WEBVTT - Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:02.880 Cool Media. 0:00:03.640 --> 0:00:06.760 Hey, everybody, Robert here, it is the end of the year. 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:10.240 You're cooling down from a Christmas, you know, still probably 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:13.600 finishing up pie and other goodies that you got. I 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.279 hope you had a good one. We're all bracing for 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:19.200 the new year to come. Behind the Bastards is of 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:22.639 course continuing to publish as we normally do around this 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:24.600 time of year, but we've also got some specials for 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.960 you from elsewhere in our network. And today we have 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:31.560 collected two great episodes from Cool People Who Did Cool 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:34.280 Stuff about all of the people who tried to kill 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:38.159 Benito Mussolini. This is with the great Margaret Killjoy. I 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:41.320 think it is very fitting for the end of this year. 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:47.440 Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. We're 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:51.159 back in case you noticed we weren't here, but now 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:56.720 we're here. The we in this case is me Murder Killjoy, 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:01.800 and my producer Sophie Hi Sophie by Pie, and my 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:05.679 guest Robert Evans Hi Magpie. 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:09.000 I listened to when I was buying Hey today, right 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:10.679 before this, I went to go get hay for my 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:13.920 livestock at the feed store and they were playing that 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:17.360 song Brandy, And so now I am in my head 0:01:17.400 --> 0:01:20.800 remixing that song instead of being about a woman whose 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:26.679 lover dies at sea, to be about you making podcasts excellent. 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:32.199 Well, we can make hay from that one time Robert 0:01:32.240 --> 0:01:33.560 and I went and got hey, and it was the 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:35.399 first time in a little while at my pickup truck 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:37.199 got to be a pickup truck. Besides well, I guess 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:40.000 it was a camper. Actually, we filled my camper full 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:42.360 of hay, is what happened. Yes, And it took me 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:43.720 a long time to get all the hay out. 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:45.480 It does take a long time to get all the 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:47.600 hay out, Yeah, but. 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:48.920 It was worth it because then the goats got to 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:50.640 eat hay, and the goats love hay. 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:55.360 So, speaking of this week, speaking of saying hey, oh, 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:57.800 we should say hey to Rory, who's our audio engineer? 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.200 Hi Rory, Hi, riight, hy Rory? And our theme musical 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:06.000 was written for us by unwoman and for no particular reason, 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:09.160 not at all. I actually genuinely picked the subject and 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:11.840 started researching it before the activities that happened last week. 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:15.680 You did like like I can vouch for you. 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:19.200 And I'm glad you don't Belee, don't to vouch for 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:20.000 me in court about it. 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:21.799 I'm just but but I would, and it would I 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:24.960 would be truthful. I have like documentation full. 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:27.480 It's true because the thing we're going to talk about, 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:31.480 Robert Evans, have you ever heard of people trying to 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:33.800 assassinate people that they don't like. 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:37.919 No assassinations. No one would ever do such a thing. 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:39.919 No one would ever do such a thing and then 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:43.560 have it immediately cause Blue Cross Blue Shield to reverse 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:48.160 the policy on denying claims arbitrarily when the surgery takes 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:51.000 too long to pay for anesthetic. That would never happen. 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.079 No, there's not a whole saying about direct action gets 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:55.680 the goods. You all are listening to this in the 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:58.760 future where the knock on effects will have become more clear. 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:00.880 But right now we know very We only know one 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:02.800 knock on effect of last week. 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:05.160 Which is, if you've got Blue Cross, you now have 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:07.720 to be less worried about getting surgery. 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:09.600 Yeah, and waking up in the middle of surgery, which 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:10.840 is basically everyone's nightmare. 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:11.800 Yeah. 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:12.960 Literally, that is. 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:15.760 So like, so many people have that fear and that 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:18.800 it's gulish. Yeah, so grulish. It's so gross. 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:23.280 Well, the person that we're going to talk about attempting 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:26.520 to assassinate in the past who's already dead is a 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:29.800 little fascist he might have heard of named Mussolini. 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:36.640 Mussolini, I hardly know Leini, Okay, pass and it's not 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:37.160 gonna work. 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:43.600 Sorry, Mussolini. Originally this was going to be a two 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.280 parter where one part was the people who tried when 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:48.840 Mussolini was coming up, and then the second part was 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:51.280 going to be people who succeeded when he was coming down. 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:54.760 But it's actually all going to be about people who 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:56.280 tried when he was coming up because there were so 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:58.560 many Did you know that an awful lot of people 0:03:58.640 --> 0:03:59.720 tried to kill Mussolini? 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:03.240 Yes, I mean it's like with Hitler, right, Like you've 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:05.160 got that guy who tried to blow him up and 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:08.280 that and almost did that fucking carpenter who tried to 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:09.560 blow him up in one of the halls. He was 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:13.400 speaking at all sorts of pre attempts. So I wasn't 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:15.720 really familiar with the ones on Mussolini, but I was 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:16.920 sure there had been some. 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:20.840 We're going to talk about I think eight of them 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:22.479 today or this week. 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:25.720 Yeah, that sounds like the right them ount Yeah. 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:28.400 And so far by my account, I was counting. Right 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:30.520 before I recorded, I was talking to one of my 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:33.160 friends about it. So far, by my account, we've got 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:37.960 one socialist, one Catholic, one Republican, and five anarchists attempted 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:44.919 to kill Mussolini. So Benito Mussolini is famously one of 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:48.880 the founders of fascism. The ideology that is genuinely and 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:51.240 truly bad. That ninety five percent of the people on 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.400 this planet agree is bad. We just don't agree about 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:56.160 what counts as fascism. 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.200 Yes, that's part of the problem. 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:05.200 Yeah, yeah, it doesn't help that. I mean, because some 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:07.640 people use fascism to just being anyone I don't like 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:12.680 or any authoritarianism, right, and that's not an accurate way 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:14.960 to talk about things. We shouldn't call our enemies fascists 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:16.000 when they're not fascists. 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:20.880 Now, like Stalin wasn't really a fascist, No, because in 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:25.080 part fascists come to power through popular acclaim as a 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:28.640 result of like setting themselves up in opposition to the left. 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:31.680 There's this also idea that Stalin does kind of fit 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:36.040 in with the attitude that like the fascist dictator embodies 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:38.720 the people in some way, although the way in which 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:42.039 like Soviet propaganda talk about Stalin was actually quite different 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:45.120 from the way fascist propaganda tends to talk about the 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:49.480 leader being like an embodiment of the people. But yeah, 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:52.279 there are some similarities, like there's a bunch of stuff. 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:54.520 Syncretism is a big part. Go read your umburdo. 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:57.520 Echo. Well, there's gonna be a bunch of emburdos in 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:01.080 this episode, but not Echo. Yeah, but it turns out 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:04.839 on Birdo is sort of the mic of Italy. Well, yeah, 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:09.440 mcla is probably the mic of Italy. But fascism is 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.159 one of the most convoluted and complex political ideologies to 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:14.240 ever come about, which is one of the reasons why 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:15.800 you can kind of point to anything and call it 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:18.960 fascism and be wrong, but also be like, you see 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:21.920 where you're coming from about it, you know, because it's 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.000 not actually a simple ideology. The more as I was 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:29.360 reading this, because Italian fascism in particular comes out of 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:33.200 where they're right and the left meet, and it is 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.560 not a Well we'll talk about this. I'm not going 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:39.200 to get too deep into the weeds of defining fascism today, 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:43.120 but I want to talk first about someone who one 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:47.920 hundred percent absolutely I am certain would have been fine 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:52.800 with assassinating someone like Benito Mussolini. About fifteen years before 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:56.279 Benito Mussolini came to power. That man who would have 0:06:56.279 --> 0:07:02.600 been totally fine with killing Benito Mussolini was Benito Mussolini. 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.040 Oh because well yeah, yeah, I know that makes sense. 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.680 Yeah, to open up a can of orbs that the 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:12.800 Internet is not equipped to handle. Benito Mussolini, the founder 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:16.520 of the world's deadliest far right ideology, started on the left. 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:20.400 Yep, he sure did. Uh kind of adjacent to anarchism. 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:22.800 Yeah, we're going to talk about that. There's gonna be 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:31.960 a lot of also started as a journalist, hooray. Uh yeah, yeah, 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:34.320 he was a socialist for a long ass time. He 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:39.040 was at least a second generation leftist. Mussolini was born 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:40.960 in the year eighteen eighty three and he was the 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.400 child of a blacksmith socialist and a Catholic school teacher. 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.280 He got named after a series of socialists and leftists 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:50.720 because of his father, and then he was baptized Catholic 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:54.680 because of his mom. He's named Benito after Benito Juarez, 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:58.920 the liberal president of Mexico, and his middle names, which 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:01.280 I forgot to look up in a Italian are Andrea 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:06.400 and Amalakare And these are after two anarchists because his 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:09.680 father was part of the Anarchist International, which was an 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:14.040 anti authoritarian socialist organization in the eighteen seventies. I'm just 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:17.760 going straight into the like the this is like when 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:21.240 I have to talk about eugenics on this show, you know, 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:23.000 whenever I have to talk about something that was like 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:25.400 really common and easily understood in the nineteenth century, that 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:30.080 makes no sense in the twenty first century. Italian nationalism 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:33.160 is really intertwined with the left, and it's really intertwined 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:33.839 with anarchism. 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.440 Yeah, and that, I mean it makes sense when you're 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:40.920 coming out of a world well not very long before 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:45.480 this period, Italy had been fucking Habsburg property. Much of 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:50.000 Italy at least had been Habsburg property, right, and when 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:52.319 all of these things that we now just see is like, well, 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.079 obviously Italy is a country, obviously Croatia is a country. 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:57.360 When they're all the property of some guy in his 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:00.760 inbred family, it's a lot less weird that it's a 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:03.240 left wing position to talk about nationalism. 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:10.280 Yeah, totally. Benito Mussolini never did really roll with the anarchists. 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:13.679 He kind of wanted to at different points. When he 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:17.040 was a socialist, he was firmly in the authoritarian socialist camp, 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:20.920 but he studied a lot of anarchist theory. He remained 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:24.679 friendly with anarchists. He was either dating or just friends with. 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:28.760 I've read both the anarchist orientalist poet named Lyda Rafanelli. 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:33.079 He translated two of the anarchist Peter Kropotkin's books from 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:36.280 French into Italian. And because yeah, he was journalists. He 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:40.160 read newspapers and kind of if you were a political 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:42.000 person in the nineteenth century, if you were like a 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:44.040 political leader, your thing was that you were a journalist. 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:45.839 Your thing is that you read a newspaper. 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:48.760 Yeah, I mean it's the same, it's the same. Reason 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:51.880 is that with the generation coming up and the next 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:54.120 generation are all going to get their starts on TikTok 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:56.920 and Twitter, and like we're already seeing this on the right, right, 0:09:57.000 --> 0:09:59.120 I mean in the left to a degree. You know, 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:03.240 it's because that totally that's not the journalism. Tweeting is 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:05.800 not or making a TikTok is not journalism. But journalism 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:08.480 wasn't what we would consider journalism back then. It was 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:10.960 just the best way of getting propaganda to the masses. 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:15.000 Yeah, and it was. Yeah, you wrote polemics, and propaganda 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:17.520 just literally meant propagating ideas. If you had an idea 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:18.920 and you want to have to tell people about it, 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:24.920 you would propagandize the idea. So Mussolini, the thing that's 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:26.600 going to come up throughout this week's story is that 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:30.280 he's clearly into authoritarianism, right, but there's something he liked 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:34.040 about the anarchists. He liked their courage, he liked their commitment, 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:37.600 and he liked action. You know, he was He wasn't 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:40.040 the kind of guy who wanted people to wait around 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:41.800 and talk about things. He wanted people to go out 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:46.000 and do things. He also, for a long time shared 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:50.160 their opinion that killing autocrats was just fine. 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:54.320 I mean, look, there's a Vin diagram. We do may 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:56.400 not like to say it, but like there's a Vin diagram. 0:10:56.400 --> 0:11:00.920 It points between me and Mussolini's life. Right, No, totally, 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:06.000 I'm not against killing early twentieth century autocrats theoretically. 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:09.160 Right, yeah, totally. Yeah, if we had a time machine, 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:12.000 we would feel justified in going back and killing absolute 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:14.120 monarchs from the nineteenth century and earlier. 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:16.920 Look, if I could go back in time and stab 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:17.840 the King of Italy. 