Assassins against the Old Order: Italian Anarchist violence in fin-de-siècle Europe (original) (raw)

Abstract

Assassins Against the Older Order: Italian Anarchist Violence in fin-de-siècle Europe (University of Illinois Press, 2018.) Co-authored by Fraser M. Ottanelli and the late Nunzio Pernicone, the book provides a full-length study of the historical, economic, cultural, and political conditions, along with the transnational experiences in Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland and the United States, that led Italian anarchists to assassinate royal personages and political leaders at the end of the nineteenth century. The six "attentatori" described in this book do not conform to contemporary definitions of terrorists, with their emphasis on the slaughter of innocents. Instead, by virtue of targeting only prominent individuals deemed directly responsible for state violence and oppression, the actions of Italian anarchists were entirely consistent with a revolutionary practice inherited from the radical democrats who spearheaded the fight for national liberation and unity throughout the Risorgimento. Placed within the context of Italy’s grinding poverty and authoritarian methods of dealing with popular unrest and dissent, along with the economic and political pressures that fostered mass migration and the cosmopolitan nature of Italian anarchism, the attentats of the 1890s collectively represented acts of protest and rebellion against a political system and social order based on inequality, exploitation, and oppression.

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