Cool People Who Did Cool StuffPart Two: All the People Who Tried to Kill Mussolini
In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Robert Evans about the awful large amount of people who tried to take Mussolini out.
Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff. You're a weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening, people try to confront those bad things in various ways, lots of various ways. One of the way, not just a person. One of the people who's also on this podcast with me is Robert Evans, my guest.
Hi, that's right, I'm Robert Evans, and uh, I'm Robert Evans.
That's me. Well, I brought you on because you're an expert about Italy.
Yeah, I mean I know several things about Italians, Margaret number one, number two.
Spice, here's where we Italian.
Whatever the hat is that they that the that the chefs wear in those kind of racist caricatures. Look, it's fine. We all decided that it's okay with Italians now.
Yeah, despite the huge trial that we talked about last time about anti ty and prejudice in the United States.
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, hanging you know, yeah exactly, hang am I.
Yeah, maybe upside down maybe, Uh, that's a dead Mussolini joke, which is which is gonna happen in today's episode. A lot of people are gonna try. Give the old college try. Our producer is Sophie. Hi, Sophie, it's me. I'm Sophie High. I realized when I got my podcast you listened to the most in twenty twenty four that four of them were Sophie podcasts. The loyalties unmatched, unmatched.
Yeah, that's right.
I'm a little bit surprised that that not all five were. But I think the problem was that the Pathfinder podcast I listened to is really long. Episode need one raised like five? Yeah, you need one break for me?
We should do a Pathfinder podcast, Margaret.
I would love to do a live play podcast.
Maybe I'll reach out to the guy who created Pathfinder and listens to our podcasts talk to him about that.
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, cools on media needs a live play podcast, That's all I'm saying. And if you listener agree, bug these people on the internet about it. And then, because I needed more podcasts to be on whatever, I don't care.
There's a shortage of podcasts. I don't know if you're aware of this. Yeah, but the CDC has said that it's probably the largest threat to our national collective health.
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. That's right, that's right. All podcast mics, Oh my god, that actually is good. Most of the podcast mics are probably not made in the US. Whatever I got mine, I have no idea.
I have no idea where they make our microphones. Margaret, No, no, I do not.
Yeah. 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've 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 gonna talk about Rory, who's our audio engineer. Hi Rory, Hi, right, Hy Rory, And that our theme musical was written force by unwoman, and that Gino Lucetti was born working class in the year nineteen hundred in Karra, Tuscany. You ever heard of Carra.
I've heard of Tuscany because the Tuscan coast is pretty famous. I've never heard of Carra other than that. It makes me think of that song that goes Tara Ra boom da, which I don't know what that's a reference to.
Is that a slur? I have no idea.
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, 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.
It's good ass marble. Yeah.
The other thing the Carrara is famous for is anarchism.
Oh okay.
When my anarchist friends took me through Italy, when we were near Carrara, they pointed out and they were like, hey, that's that place was an anarchist stronghold for a long long time among the Stonemas, and 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 Carra tour.
Oh wow, really double dipping? Yeah, I mean, and that's you know, because there's so many it's like you and I always say, Margaret, with so many anarchistsinnar audience, you know, every there's nothing that goes together like anarchism and marble quarries. Yeah, 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.
Marble. One time a statute of limitations ago, I had to empty all the marbles out of my pocket before a mass arrest.
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. Yeah, but it's pretty though. Yeah. Years and years ago, my dad told me this spooky story that he wrote called the thirty seven 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 nineteen twenties. 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 nights out 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 okay, this second time we've had an anti fascist get it in the neck and survive on the show. The other one was George Orwell.
Yeah, yeah, that's uh. I mean, I'm not gonna say but that that's very lucky.
Yeah, exactly. Don't get shot in the neck.
The neck is very low on the number of places in your body you would want to get shot.
Yeah, not a good tourniquet spot. It turns out.
Hard to turniqit and neck unless you're Google AI, which has told me repeatedly that you can turnikate the neck. Hell yeah, that's just a hanging, folks. You're just strangling someone to death. Oh my god, don't turniquit next.
Yeah, it seems self evident, but an AI is not does not have our best interests in heart.
No, it just sees well, there's fucking there's fucking arteries there.