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:21.520 I would try to Well, that's going to bring us 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.360 to this week's first assassin, is it the guy who 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:27.000 stabbed the King of Italy? I actually can't remember whether 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:30.800 this guy stabbed or shot him. This is the first Okay, 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:32.920 this is the only successful assassin we're going to talk 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:36.880 about for a while. But he shaped a lot of 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.520 Italy's politics for a long time. And that man's name 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:44.120 was Gaetano Breshi. He was a weaver from Italy who 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:47.079 emigrated to the US in the nineteenth century to Patterson, 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:50.240 New Jersey. And it's kind of funny because there's all 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:54.880 of these different hidden, secret anarchist strongholds of the past. 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:57.439 I don't normally think about New Jersey when I think 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:02.920 about anarchism, but yeah, Addison, New Jersey very strong Italian 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:06.160 anarchist scene. The next little bit, because it's been a 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:07.960 little while since I've looked up Gatana Brescia. I used 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:09.200 to write about him a lot, so I'm kind of 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:10.880 going into a little bit story mode when I talk 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:13.400 about Gatana Breshci. I'm gonna have more direct sources for 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:14.880 the rest of the rest of the people. I'm gonna 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:17.679 talk about. So everyone knows Katana Breshi was hanging out 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:19.839 in New Jersey with his Irish wife, Sophie, which is 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:25.840 a good name, I agree, right, yeah, and his two daughters, 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:29.439 and she's gonna be all right in this story. Cool. 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:32.360 Yeah, okay, cool, don't don't bring the name down. 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:36.680 Yeah no, no, she's great. No, no negative notes on Sophie. 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:40.199 In eighteen ninety eight, there are these food riots in 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:43.240 Italy and the government was like, well, a specific general 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:45.360 is like, why don't we just murder the entire crowd 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:50.120 that's rioting, And so they did that, and we will 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:52.960 think food riots, they usually think like, oh, everyone lost 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:55.480 their mind and was running around and burning things or whatever. 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:58.440 These were organized strikes that were met with lethal force. 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:02.320 At least eighty protesters and two soldiers were killed. Jesus 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:06.160 and so King umberto the first what did he do? 0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:09.240 And everyone at the time was like, oh, the king 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:11.760 is the true you know. A lot of like populism 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:13.559 is based on the idea that the government's bad, but 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:15.440 the king's good, you know, and. 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:18.040 This translates to fascism too. Right during the Third Reich, 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:20.079 there was always this idea that like if only Hitler 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:24.079 knew right about the worst Nazi policies. Yeah yeah, this 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:26.319 is the same thing with the czar. Yeah yeah, no, 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:27.160 totally yeah. 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:29.240 We see this again and again, and so I think 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:31.839 everyone was kind of expecting Umberto to come in and 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:36.000 be like, well, he probably shouldn't have done that, right, Oh, 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:37.599 I did promise you more than one, Imberto, and this 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:39.640 is one of them. There'sn be another one, probably on Wednesday, 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:44.480 m But what Umberto the first did is awarded the 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:47.360 guy who ordered the massacre of Medal of Honor and 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:52.719 Katano Breshi. He didn't like that. He was living in 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:55.400 New Jersey with Sophie. He'd started an anarchist paper with 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:56.959 some folks, and he'd put up a fuck ton of 0:13:57.040 --> 0:14:00.400 money to start that paper. It is like two bucks 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:02.280 at the time, which is like several thousand dollars now. 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:05.559 He didn't want anyone else to get in trouble for 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:08.520 what he decided to do, so he didn't tell anyone. 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:12.360 He didn't tell Sophie. He just told her he had 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:14.560 to go deal with some stuff, like family stuff in Italy. 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.199 He didn't tell his comrades. He went into the newspaper 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:19.960 and said, hey, all that seed money. I put in, 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:22.520 I need it back now, and they were like why 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:24.760 and he was like, the not your business, give me 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:26.840 my money back. And so everyone kind of thought he 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:29.600 was a sellout and he was just like getting his 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:33.200 money to go fuck off, right. Everyone thought he left 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:35.440 the movement. But he got his money back and he 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:37.480 bought two things. He bought a Smith and Wesson, and 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:39.040 he bought a one way ticket to Paris. 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.480 That's a song. That's a warren Zevon song right there. 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.520 Smith and Wesson and a one way ticket to Paris. Excellent. 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:50.880 And the King is gonna die And unlike a lot 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:53.360 of would be assassins that we've talked about on this show, 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:59.680 Breshi practiced with the revolver, which is always key. 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:00.160 Yes. 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.760 Yeah, he made his way probably to Rome. He made 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:07.240 his way to Italy. He spent two days scouting out 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:09.000 the area where he knew the King was going to be. 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:13.400 And then on July twenty ninth, nineteen hundred, he went out. 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:15.760 He got some ice cream. I think he had lunch 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:17.680 with like a stranger and just hanging out and he 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:21.000 was like, you're gonna remember me guy, and then he 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:23.880 waited for umberto to come through waiting in the crowd 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:25.640 that was all there to cheer on their you know, 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:31.080 glorious leader, and uh he shot Umberto to death. The 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:35.080 crowd immediately grabbed him. Gaetano said, I did not kill Umberto. 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:37.840 I have killed the king. I have killed a principal. 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:44.040 Hell oh, oh, that's that's a good line. That's a 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:44.600 good line. 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:50.000 Back home in New Jersey, his anarchist friends were like, oh, 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:52.120 I guess we judged him wrong, and they started a 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:54.640 fund to look after his kids and support his family. 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:58.280 His wife came to Italy and testified to his good 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:01.840 character in court. His whole family was like arrested in 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:05.280 an investigation into conspiracy, but eventually everyone was let go, 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:11.240 and Italy, under a king was actually had a more 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:14.560 fair criminal justice system than the United States does today. 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:17.760 They didn't have the death penalty. Musolini's going to bring 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:21.440 that back later, so he gets life in prison. He 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:24.720 was held in solitary confinement. He had one hour a 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:27.760 day of exercises, like feet were like manacled to the floor. 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.600 They didn't treat him great. Less than a year later 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:35.160 he was found hanging in his cell, and modern historians 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:37.520 are recentably certain he was murdered. At the time, everyone's like, nah, 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:43.360 I just killed himself. Interestingly enough, this assassination didn't bring 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:46.880 in sweeping reactionary forces or anything like usually people are like, ah, 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.040 you killed the king and something worse is going to happen. 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:54.480 This changed things, but it the existing like kind of 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:58.480 leftist government stayed in power, and things kind of chugged along. Okay, 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:00.840 it didn't even lead to they like crack down on 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:02.920 the anarchist movement, but they didn't come through and destroy it. 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:07.640 It did lead to more international cooperation between law enforcement. 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:10.880 When I first started dreaming up this show years ago, 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:14.000 it was kind of in a different context and I 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:15.879 wanted to talk about anarchist history and I was like, 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:18.639 you know, they literally invented international policing to stop us. 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:21.480 Why are all of our books boring? Has been my 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:26.560 like go to tagline because they did. International policing exists 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:29.680 because of trying to stop the anarchist movement. Because yep, 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.160 nothing gets people to work together, Like like when people 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:36.720 go around and kill like poor people, everyone's like, oh, 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:41.439 that sucks. Whatever. When people go around and kill kings, 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:44.719 kings work together to make sure that that stops. 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.520 Yeah, No, kings are great at like really union behave 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:51.160 they really work like unions royalty. 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:55.000 Yeah, when when someone comes for them as a class, 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:55.960 they band together. 0:17:56.560 --> 0:17:56.760 Yeah. 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:02.880 One person who defended Gaetano Breshi doing a little king 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:06.040 murder was a man by the name of Benito Mussolini. 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:10.440 His fellow socialists were claiming Bresci was crazy for having 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:11.040 killed the king. 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:11.400 Right. 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:17.280 Mussolini said that tarrann Aside was quote the occupational hazard 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:21.439 of being a king, which I don't know I. 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:29.160 Mean talking about occupational hazards. Yeah, I feel confident saying 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:31.280 that being a king is a pre existing condition. 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:37.800 Yeah, yeah, totally. But what isn't a pre existing No, 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:42.760 But what else we're obliged to do is play ads 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:54.360 for you now, Yeah, like these ones and we're back. 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:59.840 Now this might shock you, Robert, did you know mus 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:03.159 didn't stay leftist? Really? 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:07.440 Now? I thought you were talking about Binny Mussolini, the 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:09.840 man who invented the three day weekend. 0:19:13.040 --> 0:19:15.080 Well, I was reading a whole bunch on on that 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:19.440 website X about how actually the fascists or socialists and leftists. 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:23.840 You're, of course referring to the website that just plays 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:26.159 a looping video of the song X Gonna give It 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:28.120 to You. That's where I get all of my historical 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:31.600 information about anarchists in the early nineteen hundreds as well. 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:35.240 Yes, uh huh, yeah, my ex feet is certainly playing 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:41.960 looping videos of something right now. And so Mussolini was 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:45.840 kicked out of the Socialist Party because he supported interventionism, 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:49.960 he supported Italy fighting in World War One, and along 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:53.080 the way he started developing his theories on fascism, which 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:57.320 was basically, what if you took revolutionary socialism and then 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:01.879 replaced it with revolutionary nationalism. Instead of class solidarity, you 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:05.600 had national solidarity. What if you made all of the 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:08.240 poor people suck up to the rich people and then 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:12.520 defend the nation as a concept the leftist trappings and 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:15.879 some of the leftists strategies, but with right wing goals 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:18.920 because at the time, right wing was just like the 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:22.120 status quo. Right if you defend like the monarchy or whatever, 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:25.119 your right wing, so there's nothing really revolutionary about it. 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:28.040 But fascism was like, no, but we want the revolution 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:30.040 and we want to like feel cool and edgy, but 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:33.080 we also want to we really like the taste of boots, 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:35.879 and so we're going to become fascists and invent this 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:39.880 new ideology. For a few years, a lot of politics 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:42.320 in Italy was happening in the streets, fascist versus anti 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:45.400 fascists fighting it out, and for a good several years, 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.880 Mussolini tried to make common cause with the anarchists, specifically 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:52.840 to join him against the socialists and the communists. After all, 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:54.879 this is the period where the Bolsheviks and Russia were 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:58.920 murdering anarchists on Moss and so some folks there's a 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:01.800 chance that Mussolini even going to go anarchists during this time. 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:04.080 I actually don't buy it, but I read one person 0:21:04.160 --> 0:21:07.920 making this argument. He actually risked alienating his base with 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:12.879 how much he appreciated the anarchists. Interesting because his base 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:14.119 was like, no, those are the people we just go 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:19.040 fight in the streets. But Mussolini kind of admires their commitment, right, 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:25.760 and the anarchists don't want him. Mussolini said, quote, we 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:28.359 are always ready to admire men who are willing to 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:32.119 die for a faith they believe in selflessly. And this 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:37.040 came contrasting the anarchists to the cowardly socialists. The anarchists, 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:39.000 in so many words, told him to eat shit and die. 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:42.760 They refuse his overtures again and again, and soon enough 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:45.520 they're going to try really really hard to just outright 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:49.119 kill this man. The most famous Italian anarchist then and 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:52.800 now is this guy named Erico Malatesta. He's popped into 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:54.600 a bunch of our stories on the show, like when 0:21:54.640 --> 0:21:56.879 comrades got him to Argentina by smuggling him in a 0:21:56.960 --> 0:21:59.840 crate of sewing machines, and then he helped the Baker's 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:02.119 Union there become the most radical union in that country, 0:22:02.240 --> 0:22:04.760 and the model that all the other unions rush to follow. 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:07.359 And how today in Argentina there are still pastries named 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:11.040 by the anarchist Bakers, like little books and little bombs. 0:22:12.200 --> 0:22:15.160 I really like Malatesta. He's always in and out of jail. 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:17.119 He's an older fellow now, I think he's in his 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:20.440 sixties at this point that we're talking about. And while 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:22.960 he's in prison in Italy, there's a huge campaign to 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:27.440 free him, and who supports that campaign but Benito Mussolini, 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:30.720 even though his followers are fighting the anarchists in the 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:35.200 streets during this time, Malatesta gets out and he can't 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:38.159 get any paper for his newspapers because of political pressure. 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:41.359 Against him, and Mussolini offers him paper to print on 0:22:42.000 --> 0:22:47.720 and Mala Testa is like no, what No, So Mussolini 0:22:48.240 --> 0:22:51.919 keeps trying to be friends with them. But some anarchists 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:56.000 and folks from every ideology did turn fascist, right, because 0:22:56.119 --> 0:22:58.520 you can't have a new ideology without starting with people 0:22:58.520 --> 0:23:02.000 who used to have other ideologies. An awful lot of 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:05.840 anarchists turn fascist. Orwell has a really good essay about this. 