Luigi Galleani

Luigi Galleani was born on August 12, 1861,[1] into a middle-class family,[2] in the Piedmontese city of Vercelli. He first became interested in anarchism while studying law at the University of Turin, eventually renouncing his career in law in order to carry out anarchist propaganda against capitalism and the state.[3] His skill in oratory and writing quickly made him a leading voice in the new generation of the Italian anarchist movement.[4] Alongside Sicilian anarchist Pietro Gori, he led a resurgence of militant anarchist activism, which gained a large following among the workers of Northern Italy.[5]

By the mid-1880s, the anarchists had already lost ground to the Italian Workers' Party (POI), which developed a large support base among northern workers.[6] The anarchists were initially skeptical of the POI, due to the latter's tendencies towards workerism and reformism, but relations between the two parties became more cordial over time.[7] In 1887, Galleani led the Piedmontese anarchist movement's reorientation towards the labor movement and its rapprochement with the POI.[8] That year, he established the Turin-based newspaper Gazzetta Operaia, formed a number of workers' organizations in Vercelli, and distributed revolutionary propaganda among the factory workers of Biella. In 1888, he went on a lecture tour in towns throughout Piedmont and led a series of strike actions by Piedmontese workers in both Turin and Vercelli, increasing support for the anarchist movement and the POI.[9]

Relations between the anarchists and the POI worsened, due to the latter's continued participation in local elections. Nevertheless, Galleani continued to pursue the anarchist infiltration of the POI, in order to attempt to bring it towards revolutionary socialism.[10] He continued to advocate for a conciliatory approach between the reformists and revolutionaries, resulting in the POI both continuing its electoral participation while also endorsing class conflict.[11] Although he prevented a formal split from occurring, the two factions were ultimately irreconciable and Galleani's attempts to transform the POI proved unsuccessful.[12]

When his radical activism threatened him with arrest, in 1889 he fled to France and then to Switzerland.[13] There he collaborated with the French anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus in the preparation of his Nouvelle Geographie Universalle and organised a students' demonstration at the University of Geneva, in honor of the Haymarket martyrs.[14] Galleani was also scheduled to attend the Italian anarchist movement's Capolago congress,[15] but en route to the congress from Geneva,[16] he was arrested by the Swiss authorities and expelled back to Italy.[17] Back in Italy, he immediately continued his radical activities,[18] embarking on a speaking tour of Tuscany,[19] with the aim of fomenting an uprising on International Workers' Day of 1891.[20]

Pietro Gori, one of Galleani's close collaborators in the Italian anarchist movement

In 1892, together with Pietro Gori and Calabrese anarchist Giovanni Domanico, Galleani was delegated to represent the anarchists at the Genoa Workers' Congress, with the intention of obstructing the motions of the dominant reformist faction.[21] In opposition to the social democrats, led by Lombard lawyer Filippo Turati, an alliance was formed by the anarchists and the workerists, who both opposed political participation.[22] On August 14, a fierce argument broke out between the anarchist and socialist delegates, leading to two separate meetings being convened the following day.[23] Having finally forced the anarchists to split from the movement, Turati's social democratic majority established the new Italian Socialist Party (PSI), despite the objections of Galleani and his fellow delegates, whose own attempts at forming an anarchist party were unsuccessful.[24] The congress proved that Galleani's agitational campaign had ultimately failed to gain a mass following among the workers, leading to many Italian anarchists becoming disillusioned with the labor movement, which came under the direction of the PSI.[25]

In the wake of the Fatti di Maggio (Bava Beccaris massacre),[26] the Italian government launched a new campaign of political repression against the anarchist movement, arresting anarchists en masse and internally exiling them to small islands for up to five years,[27] all without a trial.[28] Galleani himself was swiftly arrested, convicted for conspiracy,[14] and exiled to the Sicilian island of Pantelleria.[29] There he met and married Maria Rallo, who already had a young son. Luigi and Maria Galleani had four children of their own.[30]

With Elisee Reclus's aid,[31] Galleani managed escape from Italy to Egypt,[32] where he stayed with other Italian immigrants for a year.[33] When he was threatened with extradition back to Italy,[33] he fled to the United States, arriving in October 1901, shortly after the assassination of United States President William McKinley.[34]