Turn it, get away. 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. Yeah. 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, right, And they all agreed what needed to be done was kilmusse. 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. Right. As a libcom dot 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.
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, yeah, but always very brave.
Yeah. And specifically other groups like putting us in the front. Yeah, because that's an aspect of it. Yeah. I remember when I first became an anarchist. I was like just going to protest and things twenty seven 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 like soak up off 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 anarchists 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 esthetic as fuck off the Tuscany coast, and this time there were no informants among them. He had several co conspirators worth mentioning. Stefano Vadieroni 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. Vaderoni funded the thing by selling his family's land near Carrara. Another anarchist, Leandro Sorrio, 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 in stand trial. There you go, we want to make a statement. Maltesta, the anarchist guy who's old at this point, was briefed on the plan and signed off on. 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 Mangino 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, no, because.
That would be very dangerous. Margaret, I 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 I put the dudes.
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 like 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. Yeah, fair enough. In this case, it didn't get through the windshield. This is the guy who should have brought a rock. Yeah, if 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.
That sounds about right, Yeah, 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 isn't myriadic acid the thing in like.
Swimming pools, isn't that chlorine? No?
No, I mean I think you have mriadic acid for swimming pools too. I remember I've seen like jars one sec.
I actually didn't want to google this today. That's what happened to me today is I was like, I wonder what this stuff is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you use mriadic acid to lower like pH in your pool. It's like, I'll let like a shit. Millions of Americans have this shit and like their shed.
Okay, yeah, I have no idea why you would. I either he was being really extra or like.
Or he just thought it and he might have thought it was more sketchy than it was. I don't know.
Yeah, like this one's his acid, you know, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, when it's really no, 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 like backyards because they have pools.
Yeah. And also like there's so much mythbuilding, 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 dumb dumb bullets instead of hollow points, because that's what they called him, 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 thirty years in prison, the waiter got twenty years, and the tin smith got nineteen years and nine months. Thirty years is the mac anyone's allowed to be given in Italy at the time, which again more I mean later they're going to 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.
Okay, yeah, sure, yeah, his best friend, the sparrow. I mean that's sweet, actually, I know. 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.
Yeah, he lived off of I think is just literally soup and bread, and that sounds about right. He died after seventeen years in prison in nineteen forty three. 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 fiancee, who kept visiting him until the end of his days, deny this adamantly. And I'm 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 sixty 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, 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 time frame.
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 Gino. And I want to tell you about that story. But did you know what I want to tell you about? More? Uh?
Products?
I love products.
Services. Maybe I don't know if you'd ever if there'd ever be a service on here.
I do like a good service.
Oh okay, yeah, okay, fascinating.
Yeah, no, yeah, whatever whatever they pay me to talk about, or whatever they pay someone else to talk about in an insert into my podcast. All right, I'm really excited about here, and we're back.
We are.
Gina Lucetti had a cousin, Gino Bibby, very serious country.
As you said, Yes, absolutely.
Gino Bibby was from a more middle class background. His father owned a sawmill. Gino Bibby. Did you know what anarchists invented? The missile?
No? Was he like a scientist being forced to do stuff by the not So I'm gonna get to it. You know what, that's got to 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 anarchists, you know, in anarchist related groups that have used missiles and are using them right now. But uh boy, howdie, it's a general rule, not a tool that has reduced state power.
Yeah, oh, that's an L.
I know.
It's big L for us. 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 gonna pull out missiles, guided missiles that go twenty kilometers in the Spanish Civil War, shit missile in this case being a rocket but guided. Yeah yeah yeah. And as a teen, this second Geno, Gino 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. Great, because they were a little extra the fascists. This did not make Gino less radical, It just made him more angry. He's going to have the last laugh against fascists in.
Italy, as often how things go.
Yeah yeah. He spent a while in lock up for fighting fascists in the early nineteen twenties, then fled to Spain, where he started learning how to fly in case he needed to assassinate Mussolini from the air, Okay, which is kind of like how I learned a while ago for a prison break episode that an awful lot of the prison breaks in the early aughts were it used.
To be a lot easier to get a helicopter.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, learned to fly. That's how you get people out of prison back in the day.
Yeah.
