Mussolini, Sacco-Vanzetti, and the Anarchists: The ... - Libcom

Mussolini, Sacco-Vanzetti, and the Anarchists 35
Neither the partisan nor the scholarly view is correct. Italian involvement in
the Sacco-Vanzetti case began in 1920, but it consisted largely of reluctant
gestures by a Liberal government that had long shown deep-rooted hostility
toward anarchism.'4 In the two years before Mussolini took office in October
1922, none of the Liberal prime ministers issued a formal protest against the
treatment accorded Sacco and Vanzetti, nor did they appeal privately to
American authorities. Yet although Mussolini's repression of the anarchists at
home after he came to power represented continuity with Liberal policy, he
actually did more than his predecessors to assist Sacco and Vanzetti.'5 During
the struggle for power between 1919 and 1922, while his Blackshirts battered
the socialists in the streets, Mussolini simultaneously extolled anarchist
revolutionary fervor and publicly favored the cause of Sacco and Vanzetti. As
prime minister, he reluctantly tempered his support for the defendants so as
not to antagonize American sensibilities. But behind Mussolini the diplomat
lurked a onetime revolutionary who harbored an instinctive solidarity with
two anarchists trapped in the judicial machinery of a "plutocratic" state he
had once violently excoriated and continued to detest.'6
On both sides of the Atlantic in 1919-20, a climate of right-wing reaction
prevailed, a climate marked by political violence and widespread social unrest
in which Italian anarchists were the targets of much of the repression. In the
of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case (London, 1963), pp. 380-8 1; it is mentioned in Joughin and
Morgan (n. 1 above), p. 278; Creagh, pp. 223-24; David Felix, Protest: Sacco-Vanzetti
and the Intellectuals (Bloomington, Ind., and London, 1965), pp. 230-31; and Luigi
Botta, Sacco e Vanzetti: Giustiziata la verita (Cavallermaggiore, 1978), p. 111.
14 Since the 1870s, Liberal Italy had regularly persecuted the anarchists, employing
the full administrative, judicial, and military power of the state against them. See
Nunzio Pernicone, Italian Anarchism, 1864-1892 (Princeton, N.J., 1993); Carl Levy,
"Italian Anarchism, 1870-1926," in For Anarchism: History, Theory, and Practice,
ed. David Goodway (London and New York, 1989), pp. 25-35; Richard Bach Jensen,
"The Italian and Spanish Governments and the Repression of Anarchist Terrorism,
1890-1914" (paper presented at the meeting of the American Historical Association,
Chicago, December 1991), and "Italy's Peculiar Institution: Internal Police Exile,
1861-1914," in Essays in European History, ed. June K. Burton (Lanham, Pa., New
York, and London, 1989), pp. 99-114.
'5 There is no adequate treatment of anarchism during the Fascist period. For a
general overview, see Un trentennio di attivita anarchica (1914-1945) (Cesena,
1953); Enzo Santarelli, Il socialismo anarchico in Italia, 2d ed. (Milan, 1973),
pp. 192-96; Adriana Dada, L'anarchismo in Italia: Fra movimento e partito: Storia e
documenti dell'anarchismo italiano (Milan, 1984), pp. 80-101.
16 Mussolini's long-standing animosity for American capitalism reemerged during
the period of the Italian Social Republic, 1943-45, when his speeches returned
repeatedly to the theme of "American plutocracy." See, e.g., his "Rapporto agli
ufficiali della divisione Littorio" (July 18, 1944), p. 104; "Roosevelt e le talpe
chieche" (January 16, 1944), pp. 296-98; "La democrazia dalle pance piene" (May 4,
1944), pp. 355-58; and "Nel gioco delle democrazie" (October 1, 1944), p. 410, all in
00 (n. 6 above), vol. 31. See also De Begnac, Taccuini (n. 3 above), p. 612.