Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Summary

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Behind the Bastards, Hosted by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
Release Date: December 29, 2024

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Episode Summary

In this gripping episode of Behind the Bastards, host Margaret Killjoy and guest Robert Evans delve deep into the tumultuous history of assassination attempts on Benito Mussolini, exploring the motivations, methods, and repercussions of those who dared to challenge one of history's most notorious dictators. This two-part series uncovers the complex interplay between anarchism, political ideology, and the desperate measures taken to oppose fascist tyranny.

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I. Introduction: The Relentless Quest to Kill Mussolini

As the year drew to a close, Margaret Killjoy introduced a special segment focusing on the numerous attempts to assassinate Benito Mussolini, the founder of Italian fascism. She emphasized the fascination with "bad guys" and set the stage for an exploration of the bizarre and often tragic realities surrounding these assassination plots.

Quote:
Margaret Killjoy [07:05]: "Behind the Bastards is continuing to publish as we normally do around this time of year. But we've also got some specials for you from elsewhere in our network."

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II. Gaetano Bresci: The Weaver's Vengeance

Timestamp: [09:00] – [21:00]

Gaetano Bresci, an Italian immigrant and anarchist, became renowned for assassinating King Umberto I of Italy in 1900. Driven by outrage over the brutal suppression of food riots, Bresci viewed the king as a symbol of oppressive authority.

Key Points:

• Background: Bresci emigrated to Paterson, New Jersey, driven by anarchist ideals.
• Assassination Attempt: On July 29, 1900, Bresci successfully assassinated King Umberto I in Rome, claiming, "I did not kill Umberto. I have killed the King. I have killed a principal." ([21:39])
• Motivation: His act was a direct response to the king's ordering of lethal force against protestors.
• Aftermath: Bresci was imprisoned, where he likely met his end through foul play, sustaining Mussolini's rise and the entrenchment of fascism.

Quote:
Bresci [21:39]: "I did not kill Umberto. I have killed the King. I have killed a principal."

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III. Violet Gibson: The Paranoid Assassin

Timestamp: [39:00] – [46:00]

Violet Gibson, a 49-year-old Irish woman with a tumultuous mental state and a deep-seated opposition to fascism, attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1926. Her actions, driven by a mix of religious fervor and political ideology, ultimately failed to change the course of history.

Key Points:

• Background: Raised in a wealthy Anglo-Irish family, Gibson struggled with mental health issues, resulting in multiple violent incidents.
• Assassination Attempt: On April 7, 1926, Gibson shot Mussolini in the face but only grazed his nose as he turned his head at the last moment. She was arrested and declared insane.
• Motivation: Gibson aimed to "glorify God" by eliminating Mussolini, whom she held responsible for immense suffering.
• Legacy: Initially dismissed as paranoid, modern perspectives have begun to vindicate her as a committed anti-fascist.

Quote:
Margaret Killjoy [39:58]: "And he [Mussolini] just can't handle it. Which is why I wish Violet had succeeded over everyone else."

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IV. Gino Lucetti: The Grenade Thrower

Timestamp: [72:00] – [85:00]

Gino Lucetti, an Italian anarchist from Carrara, Tuscany, orchestrated a bold yet flawed attempt to assassinate Mussolini using a pineapple grenade in 1926. His actions exemplify the extreme measures taken by anarchists during Mussolini's rise to power.

Key Points:

• Background: Born in a working-class family, Lucetti was deeply entrenched in anarchist movements and had attempted previous plots against Mussolini.
• Assassination Attempt: Utilizing a homemade grenade, Lucetti threw it at Mussolini's car, but the attack failed, leading to his capture.
• Aftermath: Imprisoned for 17 years, Lucetti became a symbol of steadfast resistance, later being honored by anarchist groups posthumously.
• Impact: His failed attempt did not deter further resistance but instead solidified Mussolini's authoritarian grip.

Quote:
Margaret Killjoy [84:57]: "He died an anarchist... His ashes were interred in the anarchist corner of the graveyard in Carrara."

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V. Antio Zamboni: The Young Hero

Timestamp: [85:00] – [98:00]

At merely 15 years old, Antio Zamboni emerged as one of Mussolini's youngest adversaries. His fervent commitment to anarchism led him to attempt assassination, illustrating the profound ideological divides of the era.

Key Points:

• Background: Born into a politically radical family, Zamboni was inspired by his parents' anarchist beliefs.
• Assassination Attempt: In 1926, Zamboni attempted to shoot Mussolini but was swiftly overpowered by the crowd, leading to his tragic death.
• Legacy: Despite his youth, Zamboni's actions highlighted the desperation and zeal within the anti-fascist movement.
• Consequences: His death underscored the ruthlessness of Mussolini's regime and the perilous nature of political dissent.

Quote:
Margaret Killjoy [95:53]: "He was a kid... the crowd knew they were killing a child."

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VI. Mussolini's Consolidation of Power Post-Attempts

Timestamp: [50:12] – [63:10]

Despite multiple assassination attempts, Mussolini adeptly maneuvered to strengthen his dictatorship. Each attempt, ironically, provided him with opportunities to justify crackdowns and solidify his authoritarian rule.

Key Points:

• Political Strategy: Mussolini used assassination attempts to portray himself as a victim of political violence, garnering public sympathy and support.
• Legislative Actions: Following these attempts, Mussolini centralized power, suppressed dissent, and eliminated opposition parties.
• Public Perception: Media portrayed Mussolini as a family man and a resilient leader, masking the brutal realities of his regime.
• Impact on Anarchist Movement: Increased repression and the downfall of international anarchist support weakened the movement's effectiveness against fascism.

Quote:
Mussolini (paraphrased) [21:47]: "Don't be afraid. This is a mere trifle."

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VII. Reflections on Anarchism and Political Violence

Timestamp: [63:10] – [127:00]

The episode concludes with a critical examination of anarchism's role in political violence. Killjoy and Evans discuss the ethical implications, effectiveness, and unintended consequences of assassination as a tool for political change.

Key Points:

• Effectiveness of Assassinations: While individual acts can draw attention, they rarely dismantle entrenched power structures and often lead to harsher repression.
• Moral Ambiguities: The line between heroism and fanaticism becomes blurred, questioning the righteousness of violent opposition.
• Historical Lessons: The repeated failures to kill Mussolini highlight the complexities and dangers inherent in political extremism.
• Contemporary Relevance: Insights drawn from these historical events serve as cautionary tales for modern political movements considering violent tactics.

Quote:
Margaret Killjoy [64:17]: "The urge to kill Mussolini was the expression of a convergence of opinion among many popularly representative political groupings and was commonly perceived as a necessity at that point in time."

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Conclusion

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff offers a profound exploration of the lengths to which individuals will go to oppose tyranny. Through detailed narratives of each assassination attempt, the episode sheds light on the intricate dynamics between political ideology, personal conviction, and the harsh realities of authoritarian regimes. While honoring the courage of these "cool people," the podcast also critically assesses the often tragic outcomes of their endeavors, providing listeners with a nuanced understanding of this dark chapter in history.

Notable Quotes:

• Gaetano Bresci [21:39]: "I did not kill Umberto. I have killed the King. I have killed a principal."
• Margaret Killjoy [39:58]: "And he just can't handle it. Which is why I wish Violet had succeeded over everyone else."
• Margaret Killjoy [84:57]: "He died an anarchist... His ashes were interred in the anarchist corner of the graveyard in Carrara."
• Margaret Killjoy [95:53]: "He was a kid... the crowd knew they were killing a child."
• Margaret Killjoy [64:17]: "The urge to kill Mussolini was the expression of a convergence of opinion among many popularly representative political groupings and was commonly perceived as a necessity at that point in time."

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For more insightful and detailed explorations of the worst humans in history, subscribe to Behind the Bastards on iHeartPodcasts.

Transcript

[Margaret Killjoy]

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[Robert Evans]

Can'T remember the place.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Hey Meta Call Eva Ray Ban Meta.

[Sophie]

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[Margaret Killjoy]

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[Sophie]

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[Eva]

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[Robert Evans]

Hey everybody. Robert, here it is, the end of the year. You're cooling down from a Christmas, you know, still probably finishing up pie and other goodies that you got. I hope you had a good one. We're all bracing for the new year to come. Behind the Bastards is of course continuing to publish as we normally do around this time of year. But we've also got some specials for you from elsewhere in our network. And today we have collected two great episodes from cool people who did cool stuff about all of the people who tried to kill Benito Mussolini. This is with the great Margaret Killjoy. I think it is very fitting for the end of this year.

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[Margaret Killjoy]

Hello and welcome to Cool People who Did Cool Stuff. We're back. In case you noticed, we weren't here, but now we're here. The we in this case is me, Murder, Killjoy, and my producer, Sophie. Hi Sophie.

[Eva]

Hi Magpie.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And my guest, Robert Evans.

[Robert Evans]

Hi Magpie. I listened to When I was Buying Hay Today. Right before this, I went to go get hay for my livestock at the feed store and they were playing that song Brandy. And so now I am in my head remixing that song instead of being about a woman whose lover dies at sea to be about you making podcasts.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Excellent. Well, we can make hay from that. One time Robert and I went and got hay and it was the first time in a Little while that my pickup truck got to be a pickup truck beside. Well, I guess it was a camper, actually. We filled my camper full of hay is what happened.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, yes.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And it took me a long time to get all the hay out.

[Robert Evans]

It does take a long time to get all the hay out.

[Margaret Killjoy]

But it was worth it because then the goats got to eat hay and.

[Robert Evans]

The goats love hay.

[Eva]

So this week, speaking of saying hey.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Oh, we should say hey to Rory, who's our audio engineer. Hi, Rory.

[Robert Evans]

Hi, Rory. Hi, Rory.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And our theme music was written for us by Unwoman and for no particular.

[Eva]

Reason, not at all.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I actually genuinely picked this subject and started researching it before the activities that happened last week.

[Robert Evans]

You did?

[Eva]

Like I can vouch for you. You 100% did.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And I'm glad you. You did.

[Robert Evans]

Hopefully.

[Margaret Killjoy]

You don't have to vouch for me in court about it.

[Eva]

I'm just. But I would and I would be truthful. I have like documentation fully.

[Margaret Killjoy]

It's true. Because the thing we're gonna talk about. Robert Evans. Have you ever heard of people trying to assassinate people that they don't like?

[Robert Evans]

No. Assassinations. No one would ever do such a thing. No one would ever do such a thing and then have it immediately cause Blue Cross Blue Shield to reverse a policy on denying claims arbitrarily when surgery takes to pay for anesthetic. That would never happen.

[Margaret Killjoy]

No, there's not a whole saying about direct action gets the goods. You all are listening to this in the future, where the knock on effects will have become more clear. But right now we know very. We only know one knock on effect of last week's, which is if you've.

[Robert Evans]

Got Blue Cross, you now have to be less worried about getting surgery.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. And waking up in the middle of surgery, which is basically everyone's nightmare.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

Literally.

[Eva]

That is so, like so many people have that fear and that.

[Margaret Killjoy]

It's ghoulish.

[Eva]

Yeah, it's so ghoulish. It's so gross.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Well, the person that we're going to talk about attempting to assassinate in the past, who's already dead, is a little fascist you might have heard of named Mussolini.

[Robert Evans]

Mussolini? I hardly know Lini. Okay, pass. It's not going to work. Sorry.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Mussolini. Originally, this is going to be a two parter, where one part was the people who tried when Mussolini was coming up. And then the second part was going to be people who succeeded when he was coming down. But it's actually all going to be about people who tried when he was coming up because there Were so many. Did you know that an awful lot of people tried to kill Mussolini?

[Robert Evans]

Yes. I mean, it's like with Hitler, right? Like, you've got that guy who tried to blow him up and that. And almost did that fucking carpenter who tried to blow him up in one of the halls. He was speaking at all sorts of pre attempts. So I wasn't really familiar with the ones on Mussolini, but I was sure there had been some.

[Margaret Killjoy]

We're gonna talk about, I think, eight of them today or this week.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that sounds like the right amount.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. And so far, by my count. I was counting right before I recorded. I was talking to one of my friends about it. So far, by my count, we've got one Socialist, one Catholic, one Republican, and five anarchists attempted to kill Mussolini. So Benito Mussolini is famously one of the founders of fascism, the ideology that is genuinely and truly bad, that 95% of the people on this planet agree is bad. We just don't agree about what counts as fascism.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, that's part of the problem.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

It doesn't help that. I mean, because some people use fascism to just being anyone I don't like or any authoritarianism. Right. And that's not an accurate way to talk about things. We shouldn't call our enemies fascists when they're not fascists.