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:07.880 George Orwell has a really good essay about this called 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:10.840 Notes on Nationalism that basically lays out the case that 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:14.520 a lot of political extremists are into extremism, not the 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:17.600 idea that the extremism is attached to. So you get 0:23:17.640 --> 0:23:19.800 people going from the radical left to the radical right 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:25.000 reasonably often. And this unfortunately ties into the first time 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:29.000 that I've found of someone trying to kill Mussolini. Some 0:23:29.119 --> 0:23:32.600 anarchists got together in nineteen twenty one, before Mussolini ever 0:23:32.720 --> 0:23:35.160 even took formal power. He does that nineteen twenty two, 0:23:36.080 --> 0:23:38.360 and they're like, all right, we got to kill this guy. 0:23:39.160 --> 0:23:42.840 They delegated one among their number, a man named Biaggio Massi, 0:23:43.440 --> 0:23:48.879 to go kill Mussolini. Instead, Biaggio went to Mussolini and 0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:53.159 told him the whole plan. Mussolini protected him, and then 0:23:53.200 --> 0:23:56.639 the very next day, because Mussolini is just being I 0:23:56.640 --> 0:24:01.159 don't know, connin or whatever, yeah, goes and gives a 0:24:01.200 --> 0:24:04.239 speech about how the government needs to really release malat Testa, right, 0:24:04.320 --> 0:24:06.920 even though he has just learned the anarchists or trying 0:24:06.960 --> 0:24:09.840 to kill him. He's a forty chess kind of man, 0:24:10.160 --> 0:24:10.960 this Mussolini. 0:24:11.520 --> 0:24:13.480 Yeah, yeah, unfortunately he is. 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:14.440 He was. 0:24:14.560 --> 0:24:16.760 I mean, one thing you learned about Mussolini and all 0:24:16.800 --> 0:24:20.159 these guys, the exception of Franco, who unfortunately kept a 0:24:20.200 --> 0:24:23.200 pretty good grip on his rationality throughout his life, is 0:24:23.680 --> 0:24:25.760 most of them are a lot more cunning and better 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:29.000 at planning before they get into power. And it's almost 0:24:29.080 --> 0:24:32.720 like power damages your brain in a way that makes 0:24:32.800 --> 0:24:35.520 you less capable of like clamping down on your own 0:24:35.600 --> 0:24:38.320 worse impulses and analyzing things logically. 0:24:39.480 --> 0:24:42.000 That makes sense to me. There's also this thing where 0:24:42.000 --> 0:24:45.919 people are always like Mussolini's like the little brother of Hitler, 0:24:46.440 --> 0:24:50.320 you know, and he's kind of a joke because Italy's 0:24:51.040 --> 0:24:56.720 military might is not the same as Germany's. Right, Mussolini 0:24:56.800 --> 0:25:00.480 pulled off something pretty incredible, like terrible evil, but like 0:25:01.040 --> 0:25:04.040 he did become dictator of a major country. That is 0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:05.960 like a hard thing to do. 0:25:06.880 --> 0:25:09.840 I mean, I think I could become dictator of Italy. Yeah, no, 0:25:09.920 --> 0:25:12.640 I know, but you get you give me six months, Margaret, Okay, 0:25:12.880 --> 0:25:16.000 six months and a lot of pizza pies. If we 0:25:16.160 --> 0:25:23.200 know anything about our Italians, Uh, Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut's 0:25:23.240 --> 0:25:23.840 probably fine. 0:25:24.640 --> 0:25:26.080 I really like the pizza in Italy. 0:25:26.800 --> 0:25:26.960 Yeah. 0:25:27.080 --> 0:25:29.960 I like how every country, not every country, but most 0:25:29.960 --> 0:25:32.760 countries I've been to, the American version of their national 0:25:32.840 --> 0:25:34.760 food is hard to get vegan, but in the country 0:25:34.800 --> 0:25:37.480 that I'm in, it's actually reasonably easy. Like it's really 0:25:37.560 --> 0:25:40.800 easy to just go into any train station in Aley 0:25:40.920 --> 0:25:41.960 and buy vegan pizza. 0:25:42.720 --> 0:25:45.159 You could feel about how this however you want, but 0:25:45.400 --> 0:25:48.800 undeniably like one of the most intense flexes in the 0:25:48.960 --> 0:25:52.920 history of international conflict is when the US had the 0:25:53.040 --> 0:25:56.480 former premiere of the Soviet Union become a spokesman for 0:25:56.600 --> 0:26:02.200 Pizza Hut. Like it's just such a wow. Well I guess, yeah, 0:26:02.200 --> 0:26:06.359 I guess you guys lost that God with Jesus Jesus. 0:26:09.080 --> 0:26:14.120 So Mussolini comes to power in October nineteen twenty two. First, 0:26:14.119 --> 0:26:16.680 as the prime minister, there's something that's like, not not 0:26:16.840 --> 0:26:18.240 a coup. I mean it's not a coup, but it's 0:26:18.240 --> 0:26:21.280 also not not a coup. Right, thirty thousand of his 0:26:21.359 --> 0:26:24.560 black Shirts, his personal army, marched on Rome. In the 0:26:25.200 --> 0:26:28.720 March on Rome. The liberal government was like, hey, let's 0:26:28.720 --> 0:26:30.840 declare martial law to stop this, but then the king 0:26:31.040 --> 0:26:33.560 was like, no, let's just put that guy in charge instead. 0:26:34.840 --> 0:26:37.720 Mussolini immediately helped out the rich people. He was not 0:26:37.880 --> 0:26:41.320 a fucking leftist at this point. Immediately helped out all 0:26:41.320 --> 0:26:43.639 the rich people, centralized power, and just was a right 0:26:43.640 --> 0:26:46.240 wing shit bag. By nineteen twenty four he was like, look, 0:26:46.280 --> 0:26:49.320 there's not a democracy anymore. Okay, it's just fascism, and 0:26:50.280 --> 0:26:55.560 Italy became fascist and people didn't really like that. There 0:26:55.600 --> 0:26:59.440 are some occupational hazards to be in a dictator. First, 0:26:59.760 --> 0:27:02.440 and most famous at the time but not the most 0:27:02.480 --> 0:27:06.920 famous now, was a socialist politician named Tito Zanaboni. And 0:27:06.960 --> 0:27:08.800 don't worry. If you're like, hey, that sounds like Zamboni 0:27:08.840 --> 0:27:13.440 and you think that's clever, don't worry. There's two Zamboni's later. Okay, okay, 0:27:13.640 --> 0:27:14.760 but this one's Xanaboni. 0:27:15.600 --> 0:27:18.000 This is not a serious country. Look, I know we're 0:27:18.000 --> 0:27:20.800 talking about serious things, but Italy, I just I'm sorry, 0:27:21.359 --> 0:27:21.919 it's just not. 0:27:23.800 --> 0:27:26.160 One time I was in Italy and my friend took 0:27:26.200 --> 0:27:30.480 me to like her very nice apartment in oh I 0:27:30.520 --> 0:27:32.159 don't remember which city. I was on tour for like 0:27:32.200 --> 0:27:33.440 a month, and I went to a bunch of cities 0:27:34.200 --> 0:27:35.639 and she was like, looks out, and I'm like, how 0:27:35.680 --> 0:27:39.520 do you afford this like amazing, fantastic place. And she 0:27:39.680 --> 0:27:41.480 goes to the window and points down to this like 0:27:41.560 --> 0:27:44.720 public square right outside, and she's like, that's where the 0:27:44.800 --> 0:27:50.800 mafia assassinate, like executes people in public. No one wants 0:27:50.880 --> 0:27:51.400 to live here. 0:27:52.280 --> 0:27:53.879 I mean, shit, you could do that in front of 0:27:53.920 --> 0:27:56.920 my ass if I could have paid like, you know, 0:27:57.119 --> 0:28:00.280 thirty percent less. Absolutely, Look, I'm not going I'm not 0:28:00.320 --> 0:28:02.359 getting involved with the mafia. They got no reason to 0:28:02.400 --> 0:28:05.320 be pissed at me. Yeah, I don't see shit. 0:28:05.920 --> 0:28:06.679 Yeah you stay here? 0:28:06.840 --> 0:28:09.679 Gunshots at night? I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, MafA, what. 0:28:11.920 --> 0:28:13.879 Most of the places that have been really nice, that 0:28:14.119 --> 0:28:16.600 like have been aesthetically really nice that I can afford 0:28:16.680 --> 0:28:18.640 to live in, have had gunshots outside at night. Yeah, 0:28:18.680 --> 0:28:19.080 that's true. 0:28:19.160 --> 0:28:21.639 I mean I have twice been coming home to my 0:28:21.800 --> 0:28:24.359 house when someone has a couple of blocks away been 0:28:24.440 --> 0:28:25.840 shooting it out with the police. 0:28:26.119 --> 0:28:29.720 Yeah. You know, a nice place to live, A nice 0:28:29.760 --> 0:28:32.399 place to live, and like, I'm not the police, so 0:28:32.520 --> 0:28:33.560 I'm not worried again. 0:28:33.680 --> 0:28:36.160 Shot, I'm not the police. These people have no reason 0:28:36.200 --> 0:28:37.040 to be angry at me. 0:28:37.359 --> 0:28:37.560 Yeah. 0:28:40.040 --> 0:28:42.600 So before we talk about Tito, we're gonna talk about 0:28:42.600 --> 0:28:48.040 another Italian socialist politician, Jacomo Mattiatodi Madia Maddiodi. 0:28:48.240 --> 0:28:55.360 And best friend Buca di Beppo Tacoma Maddio Maddieodi was 0:28:55.400 --> 0:28:59.160 a socialist politician who tried repeatedly to expose most Mussolinian 0:28:59.200 --> 0:29:02.480 fascism for what were After he published a book against 0:29:02.520 --> 0:29:05.720 the fascists and accused them of fraud the fascists, who 0:29:06.640 --> 0:29:07.800 were certainly people of action. 0:29:08.480 --> 0:29:12.680 On June tenth, nineteen twenty four, Jacomo was kidnapped by 0:29:12.680 --> 0:29:15.760 the Fascist secret police, who stabbed him to death with 0:29:15.840 --> 0:29:19.600 a carpenter's file. I believe in the car. This wasn't 0:29:19.600 --> 0:29:21.200 a lot of ways the thing that paved the way 0:29:21.240 --> 0:29:24.440 for Mussolini to declare himself dictator. I'm going to oversimplify 0:29:24.520 --> 0:29:28.080 this dangerously. But after a lot of handwringing and investigations 0:29:28.120 --> 0:29:30.640 and castigations of the fascists for this kind of thing, 0:29:31.040 --> 0:29:36.000 eventually Mussolini was like, look, I'm a fascist, though, I'm 0:29:36.040 --> 0:29:38.840 in charge, and we're going to stab people to death 0:29:38.880 --> 0:29:41.280 with Carpenter's files, and you're just going to deal with it. 0:29:42.720 --> 0:29:45.560 This had an enormous amount of knock on effects. One 0:29:45.640 --> 0:29:49.000 of them was that this other socialist politician, Tito Zanaboni, 0:29:49.600 --> 0:29:52.720 he got real mad. He had been part of the 0:29:52.760 --> 0:29:56.080 search efforts to find his friend. Before that, he'd been 0:29:56.120 --> 0:29:58.480 part of signing a peace treaty between the socialists and 0:29:58.520 --> 0:30:01.120 the fascists. But after they killed his friend, Oh yeah, 0:30:01.120 --> 0:30:04.160 the socialist sign of peace treaty of the fascists. I 0:30:04.240 --> 0:30:06.760 think that after I talk about all the like anarchists 0:30:06.800 --> 0:30:08.920 who became fascists and stuff, it's worth pointing out the 0:30:08.960 --> 0:30:13.600 socialist sign of peace treaty with the fascists. After they 0:30:13.680 --> 0:30:15.680 killed his friend, He's like, all right, fuck this, we 0:30:15.760 --> 0:30:19.720 gotta shoot this guy. And he and his friends conspired 0:30:19.720 --> 0:30:22.240 to kill Massolini. Tito is a war hero, so he 0:30:22.320 --> 0:30:24.760 got a precision rifle and he set himself up to 0:30:24.800 --> 0:30:27.720 station himself in a window to shoot Mussolini from far away. 0:30:29.040 --> 0:30:33.000 But among his co conspirators was an informant. So Tito 0:30:33.200 --> 0:30:35.600 and actually a general in the army and the Italian 0:30:35.680 --> 0:30:39.000 Army were both sent to prison. I think they got 0:30:39.000 --> 0:30:42.440 the maximum sentence, which was thirty years. At the time, great, 0:30:43.360 --> 0:30:46.640 the United Socialist Party was no more. In court, Tito 0:30:46.800 --> 0:30:49.120 used the same defense as most of Mussolini's would be 0:30:49.160 --> 0:30:53.720 assassins used later, which is the defense of yeah, but 0:30:53.760 --> 0:30:57.640 fuck Mussolini, though somebody should shoot him. M h just 0:30:58.040 --> 0:31:00.200 you know, not always the best way to get off 0:31:00.240 --> 0:31:03.280 in court, but like, looks good in history books. 0:31:03.400 --> 0:31:06.160 Yeah, looks good. I mean there's right around this time 0:31:06.480 --> 0:31:10.280 the case of Sagam Montalurian, who Berlin jury decided like, 0:31:10.640 --> 0:31:12.920 oh no, no, it was totally fine that he assassinated 0:31:12.960 --> 0:31:16.160 that guy who did a genocide. Oh yeah, politician. 0:31:16.320 --> 0:31:19.120 Yeah, we covered this one on the Armenian Genocide episode. Yeah. 0:31:19.160 --> 0:31:22.640 I'm just saying, everybody who might wind up in a 0:31:22.720 --> 0:31:26.480 court in New York start looking up jury nullifications right now. 0:31:26.720 --> 0:31:28.560 Yeah, absolutely. 0:31:30.600 --> 0:31:30.640 So. 0:31:31.400 --> 0:31:34.240 Tito is released in nineteen forty three when the Fascist 0:31:34.280 --> 0:31:36.600 government fell, which is the other thing that comes up 0:31:36.600 --> 0:31:38.680 a lot is that revolutionaries or in this case, I 0:31:38.680 --> 0:31:40.520 mean it wasn't even a revolutionary, as a politician who 0:31:40.600 --> 0:31:44.000 was like, yeah, but other politicians shouldn't murder people, you know, 0:31:44.640 --> 0:31:47.600 And people go to jail for a really long time. 0:31:49.040 --> 0:31:53.120 Right wing governments often fall, and if you can stay 0:31:53.120 --> 0:31:57.400 alive in jail long enough, you'll be free again. But 0:31:58.880 --> 0:32:02.680 someone else was directly inspired by the death of Jacamo Mattiot. 0:32:03.640 --> 0:32:06.920 One of my favorite strange and misunderstood assassins in history, 0:32:08.120 --> 0:32:11.800 Violet Gibson. Have you heard of I feel like that 0:32:11.920 --> 0:32:13.560 there's one I've heard the name. 0:32:14.000 --> 0:32:14.240 Yeah. 0:32:15.040 --> 0:32:17.920 If there's one assassin, people have probably heard of Violet Gibson. 0:32:18.880 --> 0:32:20.920 This is the most widely known attempt on his life 0:32:20.960 --> 0:32:23.720 in the modern era because it's the one that makes 0:32:23.760 --> 0:32:25.240 the coolest social media headline. 0:32:25.720 --> 0:32:26.840 Is there like a song? 0:32:27.760 --> 0:32:30.840 There are there's actually there's songs about her, there's documentaries, 0:32:31.280 --> 0:32:31.520 and I. 0:32:32.080 --> 0:32:33.560 Really hope I'm thinking of the right person and also 0:32:33.640 --> 0:32:34.080 sound dumb. 0:32:34.320 --> 0:32:36.800 She was like really short, right, yeah, she's five foot 0:32:36.840 --> 0:32:38.360 one yeah, yeah, okay. 0:32:38.160 --> 0:32:41.680 Oh yeah, hell yeah. So I love stories about short 0:32:41.760 --> 0:32:45.680 ladies doing badass. My grandma was like four foot eleven hell. 0:32:45.760 --> 0:32:45.920 Yeah. 0:32:46.080 --> 0:32:49.120 My grandpa was six ' five and because she was 0:32:49.240 --> 0:32:52.960 so small during World War Two she had a special job. 0:32:53.000 --> 0:32:55.280 They would hold her by her feet and shove her 0:32:55.400 --> 0:32:58.520 inside the wings of P fifty one mustangs so she 0:32:58.640 --> 0:33:01.520 could like weld them up or like you bolting, or 0:33:01.720 --> 0:33:03.520 she was like welding them on the inside. There was 0:33:03.520 --> 0:33:06.200 like an area that needed welds that only the tiniest 0:33:06.280 --> 0:33:07.000 girls could fit. 0:33:07.200 --> 0:33:10.640 Tell yeah fucking rab Yeah. 0:33:11.720 --> 0:33:14.560 As somebody who definitely can't reach things on the top shelf, 0:33:15.040 --> 0:33:17.520 I'm very excited to hear more about Violet. 0:33:18.160 --> 0:33:19.920 Also, the only person who I'm going to talk about 0:33:19.920 --> 0:33:22.920 today who successfully shot the man. 0:33:23.680 --> 0:33:24.160 Well done. 0:33:24.320 --> 0:33:26.640 I mean one of the lessons is that nobody knew 0:33:26.680 --> 0:33:30.360 how to shoot in the past. Yeah, and most people 0:33:30.440 --> 0:33:31.800 don't know how to shoot today. 0:33:32.120 --> 0:33:36.840 Also. Yeah, So Violet Gibson was a forty nine year 0:33:36.840 --> 0:33:40.080 old Irish woman from Dublin who lived in a convent 0:33:40.200 --> 0:33:44.040 in Rome and shot Mussolini in the face on April seventh, 0:33:44.160 --> 0:33:45.040 nineteen twenty six. 0:33:46.120 --> 0:33:46.960 What's not to lot? 0:33:47.200 --> 0:33:52.320 God Ireland stays winning? Yeah, you know, I don't. Mostly 0:33:52.600 --> 0:33:54.600 the part to not like about the story is that 0:33:55.560 --> 0:33:57.360 he turned his head at the last minute. Yeah, he 0:33:57.440 --> 0:34:00.080 didn't die, and she only grazed his nose, but there 0:34:00.080 --> 0:34:02.080 are good pictures of him, like with the like bandage 0:34:02.120 --> 0:34:05.320 on his nose or whatever. There's no comparisons that can 0:34:05.360 --> 0:34:07.480 be made now to the modern world. 0:34:07.680 --> 0:34:10.440 No about people turning their heads. 0:34:10.520 --> 0:34:14.160 Yeah and getting grazed yep mm. The world would have 0:34:14.239 --> 0:34:16.440 been a very different place if he had not turned 0:34:16.480 --> 0:34:21.040 his head yep. Violet Gibson was a thin woman, about 0:34:21.160 --> 0:34:24.480 five foot one. Her father was the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. 0:34:24.560 --> 0:34:27.040 She grew up She's Anglo Irish, right, and she grew. 0:34:26.960 --> 0:34:28.960 Up like oh wow, so her like they're like the 0:34:29.040 --> 0:34:32.440 English landlord yeah type deal, yeah yeah yeah, oh like 0:34:32.560 --> 0:34:33.800 Lawrence of Arabia. 0:34:34.239 --> 0:34:37.719 Yeah, totally and h and like Lawrence of Arabia. She's 0:34:37.840 --> 0:34:41.160 crazy as shit. But people use this to invalidate and 0:34:41.280 --> 0:34:43.600 like claim that her action wasn't political or thought out, 0:34:43.640 --> 0:34:45.080 and that's what I want to argue against. But I 0:34:45.120 --> 0:34:46.759 can't argue against her being crazy at shit, and I'm 0:34:46.760 --> 0:34:50.200 gonna tell you why. But she grew up riches hell. 0:34:50.400 --> 0:34:53.960 She was a debutante, debuted in Queen Victoria's court, which 0:34:54.000 --> 0:34:57.080 I only vaguely understand what is through mostly my friends 0:34:57.080 --> 0:34:59.960 who are from the South, most telling into the store 0:35:00.320 --> 0:35:01.879 come down to I don't know she did it because 0:35:01.880 --> 0:35:04.480 she was crazy. I am going to make the case 0:35:04.520 --> 0:35:06.600 as she did it because she was a politically committed 0:35:06.680 --> 0:35:09.680 Catholic socialist who wanted to do right by God and 0:35:09.880 --> 0:35:11.800 people by killing a man who went on to be 0:35:11.880 --> 0:35:16.040 responsible for millions of deaths, who was also crazy. She 0:35:16.239 --> 0:35:19.920 was always esoteric. She was raised Protestant right Her mother 0:35:20.080 --> 0:35:23.160 became a Christian scientist, and so she herself experimented with 0:35:23.280 --> 0:35:27.160 Christian science, and then she got into Theosophy for a while, 0:35:27.480 --> 0:35:30.800 but then she converted. She found another esoteric religion to 0:35:30.840 --> 0:35:34.600 get involved in Catholicism when she was twenty six, and 0:35:34.680 --> 0:35:36.319 she stayed a Catholic for the rest of her life. 0:35:37.200 --> 0:35:39.600 She was sick all of the time, her body carried 0:35:39.640 --> 0:35:43.160 the scars of many surgeries, and she spent years working 0:35:43.440 --> 0:35:48.319 at various pacifist organizations. The craziest thing she did, which 0:35:48.400 --> 0:35:50.480 is left out of the leftist accounts of her story, 0:35:50.520 --> 0:35:52.440 but it's included in the right wing accounts of her 0:35:52.480 --> 0:35:57.680 story that are like demonizing her, but they're verifiable. I 0:35:57.800 --> 0:36:00.880 believe this happened. So she used to walk around Dublin 0:36:00.960 --> 0:36:02.920 with a Bible in one hand and a knife in 0:36:03.000 --> 0:36:07.440 the other. And I hate to say it, but that 0:36:07.640 --> 0:36:10.279 is that is pretty cool. Oh yeah, no, like, yeah, no, 0:36:11.640 --> 0:36:14.560 she's I would want to meet her, maybe from a distance, 0:36:14.640 --> 0:36:15.600 but I would want to meet her. 0:36:15.760 --> 0:36:18.279 I would want to like observe her from from a 0:36:18.400 --> 0:36:22.799 safe distance. Yeeah, yeah exactly. She talked all the time 0:36:22.840 --> 0:36:27.200 about the necessity of mortifying the flesh, which is normally 0:36:27.239 --> 0:36:31.080 about like killing the urge to sin, but she seemed 0:36:31.120 --> 0:36:34.680 to want to kill. Was that was part of her 0:36:35.040 --> 0:36:39.000 way of understanding that particular doctrine. Around nineteen twenty, she 0:36:39.120 --> 0:36:42.320 attacked a young woman with a knife, cutting the woman's 0:36:42.360 --> 0:36:44.520 face and hands. And so she spent two years in 0:36:44.600 --> 0:36:48.400 an asylum. And I don't know enough about that attack 0:36:48.520 --> 0:36:51.719 to know, like if there's any motivation beyond something about 0:36:51.719 --> 0:36:55.440 how she wanted to like replicate the uh sacrifice of 0:36:56.280 --> 0:36:57.719 so and so in the Bible or whatever. 0:36:58.520 --> 0:37:02.560 Sure, when she got out, she moved a convent in Rome. 0:37:02.640 --> 0:37:05.160 I believe this was kind of a like, yeah, you're 0:37:05.239 --> 0:37:06.920 like super rich, though, so you can go be in 0:37:06.960 --> 0:37:11.680 this convent. Her friends thought to themselves, She's probably going 0:37:11.760 --> 0:37:15.719 to kill somebody maybe the Pope, but they didn't try 0:37:15.760 --> 0:37:17.920 to stop her, which is really funny because they're probably 0:37:17.920 --> 0:37:22.520 all Irish Catholics and they're just like, eh, whatever. Then 0:37:23.320 --> 0:37:26.600 in nineteen twenty four, when Jacamo was murdered, the guy 0:37:26.920 --> 0:37:29.960 murdered to death with a carpenter's file. Yeah, she was 0:37:30.040 --> 0:37:33.200 heartbroken because she was a Catholic socialist, right, and so 0:37:33.360 --> 0:37:36.360 she decided to like revenge that killing by shooting herself 0:37:36.400 --> 0:37:40.000 in the chest. The bullet bounced off her ribs and 0:37:40.120 --> 0:37:43.640 she survived. And if you want to survive in the 0:37:43.760 --> 0:37:48.239 world that's coming, you need to buy literally everything that 0:37:48.400 --> 0:37:51.879 is advertised on this show. It is the only way 0:37:52.760 --> 0:37:57.720 to survive. I believe it's not a guarantee. But here's 0:37:57.760 --> 0:38:10.400 ads and we're back Mussolini at this point. God, I 0:38:10.400 --> 0:38:12.000 read a whole bunch of New York Times articles and 0:38:12.080 --> 0:38:14.920 like other newspaper articles from this time, and they're all 0:38:15.080 --> 0:38:18.720 like Mussolini's great. We all like Mussolini because he's stopping 0:38:18.760 --> 0:38:22.600 the Bolsheviks. You know, Mussolini was being courted by the 0:38:22.640 --> 0:38:25.680 Western world. The King of England awarded him the Order 0:38:26.160 --> 0:38:28.480 of the Bath, which is not in order to take 0:38:28.520 --> 0:38:34.160 a bath, unfortunately, but instead a knighthood, and Violet Gibson 0:38:34.800 --> 0:38:38.600 decided that the way to glorify God was to assassinate Mussolini, 0:38:39.400 --> 0:38:40.960 so she showed up at one of his talks in 0:38:41.080 --> 0:38:44.120 nineteen twenty six with a revolver and a rock. The 0:38:44.239 --> 0:38:48.120 rock was to break his windshield if necessary, which later 0:38:48.239 --> 0:38:50.719 assassins would have been more successful if they had also 0:38:50.800 --> 0:38:56.360 brought a rock. The modern mind can't really understand her motive, 0:38:56.400 --> 0:38:58.759 I think, because their motive was primarily religious, but it 0:38:58.840 --> 0:39:01.879 was also political. She did it to quote glorify God, 0:39:02.520 --> 0:39:06.359 and Angel kept her arm steady. I told this story 0:39:06.400 --> 0:39:08.560 to a Catholic anarchist friend of mine, whose response was 0:39:08.560 --> 0:39:12.560 basically like, oh, those Irish and their angels. Mussolini turned 0:39:12.560 --> 0:39:14.800 his head the last minute, she grazed his nose. She 0:39:14.960 --> 0:39:18.480 tried to fire again, but the gun jammed. And I've 0:39:18.600 --> 0:39:20.480 read that what he yelled at the time that he 0:39:20.640 --> 0:39:25.320 was shot was fancy a woman, But that might have 0:39:25.400 --> 0:39:28.759 been later. He told the crowd, don't be afraid, this 0:39:28.920 --> 0:39:31.480 is a mere trifle, And then like later, he went 0:39:31.520 --> 0:39:33.799 on this rant about how he's totally down to die 0:39:34.160 --> 0:39:36.640 violently as long as like a good, glorious death. But 0:39:36.680 --> 0:39:38.320 if he's like killed by an old lady, he just 0:39:38.400 --> 0:39:41.480 can't handle it, which is why I wish Violet had 0:39:41.520 --> 0:39:47.319 succeeded over everyone else. Ahlas. Yeah, the crowd caught her 0:39:47.560 --> 0:39:49.880 and beat her, and she was whisked away by the 0:39:49.960 --> 0:39:54.440 cops and declared insane. People said that she was paranoid 0:39:54.600 --> 0:39:56.239 and that was why she tried to kill him, because 0:39:56.239 --> 0:39:59.080 she was paranoid. I hate to break it to the 0:39:59.120 --> 0:40:03.839 people back then, she was correct about this particular thing. 