A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: AFTERWORD TO THE BOOK - THE PEOPLE TYRANTINS NO LONGER WANT - (zero in conduct, Milan 2024) - THE "CORPTED" COMMUNITY OF ITALIAN ANARCHISTS - Natale Musarra (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

This book brings the attention of scholars and militants to some 
peculiarities of Italian anarchism, compared to other national and 
transnational 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/
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