To analyze the psychology of political violence is not only
extremely difficult, but also very dangerous. If such acts are treated with
understanding, one is immediately accused of eulogizing them. If, on the other
hand, human sympathy is expressed with the Attentäter, 1 one risks being considered a possible
accomplice. Yet it is only intelligence and sympathy that can bring us closer
to the source of human suffering, and teach us the ultimate way out of it.
The primitive man,
ignorant of natural forces, dreaded their approach, hiding from the perils they
threatened. As man learned to understand Nature's phenomena, he realized that
though these may destroy life and cause great loss, they also bring relief. To
the earnest student it must be apparent that the accumulated forces in our
social and economic life, culminating in a political act of violence, are
similar to the terrors of the atmosphere, manifested in storm and lightning.
To thoroughly
appreciate the truth of this view, one must feel intensely the indignity of our
social wrongs; one's very being must throb with the pain, the sorrow, the
despair millions of people are daily made to endure. Indeed, unless we have
become a part of humanity, we cannot even faintly understand the just
indignation that accumulates in a human soul, the burning, surging passion that
makes the storm inevitable.
The ignorant mass
looks upon the man who makes a violent protest against our social and economic
iniquities as upon a wild beast, a cruel, heartless monster, whose joy it is to
destroy life and bathe in blood; or at best, as upon an irresponsible lunatic.
Yet nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact, those who have
studied the character and personality of these men, or who have come in close
contact with them, are agreed that it is their super-sensitiveness to the wrong
and injustice surrounding them which compels them to pay the toll of our social
crimes. The most noted writers and poets, discussing the psychology of
political offenders, have paid them the highest tribute. Could anyone assume
that these men had advised violence, or even approved of the acts? Certainly
not. Theirs was the attitude of the social student, of the man who knows that
beyond every violent act there is a vital cause.
Björnstjerne Björnson,
in the second part of Beyond Human Power, emphasizes the fact that it is among
the Anarchists that we must look for the modern martyrs who pay for their faith
with their blood, and who welcome death with a smile, because they believe, as
truly as Christ did, that their martyrdom will redeem humanity.
François Coppé, the
French novelist, thus expresses himself regarding the psychology of the
Attentäter:
"The reading of the details of
Vaillant's execution left me in a thoughtful mood. I imagined him expanding his
chest under the ropes, marching with firm step, stiffening his will,
concentrating all his energy, and, with eyes fixed upon the knife, hurling
finally at society his cry of malediction. And, in spite of me, another
spectacle rose suddenly before my mind. I saw a group of men and women pressing
against each other in the middle of the oblong arena of the circus, under the
gaze of thousands of eyes, while from all the steps of the immense amphitheatre
went up the terrible cry, Ad leones!
and, below, the opening cages of the wild beasts.
"I did not
believe the execution would take place. In the first place, no victim had been
struck with death, and it had long been the custom not to punish an abortive
crime with the last degree of severity. Then, this crime, however terrible in
intention, was disinterested, born of an abstract idea. The man's past, his
abandoned childhood, his life of hardship, pleaded also in his favor. In the
independent press generous voices were raised in his behalf, very loud and
eloquent. 'A purely literary current of opinion' some have said, with no little
scorn. It is, on the contrary, an honor to the men of art and thought to have
expressed once more their disgust at the scaffold."
Again Zola, in
Germinal and Paris, describes the
tenderness and kindness, the deep sympathy with human suffering, of these men
who close the chapter of their lives with a violent outbreak against our
system.
Last, but not least,
the man who probably better than anyone else understands the psychology of the
Attentäter is M. Hamon, the author of
the brilliant work Une Psychologie du Militaire Professionnel, who has arrived
at these suggestive conclusions:
"The positive
method confirmed by the rational method enables us to establish an ideal type
of Anarchist, whose mentality is the aggregate of common psychic
characteristics. Every Anarchist partakes sufficiently of this ideal type to
make it possible to differentiate him from other men. The typical Anarchist,
then, may be defined as follows: A man perceptible by the spirit of revolt
under one or more of its forms,--opposition, investigation, criticism,
innovation,--endowed with a strong love of liberty, egoistic or
individualistic, and possessed of great curiosity, a keen desire to know. These
traits are supplemented by an ardent love of others, a highly developed moral
sensitiveness, a profound sentiment of justice, and imbued with missionary
zeal."