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 two. But Gino designed missiles that went twenty kilometers and the Drudi column fired them at Francoist forces. So it started it off as a good idea, just a very Pandora's box.
That's pretty cool. Yeah, 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? No, you ever played foosball?
Yeah?
Is that ours? Did you ever know? An anarchist named Alejandro I forget his last name because it's not my script invented foosball?
Alejandro Foos let's call it. Let's say Alan fos cool.
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.
Okay, So fascinating Spanish Civil War.
The anarchist gave us missiles and foosball.
To the two key cornerstones of the of modern civilization. Missiles and foosball.
Yeah. Meanwhile, while Gino's inventing missiles and doing specop's missions, the Stalinists murdered his sister. Listen to any of our episodes about the Spanish Civil War for more about how Stalinis betrayed their comrades and started arresting folks that they didn't like and torturing people and killing them. The Stalinists actually arrested Gino two, but the anarchists in the government, which is another odd thing that happened in the spanishivil 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 VG France one, where from he escaped and then he moved back to Italy and he joined the Partisans there, and 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 one hundred on the eighth of August nineteen ninety nine. He was cremated with a red and black scarf tied around his neck. Ashes were interred in the anarchist corner of the graveyard in Carrara.
Man, that's that's dope.
Yeah.
Also nineteen ninety nine great year to kind of clock out. Yeah, miss missed a lot of messiness, got to see most of the good star treks.
Yeah. And uh yeah. Geno Bibe, I got kind of tiary when I was writing about the life of the anarchist spy, pilot, bombmaker, engineer, partisan.
An invention spilot, spilot Margaret. Oh, spilot yes, the spilot, Yes, 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.
Uh oh. 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 Gino one through Gino two's grenade at Mussolini, another young hero stepped forward to give it as all, a really young hero, kind of a This is the most heartbreaking part of the story. A fifteen year old kid who had just quit the fascist youth and become an anarchist.
That's good for him.
Antio Zamboni. God damn, I promised you, Zamboni.
Get Jamie Loftus on the horn. She needs to know about this name.
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 me. Never mind, No, no, I'm not allowed to join the bit about trying to implicate okay, just checking, 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.
By a mysterious person with a bad, fake Boston accent. No for anyone who he doesn't know what we're talking about. I'm proud of you. Well done. Way to be less terminally online. You should listen to Jamie Lobs's podcasts. You should. 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 nineteen twenty six and now, yeah, Mamolo called himself quote an anarchist and a fascist, So okay, what a guy.
I mean, there's a lot of that too, unfortunately, yet could look into their I mean, he considered himself and was very angry about other like people who called themselves anarchists because he had a different attitude towards it. But the guy who wrote A 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 One memoir.
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.
Yeah. Yeah.
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 stab this child to death. Oh, I've you know a fifteen year old either looks like a kid or an adult. Yeah, Antio is a kid. This is a child. Yeah, I mean every fifteen year old is a child. But the crowd knew they were killing a child. Yeah, yeah, they did not.
It was not just like somebody who could have passed for seventeen or eighteen, Like they were very aware they were killing a kid.
Yeah, he could have passed for twelve.
Yeah, gotcha.
I looked at the I don't normally do this to myself, but I looked at the corpse photo because the only other photos that anyone has of him is when he's like eight, 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. The New York Times reported the father walked into the police station to see the body and said, quote, 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 gonna 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, it seems like what fascism will do.
Yeah, yeah, violent fascists might take over if Mussolini's killed. And on the exact same page of the New York Times from nineteen twenty six, there's a different article about fascist black shirts rating anti fascist newspapers at gunpoint. Uh huh, but you know, but like in a normal way, you know. Yeah, yeah, being a fascist did not protect Mamolo the father. He and his sister in law were both sentenced to thirty years for being vaguely connected to Antio. Basically, they're like, oh, the kid couldn't come up with it. It must have been a plot by previously anarchy dad. But by nineteen thirty two, the elder Zamboni received a pardon directly from Mussolini in exchange for becoming an informant for the fascists. Then, after the war, Mamlo went one eighty again and started writing pamphlets speaking of the courage of his son and started publishing anarchist material again. Great, he died in nineteen fifty two. And he's not the only anarchist in the story who went fascist and then anarchist again. Yeah, this guy, I don't like him.