[Robert Evans]

No. Like Stalin. Stalin wasn't really a fascist. No. Because in part, fascists come to power through popular acclaim as a result of, like, setting themselves up in opposition to the left. There's this also idea that Stalin does kind of fit in with the attitude that, like, the fascist dictator embodies the people in some way. Although the way in which, like, Soviet propaganda talked about Stalin was actually quite different from the way fascist propaganda tends to talk about the leader being, like an embodiment of the people. But there are some similarities. Like, there's a bunch of stuff. Syncretism's a big part. Go read your Umberto Echo.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Well, there's gonna be a bunch of umbertos in this episode, but not echo. Yeah, but it turns out Umberto is sort of the mic of Italy. Well, yeah, Michele is probably the mic of Italy, but fascism is one of the most convoluted and complex political ideologies to ever come about, which is one of the reasons why you can kind of point to anything and call it fascism and be wrong, but also be like, you see where you're coming from about it, you know, because it's not actually a simple ideology. The. More as I was reading this, because Italian fascism, in particular Comes out of where the right and the left meet. And it is not a. Well, we'll talk about this. I'm not going to get too deep into the weeds of defining fascism today, But I want to talk first about someone who 100%, absolutely, I am certain, would have been fine with assassinating someone like Benito Mussolini. About 15 years before Benito Mussolini came to power. That man who would have been totally fine with killing Benito Mussolini was Benito Mussolini.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, well, yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. To open up a can of worms that the Internet is not equipped to handle. Benito Mussolini, the founder of the world's deadliest far right ideology, started on the left.

[Robert Evans]

Yep, he sure did. Kind of adjacent to anarchism.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, we're going to talk about that. There's going to be a lot of.

[Robert Evans]

Also started as a journalist.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Hooray. Yeah, yeah. He was a socialist for a long ass time. He was at least a second generation leftist. Mussolini was born in the year 1883 and he was the child of a blacksmith socialist and a Catholic schoolteacher. He got named after a series of socialists and leftists because of his father. And then he was baptized Catholic because of his mom. He's named Benito after Benito Juarez, the liberal president of Mexico. And his middle names, which I forgot to look up in Italian, are Andrea and Amaliacare. And these are after two anarchists because his father was part of the Anarchist International, which was an anti authoritarian socialist organization in the 1870s. I'm just going straight into the. Like, this is like when I have to talk about eugenics on this show. You know, whenever I have to talk about something that was like really common and easily understood in the 19th century, that makes no sense in the 21st century. Italian nationalism is really intertwined with the left and it's really intertwined with anarchism.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And I mean, it makes sense when you're coming out of a world. Like not very long before this period, Italy had been fucking Habsburg property. Much of Italy at least had been Habsburg property. Right. Like, and when all of these things that we now just see is like, well, obviously Italy's a country, obviously Croatia is a country when they're all the property of some guy in his inbred family. It's a lot less weird that it's a left wing position to talk about nationalism.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, totally. Benito Mussolini never did really roll with the anarchists. He kind of wanted to at different points. When he was a socialist, he was firmly in the authoritarian socialist camp, but he studied a lot of anarchist theory. He remained friendly with anarchists he was either dating or just friends with. I've read both. The anarchist orientalist poet named Lito Raffineelli, he translated two of the anarchist Peter Kropotkin's books from French into Italian. And because, yeah, he was a journalist, he read newspapers and kind of. If you were a political person in the 19th century, if you were like a political leader, your thing was that you were a journalist, your thing is that you ran a newspaper.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I mean, it's the same reason as that with the generation coming up and the next generation are all going to get their starts on TikTok and Twitter and, like, we're already seeing this on the right. Right. I mean, and the left to a degree. You know, it's because that's totally. It's not. That's not the journalism. Tweeting is not. Or making a TikTok is not journalism. But journalism wasn't what we would consider journalism back then. It was just the best way of propaganda to the masses.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, and it was. Yeah, you wrote polemics and propaganda just literally meant propagating ideas. If you had an idea and you wanted to tell people about it, you would propagandize the idea. So Mussolini, the thing that's going to come up throughout this week's story is that he's clearly into authoritarianism. Right. But there's something he liked about the anarchists. He liked their courage, he liked their commitment, and he liked action. You know, he was. He wasn't the kind of guy who wanted people to wait around and talk about things. He wanted people to go out and do things. He also, for a long time, shared their opinion that killing autocrats was just fine.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, look, there's a Venn diagram. We may not like to say it, but, like, there's a Venn diagram at points between me and Mussolini's life. Right?

[Margaret Killjoy]

No, totally.

[Robert Evans]

I'm not against killing early 20th century autocrats. Theoretically.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Right, yeah, totally.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

If we had a time machine, we would feel justified at going back and killing absolute monarchs from the 19th century and earlier.

[Robert Evans]

Look, if I could go back in time and stab the King of Italy, I would try to.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Well, that's gonna bring us to this week's first assassin.

[Robert Evans]

Is it the guy who stabbed the King of Italy?

[Margaret Killjoy]

I actually can't remember whether this guy stabbed or shot him. This is the first. Okay. This is the only successful assassin we're gonna talk about for a while. But he shaped a lot of Italy's politics for a long time. And that man's name was Gaetano Bresci. He was a weaver from Italy who emigrated to the US in the 19th century to Paterson, New Jersey. And it's kind of funny because there's all of these different hidden, secret anarchist strongholds of the past. I don't normally think about New Jersey when I think about anarchism, but Patterson, New Jersey, very strong Italian anarchist scene. The next little bit, because it's been a little while since I've looked up Gaetano Bresci. I used to write about him a lot. So I'm kind of going into a little bit story mode. When I talk about Gatanno Bresci, I'm gonna have more direct sources for the rest of the rest of the people I'm talking about. Just so everyone knows, Gatano Bresci was hanging out in New Jersey with his Irish wife, Sophie, which is a good name, I agree. Right, yeah. And his two daughters. And she's gonna. She's gonna be all right in this story.

[Eva]

Cool. Yeah, cool, cool, cool. Don't bring the name down.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, no, no, she's great. No, no, negative notes on Sophie. In 1898, there are these food riots in Italy, and the government was like, well, a specific general was like, why don't we just murder the entire crowd? That's rioting. And so they. They did that. And when people think food riots, they usually think like, oh, everyone, like, lost their mind and was running around and burning. These were organized strikes that were met with lethal force. At least 80 protesters and two soldiers were killed.

[Robert Evans]

Jesus.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And so King Umberto the First, what did he do? And everyone at the time was like, oh, the king is the true. You know, a lot of, like, populism is based on the idea that the government's bad, but the king's good, you know?

[Robert Evans]

And this translates to fascism too, Right? During the Third Reich, there was always this idea that, like, if only Hitler knew. Right. About the worst Nazi policies.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Same thing with the tsar.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Yeah. We see this again and again. And so I think everyone was kind of expecting Humberto to come in and be like, well, you probably shouldn't have done that, right? Oh, I did promise you more than one Humberto, and this is one of them. There's gonna be another one probably on Wednesday. But what Humberto I did is awarded the guy who ordered the massacre a medal of honor. And Gaetano Bresci, he didn't like that. He was living in New Jersey with Sophie. He'd started an anarchist paper with some folks, and he put up A fuck ton of money to start that paper. It was like 200 bucks at the time, which is like several thousand dollars. Now. He didn't want anyone else to get in trouble for what he decided to do, so he didn't tell anyone. He didn't tell Sophie. He just told her he had to go deal with some stuff, like family stuff in Italy. He didn't tell his comrades. He went into the newspaper and said, hey, all that seed money I put in, I need it back now. And they were like, why? And he was like, not your business. Give me my money back. And so everyone kind of thought he was a sellout and he was just like getting his money to go fuck off. Right. Everyone thought he left the movement, but he got his money back and he bought two things. He bought a Smith and Wesson and he bought a One Way Ticket to Paris.

[Robert Evans]

That's a song. That's a Warren Zevon song right there. Smith and Wesson and a One Way Ticket to Paris. Excellent.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And a king is gonna die. And unlike a lot of would be assassins that we've talked about on this show, Bresci practiced with the revolver, which is always key.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. He made his way probably to Rome. He made his way to Italy. He spent two days scouting out the area where he knew the King was gonna be. And then on July 29, 1900, he went out and he got some ice cream. I think he had lunch with like a stranger just hanging out. And he was like, you're gonna remember me guy. And then he waited for Umberto to come through. Waiting in the crowd that was all there to cheer on their, you know, glorious leader. And he shot Humberto to death. The crowd immediately grabbed him. Gaetano said, I did not kill Umberto. I have killed the King. I have killed a principal.

[Robert Evans]

Hell. Oh, oh, that's. That's a good line.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Uh huh.

[Robert Evans]

That's a good line.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Back home in New Jersey, his anarchist friends were like, oh, I guess we judged him wrong. And they started a fund to look after his kids and support his family. His wife came to Italy and testified to his good character in court. His whole family was like, arrested in an investigation into conspiracy. But eventually everyone was let go. And Italy, under a king was actually had a more fair criminal justice system than the United States does today. They didn't have the death penalty. Mussolini is going to bring that back later. So he gets life in prison. He was held in solitary confinement. He had one hour a day of exercises. Like, feet were like manacled to the floor. They didn't treat him great. Less than a year later, he was found hanging in his cell. And modern historians are reasonably certain he was murdered at the time. Everyone's nah, he just killed himself. Interestingly enough, this assassination didn't bring in sweeping reactionary forces or anything. Like usually people are like, oh, you killed the king and something worse is going to happen. This changed things, but it. The existing like kind of leftist government stayed in power and things kind of chugged along. Okay. It didn't even lead to. They like cracked down on the anarchist movement, but they didn't come through and destroy it. It did lead to more international cooperation between law enforcement. When I first started dreaming up this show years ago, it was kind of in a different context and I wanted to talk about anarchist history and I was like, you know, they literally invented international policing to stop us. Why are all of our books boring? Has been my go to tagline. Because they did. International policing exists because of trying to stop the anarchist movement. Because nothing gets people to work together. Like, like when people go around and kill like poor people, everyone's like, oh that sucks. Whatever. When people go around and kill kings, kings work together to make sure that that stops.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, no, kings are great at like really union behavior. They really work like unions, royalty.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. When they're, when someone comes for them as a class, they band together.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

One person who defended Gaetano Bresci doing a little king murder was a man by the name of Benito Mussolini. His fellow socialists were claiming Bresci was crazy for having killed the king. Right. Mussolini said that tyrannicide was quote, the occupational hazard of being a king. Which I don't know.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, talking about occupational hazards, Y. I feel confident saying that being a king is a pre existing condition.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, yeah, totally. But what isn't a pre existing. No, but what else we're obliged to do is play ads for you now. Yeah, like these ones. And we're back. Now this might shock you, Robert. Did you know Mussolini didn't stay leftist?

[Robert Evans]

Really? Now, I thought you were talking about Benny Mussolini, the man who invented the three Day weekend.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Well, I was reading a whole bunch on that website X about how actually the fascists are socialists and leftists.

[Robert Evans]

You're of course referring to the website that just plays a looping video of the song X gon give it to you. That's where I get all of my historical information about anarchists in the early 1900s as well.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yes. Uh huh.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

My X feed is certainly playing looping videos of something right now. And so Mussolini was kicked out of the Socialist Party because he supported interventionism. He supported Italy fighting in World War I. And along the way he started developing his theories on fascism, which was basically, what if you took revolutionary socialism and then replaced it with revolutionary nationalism? Instead of class solidarity, you had national solidarity. What if you made all of the poor people suck up to the rich people and then defend the nation as a concept, the leftist trappings and some of the leftist strategies, but with right wing goals. Because at the time, right wing was just like the status quo, right? If you defend the monarchy or whatever, you're right wing. So there's nothing really revolutionary about it. But fascism was like, no, but we want the revolution and we want to feel cool and edgy, but we also want to. We really like the taste of boots. And so we're going to become fascists and invent this new ideology. For a few years, a lot of politics in Italy was happening in the streets. Fascists versus anti fascists fighting it out. And for a good several years, Mussolini tried to make common cause with the anarchists, specifically to join him against the socialists and the communists. After all, this is the period where the Bolsheviks in Russia were murdering anarchists on moss. And so some folks, there's a chance that Mussolini was even going to go anarchist during this time. I actually don't buy it, but I read one person making this argument. He actually risked alienating his base with how much he appreciated the anarchists. Interesting, because his base was like, no, those are the people we just go fight in the streets. But Mussolini kind of admires their commitment, right? And the anarchists don't want him. Mussolini said, quote, we are always ready to admire men who are willing to die for a faith they believe in selflessly. And this is him contrasting the anarchists to the cowardly socialists. The anarchists, in so many words, told him to eat shit and die. They refuse his overtures again and again, and soon enough they're going to try really, really hard to just outright kill this man. The most famous Italian anarchist then and now is this guy named Erico Malatesta. He's popped into a bunch of our stories on this show. Like when comrades got him to Argentina by smuggling him in a crate of sewing machines. And then he helped the bakers union there become the most radical union in that country. And the model that all the other unions rush to follow. And how today in Argentina there are still pastries name by the anarchist bakers, like little books and little bombs. I really like Malatesta. He's always in and out of jail. He's an older fellow now. I think he's in his 60s at this point that we're talking about. And while he's in prison in Italy, there's a huge campaign to free him. And who supports that campaign but Benito Mussolini? Even though his followers are fighting the anarchists in the streets during this time, Malatesta gets out, and he can't get any paper for his newspapers because of political pressure against him. And Mussolini offers him paper to print on. And Malatesta is like, no. What? No. Some Mussolini keeps trying to be friends with him, but some anarchists and folks from every ideology did turn fascist, Right? Because you can't have a new ideology without it, starting with people who used to have other ideologies. An awful lot of anarchists turn fascists. Orwell has a really good essay about this. George Orwell has a really good essay about this called Notes on Nationalism that basically lays out the case that a lot of political extremists are into extremism, not the idea that the extremism is attached to. So you get people going from the radical left to the radical right reasonably often. And this unfortunately ties into the first time that I found of someone trying to kill Mussolini. Some anarchists got together in 1921 before Mussolini ever even took formal power. He does that in 1922, and they're like, all right, we got to kill this guy. They delegated one among their number, a man named Biagio Massi, to go kill Mussolini instead. Biagio went to Mussolini and told him the whole plan. Mussolini protected him. And then the very next day, because Mussolini is just being, I don't know, cunning or whatever.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Mussolini goes and gives a speech about how the government needs to really release Malatesta, Right. Even though he has just learned that the anarchists are trying to kill him. He's a 4D chess kind of man, this Mussolini.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, unfortunately, he is. He was. I mean, one thing you learn about Mussolini and all these guys, with the exception of Franco, who unfortunately kept a pretty good grip on his rationality throughout his life, is most of them are a lot more cunning and better at planning before they get into power. And it's almost like power damages your brain in a way that makes you less capable of, like, clamping down on your own worse impulses and analyzing things logically.

