Augusto Masetti

**Augusto Masetti** was an anarchist active in Italy. He is notable for his attack against the Italian military in 1911.

## Life

### Early life

Augusto Masetti was born on 12 April, 1888 in Sala Bolgnese, Emilia-Romanga, Italy to a family of labourers. Following his birth, the family moved to the city of Bologna. Here he attended school and later became a worker, working as a shoemaker and bricklayer. He became a militant pro-worker activist, and immigrated to France in 1908 at age 20. However, he returned to Italy in 1909 in order to perform his mandatory military service. He was called to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Italo-Turkey war, as the Italian government aimed to seize and colonise Libya.

### Shooting

On the morning of 30 October 1911 while in the courtyard of the Cialdini barracks in Bologna, he fired his rifle at Colonel Stroppa, wounding him in the shoulder. He was arrested and questioned by military police, who found him to be a convinced anarchist carrying anarchist pamphlets that argued for a mutiny in the military. He was subsequently placed into an asylum and considered insane by the government. The government feared that if they executed him, he would become a martyr and strengthen the anarchist movement.

### Support network

However, a network of anarchists, socialists and anti-war activists in Italy emerged to form the "Pro Masetti National Committee" in 1914 who continuously lobbied for his release. The asylum staff agreed with the committee that Masetti was not insane, and the committee organised for him to be transferred to a different psychiatric hospital.

### Release and life under fascism

At some point he was released and married Concetta Pironi in 1919, with whom they had 3 children (Luisa, Cesare, Franco). He was arrested by the fascist police in September 1935 after he refused to participate in pro-war rallies that supported the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. He was arrested and imprisoned for 5 years. He was released in 1940 and continued to live in Bologna. In 1943 he was arrested by the Nazis, and in 1944 his son Cesare was killed in combat while participating in the Italian resistance. This event caused Augusto so much grief that he was placed in a mental hospital for "paranoid psychosis".

### After fascism

He was released after the fall of fascism in Italy, and continued to advocate for anarchism and against war and imperialism. He was killed on 3 March, 1966 after being hit by a police motorcycle in Imola.

## Quotes

> "The fatherland? I do not know her! The homeland is the reason. The proletarians have no country. We go on strike, the guards arrive and we have to flee abroad … Whoever wants to make war: Spingardi and the Turk; not with the blood of the Italian proletarians. It takes conscience! …ah! If they were all like me! There were six hundred of us, and if everyone had thought like me, he would have stayed home on the six and they would have sent the two zeros to Tripoli. […] No, this is not the homeland. We love humanity!"
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## Sources

All information used in this article comes from the Italian Wikipedia article for Augusto Masetti: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto\_Masetti