previously anarchy dad. But by nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, the elder Zamboni received a pardon directly from
Speaker 1: Mussolini in exchange for becoming an informant for the fascists. Then,
Speaker 1: after the war, Mamlo went one eighty again and started
Speaker 1: writing pamphlets speaking of the courage of his son and
Speaker 1: started publishing anarchist material again. Great, he died in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty two. And he's not the only anarchist in the
Speaker 1: story who went fascist and then anarchist again. Yeah, this guy,
Speaker 1: I don't like him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again, a lot of It's just like a lot
Speaker 2: of people are more drip, will always be a decent
Speaker 2: number of people, sizable minority, always mostly just driven by
Speaker 2: whatever's pissing them off in the moment, you know, as
Speaker 2: opposed to principles totally.
Speaker 1: I'm just so mad at him for turning his back
Speaker 1: on his kid and trying to throw this dead kid
Speaker 1: under the bus to save his own ass.
Speaker 2: And it sounds like a guy who sucks. Yeah, sounds
Speaker 2: like a guy a bastard that maybe so one should
Speaker 2: get behind.
Speaker 1: I know, I was kind of a little weird guy too, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: after Antio's attempts on Mussolini, all other political parties were outlawed,
Speaker 1: but they already didn't have any power, and Mussolini was
Speaker 1: going to do that anyhow, was my argument. This more
Speaker 1: or less ends open anarchist organizing in Italy, as I
Speaker 1: understand it, and Mussolini brings back the death penalty now
Speaker 1: for anyone trying to kill him or the king. That
Speaker 1: didn't stop people from trying to kill him. No one
Speaker 1: tries to kill a dictator thinking it's a safe thing
Speaker 1: to do. Nope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody's ever killed a dictator. Being like this is
Speaker 2: this is more relaxing than staying home at night and
Speaker 2: reading the newspaper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna get away from this just fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, although later the.
Speaker 1: People who do kill Missolini do.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's a different time. That's really not an assassination.
Speaker 1: No. No. The next attempt we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: was a man who, like Atano bread She before him,
Speaker 1: abandoned the safety of the United States and kind of
Speaker 1: abandoned his family there to return to Italy to try
Speaker 1: and do what was right. His name was Mikela Shiu Okay,
Speaker 1: which to me looks like it's spelled Michelle if anyone's curious,
Speaker 1: But it's like the French, but it's not. It's Italian,
Speaker 1: so it's Macla Miclay. Shiro was born in eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: nine on Sardinia, which is an Italian island. His father
Speaker 1: had already emigrated to the US and Michaelay was raised
Speaker 1: by his mother. He was twice arrested in demonstrations as
Speaker 1: a kid. He was conscripted into World War One, and
Speaker 1: like a lot of anarchists at the time, he was
Speaker 1: hoping the war would turn into a war of liberation.
Speaker 1: It did not.
Speaker 2: Famously, it's a bummer, yeah.
Speaker 1: Mckelay became convinced of anarchism after the Communist Party, he
Speaker 1: felt sold out the factory occupations and let the bosses
Speaker 1: back in. He eventually moves to Manhattan. He starts fighting
Speaker 1: Italian fascists in the streets. He worked as a mechanic
Speaker 1: and then he became a banana wholesaler in the Bronx.
Speaker 1: He married an Irish American woman named Minnie. He had
Speaker 1: two kids. I think he had a son and a daughter.
Speaker 1: But he was watching Italy fall to fascism and he
Speaker 1: couldn't handle it. He was like, someone's got to do something.
Speaker 1: I'm someone. I'm gonna do something. He went first to
Speaker 1: France and then likely coordinated with anarchists there, but he
Speaker 1: kept his mouth shut about it, so we never know.
Speaker 1: We'll never know, like who else was involved because they
Speaker 1: were never arrested. He went up to Belgium, and he
Speaker 1: worked in an anarchist bomb making workshop. I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's like a like fly you go to like the
Speaker 1: punk show and there's a flyer. It's like, hey, come
Speaker 1: to the anarchist bomb making workshop this Saturday. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: he made himself two bombs and then he traveled to
Speaker 1: Rome in January nineteen thirty one. We've only got his
Speaker 1: confession under duress to work from, so we don't. You know,
Speaker 1: famously not always the most.