[Margaret Killjoy]

That makes sense to me. There's also this thing where people are always like, mussolini is like the little brother of Hitler, you know, and he's kind of a joke because Italy's military might is not the same as Germany's. Right. Mussolini pulled off something pretty incredible, like terrible evil, but, like, he did become dictator of a major country. That is, like, a hard thing to do.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, I think I could become dictator of Italy.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, no, I know, but you give.

[Robert Evans]

Me six months, Margaret.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Okay?

[Robert Evans]

Six months and a lot of pizza pies. If we know anything about our Italians. Uh, Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut's probably fine.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I really like the pizza in Italy.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I like how every country I've been, Not every country, but most countries I've been to, the American version of their national food is hard to get vegan. But in the country that I'm in, it's actually reasonably easy. Like, it's really easy to just go into any train station in Italy and buy vegan pizza.

[Robert Evans]

You could feel about how this however you want, but undeniably, like, one of the most intense flexes in the history of international conflict is when the US had the former premier of the Soviet Union become a spokesman for Pizza Hut. Like, that was just such a. Wow. Well, I guess you guys lost that conflict. Jesus. Jesus.

[Margaret Killjoy]

So Mussolini comes to power in October 1922, first as the prime minister. There's something that's like, not. Not a coup. I mean, it's not a coup, but it's also not. Not a couple, right? 30,000 of his black shirts, his personal army, marched on Rome. In the march on Rome, the liberal government was like, hey, let's declare martial law to stop this. But then the king was like, nah, let's just put that guy in charge instead. Mussolini immediately helped out the rich people. He was not a fucking leftist at this point. Immediately helped out all the rich people, centralized power, and just was a right wing shitbag. By 1924, he was like, look, there's not a democracy anymore, okay? It's just fascism. And Italy became fascist, and people didn't really like that. There are some occupational hazards to being a dictator. First and most famous at the time, but not the most famous now, was a socialist politician named Tito Zanoboni. And don't worry if you're like, hey, that sounds like Zamboni, and you think that's clever. Don't worry. There's two Zambonis later. Okay? Okay, but this one's Zaniboni.

[Robert Evans]

This is not a serious country. Look, I know we're talking about serious things, but Italy, I just. I'm sorry, it's just not.

[Margaret Killjoy]

One time I was in Italy and my friend took me to, like, her very nice apartment In. Oh, I don't remember which city. I was on tour for like a month there and I went to a bunch of cities. And she looks out and I'm like, how do you afford this, like, amazing, fantastic place? And she goes to the window and points down to this, like, public square right outside and she's like, that's where the Mafia assassinates, like, executes people in public. No one wants to live here.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, shit, you could do that in front of my house. If I could have paid like 30% less, absolutely. Look, I'm not getting involved with the mafia. They got no reason to be pissed at me.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I don't see shit. Yeah, I don't hear gunshots at night. I don't know what you're talking about. Mafia, what?

[Margaret Killjoy]

Most of the places that have been really nice, that like, have been aesthetically really nice that I can afford to live in, have had gunshots outside at night. Yeah, that's true.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, I have twice been coming home to my house when someone has a couple of blocks away, been shooting it out with the police.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. You know, like a nice place to live.

[Robert Evans]

A nice place to live.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And like, I'm not the police, so I'm not worried about getting shot.

[Robert Evans]

I'm not the police. These people have no reason to be angry at me.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. So before we talk about Tito, we're going to talk about another Italian socialist politician. Giacomo Matiatodi. Matteo's best friend.

[Robert Evans]

Buca di Beppo, Tacoma.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Matty was a socialist politician who tried repeatedly to expose Mussolini and fascism for what they were after. He published a book against the fascists and accused them of fraud. The fascists, who were certainly people of action. On June 10, 1924, Giacomo was kidnapped by the fascist secret police, who stabbed him to death with a carpenter's file. I believe in the car. This was in a lot of ways the thing that paved the way for Mussolini to declare himself dictator. I'm going to oversimplify this dangerously. But after a lot of hand wringing and investigations and castigations of the fascists for this kind of thing, eventually Mussolini was like, look, I'm a fascist though. I'm in charge and we're gonna stab people to death with carpenter's files and you're just gonna deal with it. This had an enormous amount of knock on effects. One of them was that this other socialist politician, Tito Zanoboni, he got real mad. He had been part of the search efforts to find his friend. Before that, he'd been part of signing a Peace treaty between the socialists and the fascists. But after they killed his friend. Oh, yeah. The socialists signed a peace treaty with the fascists. I think after I talk about all the, like, anarchists who became fascists and stuff, it's worth pointing out the socialists signed a peace treaty with the fascists.

[Robert Evans]

Mm.

[Margaret Killjoy]

After they killed his friend. He's like, all right, fuck this, we gotta shoot this guy. And he and his friends conspired to kill Mussolini. Tito's a war hero, so he got a precision rifle and he set himself up to station himself in a window to shoot Mussolini from far away. But among his co conspirators was an informant. So Tito and actually a general in the army, in the Italian army, were both sent to prison. I think they got the maximum sentence, which was 30 years at the time.

[Robert Evans]

Great.

[Margaret Killjoy]

The United Socialist Party was no more in court. Tito used the same defense as most of Mussolini's would be assassins used later. Which is the defense of. Yeah, but fuck Mussolini, though. Somebody should shoot him.

[Robert Evans]

Mm.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Just, you know, not always the best way to get off in court, but, like, looks good in history books.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, looks good. I mean, there's right around this time the case of Sagamon to Learyan, who a Berlin jury decided, like, oh, no, no, it was totally fine that he assassinated that guy who did a genocide. Oh, yeah, totally politician. Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

We covered this one in the Armenian genocide episode.

[Robert Evans]

I'm just saying every. Everybody who might wind up in a court in New York start looking up jury nullifications right now.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, absolutely. So Tito was released in 1943 when the fascist government fell. Which is the other thing that comes up a lot is that revolutionaries, or in this case, it wasn't even a revolutionary. It was a politician who was like, yeah, but other politicians shouldn't murder people and people go to jail for a really long time. Right wing governments often fall, and if you can stay alive in jail long enough, you'll be free again. But someone else was directly inspired by the death of Giacomo Matteoti, one of my favorite strange and misunderstood assassins in history. Violet Gibson. Have you heard of. I feel like that there's one.

[Robert Evans]

I've heard the name.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. If there's one assassin people have probably heard of Violet Gibson. This is the most widely known attempt on his life in the modern era, because it's the one that makes the coolest social media headline.

[Eva]

Is there like a song?

[Margaret Killjoy]

There are. There's actually. There's songs about her, there's documentaries.

[Eva]

I really hope I'm thinking of the right person or else I sound dumb. She was like really short, right?

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. She's five foot one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. So I love stories about short ladies doing badass things. My Grandma was like 4 foot 11. Hell yeah. Grandpa was 6 5. And because she was so small during World War II, she had a special job. They would hold her by her feet and shove her inside the wings of P51 mustangs so she could like weld them or like do bolting or. So she was, I think, welding them on the inside. There was like an area that needed welds that only the tiniest girls could fit.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Hell yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Fucking rad.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Hell yeah.

[Eva]

As somebody who definitely can't reach things on the top shelf, I'm very excited to hear more about Violet.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Also the only person who I'm going to talk about today who successfully shot the man.

[Eva]

Well done.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, one of the lessons is that nobody knew how to shoot in the past and most people don't know how to shoot today also.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. So Violet Gibson was a 49 year old Irish woman from Dublin who lived in a convent in Rome and shot Mussolini in the face on April 7, 1926.

[Robert Evans]

What's not to like, God? Ireland stays winning.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. You know, I know mostly the part to not like about this story is that he turned his head at the last minute.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. He didn't die.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And she only grazed his nose. But there are good pictures of him like with the like bandage on his nose or whatever. There's no comparisons that can be made now to the model modern world.

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Eva]

About people turning their heads.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. And getting grazed. Yep. The world would have been a very different place if he had not turned his head.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Violet Gibson was a thin woman, about 5 foot 1. Her father was the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. She grew up. She's Anglo Irish. Right. And she grew up like, oh, wow.

[Robert Evans]

So her like they're like the English landlord Irish type deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, like Lawrence of Arabia. Yeah, totally.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And. And like Lawrence of Arabia, she's crazy as shit. But people use this to invalidate and like claim that her action wasn't political or thought out. And that's what I want to argue against, but I can't argue against her being crazy as shit. And I'm gonna tell you why. But she grew up rich as hell. She was a debutante, debuted in Queen Victoria's court, which I only vaguely understand what is through. Mostly my friends who are from the south, most tellings of the story come down to, I don't know. She did it because she was crazy. I am going to make the case that she did it because she was a politically committed Catholic socialist who wanted to do right by God and people. By killing a man, who went on to be responsible for millions of deaths, who was also crazy. She was always esoteric. She was raised Protestant. Right. Her mother became a Christian Scientist and so she herself experimented with Christian Science and then she got into Theosophy for a while. But then she converted. She found another esoteric religion to get involved in, Catholicism when she was 26. And she stayed a Catholic for the rest of her life. She was sick all of the time. Her body carried the scars of many surgeries and she spent years working at various pacifist organizations. The craziest thing she did, which is left out of the leftist accounts of her story, but it's included in the right wing accounts of her story that are like, demonizing her, but they're verifiable. They're. I believe this happened. So she used to walk around Dublin with a Bible in one hand and a knife in the other.

[Robert Evans]

And I hate to say it, but that is. That is pretty cool.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Oh, yeah, no, like, yeah, she's. I would want to meet her maybe from a distance, but I would want to meet her.

[Robert Evans]

I would want to like, observe her from. From a safe distance.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. She talked all the time about the necessity of mortifying the flesh, which is normally about, like, killing, the urge to sin. But she seemed to want to kill. That was. That was part of her way of understanding that particular doctrine. Around 1920, she attacked a young woman with a knife, cutting the woman's face and hands. And so she spent two years in an asylum. And. And I don't know enough about that attack to know, like, if there's any motivation beyond something about like, she wanted to like, replicate the sacrifice of so and so in the Bible or whatever.

[Robert Evans]

Mm, sure.

[Margaret Killjoy]

When she got out, she moved to a convent in Rome. I believe this was kind of a like, yeah, you're like super rich though, so you can go be in this convent. Her friends thought to themselves, she's probably going to kill somebody, maybe the Pope. But they didn't try to stop her, which is really funny because they're probably all Irish Catholics and they're just like, eh, whatever. Then in 1924, when Giacomo was murdered, the guy murdered to death with a carpenter's file.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

She was heartbroken because she was a Catholic socialist. Right. And so she decided to, like, revenge that killing by shooting herself in the chest. The bullet Bounced off her ribs, and she survived. And if you want to survive in the world that's coming, you need to buy literally everything that is advertised on this show. It is the only way to survive, I believe. It's not a guarantee, but here's ads. And we're back. Mussolini at this point. God, I read a whole bunch of New York Times articles and, like, other, like, newspaper articles from this time, and they're all like, mussolini's great. We all like Mussolini because he's stopping the Bolsheviks, you know? Mussolini was being courted by the Western world. The King of England awarded him the order of the Bath, which is not an order to take a bath, unfortunately, but instead a knighthood. And Violet Gibson decided that the way to glorify God was to assassinate Mussolini. So she showed up at one of his talks in 1926 with a revolver and a rock. The rock was to break his windshield if necessary, which later assassins would have been more successful if they had also brought a rock. The modern mind can't really understand her motive, I think, because her motive was primarily religious, but it was also political. She did it to, quote, glorify God, and angel kept her arms steady. I told this story to a Catholic anarchist friend of mine, whose response was basically like, oh, those Irish. And they're angels. Mussolini turned his head at the last minute. She grazed his nose. She tried to fire again, but the gun jammed. And I've read that what he yelled at the time that he was shot was, fancy a woman. But that might have been later. He told the crowd, don't be afraid. This is a mere trifle. And then, like, later, he went on this rant about how he's totally down to die violently as long as, like, a good, glorious death. But if he's, like, killed by an old lady, he just can't handle it. Which is why I wish Violet had succeeded over everyone else.