0:40:05.360 --> 0:40:07.919 She spent the rest of her life in various institutions. 0:40:08.440 --> 0:40:10.919 She wrote letter after letter pleading to be set free, 0:40:11.080 --> 0:40:14.239 but those letters were never sent because you know, I mean, 0:40:14.280 --> 0:40:18.759 are crazy, right, That's fine, that's a sarcastic remind Yeah, 0:40:18.760 --> 0:40:23.080 probably caught onto that. She told people that her mood 0:40:23.160 --> 0:40:24.000 controlled the weather. 0:40:25.120 --> 0:40:26.840 Okay, well did it. 0:40:27.000 --> 0:40:29.680 If she'd killed Mussolini, she would have stopped like three 0:40:29.719 --> 0:40:32.279 million deaths. Maybe her moods like I want to kill 0:40:32.400 --> 0:40:34.800 Mussolini have a pretty major impact. 0:40:35.160 --> 0:40:38.719 Yeah, I mean, look, I can't prove that she's wrong. 0:40:39.320 --> 0:40:41.759 Yeah. It reminds me of when I covered Joan of 0:40:41.840 --> 0:40:44.759 Arc on this show, where people are like, oh, feminist icon, 0:40:44.840 --> 0:40:46.680 except you know, obviously she was just crazy with her 0:40:46.760 --> 0:40:50.280 visions from God. And it's just that people were conceiving 0:40:50.360 --> 0:40:52.680 of reality in different ways than we conceive of it now, 0:40:52.760 --> 0:40:54.280 and I think that people have a hard time wrapping 0:40:54.320 --> 0:40:58.520 their heads around that she died in nineteen fifty six 0:40:58.840 --> 0:41:01.520 at the age of seventy nine. She did outlive Mussolini. 0:41:02.760 --> 0:41:07.160 No family members came to her funeral. History has vindicated her, 0:41:07.239 --> 0:41:09.360 and there's now a plaque for her on her childhood 0:41:09.440 --> 0:41:12.960 home in Dublin that describes her accurately as a committed 0:41:12.960 --> 0:41:16.960 anti fascist. And it was articles about this from like 0:41:17.080 --> 0:41:19.560 right wing Irish people, is how I learned about how 0:41:19.640 --> 0:41:21.680 she would run around and stab people and things like that. 0:41:22.440 --> 0:41:24.200 Is it possible that there was like no one at 0:41:24.239 --> 0:41:26.879 her funeral because this, I mean, I had just made 0:41:26.880 --> 0:41:30.120 a comment about Ireland staying winning. But Ireland's history are 0:41:30.480 --> 0:41:33.840 the fascists in this period is not particularly clean, in 0:41:33.960 --> 0:41:37.080 large part because the fascists were in opposed to the 0:41:37.120 --> 0:41:40.279 British government and so there was a lot of at 0:41:40.360 --> 0:41:42.759 least the enemy of my enemy is my friend thing 0:41:43.080 --> 0:41:45.200 among the Irish, as well as the fact that Franco 0:41:45.440 --> 0:41:48.920 was like a Catholic like It's not a clean period 0:41:49.080 --> 0:41:51.040 for Ireland entirely either. 0:41:51.280 --> 0:41:55.040 It's not, but she's also Anglo Irish, right, well, I. 0:41:55.080 --> 0:41:57.399 Mean, yeah, that also makes sense, you right, I'd forgotten. 0:41:57.120 --> 0:42:00.279 That, and I think it's I think overall it was 0:42:00.400 --> 0:42:04.040 just like, oh, there's our crazy aunt. She's just crazy. 0:42:04.520 --> 0:42:07.680 She just wanted to kill a guy. You know, that's 0:42:07.760 --> 0:42:12.040 like my best guess. But I'm not certain people didn't 0:42:12.200 --> 0:42:14.200 like her at the time, and now there's been kind 0:42:14.200 --> 0:42:20.640 of this reclamation of her legacy. But Mussolini was particularly 0:42:20.760 --> 0:42:23.360 good at turning attempts on his life into popular support, 0:42:23.400 --> 0:42:26.000 which is like what you do if someone tries to 0:42:26.080 --> 0:42:28.680 kill you, right. You neither say like, oh no, I'm 0:42:28.719 --> 0:42:31.560 afraid and the enemy is scary and bad, which is 0:42:31.640 --> 0:42:33.799 not a good way to gain power, or you can 0:42:33.880 --> 0:42:35.719 say like ha ha haa, they can't get me, but 0:42:35.800 --> 0:42:39.319 they want it because they're evil. You know, almost every 0:42:39.440 --> 0:42:42.839 article about attempts on Mussolini's life from then or now 0:42:43.719 --> 0:42:48.640 is basically like, but this particular attempt is what Mussolini 0:42:48.760 --> 0:42:51.760 used to consolidate power. Everything was fine until this person 0:42:51.880 --> 0:42:54.120 tried to kill him, and then wo she just like 0:42:54.239 --> 0:42:55.440 swept in with fascism. 0:42:56.200 --> 0:43:00.440 Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that that's people number one. 0:43:00.480 --> 0:43:02.799 It's like working backwards, which you shouldn't do when you're 0:43:02.800 --> 0:43:06.399 trying to analyze people psychologically. Now that said, I don't 0:43:06.440 --> 0:43:08.839 know that I would say there's it didn't have an 0:43:08.840 --> 0:43:11.600 impact on the character of the regime, just like it's 0:43:11.640 --> 0:43:15.680 probably fair to like whatever Trump does next, the shooting 0:43:15.760 --> 0:43:19.279 will probably have impacted because it clearly affected his mental. 0:43:19.080 --> 0:43:20.240 State right totally. 0:43:21.040 --> 0:43:23.719 Maybe it'll mean that he's a little less coherent and 0:43:23.800 --> 0:43:27.120 a little less like, maybe even less willing to take 0:43:27.239 --> 0:43:28.719 risks he might otherwise have taken. 0:43:28.800 --> 0:43:31.279 Maybe it'll mean he's more vengeful. We don't know yet. 0:43:31.440 --> 0:43:35.520 We'll all be learning soon. But it definitely the presidency 0:43:35.600 --> 0:43:38.040 we are going to get out of him now is 0:43:38.160 --> 0:43:41.640 different than if he had won and nobody had shot him, right, Like, 0:43:41.760 --> 0:43:44.359 that's just we don't know how, and we'll never know how. 0:43:44.680 --> 0:43:48.000 But that's just a reality because nearly being shot to 0:43:48.120 --> 0:43:53.160 death on live television changes you, changes anybody. You don't 0:43:53.200 --> 0:43:54.240 have to be a good person. 0:43:54.719 --> 0:43:57.600 And it's like people talk about like hindsight is twenty twenty, 0:43:57.640 --> 0:43:59.879 but it's not because you don't know what the other 0:44:00.200 --> 0:44:03.759 options were. You know, you can only see the one 0:44:03.880 --> 0:44:09.239 thing that happened. Yeah, and Mussolini would have become dictator 0:44:09.360 --> 0:44:12.799 if no one had tried to kill him. Yeah, you know, yeah, 0:44:12.880 --> 0:44:18.040 and he used moments like this to consolidate power because 0:44:18.080 --> 0:44:19.120 anyone would. 0:44:19.560 --> 0:44:22.320 Yeah, because you you can't let something like this go 0:44:22.480 --> 0:44:25.560 to waste. And also just like continuing to work after 0:44:25.640 --> 0:44:28.520 you've nearly been shot to death in the head probably 0:44:28.560 --> 0:44:31.560 also just kind of mentally necessary, like you're you're gonna 0:44:31.560 --> 0:44:33.719 make use of that, because otherwise you're gonna sit alone 0:44:33.760 --> 0:44:35.359 in a room and think about how you nearly got 0:44:35.400 --> 0:44:36.319 your brain's blown out. 0:44:36.520 --> 0:44:40.680 Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah, he keeps busy. You know, he's 0:44:40.680 --> 0:44:43.000 been a lot of mistresses. Although New York Times just 0:44:43.080 --> 0:44:44.719 is gonna run articles. I'll talk about him later, but 0:44:44.800 --> 0:44:46.200 New York Times like, oh, he's just hanging out with 0:44:46.239 --> 0:44:47.399 his family. He's a family man. 0:44:47.600 --> 0:44:51.560 Like, oh, they loved Mussolini, the Mito. I mean a 0:44:51.680 --> 0:44:55.239 lot of Americans really liked Mussolini in part because like 0:44:55.400 --> 0:44:59.200 he was he was a very very much a celebrity 0:44:59.320 --> 0:45:03.080 dictator in a way that Hitler Hitler was, but not 0:45:03.239 --> 0:45:07.080 in this like Hitler was, you know, famous and managed 0:45:07.160 --> 0:45:10.759 to become beloved in Germany. Mussolini had a level of 0:45:10.920 --> 0:45:14.920 like international like movie star cloud in part because he 0:45:15.080 --> 0:45:18.240 looked handsome in his photos in a way Hitler didn't 0:45:18.320 --> 0:45:21.680 really like he looked like a movie star, you know, 0:45:22.120 --> 0:45:23.880 not in real life. But he you know, he had 0:45:24.160 --> 0:45:25.400 he had good people, worry, and he had a lot 0:45:25.440 --> 0:45:27.160 of movie stars hanging out with him, by the way, 0:45:27.160 --> 0:45:28.279 a lot of American ones. 0:45:29.000 --> 0:45:33.239 And he like knew more about philosophy and art and 0:45:33.280 --> 0:45:35.000 shit like that, you know, which was like a lot 0:45:35.080 --> 0:45:36.640 of the ways to be kind of like cool at 0:45:36.680 --> 0:45:39.759 the time. And like, I mean, he created a philosophy 0:45:39.920 --> 0:45:41.040 one that is still around. 0:45:41.360 --> 0:45:41.560 Yep. 0:45:41.680 --> 0:45:45.919 It's a bad one, yep. So there's another thing that's 0:45:45.920 --> 0:45:48.120 going to tie into this that is going on the 0:45:48.200 --> 0:45:51.640 Italian anarchist world and the Italian American world and just 0:45:51.800 --> 0:45:53.880 the news in general. And it's another thing that like, 0:45:54.480 --> 0:45:56.640 looking back, it's hard to see why this is as 0:45:56.680 --> 0:45:58.680 big of a deal as it was. And this is 0:45:58.719 --> 0:46:01.040 the trial of Sacho and Zetti. Have you heard of this, 0:46:01.960 --> 0:46:02.799 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:46:02.800 --> 0:46:05.640 Those are the two American anarchists who there was a bombing, 0:46:05.760 --> 0:46:10.560 they got accused of it executed, didn't do it right? 0:46:10.960 --> 0:46:11.600 Am I am I? 0:46:12.000 --> 0:46:15.720 And the basics there, so what's funny about it? It's messy. 0:46:16.280 --> 0:46:20.400 The general version is usually it is Yeah, this was 0:46:20.560 --> 0:46:23.600 like cumulatively four sentences over the course of my high 0:46:23.600 --> 0:46:24.880 school education, and. 0:46:24.920 --> 0:46:27.480 It's probably the only time during anyone's high school education 0:46:27.600 --> 0:46:30.759 the word anarchist gets mentioned, besides like, maybe you're going 0:46:30.840 --> 0:46:34.120 to get show gosh killing McKinley, but probably not. 0:46:34.320 --> 0:46:37.600 I don't even think I learned about McKinley getting assassinated. 0:46:37.600 --> 0:46:39.279 I don't think I learned it was an anarchist, but 0:46:39.360 --> 0:46:42.000 maybe maybe it was. I barely remember high school. 0:46:42.239 --> 0:46:44.640 Yeah, fair enough. I honestly, whenever I'm like, my high 0:46:44.640 --> 0:46:46.520 school teacher didn't teach me this, I'm like, I don't know, 0:46:47.080 --> 0:46:48.840 how would I have known? I got c's like what 0:46:49.200 --> 0:46:49.400 you know. 0:46:50.200 --> 0:46:53.279 But I definitely remember knowing that Sacho and Vinzetti had 0:46:53.360 --> 0:46:55.080 been anarchists. 0:46:54.600 --> 0:46:57.560 Because that one was inescapable, and it was this incredibly 0:46:57.640 --> 0:47:02.640 important celebrity trial all over the world, and basically some 0:47:02.800 --> 0:47:06.879 Italian American anarchists or mafia, but almost certainly anarchists were 0:47:07.000 --> 0:47:10.360 robbing a guy who carried the wages basically the equivalent 0:47:10.360 --> 0:47:13.839 of an armored truck robbery, and someone shot and killed 0:47:13.880 --> 0:47:18.280 the paymaster and a guard. Two Italian American anarchists, Saqua 0:47:18.320 --> 0:47:22.120 and Venzetti, were put on trial. The entire leftist world, 0:47:22.200 --> 0:47:24.520 not just the anarchists, was convinced that they were innocent, 0:47:25.120 --> 0:47:27.520 and basically this whole thing was seen as like a 0:47:27.600 --> 0:47:31.000 travesty of justice. In nineteen twenty one, they were found 0:47:31.000 --> 0:47:34.160 guilty and sentenced to death, but it took years for 0:47:34.239 --> 0:47:36.840 the state to kill them because the outcry was so 0:47:37.120 --> 0:47:38.920 much that they had to have all these appeals and 0:47:39.000 --> 0:47:42.120 investigations and things like that. This dragged on for years. 0:47:42.880 --> 0:47:47.960 Later historians have been like, well, Saco probably did it, 0:47:50.640 --> 0:47:56.680 and Venzetti maybe, Like it's possible Venzetti was there and 0:47:56.760 --> 0:47:59.320 therefore actually criminally liable, but like didn't pull the trigger. 0:47:59.800 --> 0:48:04.319 It's also possible that they weren't there, because a lot 0:48:04.400 --> 0:48:06.440 of the evidence that they did do it comes from 0:48:06.480 --> 0:48:08.400 a guy we're going to talk about later who's an 0:48:08.400 --> 0:48:11.560 anarchist bomb maker who turned into a fascist informant named 0:48:11.960 --> 0:48:12.760 Mario Buddha. 0:48:14.000 --> 0:48:17.360 Well, it's also an unfortunate truth that a lot of 0:48:17.440 --> 0:48:19.319 times the people who are most willing to make things 0:48:19.400 --> 0:48:23.880 like bombs are also driven more by rage than like 0:48:24.040 --> 0:48:27.040 political conviction and thus very easy to swing to a 0:48:27.160 --> 0:48:30.839 politics that entirely exists on the basis of rage. Yeah, 0:48:31.400 --> 0:48:34.640 which is which is why we really do try here 0:48:35.200 --> 0:48:39.960 not to idolize people whose only contribution is that they 0:48:40.040 --> 0:48:45.320 did a violence. Yeah, totally, even when everybody's making some 0:48:45.600 --> 0:48:49.360 very funny jokes on social media, Yeah right now about 0:48:49.360 --> 0:48:50.400 a thing that just happened. 0:48:50.760 --> 0:48:54.839 No, it's it's true, and that is like something that yeah, fun, 0:48:54.920 --> 0:49:00.360 time to have decided to write this episode. But the 0:49:00.440 --> 0:49:02.520 important thing about the Saquo and Benzetti case is that 0:49:02.600 --> 0:49:05.919 this trial was huge. The outcry was enormous, and one 0:49:06.000 --> 0:49:09.120 thing that happened in this is that the fascists tried 0:49:09.239 --> 0:49:13.160 hard to capitalize on it and did capitalize on it, 0:49:13.920 --> 0:49:16.600 because most of the outcry against the trial is that 0:49:16.680 --> 0:49:19.080 the trial was unfair as a result of the US's 0:49:19.160 --> 0:49:23.920 anti Italian and anti anarchist bigotry. A fuck ton of 0:49:24.000 --> 0:49:28.160 the Italian American crowd was either anarchist or fascist, and 0:49:28.320 --> 0:49:31.800 so both the fascists and the anarchists rallied for Saco 0:49:31.880 --> 0:49:36.239 and Vinzetti. Mussolini was cynically using the trial to stir 0:49:36.360 --> 0:49:40.239 up nationalism at home and continuing his odd overtures to 0:49:40.280 --> 0:49:43.319 the anarchists, even though he was in power by most 0:49:43.360 --> 0:49:45.200 of this point, and he's cracking down on the anarchist 0:49:45.280 --> 0:49:48.600 left and right. His soldiers are burning photos of that 0:49:48.680 --> 0:49:51.440 guy Mala Testa. Anarchists are being rounded up and stuff. 0:49:52.360 --> 0:49:55.800 Yet Mussolini is telling his ambassadors to try and intervene 0:49:55.960 --> 0:50:00.200 on behalf of Saco and Vinzetti because Mussolini won to 0:50:00.239 --> 0:50:03.400 be seen as the man who protected Italians everywhere. And 0:50:03.480 --> 0:50:05.840 he has all these quotes that are like, I cannot 0:50:05.960 --> 0:50:10.320 agree with anything that these men stand for, but they're Italian, 0:50:10.719 --> 0:50:15.120 my god, and America shouldn't kill them or whatever I'm 0:50:15.280 --> 0:50:17.400 now paraphrasing. Terribly great stuff. 0:50:18.160 --> 0:50:23.399 Yeah, and I don't love their murders, but I support them. 0:50:23.440 --> 0:50:25.600 Being Italian, they thus they ought. 0:50:25.480 --> 0:50:31.000 To be free. Yeah, exactly, exactly fair enough. And what 0:50:31.040 --> 0:50:32.840 does this have to do with Violet Gibson. Well, this 0:50:32.960 --> 0:50:35.080 is going to turn into one of the best zings 0:50:35.200 --> 0:50:39.560 against America that I've ever read about h On July 0:50:39.760 --> 0:50:44.880 twenty third, nineteen twenty seven, Mussolini wrote, it is certain 0:50:44.960 --> 0:50:48.120 that the execution of Saco Vanzetti would provide the pretext 0:50:48.200 --> 0:50:51.480 for a vast and continuous agitation throughout the world. The 0:50:51.560 --> 0:50:55.120 fascist government, which is strongly authoritarian and does not give 0:50:55.239 --> 0:50:59.920 quarter to the Bolsheviks, very often employs clemency in individual cases. 0:51:00.440 --> 0:51:03.520 The governor of Massachusetts should not lose the opportunity for 0:51:03.560 --> 0:51:07.680 a humanitarian act whose repercussions would be especially positive in Italy, 0:51:08.480 --> 0:51:13.520 and fascist newspapers were now contrasting the American government as 0:51:13.680 --> 0:51:20.480 more totalitarian than the fascist Italian government because the Italian system, 0:51:20.520 --> 0:51:24.160 the fascist system, had let Violet Gibson return to her 0:51:24.160 --> 0:51:28.000 own country, and there is no death penalty in Italy 0:51:28.040 --> 0:51:28.600 at this point. 0:51:29.440 --> 0:51:29.959 That's nice. 0:51:30.200 --> 0:51:32.760 People could literally kill kings and get life in prison. 0:51:33.800 --> 0:51:38.320 Comparing this to the barbaric United States, and this is 0:51:38.400 --> 0:51:39.920 the thing that I love about it. It is like 0:51:40.400 --> 0:51:43.520 the dude's got a point yep. The US president industrial 0:51:43.600 --> 0:51:47.239 system is like a nightmare and was worse than the 0:51:47.320 --> 0:51:48.200 fascist government. 0:51:49.000 --> 0:51:52.240 I mean at the you know, it depends on the stage, 0:51:52.320 --> 0:51:54.920 but at the early stages, you know, Mussolini does eventually 0:51:54.960 --> 0:51:59.080 invade Ethiopia and deploy chemical weapons. Yeah, yeah, that's certainly 0:51:59.120 --> 0:52:02.439 an argument that you could have made earlier in Mussolini's regime. 0:52:02.480 --> 0:52:04.800 You have to remember he was not he definitely was 0:52:04.920 --> 0:52:06.320 killing his political enemies. 0:52:06.640 --> 0:52:08.600 Oh yeah, he had stabbed a dude to death of 0:52:08.640 --> 0:52:12.239 a file Yeah yeah, not necessarily in a way. 0:52:12.320 --> 0:52:15.040 That's a higher body count than, for example, the number 0:52:15.080 --> 0:52:18.280 of black people being murdered by police in apartheid states 0:52:18.320 --> 0:52:21.719 in the United States, right, yeah, like, which is not 0:52:22.040 --> 0:52:25.600 a different thing to me. I don't consider that to 0:52:25.760 --> 0:52:29.360 be better than I don't know, rounding up like a 0:52:29.440 --> 0:52:34.120 few dozen socialists and murdering them or whatever like that, 0:52:34.480 --> 0:52:37.880 and the constant mass the constant murder at a pretty 0:52:37.960 --> 0:52:40.480 high rate of black men in the South by cops 0:52:40.800 --> 0:52:44.520 and vigilantes, like both both things that I would put 0:52:44.560 --> 0:52:45.839 on a similar moral level. 0:52:46.400 --> 0:52:49.160 Yeah, exactly. I'm not trying to be like Benito Mussolini 0:52:49.320 --> 0:52:50.080 is great, you know. 0:52:50.200 --> 0:52:51.719 No, no, no, no, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't 0:52:51.719 --> 0:52:53.600 think you were. Yeah, I'm just saying, like, yeah, that's 0:52:53.640 --> 0:52:56.600 not an irrational statement to make at that point in time, 0:52:56.719 --> 0:52:57.439 knowing what they knew. 0:52:57.960 --> 0:53:03.440 Yeah. Yeah, And Violet, she was not alone in her 0:53:03.520 --> 0:53:07.719 quest to see the Duke die. The next attempt was 0:53:07.800 --> 0:53:10.239 on September eleventh, nineteen twenty six. And this is why 0:53:10.280 --> 0:53:14.239 people remember September eleventh, and this is probably the most 0:53:14.400 --> 0:53:18.040 organized attempt. Sophie is clearly agrees with me. 0:53:18.200 --> 0:53:21.360 Did anything else happen on September eleventh? Ever, that seems 0:53:21.400 --> 0:53:22.800 like one of those that coup. 0:53:22.680 --> 0:53:26.120 That happened somewhere is such a smooth joke. Yeah, thank you. 0:53:26.440 --> 0:53:29.360 I'm looking. I'm looking at my calendar of various September 0:53:29.400 --> 0:53:31.600 elevenths that I keep for no reason. Yeah, it doesn't 0:53:31.640 --> 0:53:34.239 look like anything's ever happened on another September eleventh that 0:53:34.320 --> 0:53:35.560 I can that I've got. 0:53:36.280 --> 0:53:38.160 Okay, you're the funniest person I know. 0:53:38.400 --> 0:53:44.600 That must be why I celebrate nine to eleven. Ye, wait, exactly, shit, wow, Margaret, Margaret, 0:53:44.640 --> 0:53:46.960 I'm getting some very bad Google results. Suddenly we need 0:53:46.960 --> 0:53:47.600 to edit that out. 0:53:47.680 --> 0:53:50.200 Oh my god, Oh my god, all those poor people. 0:53:50.280 --> 0:53:53.120 Holy shit. Yeah, I lived in New York City. Yeah, 0:53:53.160 --> 0:53:57.200 September eleventh, two one, so saw the towers on fire. 0:53:58.280 --> 0:54:03.920 There's all the smoking remains. But anyway, the socialist politician 0:54:04.000 --> 0:54:07.520 had failed, The Catholic wingnut had failed. Time to bring 0:54:07.600 --> 0:54:09.799 in the professionals. If there's one group that knows about 0:54:09.880 --> 0:54:14.560 killing kings and monarchs and stuff, it's the anarchists. Again, 0:54:14.680 --> 0:54:17.000 we all know they failed, but you know what. They 0:54:17.120 --> 0:54:20.520 tried real hard. The next attempt was by a man 0:54:20.640 --> 0:54:24.360 named Gino Lucetti, who I'll tell you about along with 0:54:24.440 --> 0:54:27.520 his cousin Gino, because his name is Geno, but so 0:54:27.680 --> 0:54:30.120 is his cousin. That's the thing I'm saying. Well, i'll 0:54:30.120 --> 0:54:33.680 tell you about it on Wednesday. Excellent. 