To the above
characteristics, says Alvin F. Sanborn, must be added these sterling qualities:
a rare love of animals, surpassing sweetness in all the ordinary relations of
life, exceptional sobriety of demeanor, frugality and regularity, austerity,
even, of living, and courage beyond compare.2
"There is a
truism that the man in the street seems always to forget, when he is abusing
the Anarchists, or whatever party happens to be his bête noire for the moment, as the cause of some outrage
just perpetrated. This indisputable fact is that homicidal outrages have, from
time immemorial, been the reply of goaded and desperate classes, and goaded and
desperate individuals, to wrongs from their fellowmen, which they felt to be
intolerable. Such acts are the violent recoil from violence, whether aggressive
or repressive; they are the last desperate struggle of outraged and exasperated
human nature for breathing space and life. And their cause lies not in any
special conviction, but in the depths of that human nature itself. The whole
course of history, political and social, is strewn with evidence of this fact.
To go no further, take the three most notorious examples of political parties
goaded into violence during the last fifty years: the Mazzinians in Italy, the
Fenians in Ireland, and the Terrorists in Russia. Were these people Anarchists?
No. Did they all three even hold the same political opinions? No. The
Mazzinians were Republicans, the Fenians political separatists, the Russians
Social Democrats or Constitutionalists. But all were driven by desperate
circumstances into this terrible form of revolt. And when we turn from parties
to individuals who have acted in like manner, we stand appalled by the number
of human beings goaded and driven by sheer desperation into conduct obviously
violently opposed to their social instincts.
"Now that
Anarchism has become a living force in society, such deeds have been sometimes
committed by Anarchists, as well as by others. For no new faith, even the most
essentially peaceable and humane the mind of man has yet accepted, but at its
first coming has brought upon earth not peace, but a sword; not because of
anything violent or anti-social in the doctrine itself; simply because of the
ferment any new and creative idea excites in men's minds, whether they accept
or reject it. And a conception of Anarchism, which, on one hand, threatens
every vested interest, and, on the other, holds out a vision of a free and
noble life to be won by a struggle against existing wrongs, is certain to rouse
the fiercest opposition, and bring the whole repressive force of ancient evil
into violent contact with the tumultuous outburst of a new hope.
"Under miserable
conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of better things makes the
present misery more intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most
energetic struggles to improve their lot, and if these struggles only
immediately result in sharper misery, the outcome is sheer desperation. In our
present society, for instance, an exploited wage worker, who catches a glimpse
of what work and life might and ought to be, finds the toilsome routine and the
squalor of his existence almost intolerable; and even when he has the
resolution and courage to continue steadily working his best, and waiting until
new ideas have so permeated society as to pave the way for better times, the
mere fact that he has such ideas and tries to spread them, brings him into
difficulties with his employers. How many thousands of Socialists, and above
all Anarchists, have lost work and even the chance of work, solely on the
ground of their opinions. It is only the specially gifted craftsman, who, if he
be a zealous propagandist, can hope to retain permanent employment. And what
happens to a man with his brain working actively with a ferment of new ideas,
with a vision before his eyes of a new hope dawning for toiling and agonizing
men, with the knowledge that his suffering and that of his fellows in misery is
not caused by the cruelty of fate, but by the injustice of other human
beings,--what happens to such a man when he sees those dear to him starving,
when he himself is starved? Some natures in such a plight, and those by no
means the least social or the least sensitive, will become violent, and will
even feel that their violence is social and not anti-social, that in striking
when and how they can, they are striking, not for themselves, but for human
nature, outraged and despoiled in their persons and in those of their fellow
sufferers. And are we, who ourselves are not in this horrible predicament, to
stand by and coldly condemn these piteous victims of the Furies and Fates? Are
we to decry as miscreants these human beings who act with heroic self-devotion,
sacrificing their lives in protest, where less social and less energetic
natures would lie down and grovel in abject submission to injustice and wrong?
Are we to join the ignorant and brutal outcry which stigmatizes such men as
monsters of wickedness, gratuitously running amuck in a harmonious and
innocently peaceful society? No! We hate murder with a hatred that may seem
absurdly exaggerated to apologists for Matabele massacres, to callous
acquiescers in hangings and bombardments, but we decline in such cases of homicide,
or attempted homicide, as those of which we are treating, to be guilty of the
cruel injustice of flinging the whole responsibility of the deed upon the
immediate perpetrator. The guilt of these homicides lies upon every man and
woman who, intentionally or by cold indifference, helps to keep up social
conditions that drive human beings to despair. The man who flings his whole
life into the attempt, at the cost of his own life, to protest against the
wrongs of his fellow men, is a saint compared to the active and passive
upholders of cruelty and injustice, even if his protest destroy other lives
besides his own. Let him who is without sin in society cast the first stone at
such an one."3
That every act of
political violence should nowadays be attributed to Anarchists is not at all
surprising. Yet it is a fact known to almost everyone familiar with the
Anarchist movement that a great number of acts, for which Anarchists had to
suffer, either originated with the capitalist press or were instigated, if not
directly perpetrated, by the police.