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 principles totally.
I'm just so mad at him for turning his back on his kid and trying to throw this dead kid under the bus to save his own ass.
And it sounds like a guy who sucks. Yeah, sounds like a guy a bastard that maybe so one should get behind.
I know, I was kind of a little weird guy too, Like, yeah, 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. Nope.
Yeah, nobody's ever killed a dictator. Being like this is this is more relaxing than staying home at night and reading the newspaper.
Yeah, I'm gonna get away from this just fine.
Yeah yeah, although later the.
People who do kill Missolini do.
But yeah, that's a different time. That's really not an assassination.
No. No. The next attempt we're going to talk about was a man who, like Atano bread She 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 Mikela Shiu Okay, which to me looks like it's spelled Michelle if anyone's curious, But it's like the French, but it's not. It's Italian, so it's Macla Miclay. Shiro was born in eighteen ninety nine on Sardinia, which is an Italian island. His father had already emigrated to the US and Michaelay was raised by his mother. He was twice arrested in demonstrations as a kid. He was conscripted into World War One, 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, it's a bummer, yeah.
Mckelay 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'm gonna 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. Yeah, but he made himself two bombs and then he traveled to Rome in January nineteen thirty one. We've only got his confession under duress to work from, so we don't. You know, famously not always the most.
Honest and not a great source.
Yeah, but ogonal 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 Mssolini. But in Rome he rented two hotel rooms, one for himself and one for his bombs. Because bombs need privacy too, you know.
Of course, yes, that's actually my primary political issue, yeah, is extending privacy rights to modern military explosives. You know, nobody needs to know what a couple of jade ams get up to in their spare time. That's between them and God and whatever village they're hitting.
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, 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.
Yeah, 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, of course, And this is the thing that has come up a bunch of times in the show, but has left out a lot of the sensationless stuff about bomb assassinations, as all of the bystanders who get killed. There have been so so many times in history, and there's gonna 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 third, nineteen thirty one. 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. Wow, and then he shouted, long live anarchy and put the gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger. Well, okay, all four men survived. Oh my god.
Yeah, wow, I mean that does have to win my award for worst with a gun of anyone on this podcast. To shoot four people in pluting yourself and have them all live is a real yeah. Honestly though, I got to say, given the time, something that probably just goes down to how much worse ammunition was back then. You know, powder loads were less reliable. He may have loaded himself, you know.
Yeah, like I think he like he seriously injured one of the cops in himself, Jesus Christ. He was like rushed to emergency surgery, and they, you know, wanted him fit to stand trial.
Right, stand trial for killing no one.
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 Missolini. In fact, he pretty much they were like, what are you doing. He was like, I'm here to kill Missolini.
Uh.
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 nineteen thirty one, 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 out 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 two thirty am 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 twenty four fascists, folks from his home of Sardinia, who had volunteered specifically to kill him.
Well, I guess that's a nice at least you.
No, it's your guys.
You went to high school with murdering. Yeah, totally, Actually sounds much worse.
Yeah. His wife, Minnie lived to nineteen eighty seven, dying at eighty three. Their son Spartaco, died in two thousand and five. 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. 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 sure, but before that, let's talk about the other opposite products and services.
Ah, I love products and services.
Well, someone's going to get hurt.
Mh's that's the promise we make.
Here they are.
And we're burke.
We are burt. Now I'm going to talk about my least favorite anarchist in history.
Oh, there's a couple of jokes. There's a couple of jokes I could make.
We know, but yeah, 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. Yeah. 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. One thing that you can say was probably invented by someone who called themselves an anarchist at the time. Was the car bomb? Uh?
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. No, well, it was a vbied, which I guess is like an it's in that line of descent.
Yeah, I'm still sorry you to see anyone die.
It's okay, I mostly I mean they were far enough away that I just kind of saw them turned into smoke.
Okay, yeah, no, I'm sure that doesn't have any effects on yourself. No, not at all, not at all. Yeah. Before the Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest terrorist attack in US history was the Wall Street bombing of September sixteenth, nineteen twenty.
Oh.