0:54:34.080 --> 0:54:37.840 You know, Wednesday, Margaret, is the day that comes after Tuesday. 0:54:38.000 --> 0:54:40.239 That's a little science fact for those of you in 0:54:40.280 --> 0:54:40.760 the audience. 0:54:41.520 --> 0:54:43.120 Thank you so much for telling us that. 0:54:43.239 --> 0:54:44.280 I have no idea. 0:54:44.440 --> 0:54:45.560 I have no idea how we would have. 0:54:45.560 --> 0:54:47.680 Wait, we tried to shoot a little bit a couple 0:54:47.760 --> 0:54:48.839 of facts in your way. 0:54:49.120 --> 0:54:51.200 Yeah, that's why it's edutainment. 0:54:51.840 --> 0:54:53.239 That's why it's edutainment. 0:54:53.480 --> 0:54:53.600 Right. 0:54:53.760 --> 0:54:59.839 Yeah, So remember, folks, Wednesday day after Tuesday. Thursday comes 0:55:00.120 --> 0:55:03.080 day before Monday. And that's all I gotta say. 0:55:03.320 --> 0:55:06.760 It comes before Monday. Yes, yes, yes, Tomorrow is Saturday 0:55:06.800 --> 0:55:09.840 and after Monday. Is the weirdest thing about Thursday. 0:55:09.480 --> 0:55:11.799 I know, I know, it's the day. So nice they 0:55:11.880 --> 0:55:12.800 made it happen twice. 0:55:13.520 --> 0:55:16.800 It I can't even there's nothing I can do with that. 0:55:17.200 --> 0:55:19.799 Yeah, Oh, Margan, I wish you and I could hang 0:55:19.840 --> 0:55:21.279 out all eleven days of the week. 0:55:21.719 --> 0:55:25.360 I know that'd be nice, but I only have so 0:55:25.480 --> 0:55:27.560 many hours in the day, and I don't remember how 0:55:27.600 --> 0:55:30.759 many it is forty one? Oh okay, no, yeah, that 0:55:30.800 --> 0:55:35.359 makes sense. Yes, But Robert Evans, where can people find 0:55:35.520 --> 0:55:38.359 more about you or what do you do? Well? 0:55:38.640 --> 0:55:41.720 You can find me sweating away in my basement because 0:55:41.800 --> 0:55:46.880 you and I only use an antique coptic Christian calendar 0:55:47.480 --> 0:55:52.600 and day system based largely on a step pyramid that 0:55:52.880 --> 0:55:55.759 used to exist but was bulldozed in what was once 0:55:55.840 --> 0:55:58.680 sume Aria, So it takes a lot of time to 0:55:58.760 --> 0:55:59.640 remember what day it is. 0:56:00.120 --> 0:56:03.759 Yeah, I don't know. We really kept this bit going 0:56:03.880 --> 0:56:06.440 for a while. I feel like at the end of 0:56:06.440 --> 0:56:08.320 a Gi Joe episode where you tell kids to like 0:56:08.400 --> 0:56:11.640 not hide in refrigerators. Right, I feel like it's worth 0:56:11.680 --> 0:56:14.440 pointing out that I really am talking about history here 0:56:14.520 --> 0:56:16.880 and that nothing necessarily good happened from many of the 0:56:16.920 --> 0:56:19.880 attempts that I'm describing. I am not morally against the 0:56:19.920 --> 0:56:22.239 attempts that I am describing. I'm clearly not of this 0:56:22.400 --> 0:56:24.359 thing that happened in the nineteen twenties, but I want 0:56:24.400 --> 0:56:26.960 to be like clear on that just like that. 0:56:27.160 --> 0:56:30.440 Is the thing I can think of very few assassinations 0:56:30.520 --> 0:56:33.040 in history where ultimately you would look at it and 0:56:33.200 --> 0:56:35.719 say that, like, yeah, that worked out really well. Is 0:56:35.800 --> 0:56:38.839 particularly that worked out well by the person carrying out 0:56:38.880 --> 0:56:43.800 the assassination standards. Really the one that like Sogamu and 0:56:43.840 --> 0:56:46.920 Tealurian who shot you know, one of the young Turks 0:56:46.920 --> 0:56:50.359 who orchestrated the Armenian genocide, that worked out great by 0:56:50.440 --> 0:56:53.560 his standards, and everyone else's that guy you shot Abe 0:56:54.239 --> 0:56:56.800 seems to the long run of that seems to have 0:56:56.960 --> 0:57:01.680 been positive. Very few other instances, like I don't know 0:57:01.760 --> 0:57:05.200 that I'd say McKinley worked well in the long run. 0:57:05.520 --> 0:57:08.320 Obviously shooting the archduke fucking disaster. 0:57:08.880 --> 0:57:13.320 Yeah, no, it's it is worth thinking about that anarchists 0:57:13.360 --> 0:57:15.719 had given up on propaganda by the deed at this point, 0:57:15.800 --> 0:57:17.720 propaganda by the deed. It was this anarchist idea that 0:57:17.800 --> 0:57:20.479 people were like, well, the masses don't really read theory, 0:57:20.560 --> 0:57:22.440 so let's just show them by killing all the kings 0:57:22.480 --> 0:57:24.480 and the you know, the people who are in charge 0:57:24.480 --> 0:57:28.840 of them. And it overall was disastrous for the anarchist 0:57:28.920 --> 0:57:33.520 movement because it just led people to then defend the 0:57:33.600 --> 0:57:36.320 vary systems that the anarchists were opposed to, and this 0:57:36.480 --> 0:57:39.680 happened time and time again. There are exceptions. During the 0:57:40.800 --> 0:57:42.640 the run up to the Russian Revolution, you have like 0:57:42.800 --> 0:57:46.680 about from like nineteen oh three to nineteen seventeen, anarchists 0:57:46.720 --> 0:57:49.440 and other groups were all doing these attendants, all doing 0:57:49.520 --> 0:57:53.160 these assassinations, and it did lead to a revolutionary situation, 0:57:53.200 --> 0:57:56.040 which of course all kind of ended badly and created 0:57:56.040 --> 0:58:00.000 the United the USSR. But usually these kinds of things 0:58:00.320 --> 0:58:04.800 destroy a social movement. Sometimes, if enough people are interested 0:58:04.840 --> 0:58:08.560 in it, it builds a social movement, but usually it doesn't. 0:58:08.800 --> 0:58:11.800 And that is the like, it's a crapshoot at best, 0:58:12.000 --> 0:58:15.000 It's a like, let's redraw our hand of cards and 0:58:15.120 --> 0:58:16.280 probably get something worse. 0:58:17.080 --> 0:58:17.280 Yep. 0:58:18.200 --> 0:58:23.240 But still, if someone had successfully killed Mussolini, I bet 0:58:23.280 --> 0:58:24.600 the world would have been a better place. 0:58:25.000 --> 0:58:29.280 Yes, yes, but the if within the if contains a 0:58:29.360 --> 0:58:30.920 lot of reasons. 0:58:31.040 --> 0:58:31.240 Why. 0:58:31.480 --> 0:58:36.040 Uh, you know, we're going to say for legal reasons 0:58:36.080 --> 0:58:39.640 here assassinations probably not worth. 0:58:39.440 --> 0:58:44.040 It, and we're gonna talk about like five more of 0:58:44.120 --> 0:58:46.160 them on Wednesday. Yeah. 0:58:47.880 --> 0:58:50.200 At the end here, I just want to plug if 0:58:50.240 --> 0:58:52.680 you haven't listened, I just am plugging this on anything 0:58:52.720 --> 0:58:55.400 I can I just want to plug our colleague James 0:58:55.440 --> 0:58:59.840 Stout series from reporting from the Darien Gap. Yeah, about 0:59:00.120 --> 0:59:05.439 one of the worst land migration places in the world 0:59:05.600 --> 0:59:08.800 and just you know, the stories and people he talked 0:59:08.840 --> 0:59:10.240 to there, and I just want to plug that because 0:59:10.240 --> 0:59:12.560 it's an amazing series and I'm very proud of James. 0:59:13.480 --> 0:59:15.320 Started listening to it. I haven't finished it yet. It 0:59:15.440 --> 0:59:16.040 is really good. 0:59:16.320 --> 0:59:17.040 It's really good. 0:59:18.120 --> 0:59:18.320 Yeah. 0:59:18.360 --> 0:59:19.760 So if you have time around the end of the 0:59:19.840 --> 0:59:21.480 year and you're like, Ohm, I need something to binge. 0:59:21.560 --> 0:59:24.760 James did five episodes on It could happen here on 0:59:24.880 --> 0:59:28.560 It could app Thank you, and it could happen here all. 0:59:28.520 --> 0:59:30.360 Right, see y'all on Wednesday. 0:59:30.920 --> 0:59:39.720 Bye. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production 0:59:39.840 --> 0:59:43.040 of Cool Zone Media. More podcasts and cool Zone Media. 0:59:43.200 --> 0:59:46.400 Visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out 0:59:46.560 --> 0:59:49.920 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get 0:59:49.960 --> 0:59:50.680 your podcasts. 0:59:57.560 --> 0:59:59.880 Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. 1:00:00.040 --> 1:00:02.400 You're a weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening, 1:00:02.640 --> 1:00:05.640 people try to confront those bad things in various ways, 1:00:06.000 --> 1:00:10.520 lots of various ways. One of the way, no, just 1:00:10.600 --> 1:00:12.840 a person, one of the people who's also on this 1:00:12.920 --> 1:00:15.240 podcast with me is Robert Evans, my guest. 1:00:15.640 --> 1:00:24.040 Hi, that's right, I'm Robert Evans, and uh, I'm Robert Evans. 1:00:24.160 --> 1:00:24.440 That's me. 1:00:25.480 --> 1:00:28.440 Well, I brought you on because you're an expert about Italy. 1:00:29.960 --> 1:00:32.840 Yeah, I mean I know several things about Italians, Margaret 1:00:32.960 --> 1:00:36.240 number one, number two. 1:00:36.200 --> 1:00:40.680 Spice, here's where we remind Italian. 1:00:41.040 --> 1:00:43.760 Whatever the hat is that they that the that the 1:00:43.920 --> 1:00:48.680 chefs wear in those kind of racist caricatures. Look, it's fine. 1:00:48.760 --> 1:00:52.040 We all decided that it's okay with Italians now. 1:00:52.840 --> 1:00:55.480 Yeah, despite the huge trial that we talked about last 1:00:55.480 --> 1:00:58.080 time about anti Italian prejudice in the United States. 1:00:58.280 --> 1:01:00.720 Look, if they'd been you, I have the opposite position 1:01:00.840 --> 1:01:03.480 of that guy. I'm fine with the murder. If they'd 1:01:03.520 --> 1:01:06.080 been on trial for being Italian, I would have said, 1:01:06.160 --> 1:01:07.280 fucking yeah. 1:01:07.360 --> 1:01:10.959 Hang you know, yeah exactly, hang am I yeah, maybe 1:01:11.040 --> 1:01:15.760 upside down maybe. Uh that's a dead Mussolini joke, which 1:01:15.760 --> 1:01:19.640 is which is not gonna happen in today's episode. A 1:01:19.680 --> 1:01:22.520 lot of people are gonna try give the old college try. 1:01:23.280 --> 1:01:25.880 Our producer is Sophie. Hi, Sophie, it's me. 1:01:26.120 --> 1:01:27.040 I'm Sophie High. 1:01:28.080 --> 1:01:30.760 I realized when I got my podcast you listened to 1:01:30.840 --> 1:01:33.800 the most in twenty twenty four that four of them 1:01:34.240 --> 1:01:36.120 were Sophie podcasts. 1:01:36.760 --> 1:01:39.480 The loyalties unmatched, unmapped. 1:01:39.560 --> 1:01:40.760 Yeah, that's right. 1:01:41.200 --> 1:01:45.280 I'm a little bit surprised that that not all five were. 1:01:45.480 --> 1:01:48.040 But I think the problem was that the Pathfinder podcast 1:01:48.120 --> 1:01:50.840 I listened to has really long episode. Need one raised, 1:01:50.920 --> 1:01:51.240 like five? 1:01:51.360 --> 1:01:52.560 Yeah, you need one break for me? 1:01:52.960 --> 1:01:55.320 We should do a Pathfinder podcast, Margaret. 1:01:55.720 --> 1:01:57.680 I would love to do a live play podcast. 1:01:57.920 --> 1:02:01.440 Maybe I'll reach out to the guy who created Pathfinder 1:02:01.480 --> 1:02:04.240 and listens to our podcasts, talk to him about that. 1:02:05.040 --> 1:02:09.280 I would love that guy who created Pathfinder. Y'all are 1:02:09.320 --> 1:02:11.880 great and your system rules and I play it anyway. 1:02:12.560 --> 1:02:15.520 So but yeah, no, cools on media needs a live 1:02:15.600 --> 1:02:18.800 play podcast, That's all I'm saying. And if you listener agree, 1:02:19.840 --> 1:02:23.320 bug these people on the internet about it. And then 1:02:24.280 --> 1:02:26.480 because I needed more podcasts to be on whatever, I 1:02:26.520 --> 1:02:26.880 don't care. 1:02:27.400 --> 1:02:29.360 There's a shortage of podcasts. I don't know if you're 1:02:29.360 --> 1:02:32.640 aware of this. Yeah, but the CDC has said that 1:02:32.720 --> 1:02:35.800 it's probably the largest threat to our national collective health. 1:02:36.520 --> 1:02:38.200 Well, it's the only thing that they're trying to put 1:02:38.240 --> 1:02:40.160 a tariff on that everyone's in favor of is that 1:02:40.280 --> 1:02:42.600 they're trying to make it harder for people to make podcasts. 1:02:42.640 --> 1:02:43.640 That's right, that's right. 1:02:44.520 --> 1:02:46.720 All podcast mics, Oh my god, that actually is good. 1:02:47.200 --> 1:02:48.800 Most of the podcast mics are probably not made in 1:02:48.840 --> 1:02:52.080 the US. Whatever I got mine, I have no idea. 1:02:52.120 --> 1:02:55.520 I have no idea where they make our microphones, Margaret, No, no, 1:02:55.720 --> 1:02:56.160 I do not. 1:02:56.640 --> 1:02:56.840 Yeah. 1:02:57.880 --> 1:03:02.400 Anyway, this is part two on a two part episode 1:03:02.720 --> 1:03:06.840 about people trying to kill Mussolini. Later we'll probably talk 1:03:06.840 --> 1:03:09.280 about the people who succeeded. It took a whole war, 1:03:10.080 --> 1:03:12.440 but some people tried to just cut to the chase 1:03:12.680 --> 1:03:17.320 and circumvent the need for the war. And we've already 1:03:17.360 --> 1:03:19.640 mentioned several of them, but we're going to talk a 1:03:19.680 --> 1:03:23.680 lot more of them today. First, we're gonna talk about Rory, 1:03:23.720 --> 1:03:26.600 who's our audio engineer. Hi Rory, Hi, right, Hy Rory? 1:03:27.400 --> 1:03:29.280 And that our theme musical was written forced by unwoman, 1:03:30.200 --> 1:03:34.040 and that Gino Lucetti was born working class in the 1:03:34.120 --> 1:03:40.440 year nineteen hundred in Karra, Tuscany. You ever heard of Carra. 1:03:41.440 --> 1:03:44.840 I've heard of Tuscany because the Tuscan coast is pretty famous. 1:03:44.880 --> 1:03:48.160 I've never heard of Carra. Other than that, it makes 1:03:48.200 --> 1:03:51.440 me think of that song that goes Tara Ra boom Da, 1:03:51.840 --> 1:03:53.840 which I don't know what that's a reference to. 1:03:53.960 --> 1:03:55.680 Is that a slur? I have no idea. 1:03:55.720 --> 1:03:57.680 I should probably look into that song see if there 1:03:57.720 --> 1:04:01.439 was anything fucked up. It's like celebrating genocide. That's often 1:04:01.480 --> 1:04:04.080 the case with old songs. What a lovely tune? 1:04:04.120 --> 1:04:12.120 Oh no, yeah, Well, Carrara is famous for two things. 1:04:12.880 --> 1:04:15.920 It is famous for its marble quarries. It produces some 1:04:16.040 --> 1:04:18.880 of the finest marble from which the most iconic buildings 1:04:18.920 --> 1:04:21.040 and statues in the world are made. There's a whole 1:04:21.040 --> 1:04:22.440 list of them, and I forgot to write them down, 1:04:22.880 --> 1:04:27.280 But like, think of an old Italian statue from Rome, 1:04:27.920 --> 1:04:31.120 Old Rome, and the marble might have come from Carrara. 1:04:31.480 --> 1:04:34.200 It has like blue veins. I spent way too long 1:04:34.280 --> 1:04:35.120 reading about this marble. 1:04:35.560 --> 1:04:36.640 It's good ass marble. 1:04:37.160 --> 1:04:41.160 Yeah. The other thing the Carrara is famous for is anarchism. 1:04:41.920 --> 1:04:44.840 Oh okay. When my anarchist friends took me through Italy 1:04:45.360 --> 1:04:47.600 when we were near Carrara, they pointed out and they 1:04:47.640 --> 1:04:50.080 were like, hey, that's that place. Was an anarchist stronghold 1:04:50.120 --> 1:04:52.800 for a long, long time among the Stonemasons who put 1:04:52.840 --> 1:04:56.280 that town on the map enough so that I was 1:04:56.320 --> 1:04:58.520 like double checking this today. I was like, Carrara. That 1:04:58.600 --> 1:05:01.480 sounds familiar, right, I was looking at a mainstream tour 1:05:01.560 --> 1:05:05.320 company's website, Carrara Marble Tour, and they offer an anarchic 1:05:05.520 --> 1:05:06.240 Carra tour. 1:05:06.440 --> 1:05:10.880 Oh wow, really double dipping. I mean, and that's you know, 1:05:10.920 --> 1:05:13.640 because there's so many It's like you and I always say, Margaret, 1:05:13.680 --> 1:05:17.400 with so many Anarchistsinnara audience, you know, every there's there's 1:05:17.640 --> 1:05:22.040 nothing that goes together like anarchism and marble quarries. Yeah, 1:05:22.480 --> 1:05:24.760 two great tastes that taste great together. 1:05:25.320 --> 1:05:25.480 You know. 1:05:26.200 --> 1:05:28.360 That's why. By the way, let's have a word for 1:05:28.480 --> 1:05:30.480 our sponsor, Big Marble. 1:05:31.000 --> 1:05:31.400 Marble. 1:05:31.920 --> 1:05:33.800 Maybe we could use it again for some stuff. 1:05:34.800 --> 1:05:38.680 Marble one time statute of limitations Ago I had to 1:05:38.720 --> 1:05:40.760 empty all the Marbles out of my pocket before a 1:05:40.840 --> 1:05:41.440 mass arrest. 1:05:41.960 --> 1:05:45.000 Yeah, Marble, if you use it to make all of 1:05:45.080 --> 1:05:48.120 your streets and sidewalks like they do in Greece, it 1:05:48.320 --> 1:05:52.680 makes things incredibly treacherous in the rain, actually horrible, horrible 1:05:52.760 --> 1:05:53.480 material to. 1:05:53.640 --> 1:05:56.600 Use the way that they use it. Yeah, but it's 1:05:56.640 --> 1:06:00.560 pretty though, Yeah, years and years ago, my dad told 1:06:00.600 --> 1:06:03.800 me this spooky story that he wrote called the thirty 1:06:03.840 --> 1:06:06.920 seven Marble Steps, and I was like a kid, so 1:06:07.080 --> 1:06:09.440 I was just assuming that these were steps with marbles 1:06:09.520 --> 1:06:15.760 embedded in them. But Gina Lucetti was from Carrara in 1:06:15.840 --> 1:06:19.560 the early nineteen twenties. There are factory occupations all over Italy. 1:06:19.680 --> 1:06:21.240 I don't know enough about these yet, but they've come 1:06:21.320 --> 1:06:23.280 up a bunch of times, and they'll probably be one 1:06:23.320 --> 1:06:25.600 of their own episodes at one of these points. And 1:06:26.720 --> 1:06:29.160 I know that in the end of these factory occupations, 1:06:29.720 --> 1:06:32.680 the socialist parties kind of gave up and gave power 1:06:32.760 --> 1:06:36.240 back to the bosses, which made an awful lot more 1:06:36.320 --> 1:06:40.840 anarchists from those socialists who you know, had just seized 1:06:40.880 --> 1:06:43.280 the means of production and were like, but isn't this 1:06:43.400 --> 1:06:46.280 our goal? Isn't our goal that the workers control the 1:06:46.360 --> 1:06:49.520 means of production? Why would we give them back. I 1:06:49.600 --> 1:06:51.240 don't know enough about the ins and nights out of 1:06:51.280 --> 1:06:55.080 that struggle, but a lot of people were mad. Gina 1:06:55.160 --> 1:06:58.520 Lucetti was at these occupations and somewhere along the way 1:06:59.040 --> 1:07:01.160 he got into a gun fight with the black shirts. 1:07:02.120 --> 1:07:04.080 He got a guy in the ear who got him 1:07:04.080 --> 1:07:09.000 in the neck in return, and okay, this second time 1:07:09.040 --> 1:07:10.800 we've had an anti fascist get it in the neck 1:07:10.840 --> 1:07:13.400 and survive on the show. The other one was George orwell. 1:07:14.080 --> 1:07:17.640 Yeah, yeah, that's that's uh. I mean, I'm not gonna 1:07:17.640 --> 1:07:19.000 say but that that's very lucky. 1:07:19.520 --> 1:07:21.000 Yeah, exactly. Don't get shot in the neck. 1:07:21.040 --> 1:07:23.400 The neck is very low on the number of places 1:07:23.480 --> 1:07:25.120 on your body you would want to get shot. 1:07:25.360 --> 1:07:28.080 Yeah, not a good tournique spot. It turns out. 1:07:28.120 --> 1:07:31.240 Hard to turnikit and neck unless you're Google Ai, which 1:07:31.280 --> 1:07:34.560 has told me repeatedly that you can turnikit the neck. Hell, yeah, 1:07:35.960 --> 1:07:41.400 that's just a hanging, folks, you're just strangling someone to death. 1:07:42.640 --> 1:07:44.800 Oh my god, don't TURNI quit next. 1:07:45.480 --> 1:07:48.600 Yeah, it seems self evident. But an AI is not 1:07:48.720 --> 1:07:50.280 does not have our best interests in heart. 1:07:50.440 --> 1:07:53.120 No, it just sees, well, there's fucking there, there's fucking 1:07:53.240 --> 1:07:53.880 arteries there. 1:07:54.000 --> 1:07:57.840 Turnick it away. Yeah, yeah, it detaches a limb. If 1:07:57.840 --> 1:08:02.320 a head is a limb appendage, whatever a head is anatomically, 1:08:03.160 --> 1:08:06.240 I guess it's a head. So he couldn't find a 1:08:06.360 --> 1:08:09.000 doctor in Italy to get the bullet out. I do 1:08:09.160 --> 1:08:13.360 not know why. So comrades smuggled him to France, where 1:08:13.360 --> 1:08:15.920 he was finally treated, and he was like, you know what, 1:08:16.600 --> 1:08:18.800 I don't need to be in Italy right now. They 1:08:18.880 --> 1:08:21.400 are in the middle of a fascism and I am 1:08:21.479 --> 1:08:23.320 in the middle of just got shot in the neck 1:08:23.360 --> 1:08:27.960 by a fascist. Yeah. There was a large political refugee 1:08:28.000 --> 1:08:31.560 scene in France at the time. Anarchists, socialists and communists 1:08:31.640 --> 1:08:34.880 had formed a popular front against fascism there, not only 1:08:35.000 --> 1:08:37.439 just in general in France, but like specifically the Italian 1:08:37.520 --> 1:08:40.400 refugees had. They were like, all right, look all that 1:08:40.439 --> 1:08:43.240 stuff going on in Russia, We're all mad at each other, 1:08:43.360 --> 1:08:46.360 but right now Italy is being taken over by fascists. 1:08:46.360 --> 1:08:48.800 We got to do something about that, right, And they 1:08:48.840 --> 1:08:52.600 all agreed what needed to be done was kill Mussolini. 1:08:53.960 --> 1:08:57.240 And this action was intended to be anything but a 1:08:57.360 --> 1:08:59.559 propaganda of the deed action, which is I think actually 1:08:59.560 --> 1:09:01.559 a really important point for kind of what we were 1:09:01.800 --> 1:09:05.840 ended on talking about last week. Right as a libcom 1:09:05.960 --> 1:09:09.719 dot org article put it, quote, propaganda of the deed 1:09:09.760 --> 1:09:12.840 attacks were supposed to inspire the working classes to rise, 1:09:13.240 --> 1:09:17.439 and in this they were entirely unsuccessful. In this instance, however, 1:09:17.840 --> 1:09:20.280 The urge to kill Mussolini was the expression of a 1:09:20.360 --> 1:09:25.120 convergence of opinion among many popularly representative political groupings, and 1:09:25.320 --> 1:09:28.200 was commonly perceived as a necessity at that point in time. 1:09:28.960 --> 1:09:32.600 So it wasn't like, oh, we're gonna spur on the 1:09:32.680 --> 1:09:35.880 revolution and radicalize people by showing them that, you know, 1:09:36.400 --> 1:09:39.680 our opponents are made of flesh and blood. It was like, no, 1:09:40.160 --> 1:09:43.760 Mussolini is basically the enemy war leader that we're in 1:09:43.800 --> 1:09:48.400 a war against. You know, one word that has never 1:09:48.479 --> 1:09:53.880 been successfully applied to anarchists is cowardice. Gino agreed to 1:09:53.960 --> 1:09:54.479 do the deed. 1:09:55.400 --> 1:09:57.120 And I mean it's the thing that you come across 1:09:57.280 --> 1:09:59.759 over and over again when you read about like militant 1:09:59.760 --> 1:10:02.280 moves moments and like civil wars and where there are 1:10:02.360 --> 1:10:06.080 anarchist groups, is that the anarchists are always very brave. 1:10:06.320 --> 1:10:11.320 Not always the best fighters, yeah, but always very brave. 1:10:11.920 --> 1:10:17.560 Yeah. And specifically other groups like putting us in the front. 