Speaker 2: Honest and not a great source.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but ogonal plan he said was that he was
Speaker 1: going to use the bombs in Paris against the Soviet
Speaker 1: embassy in revenge for the murder of anarchists in the USSR.
Speaker 1: But then he decided to kill Mussolini himself. I think
Speaker 1: that that was his backup plan. I think that he
Speaker 1: went to I think he went back to Europe to
Speaker 1: try and kill Mssolini. But in Rome he rented two
Speaker 1: hotel rooms, one for himself and one for his bombs.
Speaker 1: Because bombs need privacy too, you know.
Speaker 2: Of course, yes, that's actually my primary political issue, yeah,
Speaker 2: is extending privacy rights to modern military explosives. You know,
Speaker 2: nobody needs to know what a couple of jade ams
Speaker 2: get up to in their spare time. That's between them
Speaker 2: and God and whatever village they're hitting.
Speaker 1: While he was there, he was either shacking up with
Speaker 1: or conspiring with a Hungarian dancer named Anna Lukowski. If
Speaker 1: I were writing the story, it would be both. Also,
Speaker 1: everyone writes sex work out of history, so I would
Speaker 1: put money that she was a sex worker, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't make her less or more likely to have been
Speaker 1: one of the conspirators. And there is reason to believe
Speaker 1: that he is part of a broader conspiracy working, but
Speaker 1: he never rats them out. And the reason that we
Speaker 1: think this is that he spent money really freely while
Speaker 1: he was there. He was renting two hotel rooms, but
Speaker 1: he had no money on him when he was arrested,
Speaker 1: and there was like no money in any of the
Speaker 1: rooms or whatever. Right, So he was probably working with
Speaker 1: a bunch of people who wanted Mussolini dead. A lot
Speaker 1: of people wanted Mussolini dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for some reason, his.
Speaker 1: Plan was really simple. One of his hotel rooms overlooked
Speaker 1: a common route for Mussolini's car. He was going to
Speaker 1: wait and drop a bomb on Mussolini, but he wanted
Speaker 1: to do it when there was no bystanders around, of course,
Speaker 1: And this is the thing that has come up a
Speaker 1: bunch of times in the show, but has left out
Speaker 1: a lot of the sensationless stuff about bomb assassinations, as
Speaker 1: all of the bystanders who get killed. There have been
Speaker 1: so so many times in history, and there's gonna be
Speaker 1: two in this episode where people don't do it because
Speaker 1: they can't find a way to do it without hurting people.
Speaker 1: He's there for like three weeks and he can't find
Speaker 1: a way to not hurt anyone else. He had all
Speaker 1: but given up, and he was figuring he'd go back
Speaker 1: to Paris and attack the Soviets instead. When he was
Speaker 1: stopped on the street by cops on February third, nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one. And I think he was just like stopped
Speaker 1: for being a sketchy guy because it's a fascist state,
Speaker 1: you know, and they take him to a holding cell
Speaker 1: for investigation. There were three cops in the room. He
Speaker 1: pulled a gun and shot all three cops. Wow, and
Speaker 1: then he shouted, long live anarchy and put the gun
Speaker 1: in his own mouth and pulled the trigger. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: all four men survived. Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, I mean that does have to win my
Speaker 2: award for worst with a gun of anyone on this podcast.
Speaker 2: To shoot four people in pluting yourself and have them
Speaker 2: all live is a real yeah. Honestly though, I got
Speaker 2: to say, given the time, something that probably just goes
Speaker 2: down to how much worse ammunition was back then. You know,
Speaker 2: powder loads were less reliable. He may have loaded himself,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I think he like he seriously injured one
Speaker 1: of the cops in himself, Jesus Christ. He was like
Speaker 1: rushed to emergency surgery, and they, you know, wanted him
Speaker 1: fit to stand trial.
Speaker 2: Right, stand trial for killing no one.