[Robert Evans]

Alas.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, the crowd caught her and beat her, and she was whisked away by the cops and declared insane. People said that she was paranoid, and that was why she tried to kill him, because she was paranoid. I hate to break it to the people of. Back then, she was correct about this particular thing. She spent the rest of her life in various institutions. She wrote letter after letter pleading to be set free, but those letters were never sent because, you know, women are crazy. Right? That's my. That's a sarcastic remark. People probably caught onto that.

[Robert Evans]

Mm.

[Margaret Killjoy]

She told people that her mood controlled the weather.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. Well, did it.

[Margaret Killjoy]

If she'd killed Mussolini, she would have stopped like 3 million deaths. Maybe her moods, like I want to kill Mussolini have a pretty major impact.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I mean, look, I can't prove that she's wrong.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. It reminds me of when I covered Joan of Arc on this show where people are like, oh, feminist icon. Except you know, obviously she was just crazy with her visions from God. And it's just that people were conceiving of reality in different ways than we conceive of it now. And I think that people have a hard time wrapping their heads around that. She died in 1956 at the age of 79. She did outlive Mussolini. No family members came to her funeral. History has vindicated her. And there's now a plaque for her on her childhood home in Dublin that describes her accurately as a committed anti fascist. And it was articles about this from like right wing Irish people is how I learned about how she would run around and stab people and things like that.

[Robert Evans]

Is it possible that there was like no one at her funeral? Because this, I mean I had just made a comment about Ireland staying winning. But Ireland's history re the fascists in this period is not particularly clean, in large part because the fascists were opposed to the British government. And so there was a lot of at least the enemy of my enemy is my friend thing among the Irish as well as the fact that Franco was like a Catholic. Like it's not a clean period for Ireland entirely either.

[Margaret Killjoy]

It's not. But she's also Anglo Irish, right?

[Robert Evans]

Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, that also makes sense. You're right, I'd forgotten that.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And I think it's, I think overall it was just like, oh, there's our crazy aunt. She's just crazy. She just wanted to kill a guy. You know, that's like my best guess. But I'm not certain people didn't like her at the time. And now there's been kind of this reclamation of her legacy. But Mussolini was particularly good at turning attempts on his life into popular support, which is like what you do if someone tries to kill you. Right. You can either say like, oh no, I'm afraid and the enemy is scary and bad, which is not a good way to gain power. Or you can say like, hahaha, they can't get me, but they want to because they're evil. You know, almost every article about attempts on Mussolini's life from then or now is basically like, but this particular attempt is what Mussolini used to consolidate power. Everything was fine until this person tried to kill him and then whoosh, he just like Swept in with fascism.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I. Yeah, exactly. I think that that's people number one. It's like working backwards, which you shouldn't do when you're trying to analyze people psychologically. Now, that said, I don't know that I would say there's. It didn't have an impact on the character of the regime. Just like, it's probably fair to, like. Like, whatever Trump does next, the shooting will probably have impacted because it clearly affected his mental state.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Right, Totally.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe it'll mean that he's a little less coherent and a little less, like, maybe even less willing to take risks he might otherwise have taken. Maybe it'll mean he's more vengeful. We don't know yet. We'll all be learning soon. But it definitely. The presidency we are going to get out of him now is different than if he had won and nobody had shot him. Right. Like, that's just. We don't know how, and we'll never know how, but that's just a reality, because nearly being shot to death on live television changes you, changes anybody. You don't have to be a good person.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And it's like, people talk about, like, hindsight is 20 20, but it's not because you don't know what the other options were. You know, you can only see the one thing that happened.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And Mussolini would have become dictator if no one had tried to kill him.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

You know, and he used moments like this to consolidate power because anyone would.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, because you can't let something like this go to waste. And also, just like, continuing to work after you've nearly been shot to death in the head probably also just kind of mentally necessary. Like, you're gonna make use of that, because otherwise you're gonna sit alone in a room and think about how you nearly got your brains blown out.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, totally.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. He keeps busy. You know, he's got a lot of mistresses. Although New York Times just is gonna run articles. I'll talk about them later. But New York Times, like, oh, he's just hanging out with his family. He's a family man.

[Robert Evans]

Like, oh, they loved Mussolini, Benito. I mean, a lot of Americans really liked Mussolini in part because, like, he was. He was a very, very much a celebrity dictator in a way that Hitler. Hitler was. But not in this. Like, Hitler was, you know, famous and managed to become beloved in Germany. Mussolini had a level of, like, international, like, movie star clout in part because he looked handsome in his photos in a way Hitler didn't really like. He looked like a Movie star, you know, not in real life, but he, you know, he had good. He had good people where. And he had a lot of movie stars hanging out with him, by the way, a lot of American ones.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And he, like, knew more about philosophy and art and shit like that, you know, which was like, a lot of the ways to be kind of, like, cool at the time. And, like, I mean, he created a philosophy, one that is still around.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Margaret Killjoy]

It's a bad one.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Margaret Killjoy]

So there's another thing that's going to tie into this that is going on the Italian anarchist world and the Italian American world and just the news in general. And it's another thing that, like, looking back, it's hard to see why this is as big of a deal as it was. And this is the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. Have you heard of this?

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are the two American anarchists who. There was a bombing. They got accused of it, executed. Didn't do it right. Am I okay on the basics there?

[Margaret Killjoy]

So what's funny about it? It's messy. The general version is usually.

[Robert Evans]

It is, yeah. This was, like, cumulatively, four sentences over the course of my high school education.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And it's probably the only time during anyone's high school education that the word anarchist gets mentioned. Besides, like, maybe you're gonna get Shogosh killing McKinley, but probably not.

[Robert Evans]

I don't even think I. I learned about McKinley getting assassinated. I don't think I learned it was an anarchist, but maybe I'm just not. I barely remember high school.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, fair enough. I honestly, whenever I'm like, my high school teacher didn't teach me this, I'm like, I don't know. How would I have known? I got Cs. Like, what you know?

[Robert Evans]

But I definitely remember knowing that Sacco and Venzetti had been anarchists, because that one was inescapable.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And it was this incredibly important celebrity trial all over the world. And basically, some Italian American anarchists, or mafia, but almost certainly anarchists, were robbing a guy who carried the wages, basically the equivalent of an armored truck robbery. And someone shot and killed the paymaster and a guard. Two Italian American anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, were put on trial. The entire leftist world, not just the anarchists, was convinced that they were innocent. And basically this whole thing was seen as, like, a travesty of justice. In 1921, they were found guilty and sentenced to death. But it took years for the state to kill them because the outcry was so much that they had to have all these appeals and investigations and things like that. This dragged on for years later. Historians have been like, well, Sacco probably did it and Venzetti maybe. Like, it's possible Venzetti was there and therefore actually criminally liable, but, like, didn't pull the trigger. It's also possible that they weren't there because a lot of the evidence that they did do it comes from a guy we're going to talk about later who's an anarchist bomb maker who turned into a fascist informant named Mario Buddha.

[Robert Evans]

Well, it's also an unfortunate truth that a lot of times the people who are most willing to make things like bombs are also driven more by rage than like, political conviction and thus very easy to swing to a politics that entirely exists on the basis of rage.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Which is. Which is why we really do try here not to idolize people whose only contribution is that they did a violence.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, totally.

[Robert Evans]

Even when everybody's making some very funny jokes on social media.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Right now. About a thing that just happened.

[Margaret Killjoy]

No, it's true. And that is like something that. Yeah. Fun time to have decided to write this episode. And. But the important thing about the Sacco and Vanzetti case is that this trial was huge. The outcry was enormous. And one thing that happened in this is that the fascists tried hard to capitalize on it and did capitalize on it because most of the outcry against the trial was at the trial was unfair as a result of the US's anti Italian and anti anarchist bigotry. A fuckton of the Italian American crowd was either anarchist or fascist. And so both the fascists and the anarchists rallied for Sacco and Vanzetti. Mussolini was cynically using the trial to stir up nationalism at home and continuing his odd overtures to the anarchists, even though he was in power by most of this point. And he's cracking down on the anarchists left and right. His soldiers are burning photos of that guy Malatesta. Anarchists are being rounded up and stuff, yet Mussolini is telling his ambassadors to try and intervene on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti, because Mussolini wanted to be seen as the man who protected Italians everywhere. And he has all these quotes that are like, I cannot agree with anything that these men stand for, but they're Italian by God, and America shouldn't kill them or whatever. I'm now paraphrasing terribly great stuff.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And I don't love their murders, but I support them being Italian, thus they ought to be free.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Robert Evans]

Fair enough.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And what does this have to do with Violet Gibson? Well, this is going to turn into one of the best zings against America that I've ever read about.

[Robert Evans]

Mm.

[Margaret Killjoy]

On July 23, 1927, Mussolini wrote, It is certain that the execution of Sacco Vanzetti would provide the pretext for a vast and continuous agitation throughout the world. The fascist government, which is strongly authoritarian and does not give quarter to the Bolsheviks, very often employs clemency in individual cases. The governor of Massachusetts should not lose the opportunity for a humanitarian act whose repercussions would be especially positive in Italy. And fascist newspapers were now contrasting the American government as more totalitarian than the fascist Italian government because the Italian system. The fascist system had let Violet Gibson return to her own country. And there is no death penalty in Italy at this point.

[Robert Evans]

That's nice.

[Margaret Killjoy]

People could literally kill kings and get life in prison. Comparing this to the barbaric United States, and this is the thing that I love about it. It is like, the dude's got a point.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Margaret Killjoy]

The US Prison industrial system is like, a nightmare.

[Robert Evans]

It sure is.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And was worse than the fascist government.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, at the. You know, it depends on the stage, but at the early stages, you know, Mussolini does eventually invade Ethiopia and deploy chemical weapons, but. Yeah, that's certainly an argument that you could have made earlier in Mussolini's regime. You have to remember, he was not. He definitely was killing his political enemies.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Oh, yeah. He had stabbed a dude to death with a file.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Not necessarily. In a way, that's a higher body count than, for example, the number of black people being murdered by police in apartheid states in the United States. Right.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Like. Which is not a different thing. To me. I don't consider that to be better than, I don't know, rounding up, like, a few dozen socialists and murdering them or whatever like that. And the constant mass. The constant murder at a pretty high rate of black men in the south by cops and vigilantes. Like, both. Both things that I would put on a similar moral level.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, exactly. I'm not trying to be like, Benito Mussolini is great, you know?

[Robert Evans]

No, no, no, no. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't think you were. Yeah. I'm just saying, like. Yeah. That's not an irrational statement to make at that point in time, knowing what they knew.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And Violet, she was not alone in her quest to see the duke die. The next attempt was on September 11th, 1926. And this is why people remember September 11th.

[Robert Evans]

Mm.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And this is probably the most organized Attempt Sophie is clearly agrees with me.

[Robert Evans]

Did anything else happen on September 11th ever? That seems like one of those.

[Margaret Killjoy]

That coup that happened somewhere, that was.

[Eva]

Such a smooth joke.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, thank you.

[Robert Evans]

I'm looking at my calendar of various September 11th that I keep for no reason. Yeah, it doesn't look like anything's ever happened on another September 11th that I keep can. That I've got. Okay.

[Eva]

You're the funniest person I know.

[Robert Evans]

That must be why I celebrate. 9 11. Wait, no shit. Margaret. Margaret. I'm getting some very bad Google results suddenly. We need to edit that out. Oh my God. Oh my God, all those poor people. Holy shit.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. I lived in New York City on September 11, 2001. Saw the towers on fire or saw the smoking remains, but. But anyway, the socialist politician had failed. The Catholic wingnut had failed. Time to bring in the professionals. If there's one group that knows about killing kings and monarchs and stuff, it's the anarchists again. We all know they failed, but you know what? They tried real hard. The next attempt was by a man named Gino Lucetti, who I'll tell you about, along with his cousin Gino. Cause his name's Gino, but so is his cousin. That's the thing I'm saying. Well, I'll tell you about it on Wednesday. Woo hoo.

[Robert Evans]

Excellent. You know, Wednesday, Margaret, is the day that comes after Tuesday. That's a little science fact for those of you in the audience.

[Eva]

Robert, thank you so much for telling us that. I have no idea, I have no idea how we would have called.

[Robert Evans]

We try to shoot a little bit, a couple of facts your way.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, that's why it's edutainment.