1:10:18.520 --> 1:10:20.760 Yeah, because that's an aspect of it. 1:10:21.320 --> 1:10:24.000 Yeah. I remember when I first became an anarchist, I 1:10:24.080 --> 1:10:26.880 was like just going to protest and things twenty seven 1:10:26.920 --> 1:10:30.479 years ago, and my roommate in college was like, you 1:10:30.600 --> 1:10:34.200 anarchists you're just the berserkers of the protest movement. People 1:10:34.320 --> 1:10:35.960 just throw you in the front to like soak up 1:10:35.960 --> 1:10:40.240 all the damage. And I was like, no, he was 1:10:40.240 --> 1:10:42.360 a little bit right at least in terms of how 1:10:42.400 --> 1:10:45.760 people perceive us and use us. So of course, when 1:10:45.800 --> 1:10:48.120 they're like, who's going to go risk their life to 1:10:48.360 --> 1:10:53.879 go do this? An anarchists volunteered and twice he returned 1:10:53.880 --> 1:10:56.880 to Italy to meet with comrades there to plan the assassination, 1:10:57.280 --> 1:10:59.519 and they met aboard a ship at sea, which is 1:10:59.560 --> 1:11:03.559 aesthetic as fuck, off the Tuscany coast, and this time 1:11:04.240 --> 1:11:07.400 there were no informants among them. He had several co 1:11:07.560 --> 1:11:12.960 conspirators worth mentioning. Stefano Vadieroni was an anarchist tinsmith from 1:11:13.080 --> 1:11:16.639 Rome who was the secretary of the library. The fucking 1:11:16.800 --> 1:11:22.160 librarian was in on this assassination. The secretary of Mussolini's 1:11:22.200 --> 1:11:25.720 library supplied all of the details, including Mussolini's routes by car. 1:11:27.040 --> 1:11:30.679 Vadderoni funded the thing by selling his family's land near Carrara. 1:11:31.680 --> 1:11:34.559 Another anarchist, Leandro Sorrio, was a waiter who was planning 1:11:34.600 --> 1:11:36.920 to finance the group's escape from the country, but then 1:11:36.960 --> 1:11:39.840 they all decided. Basically, they were like, well, we're actually 1:11:39.920 --> 1:11:42.160 just all going to get arrested and stand trial. There 1:11:42.200 --> 1:11:47.000 you go. We want to make a statement. Maltesta, the 1:11:47.560 --> 1:11:50.960 anarchist guy who's old at this point, was briefed on 1:11:51.040 --> 1:11:52.920 the plan and signed off on it. So this wasn't 1:11:53.000 --> 1:11:55.960 a like spur of the moment attack. This was a 1:11:56.800 --> 1:11:59.400 you know, huge conspiracy across borders to try and kill 1:11:59.439 --> 1:12:03.559 this guy. Armngino went back to Italy and he went 1:12:03.640 --> 1:12:07.439 to Rome. He waited for Mussolini's car and then he 1:12:07.479 --> 1:12:10.240 threw a pineapple grenade at it. The grenade had been 1:12:10.280 --> 1:12:13.840 made by his cousin, and he threw it into the windshield. Famously, 1:12:14.680 --> 1:12:17.720 grenades are on timers, not like pressure sensitive. They like 1:12:17.760 --> 1:12:20.360 don't explode on impact, no, because. 1:12:20.120 --> 1:12:22.840 That would be very dangerous. Margaret, I have I told 1:12:22.880 --> 1:12:26.560 you the story about the Iraqi soldier. We're behind this 1:12:26.760 --> 1:12:29.960 berm embedded with this unit of the Iraqi federal police 1:12:30.000 --> 1:12:33.200 that are in this very active gunfight with some ISIS guys. 1:12:33.680 --> 1:12:36.800 But they're also kind of showing off because like I'm 1:12:36.840 --> 1:12:38.840 there and my photographer's there with the camera, and. 1:12:38.880 --> 1:12:39.840 So I put the dudes. 1:12:40.120 --> 1:12:42.680 One of the dudes clips into the buttons of his 1:12:42.880 --> 1:12:46.080 like button up shirt, a grenade over each button. He 1:12:46.200 --> 1:12:48.799 like sticks the little handle arm of the grenade around, 1:12:49.200 --> 1:12:51.800 and he like runs up and he like fires, and 1:12:51.880 --> 1:12:54.599 then he leans over to pick up a magazine that's 1:12:54.680 --> 1:12:57.560 like lying behind the berm, and all of the grenades 1:12:57.680 --> 1:13:00.600 fall off of his shirt and roll down directly towards me. 1:13:04.400 --> 1:13:09.479 So thankfully they're not set off by impact. Yeah, fair enough. 1:13:10.520 --> 1:13:14.120 In this case, it didn't get through the windshield. This 1:13:14.320 --> 1:13:16.639 is the guy who should have brought a rock. Yeah, 1:13:16.800 --> 1:13:19.240 if Violet Gibson was right, you need to get through 1:13:19.320 --> 1:13:23.600 the windshield. The grenade bounced a few meters away and exploded. 1:13:23.880 --> 1:13:26.760 Mussolini's bodyguards caught up with Gino and beat the shit 1:13:26.800 --> 1:13:29.479 out of him. That sounds about right. Yeah, And when 1:13:29.479 --> 1:13:31.679 they arrested him, they found him with a second bomb, 1:13:31.880 --> 1:13:35.200 a handgun with six hollow points poisoned with muriatic acid, 1:13:35.240 --> 1:13:36.519 which I don't know anything about. 1:13:37.280 --> 1:13:41.000 And a dagger isn't myriadic acid. The thing in like swimming. 1:13:40.720 --> 1:13:42.719 Pools, isn't that chlorine? 1:13:43.320 --> 1:13:43.360 No? 1:13:43.479 --> 1:13:45.200 No, I mean I think you have muriatic acid for 1:13:45.200 --> 1:13:47.360 swimming pools too. I remember I've seen like jars one sec. 1:13:47.479 --> 1:13:49.680 I actually didn't want to google this today. That's what 1:13:49.800 --> 1:13:52.000 happened to me today is I was like, I wonder 1:13:52.040 --> 1:13:52.680 what this stuff is. 1:13:52.760 --> 1:13:55.160 Yeah, yeah, yeah, you use mriadic acid to lower like 1:13:55.320 --> 1:13:58.120 pH in your pool. It's like, I'll let like a shit. 1:13:58.320 --> 1:14:00.840 Millions of Americans have this shit and like their shed. 1:14:01.320 --> 1:14:04.080 Okay, yeah, I have no idea why you would. I 1:14:04.800 --> 1:14:08.040 either he was being really extra or like or he 1:14:08.240 --> 1:14:08.720 just thought it. 1:14:09.080 --> 1:14:11.760 He might have thought it was more sketchy than it was. 1:14:11.920 --> 1:14:15.360 I don't know. Yeah, like this one's his acid, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, 1:14:15.560 --> 1:14:17.160 when it's really no, I don't know. I don't know. 1:14:17.240 --> 1:14:18.599 I don't know. I don't know much about it other 1:14:18.640 --> 1:14:20.200 than that, I know I've seen it in people's like 1:14:20.400 --> 1:14:21.719 backyards because they have pools. 1:14:22.000 --> 1:14:26.400 Yeah. And also like there's so much mythbuilding, both positively 1:14:26.400 --> 1:14:28.200 and negative about all of these things, you know, So 1:14:28.240 --> 1:14:30.040 it could have been like, oh, he had a dagger 1:14:30.160 --> 1:14:33.000 and muriatic acid and actually used the word dumb dumb 1:14:33.000 --> 1:14:35.559 bullets instead of hollow points because that's what they called him. 1:14:36.200 --> 1:14:39.560 A round that expands at the time, you know. So 1:14:39.680 --> 1:14:42.720 he's tortured, he gives a false name in location and 1:14:42.840 --> 1:14:45.840 eventually they get the truth out of him. Lucetti was 1:14:45.880 --> 1:14:48.720 given thirty years in prison, the waiter got twenty years, 1:14:48.760 --> 1:14:51.200 and the tin smith got nineteen years and nine months. 1:14:51.280 --> 1:14:53.599 Thirty years is the maximum anyone's allowed to be given 1:14:53.600 --> 1:14:57.960 in Italy at the time, which again more, I mean 1:14:58.040 --> 1:15:02.120 later they're going to start killing people. But yeah, for 1:15:02.280 --> 1:15:05.760 three years Lucetti was in solitary and had only a 1:15:05.880 --> 1:15:08.160 sparrow that would visit at the window for company. 1:15:09.080 --> 1:15:13.080 Okay, yeah, sure, yeah, it's his best friend, the sparrow. 1:15:13.120 --> 1:15:14.680 I mean that's sweet. Actually, I know. 1:15:15.240 --> 1:15:16.840 I bet he was giving it some of his like, 1:15:17.120 --> 1:15:20.080 very very rare bread that he didn't have a whole 1:15:20.120 --> 1:15:21.720 lot of because he was a nice man. 1:15:22.200 --> 1:15:24.920 Yeah, he lived off of I think is just literally 1:15:25.720 --> 1:15:30.000 soup and bread, and that sounds about right. He died 1:15:30.040 --> 1:15:33.200 after seventeen years in prison in nineteen forty three. He 1:15:33.360 --> 1:15:37.360 died during a US air raid. Some claimed that he 1:15:37.479 --> 1:15:39.920 was killed by the shelling, but the man who identified 1:15:39.960 --> 1:15:41.560 the body said that he had been killed by the 1:15:41.640 --> 1:15:46.200 occupying Germans during the raid. The Italian Communists tried to 1:15:46.240 --> 1:15:49.160 claim his legacy. They published that one of his fellow 1:15:49.200 --> 1:15:51.920 inmates claimed he had become a communist in his later years, 1:15:52.760 --> 1:15:55.400 but his brother and his fiancee, who kept visiting him 1:15:55.439 --> 1:15:58.320 until the end of his days, denied this adamantly. I'm like, no, 1:15:58.840 --> 1:16:03.280 he wasn't anarchists who died an anarchist. During the partisan 1:16:03.360 --> 1:16:07.400 reclamation of Italy, two different anarchist battalions named themselves after 1:16:07.680 --> 1:16:10.960 Gino Lucetti. Each was about sixty fighters. I believe, both 1:16:11.000 --> 1:16:13.599 men and women. I know one of the other anarchist 1:16:13.640 --> 1:16:15.599 battalions I'm going to talk about later was both men 1:16:15.680 --> 1:16:19.880 and women, and they helped rid Italy of fascism. So 1:16:20.000 --> 1:16:23.360 he won in a way after his death, and that 1:16:23.520 --> 1:16:25.439 is all most of us can hope for, I would. 1:16:25.200 --> 1:16:29.880 Say, yeah, definitely. I mean in the long run, it's 1:16:29.920 --> 1:16:31.720 all any of us can hope for, right because, as 1:16:31.800 --> 1:16:35.240 we've seen, every struggle worth fighting occurs over a long 1:16:35.400 --> 1:16:36.040 time frame. 1:16:36.400 --> 1:16:40.639 Yeah. Absolutely. As for the man who made the bomb, 1:16:41.560 --> 1:16:45.320 that's a different story about another Gino, because his cousin's 1:16:45.400 --> 1:16:47.720 name was also Gino. And I want to tell you 1:16:47.760 --> 1:16:49.280 about that story. But did you know what I want 1:16:49.320 --> 1:16:50.000 to tell you about? More? 1:16:51.040 --> 1:16:51.160 Uh? 1:16:52.280 --> 1:16:52.800 Products? 1:16:53.439 --> 1:16:55.040 I love products. 1:16:55.720 --> 1:16:58.800 Services. Maybe I don't know if you'd ever if there'd 1:16:58.840 --> 1:17:00.400 ever be a service on it here, I do. 1:17:00.560 --> 1:17:01.280 Like a good service. 1:17:01.720 --> 1:17:04.000 Oh okay, yeah, okay, fascinating yeah, no, yeah. 1:17:03.880 --> 1:17:06.920 Whatever whatever they pay me to talk about, or whatever 1:17:07.000 --> 1:17:10.200 they pay someone else to talk about in an insert 1:17:10.280 --> 1:17:15.040 into my podcast. All right, I'm really excited about here, 1:17:23.520 --> 1:17:24.080 and we're back. 1:17:24.760 --> 1:17:25.080 We are. 1:17:26.960 --> 1:17:31.960 Gina Lucetti had a cousin, Gino Bibby, very serious country 1:17:32.000 --> 1:17:36.000 as you said, Yes, absolutely, Gino Bibby was from a 1:17:36.080 --> 1:17:40.360 more middle class background. His father owned a sawmill. Gino Bibby. 1:17:41.800 --> 1:17:44.000 Did you know what anarchist invented the missile? 1:17:45.240 --> 1:17:45.280 No? 1:17:46.479 --> 1:17:49.360 Was he like a scientist being forced to do stuff 1:17:49.400 --> 1:17:52.479 by the not So I'm going to get to it. 1:17:53.160 --> 1:17:53.519 You know what. 1:17:53.720 --> 1:17:56.240 That's got to be one of the top anarchism fails. 1:17:57.640 --> 1:17:59.400 Yeah, it didn't work out well in the end. I 1:17:59.439 --> 1:18:00.519 would say missiles. 1:18:00.560 --> 1:18:03.760 I mean, there's definitely some anarchists, you know, in anarchist 1:18:04.160 --> 1:18:06.680 related groups that have used missiles and are using them 1:18:06.760 --> 1:18:10.320 right now. But uh, boy howdy, it's a general rule, 1:18:10.439 --> 1:18:13.559 not a tool that has reduced state power. 1:18:14.600 --> 1:18:14.840 Yeah. 1:18:15.320 --> 1:18:18.559 Oh, that's an L I know. And it's so messy, 1:18:18.640 --> 1:18:22.760 big L for us. And if you google I'll talk 1:18:22.760 --> 1:18:24.240 about it a little bit more. Later when he actually 1:18:24.240 --> 1:18:25.760 does the inventing, but I guess to it. But if 1:18:25.800 --> 1:18:28.080 you google who invented the missile, you get the Nazis. 1:18:28.680 --> 1:18:31.640 But he's gonna pull out missiles, guided missiles that go 1:18:31.760 --> 1:18:36.240 twenty kilometers in the Spanish Civil War. Shit missile in 1:18:36.280 --> 1:18:38.360 this case being a rocket, but guided. 1:18:38.680 --> 1:18:39.400 Yeah yeah yeah. 1:18:40.360 --> 1:18:44.640 And as a teen, this second Geno, Gino Bibby went 1:18:44.720 --> 1:18:47.959 around on a bicycle and distributed anarchist leaflets until fascists 1:18:48.080 --> 1:18:51.840 dragged him off his bike, beat him up, burned his motorcycle, 1:18:52.320 --> 1:18:56.400 and then burned his father's sawmill. Great, because they were 1:18:56.400 --> 1:18:59.880 a little extra the fascists. This did not make it 1:19:00.000 --> 1:19:02.960 Gino less radical, It just made him more angry. He's 1:19:03.000 --> 1:19:05.040 going to have the last laugh against fascists in Italy, 1:19:05.280 --> 1:19:08.600 as often how things go. Yeah yeah. He spent a 1:19:08.680 --> 1:19:10.880 while in lock up for fighting fascists in the early 1:19:11.000 --> 1:19:13.599 nineteen twenties, then fled to Spain, where he started learning 1:19:13.640 --> 1:19:16.320 how to fly in case he needed to assassinate Mussolini 1:19:16.360 --> 1:19:19.200 from the air. Okay, which is kind of like how 1:19:19.840 --> 1:19:21.960 I learned a while ago for a prison break episode 1:19:22.000 --> 1:19:24.000 that an awful lot of the prison breaks in the 1:19:24.080 --> 1:19:25.559 early aughts were it. 1:19:25.680 --> 1:19:27.440 Used to be a lot easier to get a helicopter. 1:19:27.680 --> 1:19:30.800 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, learn to fly. That's how you 1:19:30.920 --> 1:19:33.280 get people out of prison back in the day. Yeah. 1:19:34.560 --> 1:19:38.040 Come the Spanish Civil War, he worked behind enemy lines, 1:19:38.120 --> 1:19:41.479 blowing shit up and flying reconnaissance, and then he maybe 1:19:41.600 --> 1:19:43.800 designed the first missile. If you google right now the 1:19:43.840 --> 1:19:46.280 first missile, you get Nazi Germany World War two. But 1:19:46.439 --> 1:19:49.320 Gino design missiles that went twenty kilometers and the Drudi 1:19:49.400 --> 1:19:52.559 column fired them at Francoist forces. So it started off 1:19:52.600 --> 1:19:55.080 as a good idea, just a very Pandora's box. 1:19:55.439 --> 1:19:56.439 That's pretty cool. 1:19:56.840 --> 1:19:59.320 Yeah. You know what else? The anarchist is not a 1:19:59.360 --> 1:20:01.559 products in service switch. Do you know what else anarchists 1:20:01.560 --> 1:20:05.280 invented during the Spanish Civil War? No, you ever played foosball? 1:20:06.360 --> 1:20:06.559 Yeah? 1:20:07.200 --> 1:20:07.719 Is that ours? 1:20:07.760 --> 1:20:10.160 Did you ever know? An anarchist named Alejandro I forget 1:20:10.200 --> 1:20:12.559 his last name because it's not my script, invented foosball. 1:20:12.640 --> 1:20:17.960 Alejandro foos, let's call it. Let's say alanro fos cool. 1:20:18.280 --> 1:20:20.320 Yeah, there was a again I'm completely off script here 1:20:20.320 --> 1:20:22.720 and going from memory, but there was a guy who 1:20:22.880 --> 1:20:24.920 was injured in the Spanish Civil War and he was 1:20:25.000 --> 1:20:27.400 like an inventor, and he was like, but I want 1:20:27.439 --> 1:20:29.400 to keep playing soccer, but I can't because I got 1:20:29.439 --> 1:20:32.880 really badly injured. I'm going to invent table soccer, and 1:20:33.040 --> 1:20:36.280 other people had invented it, but his invention is the 1:20:36.360 --> 1:20:37.439 one that people play today. 1:20:38.200 --> 1:20:39.840 Okay, So fascinating. 1:20:39.920 --> 1:20:44.680 Spanish Civil War, the anarchist gave us missiles and foosball to. 1:20:45.000 --> 1:20:49.640 The two key cornerstones of the of modern civilization. 1:20:49.960 --> 1:20:51.120 Missiles and foosball. 1:20:51.640 --> 1:20:51.840 Yeah. 1:20:53.520 --> 1:20:57.040 Meanwhile, while Gino is inventing missiles and doing specop's missions, 1:20:57.760 --> 1:21:01.000 the Stalinists murdered his sister. Listen to any of our 1:21:01.040 --> 1:21:03.040 episodes about the Spanish Civil War for more about how 1:21:03.080 --> 1:21:05.680 Stalins betrayed their comrades and started arresting folks that they 1:21:05.720 --> 1:21:09.280 didn't like and torturing people and killing them. The Stalinists 1:21:09.320 --> 1:21:12.519 actually arrested Gino two, but the anarchists in the government, 1:21:12.560 --> 1:21:14.519 which is another odd thing that happened in the Spanish 1:21:14.520 --> 1:21:18.040 Civil War, were like, oh no, fuck no, and the 1:21:18.120 --> 1:21:21.479 Stalinists were forced to let him out. When the Spanish 1:21:21.560 --> 1:21:24.439 Republic fell, Like everyone else, he fled into France and 1:21:24.600 --> 1:21:27.080 was held in a concentration camp. Not a Nazi one, 1:21:27.120 --> 1:21:30.479 but a pre VG France one where from he escaped, 1:21:30.640 --> 1:21:32.799 and then he moved back to Italy and he joined 1:21:32.800 --> 1:21:36.240 the Partisans there, and he freed his own fucking hometown 1:21:36.280 --> 1:21:39.680 from fascists as part of an anarchist partisan unit. I 1:21:39.800 --> 1:21:43.040 really like this guy. To quote author Nick Heath, he 1:21:43.200 --> 1:21:45.960 died at the age of one hundred on the eighth 1:21:46.080 --> 1:21:49.519 of August nineteen ninety nine. He was cremated with a 1:21:49.560 --> 1:21:52.719 red and black scarf tied around his neck. His ashes 1:21:52.760 --> 1:21:56.000 were interred in the anarchist corner of the graveyard in Carrara. 1:21:57.560 --> 1:22:02.080 Man' that's dope. Also, nineteen ninety nine, great year to 1:22:02.160 --> 1:22:05.960 kind of clock out. Yeah, missed a lot of messinists, 1:22:06.040 --> 1:22:08.439 got to see most of the good star treks. 1:22:09.040 --> 1:22:16.479 Yeah, and uh yeah, Geno Bbe I got kind of 1:22:16.520 --> 1:22:20.679 tiary when I was writing about the life of the anarchist. Spy, pilot, bombmaker, engineer, partisan, 1:22:20.760 --> 1:22:25.880 an invention, spilot, spilot, Margaret Oh spilot, yes, the spilot, Yes, 1:22:26.920 --> 1:22:31.960 an inventor of the guided missile system, which again not 1:22:32.080 --> 1:22:34.519 our best move. Later, I'm going to talk about a 1:22:34.560 --> 1:22:37.360 military invention, or actually a terrorism invention of the anarchist 1:22:37.439 --> 1:22:41.519 that's even worse. Uh oh, the Irish are mostly famous 1:22:41.560 --> 1:22:43.840 for it, but it was an Italian anarchist who later 1:22:43.920 --> 1:22:48.320 became a fascist. Anyway, back to our main story, people 1:22:48.400 --> 1:22:51.599 trying to kill Mussolini. Only a few months after Gino 1:22:51.720 --> 1:22:55.680 one through Gino Two's grenade at Mussolini, another young hero 1:22:55.920 --> 1:22:59.040 stepped forward to give it as all a really young 1:22:59.120 --> 1:23:01.320 hero kind of a This is the most heartbreaking part 1:23:01.320 --> 1:23:04.360 of the story. A fifteen year old kid who had 1:23:04.520 --> 1:23:07.639 just quit the fascist youth and become an anarchist. That's 1:23:07.680 --> 1:23:11.000 good for him. Antio Zamboni. 1:23:12.080 --> 1:23:12.760 God damn it. 1:23:12.920 --> 1:23:14.000 I promised you, Zamboni. 1:23:14.400 --> 1:23:16.800 Get Jamie Loftus on the horn. She needs to know 1:23:16.920 --> 1:23:17.720 about this name. 1:23:18.280 --> 1:23:20.479 I genuinely thought I was very glad that you were 1:23:20.560 --> 1:23:23.320 my guest until I got to Zamboni, and I was like, ah, 1:23:23.840 --> 1:23:25.800 if I was gonna have anyone else, it would be 1:23:25.880 --> 1:23:31.320 Jamie Loftus, also more experienced killing me. Never mind, No, no, 1:23:31.760 --> 1:23:34.000 I'm not allowed to join the bit about trying to 1:23:34.040 --> 1:23:36.360 implicate okay, just checking no. 1:23:36.880 --> 1:23:40.280 Yeah, yeah. Until the court case is over and the 1:23:40.400 --> 1:23:43.120 grand jury rules on the new evidence brought forward in 1:23:43.200 --> 1:23:45.360 that case, we probably should keep our mouths quiet. 1:23:45.560 --> 1:23:50.240 By a mysterious person with a bad, fake Boston accent. No, 1:23:51.640 --> 1:23:54.400 for anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about, I'm 1:23:54.760 --> 1:23:55.200 proud of you. 1:23:55.880 --> 1:23:58.719 Well done. Way to be less terminally online. 1:23:59.400 --> 1:24:04.120 You should listen Jamie Loptis's podcasts. He should. Antio Zamboni 1:24:04.400 --> 1:24:07.400 was born into a working class political family in Bologna. 1:24:08.280 --> 1:24:10.720 His parents were anarchists who became fascists, or at least 1:24:10.760 --> 1:24:14.280 his father had. He was never baptized. His parents only 1:24:14.320 --> 1:24:16.880 had a civil union because they refused to let the 1:24:16.920 --> 1:24:18.640 state or the church have anything to do with their 1:24:18.680 --> 1:24:25.120 marriage before they became fascists. His father, Mamolo Zamboni, when 1:24:25.160 --> 1:24:27.200 he became a fascist, The New York Times called it 1:24:27.320 --> 1:24:33.439 quote disassociating from radical action, because being an anarchist is radical, 1:24:33.720 --> 1:24:35.880 being a fascist is normal. According to the New York 1:24:35.920 --> 1:24:41.639 Times in nineteen twenty six and now, yeah, Mamolo called 1:24:41.720 --> 1:24:46.240 himself quote an anarchist and a fascist. So okay, what 1:24:46.400 --> 1:24:46.679 a guy. 1:24:47.640 --> 1:24:50.960 I mean, there's a lot of that too. Unfortunately, Oh yeah, 1:24:50.960 --> 1:24:54.280 I could look into there's a I mean, he considered 1:24:54.360 --> 1:24:57.880 himself and was very angry about other like people who 1:24:57.960 --> 1:25:00.960 called themselves anarchists because he had a different attitude towards it. 1:25:01.080 --> 1:25:05.280 But the guy who wrote A Storm of Steel, Ernst Junger, 1:25:05.920 --> 1:25:08.960 was like called himself an anarch and I guess the 1:25:09.080 --> 1:25:12.559 difference is he just believed in anarchism for himself as 1:25:12.680 --> 1:25:18.080 like an individual choice, still serving the Nazi state. He 1:25:18.280 --> 1:25:21.759 was kind of an incoherent fella politically in my opinion, 1:25:21.880 --> 1:25:24.280 but wrote a very good World War One memoir. 1:25:24.680 --> 1:25:27.519 Well, I think that that sounds like approximately half of 1:25:27.600 --> 1:25:29.720 the modern Libertarian party that the other half of the 1:25:29.800 --> 1:25:34.760 Libertarian party is very embarrassed about. Yeah. Yeah. Antio had 1:25:34.800 --> 1:25:37.040 two brothers, one of whom was in a Fascist militia, 1:25:37.160 --> 1:25:39.920 the other of whom was in the army. Antio was 1:25:39.960 --> 1:25:42.320 a young anarchist with way better politics than his dad, 1:25:43.400 --> 1:25:46.080 and he took a shot at Mussolini while the man 1:25:46.200 --> 1:25:49.080 drove past him in an open car. He missed, he 1:25:49.240 --> 1:25:53.960 pierced the Fascist collar, and the crowd killed him. Just 1:25:55.000 --> 1:25:58.680 stab this child to death. Oh I have you know 1:25:58.840 --> 1:26:02.960 a fifteen year old either like a kid or an adult. Yeah, 1:26:03.920 --> 1:26:07.760 Antio's a kid. This is a child. Yeah, I mean 1:26:07.880 --> 1:26:10.040 every fifteen year old is a child. But the crowd 1:26:10.200 --> 1:26:11.920 knew they were killing a child. 