For a number of years
acts of violence had been committed in Spain, for which the Anarchists were
held responsible, hounded like wild beasts, and thrown into prison. Later it
was disclosed that the perpetrators of these acts were not Anarchists, but
members of the police department. The scandal became so widespread that the
conservative Spanish papers demanded the apprehension and punishment of the
gang-leader, Juan Rull, who was subsequently condemned to death and executed.
The sensational evidence, brought to light during the trial, forced Police
Inspector Momento to exonerate completely the Anarchists from any connection
with the acts committed during a long period. This resulted in the dismissal of
a number of police officials, among them Inspector Tressols, who, in revenge,
disclosed the fact that behind the gang of police bomb throwers were others of
far higher position, who provided them with funds and protected them.
This is one of the
many striking examples of how Anarchist conspiracies are manufactured.
That the American
police can perjure themselves with the same ease, that they are just as
merciless, just as brutal and cunning as their European colleagues, has been
proven on more than one occasion. We need only recall the tragedy of the
eleventh of November, 1887, known as the Haymarket Riot.
No one who is at all
familiar with the case can possibly doubt that the Anarchists, judicially
murdered in Chicago, died as victims of a lying, blood-thirsty press and of a
cruel police conspiracy. Has not Judge Gary himself said: "Not because you
have caused the Haymarket bomb, but because you are Anarchists, you are on
trial."
The impartial and
thorough analysis by Governor Altgeld of that blotch on the American escutcheon
verified the brutal frankness of Judge Gary. It was this that induced Altgeld
to pardon the three Anarchists, thereby earning the lasting esteem of every
liberty-loving man and woman in the world.
When we approach the
tragedy of September sixth, 1901, we are confronted by one of the most striking
examples of how little social theories are responsible for an act of political
violence. "Leon Czolgosz, an Anarchist, incited to commit the act by Emma
Goldman." To be sure, has she not incited violence even before her birth,
and will she not continue to do so beyond death? Everything is possible with
the Anarchists.
Today, even, nine
years after the tragedy, after it was proven a hundred times that Emma Goldman
had nothing to do with the event, that no evidence whatsoever exists to
indicate that Czolgosz ever called himself an Anarchist, we are confronted with
the same lie, fabricated by the police and perpetuated by the press. No living
soul ever heard Czolgosz make that statement, nor is there a single written
word to prove that the boy ever breathed the accusation. Nothing but ignorance
and insane hysteria, which have never yet been able to solve the simplest
problem of cause and effect.
The President of a
free Republic killed! What else can be the cause, except that the
Attentäter must have been insane, or
that he was incited to the act.
A free Republic! How a
myth will maintain itself, how it will continue to deceive, to dupe, and blind
even the comparatively intelligent to its monstrous absurdities. A free
Republic! And yet within a little over thirty years a small band of parasites
have successfully robbed the American people, and trampled upon the fundamental
principles, laid down by the fathers of this country, guaranteeing to every
man, woman, and child "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
For thirty years they have been increasing their wealth and power at the
expense of the vast mass of workers, thereby enlarging the army of the unemployed,
the hungry, homeless, and friendless portion of humanity, who are tramping the
country from east to west, from north to south, in a vain search for work. For
many years the home has been left to the care of the little ones, while the
parents are exhausting their life and strength for a mere pittance. For thirty
years the sturdy sons of America have been sacrificed on the battlefield of
industrial war, and the daughters outraged in corrupt factory surroundings. For
long and weary years this process of undermining the nation's health, vigor,
and pride, without much protest from the disinherited and oppressed, has been
going on. Maddened by success and victory, the money powers of this "free
land of ours" became more and more audacious in their heartless, cruel
efforts to compete with the rotten and decayed European tyrannies for supremacy
of power.
In vain did a lying
press repudiate Leon Czolgosz as a foreigner. The boy was a product of our own
free American soil, that lulled him to sleep with,
My country, 'tis of
thee,
Sweet land of liberty.
Who can tell how many times this American child had gloried in the
celebration of the Fourth of July, or of Decoration Day, when he faithfully
honored the Nation's dead? Who knows but that he, too, was willing to
"fight for his country and die for her liberty," until it dawned upon
him that those he belonged to have no country, because they have been robbed of
all that they have produced; until he realized that the liberty and
independence of his youthful dreams were but a farce. Poor Leon Czolgosz, your
crime consisted of too sensitive a social consciousness. Unlike your idealless
and brainless American brothers, your ideals soared above the belly and the
bank account. No wonder you impressed the one human being among all the
infuriated mob at your trial--a newspaper woman--as a visionary, totally
oblivious to your surroundings. Your large, dreamy eyes must have beheld a new
and glorious dawn.
