Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Highlights
id894679779
He assassinated the king as punishment for his having signed a decree imposing martial law to quell the May 1898 protests in Milan against rising food prices — before bestowing Italy’s highest military honors on the general who ordered grapeshot to be used against the unarmed demonstrators, killing hundreds. The government’s lethal response was the latest in a series of repressive measures intended to thwart efforts by industrial and agricultural workers to fight economic exploitation and force their way into a political process that had long excluded them and ignored their interests.
id894679001
Bresci migrated to the United States, arriving in New York on January 29, 1898. Soon after, he moved to Paterson, where he joined some ten thousand Italians employed in the city’s silk mills and dye houses. In addition to its thriving silk industry, Paterson at that time boasted the highest percentage of avowed anarchists and anarchist sympathizers in the United States and possibly the world.
✏️ What a wild thing to imagine. This random place in New Jersey had the highest percentage of anarchists in the world (possibly). 🔗 View Highlight
id894679676
Supporters on both sides of the Atlantic saw Bresci as a noble, pure, and selfless avenging executioner who exacted retributive justice for the victims of state violence. In Italy, during the weeks and months following the assassination, the cry “Viva Bresci” reverberated in all forms of public gatherings and was scrawled on walls across the country. By some accounts close to 2,700 people — only a few of them anarchists, comprising all social classes, from peasants, artisans, and shopkeepers to priests, soldiers, and even some aristocrats — were tried for expressing their support for Bresci in one form or another.
id894679721
When interrogators asked why he had killed Umberto, he answered, “I did not kill Umberto, I killed the King,” thus dissociating the official position of his target from the flesh and blood man who occupied it.