1:26:12.320 --> 1:26:13.240 Yeah, yeah, they did. 1:26:13.280 --> 1:26:13.320 Not. 1:26:13.479 --> 1:26:16.120 It was not just like somebody who could have passed 1:26:16.120 --> 1:26:18.400 for seventeen or eighteen, like they were very aware they 1:26:18.400 --> 1:26:20.040 were killing a kid. 1:26:20.200 --> 1:26:24.240 Yeah, he could have passed for twelve. Yeah, gotcha. I 1:26:24.400 --> 1:26:26.439 looked at the I don't normally do this to myself, 1:26:26.479 --> 1:26:28.280 but I looked at the corpse photo because the only 1:26:28.320 --> 1:26:30.080 other photos that anyone has of him is when he's 1:26:30.080 --> 1:26:35.920 like eight. You know, and his coward fascist father tried 1:26:35.960 --> 1:26:38.240 to distance himself from the actions of his son until 1:26:38.320 --> 1:26:40.920 after the war. But we'll get to that. The New 1:26:41.040 --> 1:26:43.599 York Times reported the father walked into the police station 1:26:43.680 --> 1:26:46.000 to see the body and said, quote, I knew it 1:26:46.000 --> 1:26:48.559 would happen. It was faded. He was a strange boy 1:26:48.680 --> 1:26:51.360 with strange notions. I had a dreadful premonition that something 1:26:51.400 --> 1:26:53.680 would happen to him. Our doctor said he might go 1:26:53.800 --> 1:26:57.639 mad one day. This is the father trying to save 1:26:57.720 --> 1:27:01.320 his own ass. It's not going to work. Then New 1:27:01.400 --> 1:27:04.080 York Times writes a little glowing article about Mussolini playing 1:27:04.120 --> 1:27:06.280 his violin with his wife and kids at home, taking 1:27:06.400 --> 1:27:10.120 solace after the attack. Then they talk about how everyone 1:27:10.280 --> 1:27:14.439 is saying that if Mussolini stays alive, fascism will keep 1:27:14.600 --> 1:27:16.280 Italy normal and peaceful. 1:27:16.760 --> 1:27:19.000 But if he were killed, it seems like what fascism 1:27:19.040 --> 1:27:19.280 will do. 1:27:19.560 --> 1:27:24.840 Yeah, yeah, violent fascist might take over if Mussolini's killed. 1:27:25.880 --> 1:27:28.559 And on the exact same page of the New York 1:27:28.600 --> 1:27:31.439 Times from nineteen twenty six, there's a different article about 1:27:31.479 --> 1:27:35.040 fascist black shirts rating anti fascist newspapers at gunpoint. 1:27:35.520 --> 1:27:38.920 Uh huh. But you know, but in a normal way, 1:27:39.240 --> 1:27:40.799 you know, Yeah, yeah. 1:27:42.360 --> 1:27:45.680 Being a fascist did not protect Mamolo the father. He 1:27:45.840 --> 1:27:48.360 and his sister in law were both sentenced to thirty 1:27:48.479 --> 1:27:51.200 years for being vaguely connected to antio. Basically, they're like, oh, 1:27:51.280 --> 1:27:53.200 the kid couldn't come up with doing it. It must 1:27:53.240 --> 1:27:56.840 have been a plot by previously anarchy dad. But by 1:27:56.960 --> 1:28:00.839 nineteen thirty two, the elder Zamboni received a pardon directly 1:28:00.880 --> 1:28:06.479 from Mussolini in exchange for becoming an informant for the fascists. Then, 1:28:07.280 --> 1:28:10.840 after the war, Mamlo went one eighty again and started 1:28:10.880 --> 1:28:13.280 writing pamphlets speaking of the courage of his son and 1:28:13.320 --> 1:28:16.840 started publishing anarchist material again. Great he died in nineteen 1:28:16.920 --> 1:28:19.640 fifty two. And he's not the only anarchist in the 1:28:19.680 --> 1:28:24.559 story who went fascist and then anarchist again. Yeah, this guy, 1:28:24.880 --> 1:28:25.639 I don't like him. 1:28:26.200 --> 1:28:29.160 Yeah, again, a lot of It's just like a lot 1:28:29.240 --> 1:28:31.920 of people are more dripp will always be a decent 1:28:32.040 --> 1:28:35.439 number of people, sizeable minority, always mostly just driven by 1:28:35.479 --> 1:28:37.880 whatever's pissing them off in the moment, you know, as 1:28:37.920 --> 1:28:40.120 opposed to principles totally. 1:28:41.120 --> 1:28:42.960 I'm just so mad at him for turning his back 1:28:43.000 --> 1:28:45.280 on his kid and trying to throw this dead kid 1:28:45.360 --> 1:28:46.760 under the bus to save his own ass. 1:28:46.880 --> 1:28:49.320 I mean it sounds like a guy who sucks. Yeah, 1:28:49.640 --> 1:28:52.599 sounds like a guy, a bastard that maybe someone should 1:28:52.640 --> 1:28:53.160 get behind. 1:28:53.800 --> 1:28:57.400 I know, it's kind of a little weird guy too, Like, yeah, 1:28:59.000 --> 1:29:02.800 after Antio is a t Mussolini. All other political parties 1:29:02.840 --> 1:29:05.600 were outlawed, but they already didn't have any power, and 1:29:05.680 --> 1:29:07.799 Mussolini was going to do that anyhow, was my argument. 1:29:09.040 --> 1:29:12.120 This more or less ends open anarchist organizing in Italy, 1:29:12.160 --> 1:29:15.160 as I understand it, And Mussolini brings back the death 1:29:15.240 --> 1:29:17.599 penalty now for anyone trying to kill him or the king. 1:29:18.960 --> 1:29:22.560 That didn't stop people from trying to kill him. No 1:29:22.640 --> 1:29:24.920 one tries to kill a dictator thinking it's a safe 1:29:24.960 --> 1:29:25.400 thing to do. 1:29:26.880 --> 1:29:30.479 Nope. Yeah, nobody's ever killed a dictator being like this, 1:29:31.040 --> 1:29:33.720 This is more relaxing than staying home at night and 1:29:34.479 --> 1:29:35.480 reading the newspaper. 1:29:35.640 --> 1:29:37.920 Yeah, I'm going to get away from this just fine. 1:29:38.240 --> 1:29:41.760 Yeah yeah, although later the people who do kill Missolini 1:29:41.840 --> 1:29:43.519 do but yeah. 1:29:43.400 --> 1:29:46.000 That's a different time. That's really not an assassination. 1:29:46.560 --> 1:29:47.439 No, no. 1:29:49.080 --> 1:29:50.880 The next attempt we're going to talk about was a 1:29:50.920 --> 1:29:54.240 man who, like Atano Breshi before him, abandoned the safety 1:29:54.280 --> 1:29:57.000 of the United States and kind of abandoned his family 1:29:57.080 --> 1:29:59.560 there to return to Italy to try and do what 1:29:59.720 --> 1:30:06.160 was right. His name was Mikela Shiroukay, which to me 1:30:06.280 --> 1:30:09.760 looks like it's spelled Michelle if anyone's curious, But it's 1:30:10.200 --> 1:30:14.040 like the French. But it's not. It's Italian, so it's Maclay. Micklay. 1:30:14.120 --> 1:30:17.360 Shiro was born in eighteen ninety nine on Sardinia, which 1:30:17.400 --> 1:30:20.840 is an Italian island. His father had already emigrated to 1:30:20.880 --> 1:30:24.000 the US, and Michaelay was raised by his mother. He 1:30:24.160 --> 1:30:26.920 was twice arrested in demonstrations as a kid. He was 1:30:27.000 --> 1:30:30.160 conscripted into World War One, and, like a lot of 1:30:30.200 --> 1:30:31.960 anarchists at the time, he was hoping the war would 1:30:32.000 --> 1:30:36.040 turn into a war of liberation. It did not famously. 1:30:36.720 --> 1:30:37.920 It's a bummer, yeah. 1:30:38.840 --> 1:30:41.720 Mcklay became convinced of anarchism after the Communist Party, he 1:30:41.760 --> 1:30:44.479 felt sold out the factory occupations and let the bosses 1:30:44.520 --> 1:30:48.120 back in. He eventually moves to Manhattan. He starts fighting 1:30:48.200 --> 1:30:52.160 Italian fascists in the streets. He worked as a mechanic 1:30:52.320 --> 1:30:55.200 and then he became a banana wholesaler in the Bronx. 1:30:56.800 --> 1:30:59.519 He married an Irish American woman named Minnie. He had 1:30:59.560 --> 1:31:01.760 two kids. I think he had a son and a daughter. 1:31:02.680 --> 1:31:05.479 But he was watching Italy fall to fascism and he 1:31:05.520 --> 1:31:09.160 couldn't handle it. He was like, someone's got to do something. 1:31:09.920 --> 1:31:14.120 I'm someone. I'm gonna do something. He went first to 1:31:14.240 --> 1:31:17.280 France and then likely coordinated with anarchists there, but he 1:31:17.400 --> 1:31:19.720 kept his mouth shut about it, so we never know. 1:31:20.160 --> 1:31:22.760 We'll never know like who else was involved because they 1:31:22.800 --> 1:31:26.040 were never arrested. He went up to Belgium and he 1:31:26.120 --> 1:31:28.360 worked in an anarchist bomb making workshop. I don't know, 1:31:28.439 --> 1:31:29.880 there's like a like fly you go to like the 1:31:29.920 --> 1:31:31.640 punk show and there's a flyer. It's like, hey, come 1:31:31.720 --> 1:31:35.360 to the anarchist bomb making workshop. This Saturday. Yeah, but 1:31:35.479 --> 1:31:37.880 he made himself two bombs, and then he traveled to 1:31:37.960 --> 1:31:41.680 Rome in January nineteen thirty one. M h, we've only 1:31:41.760 --> 1:31:44.400 got his confession under duress to work from, so we don't. 1:31:45.320 --> 1:31:48.439 You know, famously not always the most honest and not 1:31:48.840 --> 1:31:53.320 a great source. Yeah. But his original plan, he said, 1:31:53.479 --> 1:31:54.920 was that he was going to use the bombs in 1:31:55.000 --> 1:31:57.880 Paris against the Soviet embassy in revenge for the murder 1:31:57.920 --> 1:32:00.160 of anarchists in the USSR. But then he decided to 1:32:00.240 --> 1:32:05.479 kill Mussolini himself. I think that that was his backup plan. 1:32:06.000 --> 1:32:07.960 I think that he went to I think he went 1:32:07.960 --> 1:32:12.400 back to Europe to try and kill Mscelini. But in 1:32:12.600 --> 1:32:15.320 Rome he rented two hotel rooms, one for himself and 1:32:15.479 --> 1:32:19.400 one for his bombs, because bombs need privacy too, you know, 1:32:20.200 --> 1:32:20.599 of course. 1:32:20.880 --> 1:32:25.520 Yes, that's actually my primary political issue, yeah, is extending 1:32:25.640 --> 1:32:30.240 privacy rights to modern military explosives. You know, nobody needs 1:32:30.320 --> 1:32:32.320 to know what a couple of jade ams get up 1:32:32.360 --> 1:32:35.599 to in their spare time. That's between them and God 1:32:35.840 --> 1:32:37.599 and whatever village they're hitting. 1:32:40.960 --> 1:32:43.200 While he was there, he was either shacking up with 1:32:43.439 --> 1:32:47.599 or conspiring with a Hungarian dancer named Anna Lukowski. If 1:32:47.640 --> 1:32:50.040 I were writing the story, it would be both. Also, 1:32:50.520 --> 1:32:54.200 everyone writes sex work out of history, so I would 1:32:54.240 --> 1:32:55.640 put money that she was a sex worker, But that 1:32:55.680 --> 1:32:57.720 doesn't make her less or more likely to have been 1:32:57.760 --> 1:33:01.599 one of the conspirators. And there is reason to believe 1:33:01.920 --> 1:33:04.680 that he is part of a broader conspiracy working, but 1:33:04.800 --> 1:33:06.680 he never rats them out. And the reason that we 1:33:06.760 --> 1:33:11.000 think this is that he spent money really freely while 1:33:11.040 --> 1:33:14.040 he was there. He was renting two hotel rooms, but 1:33:14.120 --> 1:33:16.320 he had no money on him when he was arrested, 1:33:16.800 --> 1:33:18.080 and there was like no money in any of the 1:33:18.160 --> 1:33:21.360 rooms or whatever. Right, So he was probably working with 1:33:21.600 --> 1:33:23.840 a bunch of people who wanted Mussolini dead. A lot 1:33:23.880 --> 1:33:27.720 of people wanted Mussolini dead. Yeah, for some reason, his 1:33:27.880 --> 1:33:31.200 plan was really simple. One of his hotel rooms overlooked 1:33:31.200 --> 1:33:33.840 a common route for Mussolini's car. He was going to 1:33:33.920 --> 1:33:38.320 wait and drop a bomb on Mussolini, but he wanted 1:33:38.360 --> 1:33:41.000 to do it when there was no bystanders around, of course, 1:33:41.080 --> 1:33:42.880 And this is the thing that has come up a 1:33:42.920 --> 1:33:44.680 bunch of times on the show, but has left out 1:33:44.720 --> 1:33:49.200 a lot of the sensationless stuff about bomb assassinations, as 1:33:49.280 --> 1:33:51.960 all of the bystanders who get killed. There have been 1:33:52.080 --> 1:33:54.040 so many times in history, and there's gonna be two 1:33:54.120 --> 1:33:57.880 in this episode where people don't do it because they 1:33:57.920 --> 1:33:59.880 can't find a way to do it without hurting people. 1:34:02.080 --> 1:34:04.880 He's there for like three weeks and he can't find 1:34:04.880 --> 1:34:07.559 a way to not hurt anyone else. He had all 1:34:07.640 --> 1:34:09.760 but given up, and he was figuring he'd go back 1:34:09.800 --> 1:34:13.920 to Paris and attack the Soviets instead when he was 1:34:13.960 --> 1:34:17.320 stopped on the street by cops on February third, nineteen 1:34:17.400 --> 1:34:20.040 thirty one. And I think he was just like stopped 1:34:20.120 --> 1:34:22.800 for being a sketchy guy because it's a fascist state, 1:34:23.000 --> 1:34:25.559 you know, and they take him to a holding sell 1:34:25.640 --> 1:34:30.160 for investigation. There were three cops in the room. He 1:34:30.240 --> 1:34:34.479 pulled a gun and shot all three cops. Wow, and 1:34:34.600 --> 1:34:37.240 then he shouted long live anarchy and put the gun 1:34:37.320 --> 1:34:40.799 in his own mouth and pulled the trigger. Well, okay, 1:34:41.160 --> 1:34:45.160 all four men survived. Oh my god. Yeah wow. 1:34:45.800 --> 1:34:47.960 I mean that does have to win my award for 1:34:48.120 --> 1:34:50.720 worst with a gun of anyone on this podcast. To 1:34:50.800 --> 1:34:54.439 shoot four people, including yourself and have them all live 1:34:55.040 --> 1:34:58.160 is a real yeah. Honestly though, I got to a 1:34:58.240 --> 1:34:59.880 given the time, something that probably just goes down to 1:35:00.040 --> 1:35:02.880 how much worse ammunition was back then, you know, powder 1:35:03.000 --> 1:35:04.360 loads were less reliable. 1:35:04.400 --> 1:35:07.439 He may have loaded himself, you know, yeah, like I 1:35:07.479 --> 1:35:10.160 think he like he seriously injured one of the cops 1:35:10.200 --> 1:35:14.439 in himself, Jesus Christ. He was like rushed to emergency surgery, 1:35:15.120 --> 1:35:18.880 and they, you know, wanted him fit to stand trial. 1:35:19.120 --> 1:35:21.479 Right, stand trial for killing no one. 1:35:23.000 --> 1:35:27.160 That's actually part of the thing. I was reading newspapers 1:35:27.200 --> 1:35:30.040 at the time and they were like, look, shooting cops 1:35:30.120 --> 1:35:33.120 didn't carry the death penalty, so it actually was against 1:35:33.160 --> 1:35:36.759 their own laws to try and give him the death penalty. 1:35:37.520 --> 1:35:40.600 But he admitted that he was there to kill Missolini. 1:35:41.280 --> 1:35:43.160 In fact, he pretty much they were like, what are 1:35:43.200 --> 1:35:45.000 you doing? He was like, I'm here to kill Missolini. 1:35:47.000 --> 1:35:49.400 He tried to write his wife, and his wife tried 1:35:49.439 --> 1:35:51.080 to write him while he was in jail, but their 1:35:51.160 --> 1:35:53.760 letters were confiscated. He wrote to his father to the 1:35:53.800 --> 1:35:57.759 same effect. In May nineteen thirty one, he was tried 1:35:57.800 --> 1:36:00.720 by a fascist judge with no jury, and all the 1:36:00.840 --> 1:36:02.920 lawyers and witnesses had to be put before a special 1:36:03.000 --> 1:36:06.879 tribunal before they could come in. His defense was basically 1:36:07.880 --> 1:36:11.120 I came here to blow out Mussolini during the trial, 1:36:11.160 --> 1:36:14.519 he decried both fascism and communism. They told him he 1:36:14.560 --> 1:36:17.240 would be executed, shot in the back. He didn't say 1:36:17.280 --> 1:36:19.920 a word as the sentence came down. When he was 1:36:20.000 --> 1:36:23.080 asked if he had anything to add, he shrugged his shoulders. 1:36:24.400 --> 1:36:27.479 At two thirty am the next morning, they came into 1:36:27.520 --> 1:36:29.719 his cell and told him he would be killed at sunrise. 1:36:30.320 --> 1:36:32.600 He said he did not need a priest, and he 1:36:32.720 --> 1:36:34.600 was shot in the back by a firing squad of 1:36:34.680 --> 1:36:39.120 twenty four fascists, folks from his home of Sardinia, who 1:36:39.160 --> 1:36:41.360 had volunteered specifically to kill him. 1:36:42.439 --> 1:36:46.040 Well, I guess that's a nice at least you. No, 1:36:46.439 --> 1:36:50.040 it's your guys. You went to high school with murdering. Yeah, 1:36:50.760 --> 1:36:52.679 totally Actually sounds much worse. 1:36:53.080 --> 1:36:57.479 Yeah. His wife Minnie lived to nineteen eighty seven, dying 1:36:57.520 --> 1:37:01.040 at eighty three. Their son sparred A, died in two 1:37:01.040 --> 1:37:03.519 thousand and five. I found an article I couldn't get 1:37:03.520 --> 1:37:08.320 access to behind an academic wall of Spartaco writing about 1:37:08.320 --> 1:37:10.240 his father, and I'm kind of sad I couldn't get it. 1:37:11.600 --> 1:37:15.360 But here's an assassin who didn't go through with his 1:37:15.439 --> 1:37:18.679 actions because he couldn't do it without hurting anyone else. 1:37:20.280 --> 1:37:24.560 Now let's talk about the opposite sure, but before that, 1:37:25.160 --> 1:37:29.639 let's talk about the other opposite products and services. Ah, 1:37:29.760 --> 1:37:32.400 I love products and services. Well, someone's going to get hurt. 1:37:33.280 --> 1:37:35.960 M's that's the promise we make. 1:37:38.960 --> 1:37:53.200 Here they are and we're burke. We are burt. Now 1:37:53.200 --> 1:37:55.599 I'm going to talk about my least favorite anarchist in history. 1:37:56.320 --> 1:37:59.880 Oh, there's a couple of jokes. There's a couple of 1:38:00.080 --> 1:38:01.040 jokes I could make. 1:38:01.880 --> 1:38:08.080 People we know. But yeah, no, my least favorite anarchist 1:38:08.120 --> 1:38:11.439 I've never met. You don't stay in a political scene 1:38:11.479 --> 1:38:15.439 without making a few. Let's go with frenemies. Yeah. So, 1:38:16.280 --> 1:38:18.800 there's a long list of things anarchists have invented which 1:38:18.840 --> 1:38:21.400 can be used for good or evil. The carriage mounted 1:38:21.479 --> 1:38:28.639 machine gun, missiles apparently, the getaway car, foosball, steampunk, free 1:38:28.720 --> 1:38:33.880 bike programs, signal, the messaging app. One thing that you 1:38:33.960 --> 1:38:36.639 can say was probably invented by someone who called themselves 1:38:36.640 --> 1:38:39.280 an anarchist at the time was the car bomb. 1:38:40.280 --> 1:38:44.360 Uh well, yeah, look, I've seen a couple of car bombs. 1:38:44.400 --> 1:38:47.400 I've even seen one kill people, and uh not a 1:38:47.479 --> 1:38:50.200 fan of car bombs. No, Well, it was a vbied, 1:38:50.439 --> 1:38:53.639 which I guess is like and it's in that line 1:38:53.680 --> 1:38:54.080 of descent. 1:38:54.439 --> 1:38:58.040 Yeah, I'm still sorry you to see anyone die. 1:38:58.800 --> 1:39:00.680 It's okay, I mostly I'm I mean they were far 1:39:00.840 --> 1:39:02.799 enough away that I just kind of saw them turned 1:39:02.800 --> 1:39:03.439 into smoke. 1:39:04.120 --> 1:39:06.120 Okay, yeah, no, I'm sure that doesn't have any effects 1:39:06.160 --> 1:39:08.240 on yourself. No, not at all, not at all. 1:39:08.840 --> 1:39:09.040 Yeah. 1:39:11.520 --> 1:39:15.280 Before the Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest terrorist attack in 1:39:15.479 --> 1:39:19.280 US history was the Wall Street bombing of September sixteenth, 1:39:19.439 --> 1:39:20.200 nineteen twenty. 1:39:20.320 --> 1:39:21.600 Oh. I have heard of this. 1:39:21.960 --> 1:39:26.320 Yeah, someone it is not certain who used a horse 1:39:26.400 --> 1:39:30.680 drawn wagon as the first car bomb. And every time 1:39:30.720 --> 1:39:33.240 I say the first in any show, it's like, you know, 1:39:33.800 --> 1:39:35.800 I don't know the first that I know about. Right, 1:39:36.960 --> 1:39:38.280 there's a whole book about the history of the car 1:39:38.280 --> 1:39:40.439 bomb called Buddha's Wagon, because we're going to get to ooh, 1:39:40.600 --> 1:39:42.280 that's how it was. Probably Mario Buddha. 1:39:42.720 --> 1:39:45.599 Yeah, in this car bomb, I thought there were talk. 1:39:46.439 --> 1:39:48.400 I was hoping there were some Buddhist history with car 1:39:48.520 --> 1:39:50.639 bombs that I hadn't heard. But okay, that makes sense. 1:39:50.760 --> 1:39:54.160 No, I mean maybe I don't know, but yes, in 1:39:54.240 --> 1:39:57.000 this carriage was one hundred pounds of dynamite, five hundred 1:39:57.040 --> 1:40:01.200 pounds of cast iron weights for shrapnel, and they rode 1:40:01.200 --> 1:40:02.960 the horse up and then the driver got out and 1:40:03.080 --> 1:40:06.400 left and blew up on Wall Street, not in one 1:40:06.439 --> 1:40:09.559 of the buildings. It killed forty people, and then like injure, 1:40:09.640 --> 1:40:13.439 hundreds of people, and almost everyone that killed were like 1:40:13.520 --> 1:40:16.760 fucking kids that worked as messengers and like clerks and shit. 1:40:18.360 --> 1:40:22.280 Again, this is like the problem of like just this 1:40:22.360 --> 1:40:25.639 thing you get on Twitter whenever stuff happens where it's 1:40:25.720 --> 1:40:28.400 like somebody has attacked this group of people that like 1:40:28.600 --> 1:40:31.360 leftists broadly dislike, and it's like, I don't know, wait 1:40:31.360 --> 1:40:33.639 a minute to see if that's who they hit. Yeah, 1:40:33.680 --> 1:40:36.040 you know, I'm not talking about you know, the recent thing, 1:40:36.200 --> 1:40:38.720 but like it happens often where it's like yeah, it 1:40:39.120 --> 1:40:41.320 turns out like, oh no, no, that's not that's not 1:40:41.400 --> 1:40:44.639 who got hurt. Yeah, because that's you know, with bombs, 1:40:45.080 --> 1:40:47.840 very hard to be. It's the same thing, like it's 1:40:47.920 --> 1:40:50.400 not just a leftist thing, Like it's mostly not a 1:40:50.520 --> 1:40:52.960 leftist thing. It's a thing that I grew up watching 1:40:53.000 --> 1:40:55.639 all of the adults around me celebrate as like bombs 1:40:55.720 --> 1:40:59.120 got dropped in places that I now know because I 1:40:59.240 --> 1:41:01.439 understand more of out bombs and talk to people who 1:41:01.479 --> 1:41:03.479 were in those places when they were being bombed. Were 1:41:03.560 --> 1:41:06.880 largely killing civilians because precision bombing is mostly a myth. 1:41:07.400 --> 1:41:08.719 Yeah totally. 1:41:09.160 --> 1:41:10.960 It's just like people love explosions. 1:41:12.160 --> 1:41:14.280 And the guy who had recently just tried to kill 1:41:14.479 --> 1:41:17.519 MUSSLINI earlier on the story didn't do it because it 1:41:17.680 --> 1:41:20.000 wasn't a good buy chance. Yep. 1:41:20.680 --> 1:41:23.360 And don't make bombs. I shouldn't need to say that. 1:41:23.439 --> 1:41:27.000 Don't be making mombs. Don't do bombs bombs. Bomb's bad. 1:41:27.479 --> 1:41:29.360 You will not be the one who figures out how 1:41:29.400 --> 1:41:34.880 to use bombs ethically, No one ever has been. Yeah. 1:41:36.040 --> 1:41:38.599 And this wasn't some kids who died as collateral damage, 1:41:38.600 --> 1:41:41.759 but we killed some big shots. This was all collateral damage, 1:41:42.120 --> 1:41:43.960 no regular damage. Cool. 1:41:44.720 --> 1:41:47.320 Really put the fear of God into those people who 1:41:48.120 --> 1:41:48.840 didn't get hurt. 1:41:49.360 --> 1:41:53.920 Yep. And I would argue that of every major political 1:41:53.960 --> 1:41:56.000 ideology of the last two hundred years, ANA because I'm 1:41:56.000 --> 1:41:58.080 probably is the least innocent blood on its hands. 1:41:58.320 --> 1:42:01.400 Oh yeah, yeah, in part because we we generally don't 1:42:01.439 --> 1:42:04.720 wind up in power. Yeah totally, which is you know, 1:42:05.000 --> 1:42:08.439 I mean, is part of the goal. But yeah, totally. 1:42:09.520 --> 1:42:12.360 But the Wall Street bombing is a decent chunk of 1:42:12.400 --> 1:42:13.959 the innocent blood on our hands. 1:42:13.800 --> 1:42:14.760 Of the anatist movement. 1:42:15.240 --> 1:42:15.960 That's a bad one. 1:42:16.720 --> 1:42:20.360 The most likely suspect is an Italian anarchist named Mario Buddha, 1:42:21.080 --> 1:42:24.760 who was actually probably with Sacho when they robbed and 1:42:24.840 --> 1:42:27.880 killed those people in the Sacho and Vanzetti case. Mario 1:42:28.000 --> 1:42:31.479 Budda is like a mystery man in history and there's 1:42:31.479 --> 1:42:32.920 a lot of like takes on him, and he was 1:42:32.960 --> 1:42:35.719 like kind of almost everywhere that like violence was happening. 