Speaker 1: That's actually part of the thing. I was reading newspapers
Speaker 1: at the time, and they were like, look, shooting cops
Speaker 1: didn't carry the death penalty, so it actually was against
Speaker 1: their own laws to try and give him the death penalty.
Speaker 1: But he admitted that he was there to kill Missolini.
Speaker 1: In fact, he pretty much they were like, what are
Speaker 1: you doing. He was like, I'm here to kill Missolini.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: He tried to write his wife, and his wife tried
Speaker 1: to write him while he was in jail, but their
Speaker 1: letters were confiscated. He wrote to his father to the
Speaker 1: same effect in May nineteen thirty one, he was tried
Speaker 1: by a fascist judge with no jury, and all the
Speaker 1: lawyers and witnesses had to be put before a special
Speaker 1: tribunal before they could come in. His defense was basically,
Speaker 1: I came here to blow out Mussolini. During the trial,
Speaker 1: he decried both fascism and communism. They told him he
Speaker 1: would be executed, shot in the back. He didn't say
Speaker 1: a word as the sentence came down. When he was
Speaker 1: asked if he had anything to add, he shrugged his shoulders.
Speaker 1: At two thirty am the next morning, they came into
Speaker 1: his cell and told him he would be killed at sunrise.
Speaker 1: He said he did not need a priest, and he
Speaker 1: was shot in the back by a firing squad of
Speaker 1: twenty four fascists, folks from his home of Sardinia, who
Speaker 1: had volunteered specifically to kill him.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess that's a nice at least you.
Speaker 1: No, it's your guys.
Speaker 2: You went to high school with murdering. Yeah, totally, Actually
Speaker 2: sounds much worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah. His wife, Minnie lived to nineteen eighty seven, dying
Speaker 1: at eighty three. Their son Spartaco, died in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five. I found an article I couldn't get access
Speaker 1: to behind an academic wall of Spartaco writing about his father,
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of sad I couldn't get it. But
Speaker 1: here's an assassin who didn't go through with his actions
Speaker 1: because he couldn't do it without hurting anyone else. Now
Speaker 1: let's talk about the opposite sure, but before that, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the other opposite products and services.
Speaker 2: Ah, I love products and services.
Speaker 1: Well, someone's going to get hurt.
Speaker 2: Mh's that's the promise we make.
Speaker 1: Here they are.
Speaker 2: And we're burke.
Speaker 1: We are burt. Now I'm going to talk about my
Speaker 1: least favorite anarchist in history.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's a couple of jokes. There's a couple of
Speaker 2: jokes I could make.
Speaker 1: We know, but yeah, no, my least favorite anarchist I've
Speaker 1: never met. You don't stay in a political scene without
Speaker 1: making a few. Let's go with frenemies. Yeah. So, there's
Speaker 1: a long list of things anarchists have invented which can
Speaker 1: be used for good or evil. The carriage mounted machine gun,
Speaker 1: missiles apparently, the getaway car, foosball, steampunk, free bike programs, signal,
Speaker 1: the messaging app. One thing that you can say was
Speaker 1: probably invented by someone who called themselves an anarchist at
Speaker 1: the time. Was the car bomb? Uh?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, look, I've seen a couple of car bombs.
Speaker 2: I've even seen one kill people and not a fan
Speaker 2: of car bombs. No, well, it was a vbied, which
Speaker 2: I guess is like an it's in that line of descent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm still sorry you to see anyone die.
Speaker 2: It's okay, I mostly I mean they were far enough
Speaker 2: away that I just kind of saw them turned into smoke.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, no, I'm sure that doesn't have any effects
Speaker 1: on yourself. No, not at all, not at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Before the Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest terrorist attack in
Speaker 1: US history was the Wall Street bombing of September sixteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: I have heard of this. Yeah, someone it is not
Speaker 1: certain who used a horse drawn wagon as the first
Speaker 1: car bomb. And every time I say the first in
Speaker 1: any show, it's like, you know, I don't know the
Speaker 1: first that I know about, Right, there's a whole book
Speaker 1: about the history of the car bomb called Buddhas Wagon,
Speaker 1: because we're going to get to ooh, that's how it
Speaker 1: was probably Mario Buddha. Yeah, in this car bomb, I
Speaker 1: thought there were talk.