I have heard of this. Yeah, 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, Right, there's a whole book about the history of the car bomb called Buddhas Wagon, because we're going to get to ooh, that's how it was probably Mario Buddha. Yeah, in this car bomb, I thought there were talk.
I was hoping there were some Buddhist history with car bombs that I hadn't heard. But okay, that makes sense.
No, I mean maybe I don't, no, but yes, in this carriage was one hundred pounds of dynamite five hundred 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 forty people, and then like injure, hundreds of people and almost everyone that killed were like fucking kids that worked as messengers and like clerks and shit.
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. Yeah, you know, I'm not talking about you know, the recent thing, but like it happens often where it's like yeah, it 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.
Yeah, totally.
It's just like people love explosions.
And the guy who had recently just tried to kill MUSSLINI earlier on the story didn't do it because it wasn't a good buy chance. Yep.
And don't make bombs. I shouldn't need to say that. Don't be making bombs, don't do bombs. Bombs. Bomb's bad. You will not be the one who figures out how to use bombs ethically, no one ever has been.
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.
Cool really put the fear of God into those people who didn't get hurt.
Yep. And I would argue that of every major political ideology of the last two hundred years. Anarchism probably is the least innocent blood on its hands.
Oh yeah, yeah, in part because we generally don't wind up in power. Yeah totally, which is you know, I mean is part of the goal. But yeah, yeah totally. But the Wall Street bombing is a decent chunk of the innocent blood on our hands.
Of the anatist movement.
That's a bad one.
The most likely suspect is an Italian anarchist named Mario Buddha, who was actually probably with Sacho when they robbed and killed those people in the Sacho and Vanzetti case. Mario Budda 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 like violence was happening. Mario Buddha went on to almost certainly become a fascist infemant in Italy. Cool, yeah, and almost certainly foil another anarchist attempt on Mussolini's life. He is the worst.
Yeah, you're right, that is as shitty as you can possibly be as an anarchist militant. I know, honestly, I'm mad. I'm mad, but I am a little impressed. Yeah, Like if I was making up an anarchist for you to get mad at. I couldn't do better than this.
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.
Yeah it stopped someone from killing Musolini.
Yeah, yeah, Jesus. By nineteen thirty three, 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, yeah, 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 plain 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, he's basically like the fascist 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 a fascists, and I don't like Foilian an attempt on Musolini's life. Yeah again, I uh yeah really.
One of my very few lines is you probably should don't go don't be killing kids.
dB kk.
That's my little like, what would Jesus do? Bracelet in case you ever need to kill cat? Yeah, look at a bracelet. Oh no, you know what, I shouldn't kill kids?
Yeah.
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 therapy.
Yeah. Meanwhile, back to a regular anarchist when I like, who doesn't become a fascist? Sure, there's a blacksmith named Umberto. I promise you another Mberto Thomasini. Mberto got involved in politics when he was thirteen. He joined the nineteen oh nine General Strike in response to the murder of the Spanish anarchists. Educator and veteran of the Pod francisc Ferrar. He went on to fight in World War One. 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.
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.
And I bet especially when you're talking about like trenches and stuff, where you're like, yes, 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 I was trying to kill you with that, I just don't want to get shot. Yeah, but yeah, no, totally. And he 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, aside his brothers, who, like all everyone else, they left the Socialist Party in nineteen twenty one 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 Gino to the other Gino in nineteen twenty six, then spent six years in prison during the crackdown on it. Like after Musolin he 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 Renee. In nineteen thirty six, 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 specops guy and he went off to go mine franco as ships.
Oh, cool I is the opposite of the guy who just killed children and saved Mussoliti.
Yeah, exactly, exactly, and he shouldn't have been friends with that guy. He was arrested by Stalinists and prevented from attacking the fascist while he was off to go mind these ships. He broke out of Stalinis's 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 nineteen thirty seven, he goes back to France so he can plot how to kill Mussolini. One problem, one of his co conspirators, a man who has absolute trust for is Mario Budda, whom he had met in prison. Mario leaked the plan to the Italian police, who foiled it. After the war, Mario Budda went back to the anarchist movement.
Hooray, great, he sounds trustworthy.
I'm sure.
Yeah, really worked on things.
