This book brings the attention of scholars and militants to some
peculiarities of Italian anarchism, compared to other national andtransnational anarchisms, usually overlooked by historiographical
fashions and university teaching, which date back to the decade in which
much of the anarchist movement Italian ended up in the islands and
places of punishment intended for political refractors by the
exceptional laws of 1894. This was a period which profoundly marked the
history of the movement, rarefying its presence in the territories, but
in which the foundations were laid for its recovery in following decade,
activating ways of relating and internal political confrontation - in
which for example the public mixed with the private - which, renewed
with the political confinement in the fascist era, will continue to
influence life even after the Second World War and up to the present day .
The forced residence and the police confinement, with which the
anti-anarchist repression in Italy reached its peak, constituted in fact
two strongly identifying moments, capable - much more than the exile and
transnational activity of some of its main exponents - to unite the many
personalities of a very composite movement, in which even the humblest
stonemason found his voice, above all through the common human
condition, the direct knowledge also favored by the frequent movements
from one place of punishment to another, the struggles undertaken
against the most brutal police measures, the letters sent abroad that
often bypassed censorship, and a few courageous press organizations that
reported them.
The "restricted" community of anarchists, which was born in Tremiti
between 1895 and 1896, and developed in a network among the deportees in
all the Sicilian islands following the diaspora of Tremiti's convicts,
after the rebellion of 1 March 1896 in which Argante Salucci was killed,
is the same one that will operate in "virtual" mode when the former
anarchist convicts return to their territories or, in some cases,
daringly escape from forced domicile or emigrate abroad. It will
constitute the backbone of the new movement that will face the
challenges of the twentieth century.
This community, or network of political and friendly relationships
between anarchists, will have strengths and weaknesses that will have
repercussions on the life and subsequent evolution of Italian anarchism.
Among the merits, greater internal cohesion and solidarity - an apparent
paradox if we consider the co-presence of often totally divergent ideas
- which arose precisely from mutual respect and recognition, contributed
to lowering the polemical tones, to forging collaborative relationships
and even to the prospect of possible alliances with an anti-repressive,
pro-union, anti-religious, educational function, etc. Among the defects,
the greatest undoubtedly consists in that lack of representativeness of
the basic groups that the formation of an elite of "expert" militants,
despite its informality, brings with it.
Far from obtaining the repentance hoped for by the Savoy government,
forced domicile did not extinguish the anarchists' ambitions for
revolutionary struggle; on the contrary, it strengthened their fighting
spirit and ideological passion; it provided them with new ideas for
theoretical reflection and political development, and also sparked a
vast movement of civil protest and sympathy towards them. The islands
first of all revealed themselves to be places of meeting and discussion,
training grounds for anarchist culture and training, especially where
real educational structures were created for the purpose. There were
also attempts to apply the same principles that animated political
militancy in daily life and relationships. This experimentation with
elements of anarchist coexistence contributed on the one hand to
bringing the militants closer emotionally and on the other to seeking
forms of mediation, between the different theoretical positions, which
went beyond the contingent moment.
The militants closest to the anti-organisational tendency, then
pre-eminent in Italian anarchism, were especially involved in this
research. In the residual anarchist press, to which they sent their
interventions, and in particular in the "Avvenire Sociale" of Messina,
the director of the newspaper De Francesco, Galleani, Recchioni,
Binazzi, Damiani, Mazzoni, D'Angiò and the young Fabbri, forced
domicile, Raveggi and Parrini, exiles - the best-known names (to which
at least those of Pilade Tocci, Pilade Caiani, Giovanni Frangioni,
Giuseppe Prestandrea and Guglielmo Barnaba should be added) - gave rise
to a debate on the essence and reasons of anarchism from which
innovative formulas emerged, such as that - in many ways still current -
of an "integral", plural and inclusive anarchism, in which the various
associative and organizational modalities, the designs of a future
collectivist or communist society, the insurrectionary impatience or
workerist wait-and-see attitude took on equal validity as stages of an
evolutionary process towards an even freer world than the one conceived
by anarchists up until then.
The debate, which started from the writings of Sergio De Cosmo - the
main theoretician available to the anarchist movement in the early 1890s
within the country -, influenced in turn by the moral philosophy of
Jean-Marie Guyau, it was intertwined from March 1897 with that, also
aimed at a renewal of anarchism but on the basis of tactics and
political strategy, and probably for this reason ideologically more
staid, launched and conducted for ten months by Malatesta in the columns
of the " Agitation" of Ancona. From this union arose at the beginning of
the twentieth century that Program of the Socialist-Anarchist Federation
of Lazio, drawn up by two ex-convicts, Fabbri and Ceccarelli, which
while advocating the organization contains important openings to
pluralism and the autonomy of groups and individuals, so much so as to
state, "to dispel misunderstandings, so that it is not believed that it
is our intention to monopolize the movement, and above all so that the
doubt does not arise that our organization could limit the freedom of
initiative of each individual member", that that Federation "it is not
the whole party, nor do we claim the name of anarchists for our
association" and which in any case "is based on autonomy: autonomy of
individuals in groups, autonomy of groups in the federation; and it has
in no way a coercive character, since among us there is no predominance
of majorities or minorities and no one is obliged to do what he does not
believe is good or that he does not like to do even if he alone
constitutes the opposition".
There are therefore various problems still to be investigated in the
history of forced domicile as, in general, in the history of the Italian
anarchist movement. The study of the concentration camp universe that
hosted the anarchist convicts could, however, allow us to thoroughly
investigate that movement in its various components, as a network of
private as well as political relationships, in the methods of internal
and external confrontation/clash, even in its territorial peculiarities
and in the influences that the economic, political and cultural life of
their time had on it and on individual militants.
Christmas Musarra
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
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