Speaker 2: I was hoping there were some Buddhist history with car
Speaker 2: bombs that I hadn't heard. But okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: No, I mean maybe I don't, no, but yes, in
Speaker 1: this carriage was one hundred pounds of dynamite five hundred
Speaker 1: pounds of cast iron weights for shrapnel, and they rode
Speaker 1: the horse up and then the driver got out and
Speaker 1: left and blew up on Wall Street, not in one
Speaker 1: of the buildings. It killed forty people, and then like injure,
Speaker 1: hundreds of people and almost everyone that killed were like
Speaker 1: fucking kids that worked as messengers and like clerks and shit.
Speaker 2: Again, this is like the problem of like just this
Speaker 2: thing you get on Twitter whenever stuff happens where it's
Speaker 2: like somebody has attacked this group of people that like
Speaker 2: leftists broadly dislike, and it's like, I don't know, wait
Speaker 2: a minute to see if that's who they hit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not talking about you know, the recent thing,
Speaker 2: but like it happens often where it's like yeah, it
Speaker 2: turns out like oh no, no, that's not that's not
Speaker 2: who got hurt. Yeah, because that's you know, with bombs,
Speaker 2: very hard to be It's the same thing like it's
Speaker 2: not just a leftist thing. Like it's mostly not a
Speaker 2: leftist thing. It's a thing that I grew up watching
Speaker 2: all of the adults around me celebrate as like bombs
Speaker 2: got dropped in places that I now know because I
Speaker 2: understand more about bombs and talk to people who were
Speaker 2: in those places when they were being bombed, were largely
Speaker 2: killing civilians, because precision bombing is mostly a myth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: It's just like people love explosions.
Speaker 1: And the guy who had recently just tried to kill
Speaker 1: MUSSLINI earlier on the story didn't do it because it
Speaker 1: wasn't a good buy chance. Yep.
Speaker 2: And don't make bombs. I shouldn't need to say that.
Speaker 2: Don't be making bombs, don't do bombs. Bombs. Bomb's bad.
Speaker 2: You will not be the one who figures out how
Speaker 2: to use bombs ethically, no one ever has been.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this wasn't some kids who died as collateral damage,
Speaker 1: but we killed some big shots. This was all collateral damage,
Speaker 1: no regular damage.
Speaker 2: Cool really put the fear of God into those people
Speaker 2: who didn't get hurt.
Speaker 1: Yep. And I would argue that of every major political
Speaker 1: ideology of the last two hundred years. Anarchism probably is
Speaker 1: the least innocent blood on its hands.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, in part because we generally don't wind
Speaker 2: up in power. Yeah totally, which is you know, I
Speaker 2: mean is part of the goal. But yeah, yeah totally.
Speaker 2: But the Wall Street bombing is a decent chunk of
Speaker 2: the innocent blood on our hands.
Speaker 1: Of the anatist movement.
Speaker 2: That's a bad one.
Speaker 1: The most likely suspect is an Italian anarchist named Mario Buddha,
Speaker 1: who was actually probably with Sacho when they robbed and
Speaker 1: killed those people in the Sacho and Vanzetti case. Mario
Speaker 1: Budda is like a mystery man in history and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like takes on him, and he was
Speaker 1: like kind of almost everywhere that like violence was happening.
Speaker 1: Mario Buddha went on to almost certainly become a fascist
Speaker 1: infemant in Italy. Cool, yeah, and almost certainly foil another
Speaker 1: anarchist attempt on Mussolini's life. He is the worst.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, that is as shitty as you can
Speaker 2: possibly be as an anarchist militant. I know, honestly, I'm mad.
Speaker 2: I'm mad, but I am a little impressed. Yeah, Like
Speaker 2: if I was making up an anarchist for you to
Speaker 2: get mad at. I couldn't do better than this.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. After murdering a bunch of kids and shit in
Speaker 1: the name of anarchy, he made his way back to Italy,
Speaker 1: got caught up in the hubbub.