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 sixty eight swings through, he starts organizing again. He's like about seventy years old, and he's like organizing with a bunch of twenty year old kids, right, because it's the it's nineteen sixty eight.
Right, Yeah, that's who there's going to be to organize with.
Yeah, I think it's Coole 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 nineteen eighty. 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 twenty thirteen 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.
Yeah, well we all do sometimes.
Yeah.
For example, I mean there was one summer that Benita Mussolini and I were inseparable. I mean we would spend just hours on the beach, telling each other's secrets, having pig nicks. 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.
I know. I mean, what's funny is that pre him becoming Mussolini. That is the story that a lot of people tell. People do have that story, like the woman Lita, who is probably his lover, who is an anarchist, who was like later she was like I misjudged his character. You know, Yeah, he booms amongst us. Hasn't been friends with the inventor of fascism?
Well Cohen, I mean, let's we've got there was another Italian who might deserve that title a little more. But we talked about him on Behind the Bastards. Wait which one, Oh, the guy who wore a banana hammock one sec.
Wait, what does he invent the banana Hammick. No, no, no, but he uh, I don't.
Remember this person's name either.
We definitely talked about it though.
Gabriel Banunzio, Yes, Gabriel Danunzio, 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 fascist mess a concept than Mussolini and an influence on Benito. Yeah. Oh h yeah, Gabriel Dnunzio. You can listen to our two parter on him, very much worth it. He is the guy who in fume as an in dependent city. He's a guy who marches into fume and takes it over as like, oh, 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 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 fas a lot of them are prominent fascist media ideologues today. Were part of occupy.
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 into right wing ideology.
Yes.
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 he didn't go to the bomb making workshop for the punk show Flyer told him about in Brussels.
That's a shame.
So he failed at making the bombs properly, and he blew up his own house on September fifth, nineteen thirty one, killing his own mother.
Well, bad job, bro, that's about That's about his bad I mean, and again, don't build bombs. There are so many. By far, the most normal story in what political radical tries to make a bomb? Is political radical kills themselves, their friends or their family.
Yeah, yeah, don't make bombs. 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 Pellegrono Sabbard Aletto. Angelo was born in nineteen oh seven in mel Italy, and he was the fifth of eleven 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 eleven children. But you know, whatever you do, you people can make their own decisions on 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 Mikelo Sheirou and he met almost the exact same fate. In nineteen thirty two, he went to Rome to kill Mussolini, but like maclay before him, he couldn't find a moment when he could bomb Mussolini without hurting anyone else. He spent months trying, just bought a gun and should have bought a gun.
I mean whatever, I don't know how hard it was to buy guns in Mussolini's Italy, fair enough, Yeah.
But you know, he spent months trying, and he was on the verge of giving up when, like mcklay, he was arrested seemingly by happenstance on a train station, just like some cops were like, Eh, you're suspicious, We're going to search you. Which is you know, fascism. Also, the same thing happens in New York City subways, but you know whatever. Yeah, when he was searched, he had a Swiss passport, a pistol. Oh, he had a fucking gun.
Well, okay, I guess not that hard, yeah, question answered yeah, and two bombs and he was tortured, and under torture he said he was there to avenge mckelay 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. Yep, 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, mister Missolini. At whatever, I would be like you weakling.
Give uh yeah Mussolini, I hardly know. Ye, yeah, did I already do that joke? It just occurred to me.
So yeah. Originally I was going to talk about the Partisans who finally did him 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 pass. You got a Socialist, a Catholic, or Republican, at least five anarchists who tried to do him in, but it took a whole ass war. We got him in the end, though, 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 I feel like, yeah, go dig him up, yeah and take a shot. Take a shot. Yeah I had have miss that way. Yeah, gender neutral shooting range, that's what they say, 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.
Yeah, we know. I could have been a p joke because you can have a tool on hand without a penis You're right.
You could use you can use a shi wi for example. You know there's all sorts of grat 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. And I can't believe that's the note we're ending on, but that's where we're at. Everyone, Uh, go kill Mussolini, but only Mussolini.
We're talking about the past, yes, only in the past.
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.
And in terms of things I will continue to say for the modern era, don't make bombs.
Don't make bombs. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
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