1:42:37.280 --> 1:42:42.040 Mario Buddha went on to almost certainly become a fascist 1:42:42.080 --> 1:42:49.040 infemant in Italy. Cool, yeah, and almost certainly foil another 1:42:49.120 --> 1:42:53.280 anarchist attempt on Mussolini's life. He is the worst. Yeah, 1:42:53.360 --> 1:42:53.800 you're right. 1:42:53.960 --> 1:42:57.040 That is as shitty as you can possibly be as 1:42:57.120 --> 1:43:02.240 an anarchist militant. I know, honestly, I'm mad. I'm mad, 1:43:02.360 --> 1:43:04.920 but I am a little impressed. Yeah, Like, if I 1:43:05.040 --> 1:43:07.720 was making up an anarchist for you to get mad at, 1:43:07.840 --> 1:43:08.920 I couldn't do better than this. 1:43:09.840 --> 1:43:12.400 Absolutely. After murdering a bunch of kids and shit in 1:43:12.439 --> 1:43:13.960 the name of anarchy, he made his way back to 1:43:14.000 --> 1:43:15.360 Italy got caught up in the hubbub. 1:43:15.560 --> 1:43:21.560 Yeah, it stops someone from killing Musolini. Yeah, yeah, Jesus. 1:43:22.439 --> 1:43:24.560 By nineteen thirty three, it seems likely that he is 1:43:24.600 --> 1:43:27.280 cooperating with police informing on anarchists, and a lot of 1:43:27.439 --> 1:43:31.000 like people who are really into anarchist history are skeptical 1:43:31.080 --> 1:43:33.240 of this because for a while, the only information that 1:43:33.320 --> 1:43:36.880 anyone had about this was that a communist newspaper accused 1:43:36.960 --> 1:43:39.360 him of this. At the time, yeah, and a lot 1:43:39.400 --> 1:43:41.200 of people, even anarchists, listened and were like, oh, we 1:43:41.240 --> 1:43:43.360 don't trust this guy anymore. But other people were like, oh, 1:43:43.400 --> 1:43:46.920 that's the communist plain sectarian politics. And then later you 1:43:47.040 --> 1:43:49.040 can see historians have done the work of being like 1:43:49.520 --> 1:43:52.040 here's where Mario Budo was dropped off the list of 1:43:52.160 --> 1:43:54.760 dangerous anarchists to keep an eye out for, and like 1:43:54.840 --> 1:43:57.640 here's you know, he's basically like the fascist took him 1:43:57.720 --> 1:44:01.840 under their wing. And even if half of what they 1:44:01.880 --> 1:44:04.240 say about Mario Buddha is true, I don't like him 1:44:04.240 --> 1:44:06.240 at all. I don't like blowing up kids on Wall Street. 1:44:06.240 --> 1:44:08.280 I don't like cooperating fascists, I don't like Foilian an 1:44:08.280 --> 1:44:09.479 attempt Mussolini's life. 1:44:09.920 --> 1:44:12.680 Yeah again, I uh yeah. Really. One of my very 1:44:12.720 --> 1:44:15.400 few lines is you probably should don't go don't be 1:44:15.520 --> 1:44:19.519 killing kids. dB kk. That's my little like, what would 1:44:19.560 --> 1:44:23.479 Jesus do? Bracelet in case you ever need not kill cat? Yeah, 1:44:23.560 --> 1:44:25.640 look at a bracelet. Oh no, you know what, I 1:44:25.760 --> 1:44:27.040 shouldn't kill kids. 1:44:27.520 --> 1:44:27.760 Yeah. 1:44:29.040 --> 1:44:30.840 Also, if you need to look at a bracelet to 1:44:30.880 --> 1:44:35.880 remind you not to kill kids, I would. Maybe there's 1:44:35.880 --> 1:44:37.439 a lot of things you probably need to do. 1:44:37.960 --> 1:44:38.439 Therapy. 1:44:38.760 --> 1:44:38.960 Yeah. 1:44:40.680 --> 1:44:43.800 Meanwhile, back to a regular anarchist, when I like, who 1:44:43.840 --> 1:44:47.080 doesn't become a fascist? Sure, there's a blacksmith named Umberto. 1:44:47.160 --> 1:44:51.640 I promise you another Mberto Thomasini. Umberto got involved in 1:44:51.720 --> 1:44:54.280 politics when he was thirteen. He joined the nineteen oh 1:44:54.360 --> 1:44:56.360 nine General Strike in response to the murder of the 1:44:56.400 --> 1:44:59.400 Spanish anarchists educator and veteran of the Pod franc Sisc Farrar. 1:45:00.160 --> 1:45:01.760 He went on to fight in World War One. He 1:45:01.840 --> 1:45:05.280 won a Cross for valor. But according to his own take, 1:45:05.360 --> 1:45:06.880 what happened is he got to the war because he 1:45:06.960 --> 1:45:09.160 was conscripted and he just shot into the air and 1:45:09.240 --> 1:45:10.599 he was like trying not to kill anyone. 1:45:11.360 --> 1:45:14.080 Well, yeah, that's actually I mean, there's some evidence, although 1:45:14.120 --> 1:45:17.880 the studies around it have been to a degree, there's 1:45:17.920 --> 1:45:20.479 a lot of critiques about them, but like some evidence 1:45:20.560 --> 1:45:23.799 that that was more the norm than not with combat soldiers. 1:45:24.280 --> 1:45:26.559 And I bet especially when you're talking about like trenches 1:45:26.600 --> 1:45:29.639 and stuff, where you're yes, yes, go shoot that dot 1:45:29.720 --> 1:45:31.960 on the horizon, whereas like if someone's like running through 1:45:32.000 --> 1:45:34.439 a trench trying to kill me, I'm like, I'm gonna 1:45:34.439 --> 1:45:37.880 shoot that man, even if we have the same political ideology, 1:45:37.960 --> 1:45:39.560 if someone's trying to kill me with that, I just 1:45:39.640 --> 1:45:43.000 don't want to get shot. Yeah, but yeah, no, totally. 1:45:43.880 --> 1:45:46.679 And he He spent some time as a pow during 1:45:46.760 --> 1:45:48.800 the war, and then he returned home to return to 1:45:48.880 --> 1:45:51.600 work as a blacksmith, and he more formally committed to 1:45:51.600 --> 1:45:54.880 anarchism alongside his brothers, who, like all everyone else, they 1:45:55.040 --> 1:45:57.600 left the Socialist Party in nineteen twenty one after the 1:45:57.680 --> 1:46:01.160 Socialist sold out the movement. Again, I don't know as 1:46:01.280 --> 1:46:03.840 much about that, but that is what Umberto felt, and 1:46:03.920 --> 1:46:07.719 his brothers felt. Umberto's life could easily be his own episode. 1:46:08.120 --> 1:46:10.240 He helped get the bombs from one Gino to the 1:46:10.320 --> 1:46:12.920 other Gino in nineteen twenty six, then spent six years 1:46:12.920 --> 1:46:16.040 in prison during the crackdown on it. Like after Musolin 1:46:16.080 --> 1:46:17.400 he came to power, he sent a whole bunch of 1:46:17.439 --> 1:46:21.200 the anarchists to prison. Right during those six years he 1:46:21.280 --> 1:46:25.479 met an anarchist in prison named Mario Buddha. Then Umberto 1:46:25.560 --> 1:46:28.799 fled Italy on foot to Yugoslavia. Then he went to Paris, 1:46:29.120 --> 1:46:31.439 where he met his partner Anna and had his son Renee. 1:46:32.479 --> 1:46:34.840 In nineteen thirty six, Spain was under attack and so 1:46:35.000 --> 1:46:37.760 Umberto left the then safety of Paris to go to 1:46:37.840 --> 1:46:42.080 the front lines teaching anarchists about trench warfare. And then 1:46:42.120 --> 1:46:44.559 he became an anarchist specops guy, and he went off 1:46:44.600 --> 1:46:46.040 to go mine franco As ships. 1:46:46.720 --> 1:46:49.800 Oh cool, I know, the opposite of the guy who 1:46:49.960 --> 1:46:51.800 just killed children and saved Mussolini. 1:46:51.880 --> 1:46:55.360 Yeah, exactly exactly, and he shouldn't have been friends with 1:46:55.400 --> 1:46:59.960 that guy. He was arrested by Stalinists and prevented from 1:47:00.080 --> 1:47:01.920 attacking the fascists while he was off to go mind 1:47:01.960 --> 1:47:05.320 these ships. He broke out of Stalinis prison, and then 1:47:05.320 --> 1:47:07.519 he returned back to the prison he'd just broken out 1:47:07.560 --> 1:47:11.240 of alongside anarchists from the government to negotiate everyone's release. 1:47:11.640 --> 1:47:16.080 I think this is the same situation as the last man, 1:47:16.240 --> 1:47:19.639 the missile inventor man. But this might have just happened 1:47:19.680 --> 1:47:21.840 a bunch of times, yeah, because I read about these 1:47:21.840 --> 1:47:26.360 in different sources. Then in nineteen thirty seven, he goes 1:47:26.400 --> 1:47:29.200 back to France, so we can plot how to kill Mussolini. 1:47:30.479 --> 1:47:33.800 One problem. One of his co conspirators, a man who 1:47:33.840 --> 1:47:37.600 has absolute trust for is Mario Budda, whom he had 1:47:37.640 --> 1:47:41.439 met in prison. Mario leaked the plan to the Italian police, 1:47:41.720 --> 1:47:46.040 who foiled it. After the war, Mario Budda went back 1:47:46.080 --> 1:47:47.080 to the anarchist movement. 1:47:47.280 --> 1:47:54.679 Hooray, great, he sounds trustworthy. I'm sure really worked on things. 1:47:55.280 --> 1:47:58.720 Yeah, you know, don't want to cancel him just for 1:47:59.640 --> 1:48:04.760 saving Mussolini's life and murdering children. I can't find much 1:48:04.800 --> 1:48:08.360 about this particular assassination attempt that he foiled. Mostly I 1:48:08.400 --> 1:48:10.679 found a lot of ins and outs about the informant. 1:48:11.720 --> 1:48:15.320 But to follow umberto, He, like so many other anarchists, 1:48:15.360 --> 1:48:17.880 wound up in a non Nazi concentration camp in France. 1:48:18.280 --> 1:48:20.320 Then he was turned over to the Italian police, where 1:48:20.320 --> 1:48:23.160 he was imprisoned until the end of the war. Finally 1:48:23.320 --> 1:48:25.639 he's freed. He returns to his wife and his son, 1:48:25.720 --> 1:48:28.120 and his work as a blacksmith, and to anarchist organizing. 1:48:28.880 --> 1:48:31.559 When the spirit of sixty eight swings through, he starts 1:48:31.680 --> 1:48:35.559 organizing again. He's like about seventy years old, and he's 1:48:35.600 --> 1:48:37.640 like organizing with a bunch of twenty year old kids, right, 1:48:37.680 --> 1:48:39.599 because it's the it's nineteen sixty eight. 1:48:40.000 --> 1:48:42.760 Right, Yeah, that's who there's going to be to organize with. 1:48:43.120 --> 1:48:46.120 Yeah, I think it's Coole as shit. He kept publishing 1:48:46.160 --> 1:48:47.920 shit that would send him back to jail. I think 1:48:47.920 --> 1:48:49.920 he was sent back to jail like multiple times just 1:48:50.000 --> 1:48:53.720 for continuing to publish anarchist literature. And then he died 1:48:53.760 --> 1:48:56.720 in nineteen eighty. He wrote an autobiography, but I don't 1:48:56.720 --> 1:48:59.360 believe it's been translated. And there's a documentary about him 1:48:59.400 --> 1:49:01.679 called An Anarchist Life from twenty thirteen that I haven't 1:49:01.680 --> 1:49:04.960 seen yet that I want to see. And he was 1:49:05.000 --> 1:49:07.560 real cool. But I don't know what he did to 1:49:07.600 --> 1:49:09.439 try and Colle Mussolini. I just know he made the 1:49:09.479 --> 1:49:10.040 wrong friend. 1:49:10.880 --> 1:49:12.599 Yeah, well we all do sometimes. 1:49:13.040 --> 1:49:13.240 Yeah. 1:49:13.280 --> 1:49:15.599 For example, I mean there was there was one summer 1:49:15.640 --> 1:49:18.240 that Benita Mussolini and I were inseparable. I mean we 1:49:18.280 --> 1:49:22.000 would spend just hours on the beach, telling each other's secrets, 1:49:22.040 --> 1:49:24.760 having pig nicks. You know, there was there was that 1:49:24.920 --> 1:49:27.760 one wine drenched to night, and then I found out 1:49:27.800 --> 1:49:30.280 he'd been the dictator of Italy this whole time. I 1:49:30.360 --> 1:49:32.880 had no idea, Margaret, I had no idea. 1:49:33.120 --> 1:49:33.439 I know. 1:49:34.200 --> 1:49:37.000 I mean, what's funny is that pre him becoming Mussolini. 1:49:37.560 --> 1:49:39.479 That is the story that a lot of people tell. 1:49:40.080 --> 1:49:43.280 People do have that story, like the woman Lita, who 1:49:43.320 --> 1:49:45.519 is probably his lover, who is an anarchist, who was 1:49:45.600 --> 1:49:51.000 like later she was like I misjudged his character, you know, Yeah, 1:49:51.760 --> 1:49:55.000 he whom'st amongst us hasn't been friends with the inventor 1:49:55.160 --> 1:49:56.240 of fascism? 1:49:57.320 --> 1:50:00.400 Well, Cohen, I mean, let's we've got a There was 1:50:00.400 --> 1:50:02.920 another Italian who might deserve that title a little more. 1:50:03.000 --> 1:50:06.439 But we talked about him on Behind the Bastards. Wait 1:50:06.479 --> 1:50:09.040 which one, Oh, the guy who wore a banana hamnock? 1:50:09.520 --> 1:50:11.599 One sec Wait what does. 1:50:11.600 --> 1:50:12.719 He invent the banana hammock? 1:50:13.560 --> 1:50:16.960 No? No, no, but he I don't remember this person's 1:50:17.040 --> 1:50:19.240 name either. We definitely talked about it though. 1:50:19.840 --> 1:50:24.920 Gabriel Danunzio, Yeah, yes, Gabriel Danunzio, who was a big 1:50:25.000 --> 1:50:29.840 influence on Mussolini and was like is often credited as 1:50:30.240 --> 1:50:34.759 the inventor of fascism. He never called himself a fascist. 1:50:34.800 --> 1:50:37.720 He's like partially right, there's not just one guy, but 1:50:38.000 --> 1:50:41.519 he is earlier in the chain of the development of 1:50:41.560 --> 1:50:45.400 fascist mes a concept than Mussolini and an influence on Benito. 1:50:45.640 --> 1:50:45.840 Yeah. 1:50:46.120 --> 1:50:48.400 Oh h yeah, Gabriel Danunzio. You can listen to our 1:50:48.439 --> 1:50:50.760 two parter on him, very much worth it. He is 1:50:50.840 --> 1:50:53.000 the guy who in Fume as an independent city. He's 1:50:53.000 --> 1:50:55.360 a guy who marches into Fume and takes it over 1:50:55.880 --> 1:50:59.160 as like, oh, along with a bunch of there were 1:50:59.240 --> 1:51:02.960 anarchists and communists and fascists all kind of together because 1:51:03.000 --> 1:51:06.000 they were all very much anti just all of the 1:51:06.080 --> 1:51:09.160 things that are going on right now, but those ideologies 1:51:09.240 --> 1:51:12.679 hadn't really hardened into in the concrete way they would 1:51:12.720 --> 1:51:15.880 a couple of years later. Fascinating time, kind of like 1:51:16.000 --> 1:51:18.479 how a lot of our most prominent right wing fas 1:51:18.640 --> 1:51:21.360 a lot of them are prominent fascist media ideologues today, 1:51:22.080 --> 1:51:24.080 were part of occupy. Yeah. 1:51:25.160 --> 1:51:28.479 God, Actually, the occupy versus Fume thing is actually makes 1:51:28.520 --> 1:51:31.040 a lot of really specific sense. That's the thing that's 1:51:31.080 --> 1:51:33.600 like it's so hard to talk about. Is that in 1:51:33.680 --> 1:51:37.160 a certain way, fascism is the red Brown alliance because 1:51:37.200 --> 1:51:41.320 it is taking ideas from leftism but applying into right 1:51:41.360 --> 1:51:42.440 wing ideology. 1:51:43.120 --> 1:51:46.120 Yes, well, two. 1:51:46.040 --> 1:51:49.160 More people at least tried to kill Mussolini. One of 1:51:49.200 --> 1:51:52.719 them don't know much about. Isn't even on the list 1:51:52.760 --> 1:51:55.800 of people who tried to kill Mussolini Wikipedia. His name 1:51:55.880 --> 1:52:00.479 is Domenico Bavone and he was a Republican. Republican on 1:52:00.560 --> 1:52:03.920 our list. He tried to build bombs to kill Mussolini, 1:52:04.080 --> 1:52:06.880 but he didn't go to the bomb making workshop for 1:52:07.000 --> 1:52:10.200 the punk show Flyer told him about in Brussels. That's 1:52:10.240 --> 1:52:13.439 a shame. So he failed at making the bombs properly, 1:52:13.800 --> 1:52:15.679 and he blew up his own house on September fifth, 1:52:15.720 --> 1:52:17.320 nineteen thirty one, killing his own mother. 1:52:17.920 --> 1:52:21.280 Well, bad job, bro, that's a that's about his bad 1:52:21.360 --> 1:52:25.320 I mean. And again, don't build bombs. There are so many. 1:52:25.439 --> 1:52:29.760 By far, the most normal story in political radical tries 1:52:29.800 --> 1:52:33.200 to make a bomb is political radical kills themselves, their 1:52:33.200 --> 1:52:37.800 friends or their family. Yeah, yeah, don't make bombs. Yeah, 1:52:38.280 --> 1:52:39.560 they're very indiscriminate. 1:52:40.240 --> 1:52:44.520 And under interrogation he admitted he was trying to kill Mussolini, 1:52:45.080 --> 1:52:47.200 and he was shot in the back by a firing squad. 1:52:48.560 --> 1:52:55.560 And then there is Angelo Pellegrono Sabard Aletto. Angelo was 1:52:55.640 --> 1:52:58.400 born in nineteen oh seven in mel Italy, and he 1:52:58.520 --> 1:53:00.640 was the fifth of eleven children, which means I do 1:53:00.760 --> 1:53:02.599 not need to tell you he was from a Catholic family, 1:53:02.840 --> 1:53:06.519 but he was His family was poor as hell. The 1:53:06.640 --> 1:53:09.080 article I read specifically indicated they were poor as hell 1:53:09.120 --> 1:53:12.040 because they had eleven children. But you know, whatever you do, 1:53:12.160 --> 1:53:14.040 you people can make their own decisions on how many 1:53:14.120 --> 1:53:17.920 kids to have. They fled poverty to France, then Luxembourg, 1:53:18.040 --> 1:53:22.000 then Belgium. Angelo was a miner and a machine hand. 1:53:22.240 --> 1:53:24.880 He became an anarchist as a teenager, talking to other 1:53:24.960 --> 1:53:28.760 immigrant workers who were mostly political refugees. Soon enough he 1:53:28.880 --> 1:53:32.160 was on lists of dangerous extremists and draft dodgers and shit. 1:53:33.200 --> 1:53:36.120 And he was inspired by Mikelo Sheirou and he met 1:53:36.800 --> 1:53:40.439 almost the exact same fate. In nineteen thirty two, he 1:53:40.560 --> 1:53:43.920 went to Rome to kill Mussolini, but like Maclay before him, 1:53:44.240 --> 1:53:46.600 he couldn't find a moment when he could bomb Mussolini 1:53:46.640 --> 1:53:51.400 without hurting anyone else. He spent months trying. Just bought 1:53:51.400 --> 1:53:55.120 a gun. That man should have bought a gun. I 1:53:55.200 --> 1:53:56.200 mean whatever, I. 1:53:56.200 --> 1:53:57.720 Don't know how hard it was to buy guns in 1:53:57.760 --> 1:54:00.559 Mussolini's Italy, fair enough, Yeah. 1:54:01.120 --> 1:54:04.960 But you know, he spent months trying, and he was 1:54:05.000 --> 1:54:07.240 on the verge of giving up when, like mcklay, he 1:54:07.360 --> 1:54:11.080 was arrested seemingly by happenstance on a train station, just 1:54:11.160 --> 1:54:13.400 like some cops were like, Eh, you're suspicious, We're going 1:54:13.439 --> 1:54:17.760 to search you. Which is you know, fascism. Also, the 1:54:17.800 --> 1:54:19.720 same thing happens in New York City subways, but you 1:54:19.800 --> 1:54:23.640 know whatever. Yeah, when he was searched, he had a 1:54:23.720 --> 1:54:26.720 Swiss passport, a pistol. Oh, he had a fucking gun. 1:54:28.120 --> 1:54:32.320 Well, okay, I guess not that hard, yeah, question answered. 1:54:32.280 --> 1:54:36.600 Yeah, and two bombs and he was tortured, and under 1:54:36.640 --> 1:54:39.000 torture he said he was there to avenge mckelay Shiro. 1:54:40.560 --> 1:54:43.480 He'd written a letter previously that year that said, quote, 1:54:44.480 --> 1:54:47.200 I have no choice to be free. Tyranny must be 1:54:47.320 --> 1:54:49.960 beaten to build tomorrow a new order in which all 1:54:50.000 --> 1:54:52.360 can enjoy the fruits of their labor and freely express 1:54:52.440 --> 1:54:56.160 their thoughts. We must destroy today all the injustices which 1:54:56.200 --> 1:55:00.480 render this impossible. His trial was a show trial. It 1:55:00.560 --> 1:55:03.520 was two days long. Journalists decried him as surly and 1:55:03.680 --> 1:55:06.480 sinister and would like literally make stuff up about how 1:55:06.520 --> 1:55:08.600 he looked. They were like he had a low forehead, 1:55:09.280 --> 1:55:12.680 you know, which he didn't. But even if he did, 1:55:12.800 --> 1:55:16.240 fuck you, you know. His lawyer asked him to write 1:55:16.280 --> 1:55:19.640 Ussolini for clemency. He refused. He shouted long Live Anarchy 1:55:19.680 --> 1:55:22.600 when he was shot in the back. After he was killed, 1:55:22.720 --> 1:55:26.480 the Fascist government decided to hide forever his burial site. 1:55:27.080 --> 1:55:31.040 No one knows where his body is. A biographer for 1:55:31.160 --> 1:55:33.920 Mussolini said that he would have pardoned the anarchists if 1:55:33.920 --> 1:55:37.720 they had asked, because he lauded their courage. I mean, 1:55:37.800 --> 1:55:41.280 considering a lot of his fucking people were former anarchists. Yep, 1:55:41.440 --> 1:55:44.880 I don't know. Maybe you would have, but fuck that, 1:55:45.760 --> 1:55:48.040 I mean whatever. I wouldn't be mad if anyone was like, oh, 1:55:48.160 --> 1:55:50.720 please don't kill me, mister Missolini, whatever, I would be like, 1:55:50.800 --> 1:55:52.440 you weakling, give the shit. 1:55:53.080 --> 1:55:55.400 Yeah Mussolini, I hardly know. 1:55:55.560 --> 1:55:55.640 Ye. 1:55:56.280 --> 1:55:58.800 Yeah, did I already do that joke? It just occurred 1:55:58.800 --> 1:55:59.000 to me. 1:56:02.040 --> 1:56:03.440 So yeah. 1:56:03.480 --> 1:56:05.520 Originally I was going to talk about the Partisans who 1:56:05.560 --> 1:56:07.880 finally did him in. But I think we've covered a 1:56:08.000 --> 1:56:11.120 lot of trying to kill Mussolini. There are too many 1:56:11.160 --> 1:56:12.720 cool people. I didn't want a skim pass. You got 1:56:12.760 --> 1:56:15.400 a Socialist, a Catholic, or Republican, at least five anarchists 1:56:15.440 --> 1:56:17.120 who tried to do him in. But it took a 1:56:17.160 --> 1:56:19.600 whole ass war. We got him in the end, though. 1:56:19.800 --> 1:56:22.040 And you know what folks would I'll say right now, 1:56:22.240 --> 1:56:24.600 is you can still try to take a shot at 1:56:24.680 --> 1:56:26.480 Mussolini and he's a lot easier to hit. 1:56:26.640 --> 1:56:30.280 Now. I assume he's buried somewhere. Probably I feel like, yeah, 1:56:30.720 --> 1:56:33.480 go dig him up, Yeah, and take a shot. 1:56:34.040 --> 1:56:34.600 Take a shot. 1:56:35.040 --> 1:56:39.560 Yeah, hard miss that way. Yeah, gender neutral shooting range, 1:56:39.600 --> 1:56:40.400 that's what they say. 1:56:42.480 --> 1:56:45.360 Take a shot with. You know, it could just be 1:56:45.600 --> 1:56:48.080 with the tool that you have on hand, so to speak. 1:56:49.640 --> 1:56:50.800 That was a penis joke. 1:56:51.600 --> 1:56:54.040 Yeah, we know. I could have been a p joke 1:56:54.240 --> 1:56:56.240 because you can have a tool on hand without a penis. 1:56:56.280 --> 1:56:58.080 You're right, you could use You can use a shili 1:56:58.280 --> 1:57:00.440 for example. You know there's all sorts of g or 1:57:00.600 --> 1:57:03.120 just you cut the bottom of a water bottle out 1:57:03.480 --> 1:57:05.600 and then like cut the top to widen it and 1:57:05.680 --> 1:57:08.400 you kind of jam it in there. It sort of works. 1:57:09.240 --> 1:57:10.920 And I can't believe that's the note we're ending on, 1:57:11.080 --> 1:57:15.640 but that's where we're at. Everyone, Uh go kill Mussolini, 1:57:15.880 --> 1:57:18.320 but only Mussolini. We're talking about the past. 1:57:18.520 --> 1:57:20.000 Yes, only in the past. 1:57:20.760 --> 1:57:22.720 And if you want to know more about the knock 1:57:22.800 --> 1:57:25.120 on effects of various types of violence, listen to this 1:57:25.360 --> 1:57:28.440 entire show's history because it is full of knock on effects, 1:57:28.680 --> 1:57:29.680 many of which are negative. 1:57:29.960 --> 1:57:32.000 And in terms of things I will continue to say 1:57:32.040 --> 1:57:33.840 for the modern era, don't make bombs. 1:57:34.640 --> 1:57:35.760 Yeah, don't make bombs. 1:57:41.280 --> 1:57:43.720 Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of 1:57:43.800 --> 1:57:47.240 cool Zone Media. More podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit 1:57:47.320 --> 1:57:50.440 our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on 1:57:50.600 --> 1:57:53.200 the iHeartRadio app, app a podcasts, or wherever 1:57:53.440 --> 1:57:54.520 You get your podcasts.