Speaker 2: Yeah it stopped someone from killing Musolini.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Jesus. By nineteen thirty three, it seems likely
Speaker 1: that he is cooperating with police and informing on anarchists,
Speaker 1: and a lot of like people who are really into
Speaker 1: anarchist history are skeptical of this because for a while,
Speaker 1: the only information that anyone had about this was that
Speaker 1: a communist newspaper accused him of this. At the time, yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people, even anarchists listened and were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't trust this guy anymore. But other people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the communist plain sectarian politics. And then later you
Speaker 1: can see historians have done the work of being like
Speaker 1: here's where Mario Budo was dropped off the list of
Speaker 1: dangerous anarchists to keep an eye out for, and like
Speaker 1: here's you know, he's basically like the fascist took him
Speaker 1: under their wing. And even if half of what they
Speaker 1: say about Mario Buddha is true. I don't like him
Speaker 1: at all. I don't like blowing up kids on Wall Street.
Speaker 1: I don't like cooperating a fascists, and I don't like
Speaker 1: Foilian an attempt on Musolini's life. Yeah again, I uh yeah really.
Speaker 2: One of my very few lines is you probably should
Speaker 2: don't go don't be killing kids.
Speaker 1: dB kk.
Speaker 2: That's my little like, what would Jesus do? Bracelet in
Speaker 2: case you ever need to kill cat? Yeah, look at
Speaker 2: a bracelet. Oh no, you know what, I shouldn't kill kids?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, if you need to look at a bracelet to
Speaker 2: remind you not to kill kids, I would. Maybe there's
Speaker 2: a lot of things you probably need to do therapy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Meanwhile, back to a regular anarchist when I like,
Speaker 1: who doesn't become a fascist? Sure, there's a blacksmith named Umberto.
Speaker 1: I promise you another Mberto Thomasini. Mberto got involved in
Speaker 1: politics when he was thirteen. He joined the nineteen oh
Speaker 1: nine General Strike in response to the murder of the
Speaker 1: Spanish anarchists. Educator and veteran of the Pod francisc Ferrar.
Speaker 1: He went on to fight in World War One. He
Speaker 1: won a Cross for valor, but according to his own take.
Speaker 1: What happened is he got to the war because he
Speaker 1: was conscripted and he just shot into the air and
Speaker 1: he was like trying not to kill anyone.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's actually I mean, there's some evidence, although
Speaker 2: the studies around it have been to a degree, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of critiques about them, but like some evidence
Speaker 2: that that was more the norm than not with combat soldiers.
Speaker 1: And I bet especially when you're talking about like trenches
Speaker 1: and stuff, where you're like, yes, yes, go shoot that
Speaker 1: dot on the horizon, whereas like if someone's like running
Speaker 1: through a trench trying to kill me, I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna shoot that man, even if we have the same
Speaker 1: political ideology. If I was trying to kill you with that,
Speaker 1: I just don't want to get shot. Yeah, but yeah, no, totally.
Speaker 1: And he he spent some time as a pow during
Speaker 1: the war, and then he returned home to return to
Speaker 1: work as a blacksmith, and he more formally committed to anarchism,
Speaker 1: aside his brothers, who, like all everyone else, they left
Speaker 1: the Socialist Party in nineteen twenty one after the Socialists
Speaker 1: sold out the movement. Again. I don't know as much
Speaker 1: about that, but that is what Umberto felt, and his
Speaker 1: brothers felt. Umberto's life could easily be his own episode.
Speaker 1: He helped get the bombs from one Gino to the
Speaker 1: other Gino in nineteen twenty six, then spent six years
Speaker 1: in prison during the crackdown on it. Like after Musolin
Speaker 1: he came to power, he sent a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: the anarchists to prison. Right during those six years he
Speaker 1: met an anarchist in prison named Mario Buddha. Then Umberto
Speaker 1: fled Italy on foot to Yugoslavia. Then he went to Paris,
Speaker 1: where he met his partner Anna and had his son Renee.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty six, Spain was under attack and so
Speaker 1: Umberto left the then safety of Paris to go to
Speaker 1: the front lines teaching anarchists about trench warfare. And then
Speaker 1: he became an anarchist specops guy and he went off
Speaker 1: to go mine franco as ships.