Now, to a recent
instance of police-manufactured Anarchist plots. In that bloodstained city
Chicago, the life of Chief of Police Shippy was attempted by a young man named
Averbuch. Immediately the cry was sent to the four corners of the world that
Averbuch was an Anarchist, and that Anarchists were responsible for the act.
Everyone who was at all known to entertain Anarchist ideas was closely watched,
a number of people arrested, the library of an Anarchist group confiscated, and
all meetings made impossible. It goes without saying that, as on various previous
occasions, I must needs be held responsible for the act. Evidently the American
police credit me with occult powers. I did not know Averbuch; in fact, had
never before heard his name, and the only way I could have possibly
"conspired" with him was in my astral body. But, then, the police are
not concerned with logic or justice. What they seek is a target, to mask their
absolute ignorance of the cause, of the psychology of a political act. Was
Averbuch an Anarchist? There is no positive proof of it. He had been but three
months in the country, did not know the language, and, as far as I could
ascertain, was quite unknown to the Anarchists of Chicago.
What led to his act?
Averbuch, like most young Russian immigrants, undoubtedly believed in the
mythical liberty of America. He received his first baptism by the policeman's
club during the brutal dispersement of the unemployed parade. He further
experienced American equality and opportunity in the vain efforts to find an
economic master. In short, a three months' sojourn in the glorious land brought
him face to face with the fact that the disinherited are in the same position
the world over. In his native land he probably learned that necessity knows no
law--there was no difference between a Russian and an American policeman.
The question to the
intelligent social student is not whether the acts of Czolgosz or Averbuch were
practical, any more than whether the thunderstorm is practical. The thing that
will inevitably impress itself on the thinking and feeling man and woman is
that the sight of brutal clubbing of innocent victims in a so-called free
Republic, and the degrading, soul-destroying economic struggle, furnish the
spark that kindles the dynamic force in the overwrought, outraged souls of men
like Czolgosz or Averbuch. No amount of persecution, of hounding, of
repression, can stay this social phenomenon.
But, it is often
asked, have not acknowledged Anarchists committed acts of violence? Certainly
they have, always however ready to shoulder the responsibility. My contention
is that they were impelled, not by the teachings of Anarchism, but by the
tremendous pressure of conditions, making life unbearable to their sensitive
natures. Obviously, Anarchism, or any other social theory, making man a
conscious social unit, will act as a leaven for rebellion. This is not a mere
assertion, but a fact verified by all experience. A close examination of the
circumstances bearing upon this question will further clarify my position.
Let us consider some
of the most important Anarchist acts within the last two decades. Strange as it
may seem, one of the most significant deeds of political violence occurred here
in America, in connection with the Homestead strike of 1892.
During that memorable
time the Carnegie Steel Company organized a conspiracy to crush the Amalgamated
Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Henry Clay Frick, then Chairman of the
Company, was intrusted with that democratic task. He lost no time in carrying
out the policy of breaking the Union, the policy which he had so successfully
practiced during his reign of terror in the coke regions. Secretly, and while
peace negotiations were being purposely prolonged, Frick supervised the
military preparations, the fortification of the Homestead Steel Works, the
erection of a high board fence, capped with barbed wire and provided with
loopholes for sharpshooters. And then, in the dead of night, he attempted to
smuggle his army of hired Pinkerton thugs into Homestead, which act precipitated
the terrible carnage of the steel workers. Not content with the death of eleven
victims, killed in the Pinkerton skirmish, Henry Clay Frick, good Christian and
free American, straightway began the hounding down of the helpless wives and
orphans, by ordering them out of the wretched Company houses.
The whole country was
aroused over these inhuman outrages. Hundreds of voices were raised in protest,
calling on Frick to desist, not to go too far. Yes, hundreds of people
protested,--as one objects to annoying flies. Only one there was who actively
responded to the outrage at Homestead,--Alexander Berkman. Yes, he was an
Anarchist. He gloried in that fact, because it was the only force that made the
discord between his spiritual longing and the world without at all bearable.
Yet not Anarchism, as such, but the brutal slaughter of the eleven steel
workers was the urge for Alexander Berkman's act, his attempt on the life of
Henry Clay Frick.
The record of European
acts of political violence affords numerous and striking instances of the
influence of environment upon sensitive human beings.