[Robert Evans]

That's why it's edutainment.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Right, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So remember folks, Wednesday, day after Tuesday, Thursday comes the day before Monday. And that's all I gotta say comes before Monday. Yes, yes, yes. Tomorrow is Saturday.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And after Monday is the weirdest thing about Thursday.

[Robert Evans]

I know, I know. It's the day. So nice they made it happen twice.

[Margaret Killjoy]

It can't even. There's nothing I can do with that. Yep.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, Margaret, I wish you and I could hang out all 11 days of the week.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I know, I know, that'd be nice, but I only have so many hours in the day and I don't remember how many it is.

[Robert Evans]

41.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Margaret Killjoy]

But Robert Evans, where can people find more about you? Or what do you do?

[Robert Evans]

Well, you can find me sweating away in my basement because you and I only use an Antique Coptic Christian calendar and day system based largely on a step pyramid that used to exist but was bulldozed in what was once Sumeria. So it's very. It takes a lot of time to remember what day it is. Yeah, I don't know. We really kept this bit going for a while.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I feel like at the end of a GI Joe episode where you tell kids to like not hide in refrigerators. Right. I feel like it's worth pointing out that I really am talking about history here and that nothing necessarily good happened for many of the attempts that I'm describing. I am not morally against the attempts that I am describing. I'm clearly not of this thing that happened in the 1920s. But I want to be clear on that.

[Robert Evans]

That is the thing I can think of very few assassinations in history where ultimately you would look at it and say that yeah, that worked out really well. Particularly that worked out well by the person carrying out the assassination standards really the one that like Sagam and to Leary and who shot, you know, one of the young turks who orchestrated the Armenian genocide. That worked out great by his standards and everyone else's. That guy who shot Abe seems to the long run of that seems to have been positive. Very few other instances like I. I don't know that I'd say McKinley worked out that would. Well in the long run. Obviously shooting the Archduke. Fucking disaster. Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

No, it's. And it is worth thinking about that anarchists had given up on propaganda by the deed at this point. Propaganda by the deed was this anarchist idea that people were like, well the masses don't really read theory, so let's just show them by killing all the kings and the, you know, the people who are in charge of them. And it overall was disastrous for the anarchist movement because it just led people to then defend the very systems that the anarchists were opposed to. And this happened time and time again. There are exceptions. During the pre. The run up to the Russian Revolution, you have like about from like 1903 to 1917, anarchists and other groups were all doing these attentives all doing these assassinations. And it did lead to a revolutionary situation which of course all kind of ended badly and created the united the ussr. But usually these kind of things destroy a social movement. Sometimes if enough people are interested in it, it builds a social movement, but usually it doesn't. And that is the like it's a crapshoot at best. It's a like let's redraw our hand of cards and probably get something worse.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Margaret Killjoy]

But still, if someone had successfully killed Mussolini, I bet the world would have been a better place.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, yes. But the if within the if contains a lot of reasons why, you know, we're going to say for legal reasons here, assassinations probably not worth it.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And we're going to talk about like five more of them on Wednesday.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Eva]

At the end here. I just want to plug if you you haven't listened, I just am plugging this on anything I can. I just want to plug our colleague James Stout series from reporting from the Darien Gap about one of the worst land migration places in the world and just the stories and people he talked to there. And I just want to plug that because it's an amazing series and I'm very proud of James.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I started listening to it. I haven't finished it yet. It is really good.

[Eva]

It's really good. Yeah. So if you have time around the end of the year and you're like, I need something to binge, James did.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Five episodes on it could happen here.

[Eva]

On it could happen. Thank you. On It Could Happen here.

[Margaret Killjoy]

All right, see you all on Wednesday.

[Robert Evans]

Bye.

[Eva]

Cool People who did Cool Stuff is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

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[Margaret Killjoy]

Hello and welcome to Cool People who did Cool Stuff. Your weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening, I mean people try to confront those bad things in Various ways. Lots of various ways. One of the ways. No, just a person. One of the people who's also on this podcast with me is Robert Evans, my guest. Hi.

[Robert Evans]

That's right. I'm Robert Evans. And I'm Robert Evans. That's me.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Well, I brought you on because you're an expert about Italy.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I mean, I know several things about Italians, Margaret. Number one, botta di beppo. Number two, spicy mitaballe.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Here's where we remind the listeners that Robert Evans is Italian.

[Robert Evans]

Whatever the hat is that they. That the chefs wear. And those kind of racist caricatures. Yeah, yeah, look, it's fine. We all decided that it's okay with Italians now.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. Despite the huge trial that we talked about last time about anti Italian prejudice in the United States.

[Robert Evans]

Look, if they'd been. I have the opposite position of that guy. I'm fine with the murder. If they'd been on trial for being Italian, I would have said fucking, yeah, hang em. You know? Yeah, exactly. Hang. Am I?

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, maybe upside down. Maybe that's a dead Mussolini joke, which is unfortunately not gonna happen in today's episode. A lot of people are gonna try. Give the old college try. Our producer. It's Sophie. Hi, Sophie.

[Eva]

It's me. I'm Sophie. Hi.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I realized when I got my podcast you listened to the most in 2024 that four of them were Sophie podcasts.

[Eva]

The loyalty is unmatched. Unmatched.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's right.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I'm a little bit surprised that not all five were. But I think the problem was that the Pathfinder podcast I listened to has really long episodes.

[Eva]

You need one break.

[Margaret Killjoy]

So I listened to, like, five.

[Eva]

Yeah, you need one break for me.

[Robert Evans]

We should do a Pathfinder podcast, Margaret.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I would love to do a live play podcast.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe I'll reach out to the guy who created Pathfinder and listens to our podcasts and talk to him about that.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I would love that guy who created Pathfinder. Y'all are great. And your system rules. And I play it anyway, so. But yeah, no. Cool Zone Media needs a live play podcast. That's all I'm saying. And if you. Listener agreement, bug these people on the Internet about it and then. Cause I needed more podcasts to be on. Whatever. I don't care.

[Robert Evans]

There's a shortage of podcasts. I don't know if you're aware of this.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

But the CDC has said that it's probably the largest threat to our national collective health.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Well, it's the only thing that they're trying to put a tariff on that everyone's in favor of is that they're trying to make it harder for people to make podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

That's right. That's right.

[Margaret Killjoy]

All podcast mics. Oh, my God. That actually is gonna. Most of the podcast mics are probably not made in the US. Whatever. I got mine.

[Robert Evans]

I have no idea. I have no idea where they make our microphones. Margaret.

[Margaret Killjoy]

No, no, I do not.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Anyway, this is part two on a two part episode about people trying to kill Mussolini. Later we'll probably talk about the people who succeeded. It took a whole war, but some people tried to just cut to the chase and circumvent the need for the war. And we've already mentioned several of them, but we're going to talk a lot more of them today. First we're going to talk about Rory, who's our audio engineer. Hi, Rory.

[Eva]

Hi, Rory.

[Robert Evans]

Hi, Rory.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And that our theme music was written for us by Unwoman. And that Gino Lucetti was born working class in the year 1900 in Carrara, Tuscany. Have you ever heard of Carrara?

[Robert Evans]

I've heard of Tuscany because the Tuscan coast is pretty famous. I've never heard of Carrara other than that. It makes me think of that song that goes, tarra boom die, which I don't know what that's a reference to. Is that a slur?

[Margaret Killjoy]

I have no idea.

[Robert Evans]

I should probably look into that song, see if there was anything fucked up. It's like celebrating a genocide. That's often the case with old songs. What a lovely tune. Oh, no.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, well, Carrara is famous for two things. It is famous for its marble quarries. It produces some of the finest marble from which the most iconic buildings and statues in the world are made. There's a whole list of them and I forgot to write them down. But like, think of an old Italian statue from Rome. Old Rome. And the marble might have come from Carrara. It has like blue veins. I spent way too long reading about this marble.

[Robert Evans]

It's good ass marble. Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

The other thing that Carrara is famous for is anarchism.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, okay.

[Margaret Killjoy]

When my anarchist friends took me through Italy, when we were near Carrara, they pointed out and they were like, hey, that place was an anarchist stronghold for a long, long time among the stonemasons who put that town on the map enough so that I was like double checking this today. I was like, carrara, that sounds familiar, right? And I was looking at a mainstream tour company's website, Carrara Marble Tour. And they offer an anarchic Carrara tour.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, wow, really? Double dipping.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, and that's, you know, because there's so many. It's like you and I always say, Margaret, with so many anarchists in our audience, you know, every. There's. There's nothing that goes together like anarchism and marble quarries.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, two.

[Robert Evans]

Two great tastes that taste great together, you know? That's why, by the way, let's have a word for our sponsor. Big marble. Marble. Maybe we could use it again for some stuff.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Marble. One time, statute of limitations ago, I had to empty all the marbles out of my pocket before a mass arrest.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, marble. If you use it to make all of your streets and sidewalks like they do in Greece, it makes things incredibly treacherous in the rain, actually. Horrible, horrible material to use the way that they use it.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. But it's pretty, though.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Years and years ago, my dad told me this spooky story that he wrote called the 37 Marble Steps. And I was like a kid, so I was just assuming that these were steps with marbles embedded in them. But Gina Lucetti was from Carrara in the early 1920s. There are factory occupations all over Italy. I don't know enough about these yet, but they've come up a bunch of times, and they'll probably be one of their own episodes at one of these points. And I know that in the end of these factory occupations, the socialist parties kind of gave up and gave power back to the bosses, which made an awful lot more anarchists from those socialists who, you know, had just seized the means of production and were like, but isn't this our goal? Isn't our goal that the workers control the means of production? Why would we give them back? I don't know enough about the ins and outs of that struggle, but a lot of people were mad. Gina Lucetti was at these occupations, and somewhere along the way, he got into a gunfight with the black shirts. He got a guy in the ear who got him in the neck in return. And second time we've had an anti fascist get it in the neck and survive on this show. The other one was George Orwell.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, that's. I mean, I'm not gonna say, but that's very lucky.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, exactly. Don't get shot in the neck.

[Robert Evans]

The neck is very low on the number of places on your body you would want to get shot.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. Not a good tourniquet spot, it turns out.

[Robert Evans]

Hard to tourniquet a neck unless you're Google AI, which has told me repeatedly that you can tourniquet the neck. Hell, yeah, that's just a hanging, folks. You're just strangling someone to death.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

Don't. Tourniquet necks.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, it seems self evident, but an AI does not have our best interests in heart.

[Robert Evans]

No, it just sees. Well, there's fucking. There's fucking arteries there. Tourniquet away.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It detaches a limb. If a head is a limb, the appendage, I don't know, whatever. Whatever a head is anatomically, I guess it's a head. So he couldn't find a doctor in Italy to get the bullet out. I do not know why. So comrades smuggled him to France where he was finally treated. And he was like, you know what? I don't need to be in Italy right now. They are in the middle of a fascism and I am in the middle of. Just got shot in the neck by a fascist.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

There was a large political refugee scene in France at the time. Anarchists, socialists and communists had formed a popular front against fascism there. Not only just in general in France, but like, specifically the Italian refugees had. They were like, all right, look, all that stuff going on in Russia, we're all mad at each other, but right now Italy is being taken over by fascists. We got to do something about that.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And they all agreed what needed to be done was kill Mussolini. And this action was intended to be anything but a propaganda of the deed action, which is I think, actually a really important point for kind of what we were ended on talking about last week.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Margaret Killjoy]

As a libcom.org article put it, quote, propaganda of the deed attacks were supposed to inspire the working classes to rise. And in this, they were entirely unsuccessful in this instance. However, the urge to kill Mussolini was the expression of a convergence of opinion among many popularly representative political groupings and was commonly perceived as a necessity at that point in time. So it wasn't like, oh, we're gonna spur on the revolution and radicalize people by showing them that, you know, our opponents are made of flesh and blood. It was like, no, Mussolini is basically the enemy war leader that we're in a war against. You know, one word that has never been successfully applied to anarchists is cowardice. Gino agreed to do the deed.

[Robert Evans]

And I mean, it's the thing that you come across over and over again when you read about, like, militant movements and like civil wars and where there are anarchist groups is that the anarchists are always very brave. Not always the best fighters.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

But always very brave.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. And specifically other groups like putting us.

[Robert Evans]

In the front yeah, that's an aspect of it, yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I remember when I first became an anarchist, I was like just going to protests and things 20 some years ago. And my roommate in college was like, you anarchists, you're just the berserkers of the protest movement. People just throw you in the front to soak up all the damage. And I was like, no, he was a little bit right, at least in terms of how people perceive us and use us. So of course, when they're like, who's going to go risk their life to go do this? An anarchist volunteered and twice he returned to Italy to meet with comrades there to plan the assassination. And they met aboard a ship at sea, which is aesthetic as fuck, off the Tuscany coast. And this time there were no informants among them. He had several co conspirators worth mentioning. Stefano Vattieroni was an anarchist tinsmith from Rome who was the secretary of the library. The fucking librarian was in on this assassination. The secretary of Mussolini's library supplied all of the details, including Mussolini's routes by car. Vattaroni funded the thing by selling his family's land near Carrara. Another anarchist, Leandro Sorio, was a waiter who was planning to finance the group's escape from the country. But then they all decided, basically, they were like, well, we're actually just all going to get arrested and stand trial.