Speaker 2: Oh, cool I is the opposite of the guy who
Speaker 2: just killed children and saved Mussoliti.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, exactly, and he shouldn't have been friends with
Speaker 1: that guy. He was arrested by Stalinists and prevented from
Speaker 1: attacking the fascist while he was off to go mind
Speaker 1: these ships. He broke out of Stalinis's prison, and then
Speaker 1: he returned back to the prison he'd just broken out
Speaker 1: of alongside anarchists from the government to negotiate everyone's release.
Speaker 1: I think this is the same situation as the last man,
Speaker 1: the missile inventor man. But this might have just happened
Speaker 1: a bunch of times, yeah, because I read about these
Speaker 1: in different sources. Then in nineteen thirty seven, he goes
Speaker 1: back to France so he can plot how to kill Mussolini.
Speaker 1: One problem, one of his co conspirators, a man who
Speaker 1: has absolute trust for is Mario Budda, whom he had
Speaker 1: met in prison. Mario leaked the plan to the Italian police,
Speaker 1: who foiled it. After the war, Mario Budda went back
Speaker 1: to the anarchist movement.
Speaker 2: Hooray, great, he sounds trustworthy.
Speaker 1: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really worked on things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, don't want to cancel him just for
Speaker 1: saving Mussolini's life and murdering children. I can't find much
Speaker 1: about this particular assassination attempt that he foiled. Mostly I
Speaker 1: found a lot of ins and outs about the informant.
Speaker 1: But to follow umberto he like so many other anarchists
Speaker 1: wound up in a non Nazi concentration camp in France.
Speaker 1: Then he was turned over to the Italian police, where
Speaker 1: he was imprisoned until the end of the war. Finally
Speaker 1: he's freed. He returns to his wife and his son
Speaker 1: and his work as a blacksmith, and to anarchist organizing.
Speaker 1: When the spirit of sixty eight swings through, he starts
Speaker 1: organizing again. He's like about seventy years old, and he's
Speaker 1: like organizing with a bunch of twenty year old kids, right,
Speaker 1: because it's the it's nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's who there's going to be to organize with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's Coole as shit. He kept publishing
Speaker 1: shit that would send him back to jail. I think
Speaker 1: he was sent back to jail like multiple times, just
Speaker 1: for continuing to publish anarchist literature. And then he died
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty. He wrote an autobiography, but I don't
Speaker 1: believe it's been translated, And there's a documentary about him
Speaker 1: called An Anarchist Life from twenty thirteen that I haven't
Speaker 1: seen yet that I want to see. And he was
Speaker 1: real cool, but I don't know what he did to
Speaker 1: try and kill Mussolini. I just know he made the
Speaker 1: wrong friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we all do sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: For example, I mean there was one summer that Benita
Speaker 2: Mussolini and I were inseparable. I mean we would spend
Speaker 2: just hours on the beach, telling each other's secrets, having
Speaker 2: pig nicks. You know. There was that one wine drenched night,
Speaker 2: and then I found out he'd been the dictator of
Speaker 2: Italy this whole time. I had no idea, Margaret, I
Speaker 2: had no idea.
Speaker 1: I know. I mean, what's funny is that pre him
Speaker 1: becoming Mussolini. That is the story that a lot of
Speaker 1: people tell. People do have that story, like the woman Lita,
Speaker 1: who is probably his lover, who is an anarchist, who
Speaker 1: was like later she was like I misjudged his character.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, he booms amongst us. Hasn't been friends
Speaker 1: with the inventor of fascism?
Speaker 2: Well Cohen, I mean, let's we've got there was another
Speaker 2: Italian who might deserve that title a little more. But
Speaker 2: we talked about him on Behind the Bastards. Wait which one, Oh,
Speaker 2: the guy who wore a banana hammock one sec.
Speaker 1: Wait, what does he invent the banana Hammick. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: but he uh, I don't.
Speaker 2: Remember this person's name either.
Speaker 1: We definitely talked about it though.