The court speech of
Vaillant, who, in 1894, exploded a bomb in the Paris Chamber of Deputies,
strikes the true keynote of the psychology of such acts:
"Gentlemen, in a
few minutes you are to deal your blow, but in receiving your verdict I shall
have at least the satisfaction of having wounded the existing society, that
cursed society in which one may see a single man spending, uselessly, enough to
feed thousands of families; an infamous society which permits a few individuals
to monopolize all the social wealth, while there are hundreds of thousands of
unfortunates who have not even the bread that is not refused to dogs, and while
entire families are committing suicide for want of the necessities of life.
"Ah, gentlemen,
if the governing classes could go down among the unfortunates! But no, they
prefer to remain deaf to their appeals. It seems that a fatality impels them,
like the royalty of the eighteenth century, toward the precipice which will
engulf them, for woe be to those who remain deaf to the cries of the starving,
woe to those who, believing themselves of superior essence, assume the right to
exploit those beneath them! There comes a time when the people no longer
reason; they rise like a hurricane, and pass away like a torrent. Then we see
bleeding heads impaled on pikes.
"Among the
exploited, gentlemen, there are two classes of individuals. Those of one class,
not realizing what they are and what they might be, take life as it comes,
believe that they are born to be slaves, and content themselves with the little
that is given them in exchange for their labor. But there are others, on the
contrary, who think, who study, and who, looking about them, discover social
iniquities. Is it their fault if they see clearly and suffer at seeing others
suffer? Then they throw themselves into the struggle, and make themselves the
bearers of the popular claims.
"Gentlemen, I am
one of these last. Wherever I have gone, I have seen unfortunates bent beneath
the yoke of capital. Everywhere I have seen the same wounds causing tears of
blood to flow, even in the remoter parts of the inhabited districts of South
America, where I had the right to believe that he who was weary of the pains of
civilization might rest in the shade of the palm trees and there study nature.
Well, there even, more than elsewhere, I have seen capital come, like a
vampire, to suck the last drop of blood of the unfortunate pariahs.
"Then I came back
to France, where it was reserved for me to see my family suffer atrociously.
This was the last drop in the cup of my sorrow. Tired of leading this life of
suffering and cowardice, I carried this bomb to those who are primarily
responsible for social misery.
"I am reproached
with the wounds of those who were hit by my projectiles. Permit me to point out
in passing that, if the bourgeois had not massacred or caused massacres during
the Revolution, it is probable that they would still be under the yoke of the
nobility. On the other hand, figure up the dead and wounded on Tonquin,
Madagascar, Dahomey, adding thereto the thousands, yes, millions of
unfortunates who die in the factories, the mines, and wherever the grinding
power of capital is felt. Add also those who die of hunger, and all this with
the assent of our Deputies. Beside all this, of how little weight are the
reproaches now brought against me!
"It is true that
one does not efface the other; but, after all, are we not acting on the
defensive when we respond to the blows which we receive from above? I know very
well that I shall be told that I ought to have confined myself to speech for
the vindication of the people's claims. But what can you expect! It takes a
loud voice to make the deaf hear. Too long have they answered our voices by
imprisonment, the rope, rifle volleys. Make no mistake; the explosion of my
bomb is not only the cry of the rebel Vaillant, but the cry of an entire class
which vindicates its rights, and which will soon add acts to words. For, be
sure of it, in vain will they pass laws. The ideas of the thinkers will not
halt; just as, in the last century, all the governmental forces could not
prevent the Diderots and the Voltaires from spreading emancipating ideas among
the people, so all the existing governmental forces will not prevent the
Reclus, the Darwins, the Spencers, the Ibsens, the Mirbeaus, from spreading the
ideas of justice and liberty which will annihilate the prejudices that hold the
mass in ignorance. And these ideas, welcomed by the unfortunate, will flower in
acts of revolt as they have done in me, until the day when the disappearance of
authority shall permit all men to organize freely according to their choice,
when everyone shall be able to enjoy the product of his labor, and when those
moral maladies called prejudices shall vanish, permitting human beings to live
in harmony, having no other desire than to study the sciences and love their
fellows.
"I conclude, gentlemen,
by saying that a society in which one sees such social inequalities as we see
all about us, in which we see every day suicides caused by poverty,
prostitution flaring at every street corner,--a society whose principal
monuments are barracks and prisons,--such a society must be transformed as soon
as possible, on pain of being eliminated, and that speedily, from the human
race. Hail to him who labors, by no matter what means, for this transformation!
It is this idea that has guided me in my duel with authority, but as in this
duel I have only wounded my adversary, it is now its turn to strike me.