[Robert Evans]

There you go.

[Margaret Killjoy]

We want to make a statement. Malatesta, the anarchist guy, who's old at this point, was briefed on the plan and signed off on it. So this wasn't a, like spur of the moment attack. This was a, you know, huge conspiracy across borders to try and kill this guy. Our man Gino went back to Italy and he went to Rome. He waited for Mussolini's car and then he threw a pineapple grenade at it. The grenade had been made by his cousin and he threw it into the windshield. Famously, grenades are on timers, not like pressure sensitive. They like don't explode on impact.

[Robert Evans]

No, because that would be very dangerous. Margaret, have I told you the story about the Iraqi soldier? We're behind this berm embedded with this unit of the Iraqi Federal Police that are in this very active gunfight with some ISIS guys. But they're also kind of showing off because, like, I'm there and my photographer's there with the camera. And so like one of the dudes clips into the buttons of his, like button up shirt, a grenade over each button. He like sticks the little handle arm of the grenade around and he runs up and he like fires and Then he leans over to pick up a magazine that's, like, lying behind the berm. And all of the grenades fall off of his shirt and roll down directly towards me. So thankfully, they're not set off by impact.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, fair enough. In this case, it didn't get through the windshield. This is the guy who should have brought a rock.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Violet Gibson was right. You need to get through the windshield. The grenade bounced a few meters away and exploded. Mussolini's bodyguards caught up with Gino and beat the shit out of him.

[Robert Evans]

That sounds about right. Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And when they arrested him, they found him with a second bomb, a handgun with six hollow points poisoned with muriatic acid, which I don't know anything about, and a dagger.

[Robert Evans]

Isn't muriatic acid the thing in, like, swimming pools?

[Margaret Killjoy]

Isn't that chlorine?

[Robert Evans]

No, no. I mean, I think you have muriatic acid for swimming pools, too. I remember I've seen, like, jars. One sec.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I actually didn't want to Google this today. That's what happened to me today, is I was like. Like, I wonder what this stuff is.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You use muriatic acid to lower, like, ph in your pool. It's like, a shit. Millions of Americans have this shit and, like, their shed.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I have no idea why you would. I. Either he was being really extra or like.

[Robert Evans]

Or he just thought it. He might have thought it was more sketchy than it was. I don't know.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. Like, this one says acid, you know?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When it's really. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know much about it other than that. I know I've seen it in people's lives, like, backyards, because they have pools.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. And also, like, there's so much myth building, both positively and negative about all of these things, you know? So it could have been like, oh, he had a dagger and muriatic acid. It actually used the word dum dum bullets instead of hollow points, because that's what they called a round that expands at the time, you know? So he's tortured, he gives a false name and location, and eventually they get the truth out of him. Lucetti was given 30 years in prison. The waiter got 20 years and the tinsmith got 19 years and nine months. Thirty years is the maximum anyone's allowed to be given in Italy at the time, which, again, more. I mean, later they're gonna start killing people. But, yeah, for three years, Lucetti was in solitary and had only a Sparrow that would visit at the window for company.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. Yeah, sure.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

His best friend, the sparrow. I mean, that's sweet, actually.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I know.

[Robert Evans]

I bet he was giving it some of his, like, very, very rare bread that he didn't have a whole lot of because he was a nice man.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, he lived off of. I think it's just literally soup and bread.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[Margaret Killjoy]

He died after 17 years in prison in 1943. He died during a US air raid. Some claim that he was killed by the shelling, but the man who identified the body said that he had been killed by the occupying Germans during the raid. The Italian communists tried to claim his legacy. They published that one of his fellow inmates claimed he had become a communist in his later years. But his brother and his fiance, who kept visiting him until the end of his days, denied this adamantly, like, no, he was an anarchist. He died an anarchist. During the Partisan Reclamation of Italy. Two different anarchist battalions named themselves after Gino Lucetti. Each was about 60 fighters, I believe, both men and women. I know. One of the other anarchist battalions I'm going to talk about later was both men and women, and they helped rid Italy of fascism. So he won in a way, after his death. And that is all most of us can hope for, I would say.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, definitely. I mean, in the long run, it's all any of us can hope for. Right. Because as we've seen, every struggle worth fighting occurs over a long timeframe.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, absolutely. As for the man who made the bomb, that's a different story about another Geno because his cousin's name was also Geno. And I want to tell you about that story, but did you know what I want to tell you about more.

[Robert Evans]

Products?

[Margaret Killjoy]

I love products.

[Robert Evans]

Services, maybe. I don't know if you'd ever. If there'd ever be a service on here.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I do like a good service.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, okay. Okay. Fascinating.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, no, yeah, whatever. Whatever they pay me to talk about or whatever they pay someone else to talk about and then insert into my podcast. All right, I'm really excited about here. And we're back. We are. Gino Lucetti had a cousin, Gino Bin Bibby. Very serious country, as you said.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, absolutely.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Geno Bibby was from a more middle class background. His father owned a sawmill. Geno Bibby. Did you know an anarchist invented the missile?

[Robert Evans]

No. Was he like a scientist being forced to do stuff by the not.

[Margaret Killjoy]

So I'm gonna get to it.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. You know what? That's gotta be one of the top. Anarchism fails yeah, it didn't work out well in the end, I would say missiles. I mean there's definitely some. An anarchists, you know, and anarchist related groups that have used missiles and are using them right now. But boy howdy, it's a general rule, not a tool that has. That has reduced state power.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, that's an L. I know.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And it's so messy.

[Robert Evans]

That's a big L for us.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And if you Google, I'll talk about a little bit more later when he actually does the inventing, when I get to it. But if you google who invented the missile, you get the Nazis. But he's going to pull out missiles. Guided missiles that go 20 km in the Spanish Civil War.

[Robert Evans]

Shit.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Missile. In this case being a rocket. But guided.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And as a teen, this second Geno, Geno Bibby went around on a bicycle and distributed anarchist leaflets until fascists dragged him off his bike, beat him up, burned his motorcycle, and then burned his father's sawmill.

[Robert Evans]

Great.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Because they were a little extra, the fascists. This did not make Gino less radical. It just made him more angry. He's gonna have the last laugh against fascists in Italy.

[Robert Evans]

That is often how things go.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, yeah. He spent a while in lockup for fighting fascists in the early 1920s, then fled to Spain where he started learning how to fly in case he needed to assassinate Mussolini from the air.

[Robert Evans]

Okay.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Which is kind of like how I learned a while ago for a Prison Break episode that. But an awful lot of the prison breaks in the early aughts were it.

[Robert Evans]

Used to be a lot easier to get a helicopter.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Learn to fly. That's how you get people out of prison back in the day.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Come the Spanish Civil War, he worked behind enemy lines blowing shit up and flying reconnaissance. And then he maybe designed the first missile. If you Google right now, the first missile you get Nazi Germany, World War II. But Gino designed missiles that went 20 kilometers in the Daruti column. Fired them at Francois forces. So it started off as a good idea. Just a very Pandora's box.

[Robert Evans]

That's pretty cool. Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

You know what else? The anarchist is not a products and services switch. Do you know what else anarchists invented during the Spanish Civil War?

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Margaret Killjoy]

You ever played foosball?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Is that ours?

[Margaret Killjoy]

Did you ever know an anarchist named Alejandro? I forget his last name because it's not my script. Invented foosball.

[Robert Evans]

Alejandro Foos. Let's call. Let's say Alejandro Foos. Cool.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. There was a. Again, I'm completely off Script here and going from memory. But there was a guy who was injured in the Spanish Civil War and he was like an inventor and he was like, but I want to keep playing soccer, but I can't because I got really badly injured. I'm going to invent table soccer. And other people had invented it, but his invention is the one that people play today.

[Robert Evans]

Okay, fascinating.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Spanish Civil War. The anarchists gave us missiles and foosball.

[Robert Evans]

The two key cornerstones of modern civilization. Missiles and foosball.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. Meanwhile, while Geno's inventing missiles and doing spec ops missions, the Stalinist murdered his sister. Listen to any of our episodes about the Spanish Civil War for more about how Stalin's betrayed their comrades and started arresting folks that they didn't like and torturing people and killing them. The Stalinists actually arrested Gino too. But the anarchists in the government, which is another odd thing that happened in the Spanish Civil War, were like, oh no, fuck no. And the Stalinists were forced to let him out. When the Spanish Republic fell. Like everyone else, he fled into France and was held in a concentration camp. Not a Nazi one, but a pre Vichy France one, where from he escaped. And then he moved back to Italy and he joined the partisans there. And he. He freed his own fucking hometown from fascists as part of an anarchist partisan unit. I really like this guy. To quote author Nick Heath, he died at the age of 100 on 8 August 1999. He was cremated with a red and black scarf tied around his neck. His ashes were interred in the anarchist corner of the graveyard in Carrara.

[Robert Evans]

Man, that's dope.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Also 1999. Great year to kind of clock out.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Totally missed a lot of messiness. Got to see most of the good Star Treks.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. And yeah, Geno Beebe. I got kind of teary when I was writing about the life of the anarchist spy, pilot, bomb maker, engineer, partisan and inventor.

[Robert Evans]

Spylet Spilot Margaret.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Oh, Spylet, yes, The spilot.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Margaret Killjoy]

An inventor of the guided missile system, which again, not our best move. Later I'm going to talk about a military invention or actually a terrorism invention of the anarchist. That's even worse.

[Robert Evans]

Uh oh.

[Margaret Killjoy]

The Irish are mostly famous for it. But it was an Italian anarchist who later became a fascist. Anyway, back to our main story. People trying to kill Mussolini. Only a few months after Geno 1 through Geno 2's grenade at Mussolini, another young hero stepped forward to give it his all. A really young hero kind of a. This is the most heartbreaking part of the story. A 15 year old kid who had just quit the Fascist Youth and become an anarchist.

[Robert Evans]

That's good for him.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Antio Zamboni.

[Robert Evans]

God damn it.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I promised you Zamboni.

[Robert Evans]

Get Jamie Loftus on the horn. She needs to know about this name.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I genuinely thought. I was very glad that you were my guest until I got to Zamboni and I was like, ah. If I was gonna have anyone else, it would be Jamie Loftus. Also more experienced. Killing. Nevermind.

[Eva]

No, no, no.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I'm not allowed to join. The bit about trying to implicate. Okay, just checking.

[Robert Evans]

No, yeah, yeah. Until the court case is over and the grand jury rules on the new evidence brought forward in that case, we probably should keep our mouths quiet.

[Margaret Killjoy]

By a mysterious person with a bad fake Boston accent.

[Eva]

No.

[Margaret Killjoy]

For anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about. I'm proud of you.

[Eva]

Well done. Way to be less terminally online.

[Margaret Killjoy]

You should listen to Jamie Loftus's podcasts.

[Eva]

You should.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Antio Zamboni was born into a working class political family in Bologna. His parents were anarchists who became fascists, or at least his father had. He was never baptized. His parents only had a civil union because they refused to let the state or the church have anything to do with their marriage before they became fascists. His father, Mamolo Zamboni, when he became a fascist, the New York Times called it, quote, disassociating from radical action because being an anarchist is radical. Being a fascist is normal. According to the New York Times, in 1926 and now. Yeah, Mamolo called himself, quote, an anarchist and a fascist. So, okay, what a guy.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, there's a lot of that too, unfortunately. Oh, yeah, you could look into. There's a. I mean, he considered himself and was very angry about other anarchists, like people who called themselves anarchists, because he had a different attitude towards it. But the guy who wrote Storm of Steel, Ernst Junger, was like, called himself an anarch. And I guess the difference is he just believed in anarchism for himself as, like an individual choice still serving the Nazi state. He was kind of an incoherent fella politically, in my opinion, but wrote a very good World War I memoir.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Well, I think that that sounds like approximately half of the modern Libertarian Party that the other half of the Libertarian Party is very embarrassed about.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Antio had two brothers, one of whom was in a fascist militia, the other of whom was in the army. Antio was a young anarchist with way better politics than his dad, and he Took a shot at Mussolini while the man drove past him in an open car. He missed. He pierced the fascist collar and the crowd killed him. Just stabbed this child to death. Oh, I have. You know how a 15 year old either looks like a kid or an adult?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Antio is a kid. This is a child.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I mean every 15 year old is a child. But the crowd knew they were killing a child.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. They did not. It was not just like somebody who could have passed for 17 or 18, like they were very aware they were killing a kid.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. He could have passed for 12.

[Robert Evans]

Gotcha.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I looked at the. I don't normally do this to myself, but I looked at the corpse photo. Cause the only other photos that anyone has of him is when he's like 8, you know. And his coward fascist father tried to distance himself from the actions of his son until after the war. But we'll get to that. That the New York Times reported the father walked into the police station to see the body and said, I knew it would happen. It was faded. He was a strange boy with strange notions. I had a dreadful premonition that something would happen to him. Our doctor said he might go mad one day. This is the father trying to save his own ass. It's not going to work. Then New York Times writes a little glowing article about Mussolini playing his violin with his wife and kids at home, taking solace after the attack. Then they talk about how everyone is saying that if Mussolini stays alive, Fascism will keep Italy normal and peaceful. But if he were killed, that seems.