Speaker 2: Gabriel Banunzio, Yes, Gabriel Danunzio, who was a big influence
Speaker 2: on Mussolini and was like is often credited as the
Speaker 2: inventor of fascism. He never called himself a fascist. He's
Speaker 2: like partially right, there's not just one guy, but he
Speaker 2: is earlier in the chain of the development of fascist
Speaker 2: mess a concept than Mussolini and an influence on Benito. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh h yeah, Gabriel Dnunzio. You can listen to our
Speaker 2: two parter on him, very much worth it. He is
Speaker 2: the guy who in fume as an in dependent city.
Speaker 2: He's a guy who marches into fume and takes it
Speaker 2: over as like, oh, along with a bunch of there
Speaker 2: were anarchists and communists and fascists all kind of together
Speaker 2: because they were all very much anti just all of
Speaker 2: the things that are going on right now, but those
Speaker 2: ideologies hadn't really hardened into the in the concrete way
Speaker 2: they would a couple of years later. Fascinating time, kind
Speaker 2: of like how a lot of our most prominent right
Speaker 2: wing fas a lot of them are prominent fascist media
Speaker 2: ideologues today. Were part of occupy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, God, Actually the occupy versus fume thing is actually
Speaker 1: makes a lot of really specific sense. That's the thing
Speaker 1: that's like it's so hard to talk about, is that
Speaker 1: in a certain way, fascism is the red Brown alliance
Speaker 1: because it is taking ideas from leftism but applying into
Speaker 1: right wing ideology.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Well, two more people at least tried to kill Mussolini.
Speaker 1: One of them don't know much about. Isn't even on
Speaker 1: the list of people who tried to kill Mussolini Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: His name is Domenico Bavone and he was a Republican.
Speaker 1: He's the republican on our list. He tried to build
Speaker 1: bombs to kill Mussolini, but he didn't go to the
Speaker 1: bomb making workshop for the punk show Flyer told him
Speaker 1: about in Brussels.
Speaker 2: That's a shame.
Speaker 1: So he failed at making the bombs properly, and he
Speaker 1: blew up his own house on September fifth, nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: killing his own mother.
Speaker 2: Well, bad job, bro, that's about That's about his bad
Speaker 2: I mean, and again, don't build bombs. There are so many.
Speaker 2: By far, the most normal story in what political radical
Speaker 2: tries to make a bomb? Is political radical kills themselves,
Speaker 2: their friends or their family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, don't make bombs. Yeah, they're very indiscriminate. And
Speaker 1: under interrogation he admitted he was trying to kill Mussolini
Speaker 1: and he was shot in the back by a firing squad.
Speaker 1: And then there is Angelo Pellegrono Sabbard Aletto. Angelo was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen oh seven in mel Italy, and he
Speaker 1: was the fifth of eleven children, which means I do
Speaker 1: not need to tell you he was from a Catholic family,
Speaker 1: but he was. His family was poor as hell. The
Speaker 1: article I read specifically indicated they were poor as hell
Speaker 1: because they had eleven children. But you know, whatever you do,
Speaker 1: you people can make their own decisions on how many
Speaker 1: kids to have. They fled poverty to France, then Luxembourg,
Speaker 1: then Belgium. Angelo was a miner and a machine hand.
Speaker 1: He became an anarchist as a teenager, talking to other
Speaker 1: immigrant workers who were mostly political refugees. Soon enough he
Speaker 1: was on lists of dangerous extremists and draft dodgers and shit.
Speaker 1: And he was inspired by Mikelo Sheirou and he met
Speaker 1: almost the exact same fate. In nineteen thirty two, he
Speaker 1: went to Rome to kill Mussolini, but like maclay before him,
Speaker 1: he couldn't find a moment when he could bomb Mussolini
Speaker 1: without hurting anyone else. He spent months trying, just bought
Speaker 1: a gun and should have bought a gun.
Speaker 2: I mean whatever, I don't know how hard it was
Speaker 2: to buy guns in Mussolini's Italy, fair enough, Yeah.