Cronaca Sovversiva header

Galleani settled in Paterson, New Jersey,[35] a hub for Piedmontese immigrant silk weavers and dyers,[36] where he took up editing the Italian anarchist newspaper La Questione Sociale.[37] When a silk workers' strike broke out in the city in June 1902, he became a vocal supporter,[38] giving a series of speeches in which he called for a revolutionary general strike to overthrow capitalism.[33] When the striking workers clashed with police, he was shot in the face and charged for incitement to riot.[39] He escaped to Canada and recovered from his wounds, before covertly returning over the border and hiding out in Barre, Vermont,[40] where he stayed with Tuscan stonemasons from Carrara.[41] With these new comrades, on June 6, 1903,[42] he launched Cronaca Sovversiva, which rapidly became the most influential Italian anarchist periodical in North America,[43] receiving worldwide distribution.[44] Through this new publication, in 1905 he published the bomb-making manual La Salute è in voi!,[45] in which he supplied to his readers the formula for making nitroglycerine, compiled by a friend and explosives expert, Professor Ettore Molinari.[46]

Socialist politician Francesco Saverio Merlino, whose critique of anarchism provoked Galleani to write his book The End of Anarchism?

In 1906, the editor of the rival Italian socialist newspaper Il Proletario publicised Galleani's location and he was quickly located by the authorities.[42] Arrested, he was brought back to Paterson and tried for incitement, although a hung jury resulted in him being released.[40] He returned to Barre, where he once again resumed giving fiery speeches and writing hundreds of articles for his newspaper, quickly becoming a leading voice in the Italian American anarchist movement.[47] In late 1907, in response to Neapolitan socialist Francesco Saverio Merlino's public renunciation of anarchism in favour of reformist labor unionism, Galleani published a series of articles in defense of anarchism.[48] By this time, he had become disillusioned with the labor movement and came to reject labor unions entirely, instead adopting an anti-organizational form of anarchism,[49] which became the dominant tendency within the Italian American anarchist movement.[50] He even openly broke with the anarcho-syndicalist Carlo Tresca over the latter's cooperation with the Industrial Workers of the World, causing a rift between their followers that undermined the Italian American anarchist movement's cohesion.[51]

Galleani gained many militant and highly devoted followers, known as the Galleanisti,[52] who likewise rejected all formal organization and developed markedly extremist tendencies.[53] These disciples included Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti,[54] who promoted Galleani's lectures and distributed his literature.[55] The Galleanisti, following Galleani's anti-organizational principles, formed small, tight-knit cells made up of "self-selecting individuals". Although they rejected formal leadership, Galleani himself was treated with reverence and he had the status of an unofficial leader.[56]

Following the American entry into World War I, Galleani became a leading voice in the anti-war movement,[57] declaring that the anarchist movement was "Against the War, Against the Peace, For Social Revolution!"[58] In response to the Selective Service Act of 1917 being passed into law, he urged his followers to refuse registration and go into hiding,[59] with he and many of his comrades moving to a cabin in the woods near Taunton, Massachusetts.[60] At his direction, some Galleanisti escaped to Mexico,[61] from which they planned to return to Italy, where they believed a revolution was imminent.[62] Despite the ongoing Mexican Revolution, Galleani had rejected the possibility of an anarchist revolution in Mexico itself, due to its high population of people of color, whom he characterized as "uninterested" racial groups.[63]

His anti-war activities made him a target for political repression by the American government.[64] On June 17, 1917, federal agents raided the offices of the Cronaca Sovversiva in Lynn, Massachusetts,[62] arresting Galleani and shutting down the newspaper.[65] Charged with conspiracy, he and eight of his followers were subsequently deported back to Italy,[66] leaving his family behind in the United States,[67] on June 24, 1919.[68]

He attempted to continue publishing Cronaca Sovversiva upon arrival in Turin,[69] but it was quickly suppressed by the Italian authorities.[70] In the wake of the March on Rome in 1922, he was arrested and convicted of sedition by the new fascist authorities,[71] which sentenced him to 14 months in prison.[72] After being released, he concluded his polemic against Merlino, writing a further series of articles and publishing them together in his book The End of Anarchism? (1925).[73] While the book was hailed by Neapolitan anarchist Errico Malatesta as a key text in anarchist communism, in November 1926, it provoked his arrest by the fascist authorities, on charges of insulting the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Galleani spent time in the cell he had been kept in for months in 1892, before being banished to Lipari and later Messina, where he was imprisoned for 6 months.[72]

In February 1930, he was granted compassionate release due to his failing health. He retired to Caprigliola,[72] where he was kept under close and constant surveillance.[71] After returning from a walk through the countryside, during which he was followed by the police,[74] he collapsed from a heart attack,[71] dying on November 4, 1931.[75]