[Robert Evans]

Like what fascism will do. Yeah, yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Violent fascists might take over if Mussolini is killed. And on that exact same page of the New York Times from 1926, there's a different article about fascist Blackshirts raiding anti fascist newspapers at gunpoint.

[Robert Evans]

Uh huh.

[Margaret Killjoy]

But you know, but like in a.

[Robert Evans]

Normal way, you know. Yeah, yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Being a Fascist did not protect Mamelo the father. He and his sister in law were Both sentenced to 30 years for being vaguely connected to Antio. Basically they're like, oh, the kid couldn't have come up with doing it. It must have been a plot by previously. Anarchy, dad. But by 1932, the elder Zamboni received a pardon directly from Mussolini in exchange for becoming an informant for the fascists. Then after the war, Mamelo went 180 again and started writing pamphlets speaking of the courage of his son and started publishing anarchist material again.

[Robert Evans]

Great.

[Margaret Killjoy]

He died in 1952. And he's not the only anarchist in the story who went fascist and then anarchist again.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

This guy, I don't like him.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Again, a lot of. It's just like. A lot of people are more drip. Will always be a decent number of people. Sizable minority. Always. Mostly just driven by whatever's pissing them off in the moment, you know, as opposed to principals.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Totally. I'm just so mad at him for turning his back on his kid and trying to throw his dead kid under the bus to save his own ass.

[Robert Evans]

And then leave him. Sounds like a guy who sucks.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Sounds like a guy. A bastard that maybe someone should get behind.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I know. He's kind of a little weird guy, too. After Antio's attempts on Mussolini, all other political parties were outlawed, but they already didn't have any power. And Mussolini was going to do that anyhow, was my argument. This more or less ends open anarchist organizing in Italy, as I understand it. And Mussolini brings back the death penalty now for anyone trying to kill him or the king. That didn't stop people from trying to kill him. No one tries to kill a dictator thinking it's a safe thing to do.

[Robert Evans]

Nope. Yeah. Nobody's ever killed a dictator. Being like this is more relaxing than staying home at night and reading the newspaper.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. I'm gonna get away from this just fine.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Although later, the people who do kill Miscellane do.

[Robert Evans]

But. Yeah, that's a different time. That's really not an assassination.

[Margaret Killjoy]

No, no. The next attempt we're gonna talk about was a man who, like Gitano Bresci before him, abandoned the safety of the United States and kind of abandoned his family there to return to Italy to try and do what was right. His name was Michele Shirou.

[Robert Evans]

Okay.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Which to me looks like it's spelled Michel, if anyone's curious. But it's like the French, but it's not. It's Italian, so it's Michele. Michele Shirou was born in 1899 on Sardinia, which is an Italian island. His father had already emigrated to the US And Michele was raised by his mother. He was twice arrested in demonstrations as a kid. He was conscripted into World War I. And like a lot of anarchists at the time, he was hoping the war would turn into a war of liberation. It did not, famously.

[Robert Evans]

That's a bummer.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. Michele became convinced of anarchism after the Communist Party. He felt sold out the factory occupations and let the bosses back in. He eventually moves to Manhattan. He starts fighting Italian fascists in the streets. He worked as a mechanic, and then he became a banana wholesaler in the Bronx. He married an Irish American woman named Minnie. He had two kids. I think he had a son and a daughter. But he was watching Italy fall to fascism and he couldn't handle it. He was like, someone's got to do something. I'm someone. I'mma do something. He went first to France and then likely coordinated with anarchists there, but he kept his mouth shut about it. So we never know. We'll never know, like, who else was involved because they were never arrested. He went up to Belgium and he worked in an anarchist bomb making workshop. I don't know, there's like a. Like, fly. You go to, like, the punk show and there's a flyer. It's like, hey, come to the anarchist bomb making workshop this Saturday.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

But he made himself two bombs, and then he traveled to Rome in January 1931.

[Robert Evans]

Mm.

[Margaret Killjoy]

We've only got his confession under duress to work from, so we don't, you know, famously. Not always the most honest.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Not a great source.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. But his original plan, he said, was that he was going to use the bombs in Paris against the Soviet embassy in revenge for the murder of anarchists in the ussr. But then he decided to kill Mussolini himself. I think that that was his backup plan. I think that he went to. I think he went back to Europe to try and kill Mussolini, but in Rome, he rented two hotel rooms, one for himself and one for his bombs. Because bombs need privacy too, you know.

[Robert Evans]

Of course, yes. That's actually my primary political issue is extending privacy rights to modern military explosives. You know, nobody needs to know what a couple of JDAMs get up to in their spare time. That's. That's between them and God and whatever village they're hitting.

[Margaret Killjoy]

While he was there, he was either shacking up with or conspiring with a Hungarian dancer named Anna Lukowski. If I were writing the story, it would be both. Also, everyone writes sex work out of history. So I would put money that she was a sex worker, but that doesn't make her less or more likely to have been one of the conspirators. And there is reason to believe that he is part of a broader conspiracy working on. But he never rats them out. And the reason that we think this is that he spent money really freely while he was there. He was renting two hotel rooms, but he had no money on him when he was arrested, and there was like no money in any of the rooms or whatever. Right. So he was probably working with a bunch of people who wanted Mussolini dead. A lot of people wanted Mussolini dead.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

For some reason, his plan was really simple. One of his hotel rooms overlooked a common route for Mussolini's car. He was going to wait and drop a bomb on Mussolini, but he wanted to do it when there was no bystanders around.

[Robert Evans]

Of course.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And this is a thing that has come up a bunch of times on this show, but has left out a lot of the sensationalist stuff about bomb assassinations, as all of the bystanders who get killed. There have been so many times in history, and there's going to be two in this episode where people don't do it because they can't find a way to do it without hurting people. He's there for, like, three weeks, and he can't find a way to not hurt anyone else. He had all but given up, and he was figuring he'd go back to Paris and attack the Soviets instead, when he was stopped on the street by cops on February 3, 1931. And I think he was just, like, stopped for being a sketchy guy because it's a fascist state, you know, and they take him to a holding cell for investigation. There were three cops in the room. He pulled a gun and shot all three cops.

[Robert Evans]

Wow.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And then he shouted, long live anarchy. And put the gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger.

[Robert Evans]

Well, okay.

[Margaret Killjoy]

All four men survived.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, my God.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Wow. I mean, that does have to win my award for worst with a gun of anyone on this podcast. To shoot four people, including yourself, and have them all live is a real.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Honestly, though, I gotta say, given the time, some of that probably just goes down to how much worse ammunition was back then. You know, powder loads were less reliable. He may have loaded them himself, you know.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, Like, I think he. Like. He seriously injured one of the cops and himself.

[Robert Evans]

Jesus Christ.

[Margaret Killjoy]

He was, like, rushed to emergency surgery, and they, you know, wanted him fit to stand trial.

[Robert Evans]

Right, Stand trial for killing no one.

[Margaret Killjoy]

That's actually part of the thing. I was reading newspapers at the time, and they were like, look, shooting cops didn't carry the death penalty. So it actually was against their own laws to try and give him the death penalty. But he admitted that he was there to kill Mussolini. In fact, he pretty much. They were like, what are you doing? He was like, I'm here to kill Mussolini. He tried to write his wife, and his wife tried to write him while he was in jail, but their letters were confiscated. He wrote to his father to the same effect. In May 1931, he was tried by a fascist judge with no jury. And all the Lawyers and witnesses had to be put before a special tribunal before they could come in. His defense was basically, I came here to blow up Mussolini. During the trial, he decried both fascism and communism. They told him he would be executed, shot in the back. He didn't say a word as the sentence came down. When he was asked if he had anything to add, he shrugged his shoulders. At 2:30am the next morning, they came into his cell and told him he would be killed at sunrise. He said he did not need a priest. And he was shot in the back by a firing squad of 24 fascists. Folks from his home of Sardinia who had volunteered specifically to kill him.

[Robert Evans]

Well, I guess that's a nice. At least you know it's your guys you went to high school with. Murdering you actually sounds much worse.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. His wife Minnie lived to 1987, dying at 83. Their son Spartaco died in 2005. I found an article I couldn't get access to behind an academic wall of Spartaco writing about his father. And I'm kind of sad I couldn't get it it but here's an assassin who didn't go through with his actions because he couldn't do it without hurting anyone else. Now let's talk about the opposite.

[Robert Evans]

Sure.

[Margaret Killjoy]

But before that, let's talk about the other opposite. Products and services.

[Robert Evans]

Ah, I love products and services.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Someone's gonna get hurt.

[Robert Evans]

That's the promise we make.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Here they are.

[Robert Evans]

And we're Burke.

[Margaret Killjoy]

We are Bert. Now I'm going to talk about my least favorite anarchist in history.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, there's a couple of jokes. There's a couple of jokes I could make about people we know, but yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

No, my least favorite anarchist I've never met. You don't stay in a political scene without making a few let's go with frenemies.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

So there's a long list of things anarchists have invented which can be used for good or evil. The carriage mounted machine gun missiles, apparently the getaway car, foosball, steampunk, free bike programs, Signal, the messaging app.

[Robert Evans]

Mm.

[Margaret Killjoy]

One thing that you can say was probably invented by someone who called himself an anarchist at the time was the car bomb.

[Robert Evans]

Well, yeah, look, I've seen a couple of car bombs. I've even seen one kill people. And not a fan of car bombs?

[Margaret Killjoy]

No.

[Robert Evans]

Well, it was a vbied, which I guess is like it's in that line of descent. Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I'm still sorry I had to see anyone die.

[Robert Evans]

It's okay. I mostly, I mean, they were far enough away That I just kind of saw them turned into smoke. Okay.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. No, I'm sure that doesn't have any effects on your psyche.

[Robert Evans]

No, no, not at all. Not at all. Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Before the Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest terrorist attack in US history was the Wall street bombing of September 16, 1920.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, I have heard of this. Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Someone, it is not certain who used a horse drawn wagon as the first car bomb. And every time I say the first in any show, it's like, you know, I don't know the first that I know about.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Margaret Killjoy]

There's a whole book about the history of the car bomb called Buddha's Wagon. Because we're gonna get to.

[Robert Evans]

Ooh, that's how it was.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Probably Mario Buddha.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

In this car bomb.

[Robert Evans]

I thought they were talking. I was hoping there was some Buddhist history with car bombs that I hadn't heard, but. Okay, that makes sense.

[Margaret Killjoy]

No, I mean, maybe. I don't know, but. But yes, in this carriage was 100 pounds of dynamite, 500 pounds of cast iron, weights for shrapnel. And they rode the horse up and then the driver got out and left and blew up on Wall Street. Not in one of the buildings. It killed 40 people and then like injured hundreds of people. And almost everyone it killed were like fucking kids that worked as messengers and like clerks and shit.

[Robert Evans]

Again, this is like the problem of, like, just this thing you get on Twitter whenever stuff happens where it's like somebody has attacked this group of people that like, leftists broadly dislike, and it's like, I don't know, wait a minute. To see if that's who they hit.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

You know, I'm not talking about, you know, the recent thing, but like, it happens often where it's like, yeah. Turns out like, oh, no, no, that's not. That's not who got hurt. Yeah. Because that's, you know, with bombs, very hard to be. It's the same thing. Like, it's not just a leftist thing. Like, it's mostly not a leftist thing. It's a thing that I grew up watching all of the adults around me celebrate as, like, bombs got dropped in places that I now know because I understand more about bombs and talk to people who were in those places when they were being bombed, were largely killing civilians because precision bombing is mostly a myth.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, totally.

[Robert Evans]

It's just like, people love explosions.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And the guy who had recently just tried to kill Mussolini earlier in the story didn't do it because.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Wasn't a good bomb. Chance.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. And don't make bombs. I shouldn't need to say that. Don't be making bombs. Don't do bombs. Bombs. Bombs, bad. You will not be the one who figures out how to use bombs ethically. No one ever has been.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. And this wasn't some kids who died as collateral damage. But we killed some big shots. This was all collateral damage. No regular damage.

[Robert Evans]

Cool. Really put the fear of God into those people who didn't get hurt.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yep. And I would argue that of every major political ideology of the last 200 years, anarchism probably has the least innocent blood on its hands.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah, yeah. In part because we generally don't wind up in power.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, totally.

[Robert Evans]

Which is, you know, I mean, is part of the goal, but.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, totally. But the Wall street bombing is a decent chunk of the innocent blood on our hands of the anarchist movement.

[Robert Evans]

That's a bad one.

[Margaret Killjoy]

The most likely suspect is an Italian anarchist named Mario Budda, who was actually probably with Sacco when they robbed and killed those people in the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Mario Buddha is, like, a mystery man in history, and there's a lot of, like, takes on him, and he was, like, kind of almost everywhere that violence was happening. Maria Buddha went on to almost certainly become a fascist informant in Italy.