Speaker 1: But you know, he spent months trying, and he was
Speaker 1: on the verge of giving up when, like mcklay, he
Speaker 1: was arrested seemingly by happenstance on a train station, just
Speaker 1: like some cops were like, Eh, you're suspicious, We're going
Speaker 1: to search you. Which is you know, fascism. Also, the
Speaker 1: same thing happens in New York City subways, but you
Speaker 1: know whatever. Yeah, when he was searched, he had a
Speaker 1: Swiss passport, a pistol. Oh, he had a fucking gun.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, I guess not that hard, yeah, question answered yeah,
Speaker 2: and two bombs and he was tortured, and under torture
Speaker 2: he said he was there to avenge mckelay Shiro.
Speaker 1: He'd written a letter previously that year that said, quote,
Speaker 1: I have no choice to be free. Tyranny must be beaten.
Speaker 1: To build tomorrow a new order in which all can
Speaker 1: enjoy the fruits of their labor and freely express their thoughts.
Speaker 1: We must destroy today all the injustices which render this impossible.
Speaker 1: His trial was a show trial. It was two days long.
Speaker 1: Journalists decried him as surly and sinister and would like
Speaker 1: literally make stuff up about how he looked. They were
Speaker 1: like he had a low forehead, you know, which he didn't.
Speaker 1: But even if he did, fuck you, you know. His
Speaker 1: lawyer asked him to write Mussolini for clemency. He refused.
Speaker 1: He shouted long Live anarchy when he was shot in
Speaker 1: the back. After he was killed, the Fascist government decided
Speaker 1: to hide forever his burial site. No one knows where
Speaker 1: his body is. A biographer for Mussolini said that he
Speaker 1: would have pardoned the anarchists if they had asked, because
Speaker 1: he lauded their courage. I mean, considering a lot of
Speaker 1: his fucking people were former anarchists. Yep, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you would have, but fuck that, I mean whatever.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be mad if anyone was like, oh, please
Speaker 1: don't kill me, mister Missolini. At whatever, I would be
Speaker 1: like you weakling.
Speaker 2: Give uh yeah Mussolini, I hardly know. Ye, yeah, did
Speaker 2: I already do that joke? It just occurred to me.
Speaker 1: So yeah. Originally I was going to talk about the
Speaker 1: Partisans who finally did him in, but I think we've
Speaker 1: covered a lot of trying to kill Mussolini. There are
Speaker 1: too many cool people I didn't want to skim pass.
Speaker 1: You got a Socialist, a Catholic, or Republican, at least
Speaker 1: five anarchists who tried to do him in, but it
Speaker 1: took a whole ass war. We got him in the end, though, And.
Speaker 2: You know what, folks, what I'll say right now is
Speaker 2: you can still try to take a shot at Mussolini,
Speaker 2: and he's a lot easier to hit now. I assume
Speaker 2: he's buried somewhere.
Speaker 1: Probably I feel like, yeah, go dig him up, yeah
Speaker 1: and take a shot. Take a shot. Yeah I had
Speaker 1: have miss that way. Yeah, gender neutral shooting range, that's
Speaker 1: what they say, take a shot with.
Speaker 2: You know, it could just be with the tool that
Speaker 2: you have on hand, so to speak. That was a
Speaker 2: penis joke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we know. I could have been a p joke
Speaker 1: because you can have a tool on hand without a
Speaker 1: penis You're right.
Speaker 2: You could use you can use a shi wi for example.
Speaker 2: You know there's all sorts of grat or just you
Speaker 2: cut the bottom of a water bottle out and then
Speaker 2: like cut the top to widen it and you kind
Speaker 2: of jam it in there.
Speaker 1: It sort of works. And I can't believe that's the
Speaker 1: note we're ending on, but that's where we're at. Everyone, Uh,
Speaker 1: go kill Mussolini, but only Mussolini.
Speaker 2: We're talking about the past, yes, only in the past.
Speaker 1: And if you want to know more about the knock
Speaker 1: on effects of various types of violence, listen to this
Speaker 1: entire show's history because it is full of knock on effects,
Speaker 1: many of which are negative.
Speaker 2: And in terms of things I will continue to say
Speaker 2: for the modern era, don't make bombs.
Speaker 1: Don't make bombs. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
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