"Now, gentlemen,
to me it matters little what penalty you may inflict, for, looking at this
assembly with the eyes of reason, I can not help smiling to see you, atoms lost
in matter, and reasoning only because you possess a prolongation of the spinal
marrow, assume the right to judge one of your fellows.
"Ah! gentlemen,
how little a thing is your assembly and your verdict in the history of humanity;
and human history, in its turn, is likewise a very little thing in the
whirlwind which bears it through immensity, and which is destined to disappear,
or at least to be transformed, in order to begin again the same history and the
same facts, a veritably perpetual play of cosmic forces renewing and
transferring themselves forever."
Will anyone say that
Vaillant was an ignorant, vicious man, or a lunatic? Was not his mind
singularly clear and analytic? No wonder that the best intellectual forces of
France spoke in his behalf, and signed the petition to President Carnot, asking
him to commute Vaillant's death sentence.
Carnot would listen to
no entreaty; he insisted on more than a pound of flesh, he wanted Vaillant's
life, and then--the inevitable happened: President Carnot was killed. On the
handle of the stiletto used by the Attentäter
was engraved, significantly,
VAILLANT!
Santa Caserio was an
Anarchist. He could have gotten away, saved himself; but he remained, he stood
the consequences.
His reasons for the
act are set forth in so simple, dignified, and childlike manner that one is
reminded of the touching tribute paid Caserio by his teacher of the little
village school, Ada Negri, the Italian poet, who spoke of him as a sweet,
tender plant, of too fine and sensitive texture to stand the cruel strain of
the world.
"Gentlemen of the
Jury! I do not propose to make a defense, but only an explanation of my deed.
"Since my early
youth I began to learn that present society is badly organized, so badly that
every day many wretched men commit suicide, leaving women and children in the
most terrible distress. Workers, by thousands, seek for work and can not find
it. Poor families beg for food and shiver with cold; they suffer the greatest
misery; the little ones ask their miserable mothers for food, and the mothers
cannot give it to them, because they have nothing. The few things which the
home contained have already been sold or pawned. All they can do is beg alms;
often they are arrested as vagabonds.
"I went away from
my native place because I was frequently moved to tears at seeing little girls
of eight or ten years obliged to work fifteen hours a day for the paltry pay of
twenty centimes. Young women of eighteen or twenty also work fifteen hours
daily, for a mockery of remuneration. And that happens not only to my fellow
countrymen, but to all the workers, who sweat the whole day long for a crust of
bread, while their labor produces wealth in abundance. The workers are obliged
to live under the most wretched conditions, and their food consists of a little
bread, a few spoonfuls of rice, and water; so by the time they are thirty or
forty years old, they are exhausted, and go to die in the hospitals. Besides,
in consequence of bad food and overwork, these unhappy creatures are, by
hundreds, devoured by pellagra--a disease that, in my country, attacks, as the
physicians say, those who are badly fed and lead a life of toil and privation.
"I have observed
that there are a great many people who are hungry, and many children who
suffer, whilst bread and clothes abound in the towns. I saw many and large
shops full of clothing and woolen stuffs, and I also saw warehouses full of
wheat and Indian corn, suitable for those who are in want. And, on the other
hand, I saw thousands of people who do not work, who produce nothing and live
on the labor of others; who spend every day thousands of francs for their
amusement; who debauch the daughters of the workers; who own dwellings of forty
or fifty rooms; twenty or thirty horses, many servants; in a word, all the
pleasures of life.
"I believed in
God; but when I saw so great an inequality between men, I acknowledged that it
was not God who created man, but man who created God. And I discovered that
those who want their property to be respected, have an interest in preaching
the existence of paradise and hell, and in keeping the people in ignorance.
"Not long ago,
Vaillant threw a bomb in the Chamber of Deputies, to protest against the
present system of society. He killed no one, only wounded some persons; yet
bourgeois justice sentenced him to death. And not satisfied with the
condemnation of the guilty man, they began to pursue the Anarchists, and arrest
not only those who had known Vaillant, but even those who had merely been
present at any Anarchist lecture.
"The government
did not think of their wives and children. It did not consider that the men
kept in prison were not the only ones who suffered, and that their little ones
cried for bread. Bourgeois justice did not trouble itself about these innocent
ones, who do not yet know what society is. It is no fault of theirs that their
fathers are in prison; they only want to eat.
"The government
went on searching private houses, opening private letters, forbidding lectures
and meetings, and practicing the most infamous oppressions against us. Even
now, hundreds of Anarchists are arrested for having written an article in a
newspaper, or for having expressed an opinion in public.
"Gentlemen of the
Jury, you are representatives of bourgeois society. If you want my head, take
it; but do not believe that in so doing you will stop the Anarchist propaganda.
