Nunzio Pernicone and Fraser M. Ottanelli. Assassins against the Old Order

Assassins against the Old Order: Italian Anarchist Violence in Fin de Siècle Europe, a posthumously published monograph by Nunzio Pernicone and brought to completion by Fraser M. Ottanelli, achieves the considerable feat of making a compelling, innovative argument about late nineteenth-century transnational anarchist terrorism. This history of anarchist political violence in Italy brings fresh perspectives to the abundant recent historiography of anarchist terrorism and transnationalism, which, the authors stress, has tended to gloss over national specificities in its embrace of transnational flows and mutual inspirations between national movements and individual perpetrators. Instead, they argue that the terrorist ideology of “‘propaganda of the deed’ as conceived and carried out by Italian anarchists possessed unique and distinctive characteristics that derived exclusively from their multilayered experiences” (5). Such singularity is accounted for by the legacy of the Risorgimento, the role of Bakunin, the suppression of the First International and its impact, the inciting role of political repression in Italy, the individual circumstances of each perpetrator, as well as the criminalization and demonization of anarchist political violence by authorities and social scientists.

Criminology · Demonization · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Terrorism · Transnationalism · Anarchism and Radical Politics · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law