[Robert Evans]

Cool.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. And almost certainly foil another anarchist attempt on Mussolini's life.

[Robert Evans]

He is the worst. Yeah, you're right. That is as shitty as you can possibly be as an anarchist militant.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I know.

[Robert Evans]

Honestly, I'm mad, but I am a little impressed. Like, if I was making up an anarchist for you to get mad at, I couldn't do better than this.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Absolutely. After murdering a bunch of kids and shit in the name of anarchy, he made his way back to Italy, Got caught up in the hubbub.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. It stops someone from killing Mussolini.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Jesus.

[Margaret Killjoy]

By 1933, it seems likely that he is cooperating with police and informing on anarchists. And a lot of, like, people who are really into anarchist history are skeptical of this because for a while, the only information that anyone had about this was that a communist newspaper accused him of this at the time.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And a lot of people, even anarchists, listened and were like, oh, we don't trust this guy anymore. But other people were like, oh, that's the communist playing sectarian politics. And then later, you can see historians have done the work of being like, here's where Mario Budo was dropped off the list of dangerous anarchists to keep an eye out for. And, like, here's, you know, his. Basically, like. Like, the fascists took him under their wing and even if half of what they say about Mario Buddha is true, I don't like him at all. I don't like blowing up kids on Wall Street. I don't like cooperating with fascists, and I don't like foiling an attempt on Mussolini's life.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, again, really? One of my very few lines is, you probably should don't go. Don't be killing kids. Dbkk. That's my little, like, what would Jesus do bracelet. In case you ever need not kill cats. Yeah. Look at a bracelet. Oh, no, you know what? I shouldn't kill kids. Also, if you need to look at a bracelet to remind you not to kill kids, I would. Maybe. There's a lot of things you probably need to do.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Therapy. Yeah. Meanwhile, back to a regular anarchist. One I like who doesn't become a fascist.

[Robert Evans]

Sure.

[Margaret Killjoy]

There's a blacksmith named Umberto, I promise you another Umberto Tomasini. Umberto got involved in politics when he was 13. He joined the 1909 General Strike in response to the murder of the Spanish anarchist, educator and veteran of the pod, Francisc Farrar. He went on to fight in World War I. He won a cross for valor. But according to his own take, what happened is he got to the war because he was conscripted and he just shot into the air, and he was, like, trying not to kill anyone.

[Robert Evans]

Well, yeah, that's actually. I mean, there's some evidence, although the studies around it have been to a degree. There's a lot of critiques about them, but, like, some evidence that that was more the norm than not with combat soldiers.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And I bet, especially when you're talking about, like, trenches and stuff, where you're like, yes, go shoot that dot on the horizon. Whereas, like, if someone's, like, running through a trench trying to kill me, I'm like, I'm gonna shoot that man. Even if we have the same political ideology, if someone's trying to kill me.

[Robert Evans]

With it, I just don't want to get shot.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, but. Yeah, no, totally. And he spent some time as a POW during the war, and then he returned home to return to work as a blacksmith. And he more formally committed to anarchism alongside his brothers, who, like everyone else, they left the Socialist Party in 1921 after the Socialists sold out the movement. Again, I don't know as much about that, but that is what Umberto felt and his brothers felt. Umberto's life could easily be his own episode. He helped get the bombs from one Geno to the other Geno in 1926. Then spent six years in prison during the crackdown on like after Mussolini came to power, he sent a whole bunch of the anarchists to prison. Right. During those six years he met an anarchist in prison named Mario Buddha. Then Umberto fled Italy on foot to Yugoslavia. Then he went to Paris where he met his partner Anna and had his son Rene. In 1936, Spain was under attack and so Umberto left the then safety of Paris to go to the front lines teaching anarchists about trench warfare. And then he became an anarchist spec ops guy and he went off to go mine Francois ships.

[Robert Evans]

Oh cool. He's the opposite of the guy who just killed children and saved Mussolini.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And he shouldn't have been friends with that guy. He was arrested by Stalinists and prevented from attacking the fascists. While he was off to go mine these ships, he broke out of Stalinist prison and then he returned back to the prison he'd just broken out of alongside anarchists from the government to negotiate everyone's release. I think this is the same situation as the last man, the missile inventor man. But this might have just happened a bunch of times. Yeah, because I read about these in different sources. Then in 1937 he goes back to France so he can plot how to kill Mussolini. One problem. One of his co conspirators, a man who he has absolute trust for, is Mario Buddha, whom he had met in prison. Mario leaked the plan to the Italian police who foiled it. After the war, Mario Buddha went back to the anarchist movement. Hooray.

[Robert Evans]

Great, he sounds trustworthy. I'm sure he's really worked on things.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, you know, don't want to cancel him just for saving Mussolini's life and murdering children. I can't find much about this particular assassination attempt that he foiled. Mostly I found a lot of ins and outs about the informant. But to follow Umberto, he, like so many other anarchists, wound up in a non Nazi concentration camp in France. Then he was turned over to the Italian police where he was imprisoned until the end of the war. Finally he's freed. He returns to his wife and his son and his work as a blacksmith and to anarchist organizing. When the spirit of 68 swings through, he starts organizing again. He's like about 70 years old and he's like organizing with a bunch of 20 year old kids. Right, because it's 1968, right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. That's who there's gonna be to organize with.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, I think it's cool as shit. He kept publishing shit that would send him back to jail. I Think he was sent back to jail like multiple times just for continuing to publish anarchist literature. And then he died in 1980. He wrote an autobiography, but I don't believe it's been translated. And there's a documentary about him called an anarchist life from 2013 that I haven't seen yet that I want to see. And he was real cool. But I don't know what he did to try and kill Mussolini. I just know he made the wrong friend.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, well, we all do sometimes.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

For example, I mean, there was one summer that Benito Mussolini and I were inseparable. I mean, we would spend just hours on the beach telling each other's secrets, having picnics, you know, there was that one wine drenched night. And then I found out he'd been the dictator of Italy this whole time. I had no idea, Margaret. I had no idea.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I know. I mean, what's funny is that pre him becoming Mussolini, that is the story that a lot of people tell people.

[Robert Evans]

To have that story like that woman.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Leda, who was probably his lover, who was an anarchist, who was like. Later she was like, I misjudged his character, you know?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Hey, whomst amongst us hasn't been friends with the inventor of fascism.

[Robert Evans]

Well, Cohen, I mean, let's. We've got. There was another Italian who might deserve that title a little more. But we talk about him on behind the Bastards.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Wait, which one?

[Robert Evans]

Oh, the guy who wore a banana hammock. One sec, Wait.

[Margaret Killjoy]

What? Did he invent the banana hammock?

[Robert Evans]

No, no, no. But he.

[Eva]

I don't remember this person's name either. We definitely talked about it though.

[Robert Evans]

Gabriel D'Annunzio.

[Eva]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

Gabriel D'AnnunzIO, who was a big influence on Mussolini and was like. Is often credited as the inventor of fascism. He never called himself a fascist. He's like partially right. There's not just one guy, but he is earlier in the chain of the development of fascism as a concept than Mussolini, Mussolini and an influence on Benito.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, okay.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Gabriel D'Annunzia. You can listen to our two parter on him. Very much worth it. He is the guy who, when Fume is an independent city, he's a guy who marches into Fume and takes it over as like along with a bunch of. There were anarchists and communists and fascists all kind of together because they were all very much anti. Just all of the things that are going on right now. But those ideologies hadn't really like hardened into the. In the concrete way they would a couple of years later. Fascinating. Time. Kind of like how a lot of our most prominent right wing fa, a lot of our most prominent fascist media ideologues today were part of Occupy.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. God. Actually, the Occupy versus Fume thing is. Actually makes a lot of really specific sense. That's the thing that's like, it's so hard to talk about is that in a certain way fascism is the Red Brown alliance because it is taking ideas from leftism but applying them to right wing ideology.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Well, two more people at least tried to kill Mussolini. One of them don't know much about isn't even on the list of people who tried to kill Mussolini. Wikipedia. His name is Domenico Bavone and he was a Republican. He's the Republican on our list. He tried to build bombs to kill Mussolini, but. But he didn't go to the bomb making workshop the punk show flyer told him about in Brussels.

[Robert Evans]

That's a shame.

[Margaret Killjoy]

So he failed at making the bombs properly and he blew up his own house on September 5, 1931, killing his own mother.

[Robert Evans]

Well, bad job, bruh. That's about as bad. I mean, and again, don't build bombs. There are so many. By far the most normal story in political radical tries to make a bomb is political radical kills themselves, their friends or their family. Yeah, you don't make bombs.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, they're very indiscriminate. And under interrogation, he admitted he was trying to kill Mussolini and he was shot in the back by a firing squad. And then there is Angelo Pellegrino Sabardoletto. Angelo was born in 1907 in Mel, Italy, and he was the fifth of 11 children. Which means, I do not need to tell you he was from a Catholic family. But he was. His family was poor as hell. The article I read specifically indicated they were poor as hell because they had 11 children. But you know, whatever you do, you people can make their own decisions about how many kids to have. They fled poverty to France, then Luxembourg, then Belgium. Angelo was a miner and a machine hand. He became an anarchist as a teenager, talking to other immigrant workers who were mostly political refugees. Soon enough he was on lists of dangerous extremists and draft dodgers and shit. And he was inspired by Michelo Shirou. And he met almost the exact same fate in 1932. He went to Rome to kill Mussolini. But like Michele before him, he couldn't find a moment when he could bomb Mussolini without hurting anyone else. He spent months trying. Should have just bought a gun. That man should have bought a gun. I mean, whatever.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know how Hard it was to buy guns in Mussolini's Italy.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Fair enough.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Margaret Killjoy]

But, you know, he spent months trying, and he was on the verge of giving up when, like Michele, he was arrested, seemingly by happenstance on a train station. Just like some cops were like, eh, you're suspicious, we're gonna search you. Which is, you know, fascism. Also, the same thing happens in New York City subways, but, you know, whatever.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Margaret Killjoy]

When he was searched, he had a Swiss passport, a pistol. Oh, he had a fucking gun. Whatever.

[Robert Evans]

Well, okay, I guess not that hard.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Question answered.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah, and two bombs. And he was tortured and under torture. He said he was there to avenge Michele Shiro. He'd written a letter previously that year that said, quote, I have no choice to be free. Tyranny must be beaten to build tomorrow a new order in which all can enjoy the fruits of their labor and freely express their thoughts. We must destroy today all the injustices which render this impossible. His trial was a show trial. It was two days long. Journalists decried him as surly and sinister and would, like, literally make stuff up about how he looked. They were like, he had a low forehead, you know, which he didn't. But even if he did, fuck you, you know, his lawyer asked him to write Mussolini for clemency. He refused. He shouted, long live anarchy when he was shot in the back. After he was killed, the fascist government decided to hide forever his burial site. No one knows where his body is. A biographer for Mussolini said that he would have pardoned the anarchists if they had asked because he lauded their courage. I mean, considering a lot of his fucking people were former anarchists.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I don't know, maybe you would have. But fuck that. I mean, whatever. I wouldn't be mad if anyone was like, oh, please don't kill me, Mr. Mussolini. Whatever. I wouldn't be like, you weakling gives a shit.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, Mussolini, I hardly know. Yeah, did I already do that joke? It just occurred to me.

[Margaret Killjoy]

So, yeah, originally I was going to talk about the partisans who finally did them in, but I think we've covered a lot of trying to kill Mussolini. There are too many cool people I didn't want to skim past. You got a socialist, a Catholic, a Republican, and at least five anarchists who tried to do him in, but it took a whole ass war. We got him in the end, though.

[Robert Evans]

And you know what, folks? What I'll say right now is you can still try to take a shot at Mussolini and he's a lot easier to hit. Now, I assume he's buried somewhere Probably.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I feel like.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, go dig him up.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. And take a shot.

[Robert Evans]

Take a shot.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Harder to miss that way.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Yeah. Gender neutral shooting range. That's what they say.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's right. This gravesite, take a shot with. You know, it could just be with the tool that you have on hand, so to speak. That was a penis joke.

[Eva]

Yeah, we know.

[Margaret Killjoy]

It could have been a pee joke because you could have a tool on hand without a penis.

[Robert Evans]

You're right. You can use a shiwi, for example. You know, there's all sorts of great. Or just you cut the bottom of a water bottle out and then like cut the top to widen it and you kind of jam it in there. It sort of works.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And I can't believe that's the note we're ending on, but that's where we're at. Everyone go kill Mussolini. But only Mussolini. We're talking about the past.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, only in the past.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And if you want to know more about the knock on effects of various types of violence, listen to this entire show's history because it is full of knock on effects, many of which are negative.

[Robert Evans]

And in terms of things I will continue to say for the modern era, don't make bombs. Don't make bombs.

[Eva]

Cool People who Did Cool Stuff is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Margaret Killjoy]

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[Margaret Killjoy]

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[Robert Evans]

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