Take care, for men reap what they have sown."
During a religious
procession in 1896, at Barcelona, a bomb was thrown. Immediately three hundred
men and women were arrested. Some were Anarchists, but the majority were
trade-unionists and Socialists. They were thrown into that terrible bastille
Montjuich, and subjected to most horrible tortures. After a number had been
killed, or had gone insane, their cases were taken up by the liberal press of
Europe, resulting in the release of a few survivors.
The man primarily
responsible for this revival of the Inquisition was Canovas del Castillo, Prime
Minister of Spain. It was he who ordered the torturing of the victims, their
flesh burned, their bones crushed, their tongues cut out. Practiced in the art
of brutality during his r gime in Cuba, Canovas remained absolutely deaf to the
appeals and protests of the awakened civilized conscience.
In 1897 Canovas del
Castillo was shot to death by a young Italian, Angiolillo. The latter was an
editor in his native land, and his bold utterances soon attracted the attention
of the authorities. Persecution began, and Angiolillo fled from Italy to Spain,
thence to France and Belgium, finally settling in England. While there he found
employment as a compositor, and immediately became the friend of all his
colleagues. One of the latter thus described Angiolillo: "His appearance
suggested the journalist rather than the disciple of Guttenberg. His delicate
hands, moreover, betrayed the fact that he had not grown up at the 'case.' With
his handsome frank face, his soft dark hair, his alert expression, he looked
the very type of the vivacious Southerner. Angiolillo spoke Italian, Spanish,
and French, but no English; the little French I knew was not sufficient to
carry on a prolonged conversation. However, Angiolillo soon began to acquire
the English idiom; he learned rapidly, playfully, and it was not long until he
became very popular with his fellow compositors. His distinguished and yet
modest manner, and his consideration towards his colleagues, won him the hearts
of all the boys."
Angiolillo soon became
familiar with the detailed accounts in the press. He read of the great wave of
human sympathy with the helpless victims at Montjuich. On Trafalgar Square he
saw with his own eyes the results of those atrocities, when the few Spaniards,
who escaped Castillo's clutches, came to seek asylum in England. There, at the
great meeting, these men opened their shirts and showed the horrible scars of
burned flesh. Angiolillo saw, and the effect surpassed a thousand theories; the
impetus was beyond words, beyond arguments, beyond himself even.
Señor Antonio Canovas
del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain, sojourned at Santa Agueda. As usual in
such cases, all strangers were kept away from his exalted presence. One
exception was made, however, in the case of a distinguished looking, elegantly
dressed Italian--the representative, it was understood, of an important
journal. The distinguished gentleman was--Angiolillo.
Señor Canovas, about
to leave his house, stepped on the veranda. Suddenly Angiolillo confronted him.
A shot rang out, and Canovas was a corpse.
The wife of the Prime
Minister rushed upon the scene. "Murderer! Murderer!" she cried,
pointing at Angiolillo. The latter bowed. "Pardon, Madame," he said,
"I respect you as a lady, but I regret that you were the wife of that
man."
Calmly Angiolillo
faced death. Death in its most terrible form--for the man whose soul was as a
child's.
He was garroted. His
body lay, sun-kissed, till the day hid in twilight. And the people came, and
pointing the finger of terror and fear, they said: "There--the
criminal--the cruel murderer."
How stupid, how cruel
is ignorance! It misunderstands always, condemns always.
A remarkable parallel
to the case of Angiolillo is to be found in the act of Gaetano Bresci, whose
Attentat upon King Umberto made an
American city famous.
Bresci came to this
country, this land of opportunity, where one has but to try to meet with golden
success. Yes, he too would try to succeed. He would work hard and faithfully.
Work had no terrors for him, if it would only help him to independence,
manhood, self-respect.
Thus full of hope and
enthusiasm he settled in Paterson, New Jersey, and there found a lucrative job
at six dollars per week in one of the weaving mills of the town. Six whole
dollars per week was, no doubt, a fortune for Italy, but not enough to breathe
on in the new country. He loved his little home. He was a good husband and
devoted father to his bambina Bianca,
whom he adored. He worked and worked for a number of years. He actually managed
to save one hundred dollars out of his six dollars per week.
Bresci had an ideal.
Foolish, I know, for a workingman to have an ideal,--the Anarchist paper
published in Paterson, La Questione Sociale.
Every week, though
tired from work, he would help to set up the paper. Until later hours he would
assist, and when the little pioneer had exhausted all resources and his
comrades were in despair, Bresci brought cheer and hope, one hundred dollars,
the entire savings of years. That would keep the paper afloat.
In his native land
people were starving. The crops had been poor, and the peasants saw themselves
face to face with famine. They appealed to their good King Umberto; he would
help. And he did. The wives of the peasants who had gone to the palace of the
King, held up in mute silence their emaciated infants. Surely that would move
him. And then the soldiers fired and killed those poor fools.
Bresci, at work in the
weaving mill at Paterson, read of the horrible massacre. His mental eye beheld
the defenceless women and innocent infants of his native land, slaughtered
right before the good King. His soul recoiled in horror. At night he heard the
groans of the wounded. Some may have been his comrades, his own flesh. Why, why
these foul murders?
The little meeting of
the Italian Anarchist group in Paterson ended almost in a fight. Bresci had
demanded his hundred dollars. His comrades begged, implored him to give them a
respite. The paper would go down if they were to return him his loan. But
Bresci insisted on its return.
How cruel and stupid
is ignorance. Bresci got the money, but lost the good will, the confidence of
his comrades. They would have nothing more to do with one whose greed was
greater than his ideals.
On the twenty-ninth of
July, 1900, King Umberto was shot at Monzo. The young Italian weaver of
Paterson, Gaetano Bresci, had taken the life of the good King.
Paterson was placed
under police surveillance, everyone known as an Anarchist hounded and
persecuted, and the act of Bresci ascribed to the teachings of Anarchism. As if
the teachings of Anarchism in its extremest form could equal the force of those
slain women and infants, who had pilgrimed to the King for aid. As if any
spoken word, ever so eloquent, could burn into a human soul with such white
heat as the lifeblood trickling drop by drop from those dying forms. The
ordinary man is rarely moved either by word or deed; and those whose social
kinship is the greatest living force need no appeal to respond--even as does
steel to the magnet--to the wrongs and horrors of society.
If a social theory is
a strong factor inducing acts of political violence, how are we to account for
the recent violent outbreaks in India, where Anarchism has hardly been born.
More than any other old philosophy, Hindu teachings have exalted passive
resistance, the drifting of life, the Nirvana, as the highest spiritual ideal.
Yet the social unrest in India is daily growing, and has only recently resulted
in an act of political violence, the killing of Sir Curzon Wyllie by the Hindu
Madar Sol Dhingra.
If such a phenomenon
can occur in a country socially and individually permeated for centuries with
the spirit of passivity, can one question the tremendous, revolutionizing
effect on human character exerted by great social iniquities? Can one doubt the
logic, the justice of these words:
"Repression,
tyranny, and indiscriminate punishment of innocent men have been the watchwords
of the government of the alien domination in India ever since we began the
commercial boycott of English goods. The tiger qualities of the British are
much in evidence now in India. They think that by the strength of the sword
they will keep down India! It is this arrogance that has brought about the
bomb, and the more they tyrannize over a helpless and unarmed people, the more
terrorism will grow. We may deprecate terrorism as outlandish and foreign to
our culture, but it is inevitable as long as this tyranny continues, for it is
not the terrorists that are to be blamed, but the tyrants who are responsible
for it. It is the only resource for a helpless and unarmed people when brought
to the verge of despair. It is never criminal on their part. The crime lies
with the tyrant." 4
Even conservative
scientists are beginning to realize that heredity is not the sole factor
moulding human character. Climate, food, occupation; nay, color, light, and
sound must be considered in the study of human psychology.
If that be true, how
much more correct is the contention that great social abuses will and must
influence different minds and temperaments in a different way. And how utterly
fallacious the stereotyped notion that the teachings of Anarchism, or certain
exponents of these teachings, are responsible for the acts of political
violence.
Anarchism, more than
any other social theory, values human life above things. All Anarchists agree
with Tolstoy in this fundamental truth: if the production of any commodity
necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that
commodity, but it can not do without that life. That, however, nowise indicates
that Anarchism teaches submission. How can it, when it knows that all
suffering, all misery, all ills, result from the evil of submission?
Has not some American
ancestor said, many years ago, that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God?
And he was not an Anarchist even. It would say that resistance to tyranny is
man's highest ideal. So long as tyranny exists, in whatever form, man's deepest
aspiration must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe.
Compared with the
wholesale violence of capital and government, political acts of violence are
but a drop in the ocean. That so few resist is the strongest proof how terrible
must be the conflict between their souls and unbearable social iniquities.
High strung, like a
violin string, they weep and moan for life, so relentless, so cruel, so
terribly inhuman. In a desperate moment the string breaks. Untuned ears hear
nothing but discord. But those who feel the agonized cry understand its
harmony; they hear in it the fulfillment of the most compelling moment of human
nature.
Such is the psychology
of political violence.
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