Enrico Arrigoni (pseudonym: Frank Brand) (February 20, 1894
Pozzuolo Martesana
Pozzuolo Martesana ( lmo, Pozzoeu or ''Pozzoeul'' ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Milan in the Italian region Lombardy, located about east of Milan.
Pozzuolo Martesana borders the following municipalities: Inzago, C ...
,
Province of Milan
The Province of Milan ( it, Provincia di Milano) was a province in the Lombardy region, Italy. Its capital was the city of Milan. The area of the former province is highly urbanized, with more than 2,000 inhabitants/km2, the third highest populati ...
– December 7, 1986
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
) was an
Italian American
Italian Americans ( it, italoamericani or ''italo-americani'', ) are Americans who have full or partial Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeast and industrial Midwestern metropolitan areas, ...
individualist anarchist
Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their Will (philosophy), will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems."What do I mean by individualism? I mean ...
, a lathe operator, house painter, bricklayer, dramatist and political activist influenced by the work of
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt (25 October 1806 – 26 June 1856), known professionally as Max Stirner, was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen a ...
.
[Enrico Arrigoni at the Daily Bleed's Anarchist Encyclopedia](_blank)
[Paul Avrich. ''Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America''](_blank)
/ref>
Life and activism
He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
´s plays. In the 1910s, he became involved in anarchist and anti-war activism around Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
. From the 1910s until the 1920s, he participated in anarchist activities and popular uprisings in various countries including Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Argentina and Cuba.
He lived from the 1920s onwards in New York City, and there he edited the individualist anarchist eclectic journal ''Eresia'' in 1928. He also wrote for other American anarchist publications such as ''L' Adunata dei refrattari
''L'Adunata dei refrattari'' ( en: ''Call of the refractaires'' (unmanageable ones)) was an Italian American anarchist publication published between 1922 and 1971 in New York City.International Institute of Social History"L'Adunata dei refrattari A ...
'', ''Cultura Obrera'', ''Controcorrente'' and ''Intessa Libertaria''. During the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
, he went to fight with the anarchists but was imprisoned and was helped in his release by Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Russian-born anarchist political activist and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the ...
. Afterwards, Arrigoni became a longtime member of the Libertarian Book Club in New York City. He lived in the US as an illegal immigrant.
During the 1960s, he helped Cuban anarchists
Anarchism as a social movement in Cuba held great influence with the working classes during the 19th and early 20th century. The movement was particularly strong following the abolition of slavery in 1886, until it was repressed first in 1925 by ...
who were suffering the repression of the recently established Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...
´s Marxist-Leninist regime. Along with the exiled Cuban anarchist Manuel Ferro, they "began a campaign in Italy itself...They turned to the most important Italian anarchist periodical, ''Umanità Nova
''Umanità Nova'' is an Italian anarchist newspaper founded in 1920.
It was published daily until 1922 when it was shut down by the fascist regime. In some places, its circulation exceeded that of the socialist paper '' Avanti!'' Upon the fal ...
'' (“New Humanity”), the official publication of the Federazione Anarchica Italiana The Italian Anarchist Federation ( it, Federazione Anarchica Italiana) is an Italian anarchist federation of autonomous anarchist groups all over Italy. The Italian Anarchist Federation was founded in 1945 in Carrara. It adopted an "Associative Pac ...
, with the idea of counterbalancing the undeniable influence of '' L’Adunata'' in the Italian-American anarchist community, and more especially of responding to a series of pro-Cuban Revolution articles published in that weekly by Armando Borghi. ''Umanità Nova'' refused to publish Ferro's articles (translated by Arrigoni), saying that they didn't want to create a polemic. At that point, Arrigoni accused them of being in the pay of the Communists, and they eventually published Ferro's responses to Borghi. A few months later, Borghi — ignoring the points raised by Ferro — published a new defense of Castroism in ''L’Adunata'', but ''Umanità Nova'' refused to publish Ferro's response to it."[Frank Fernández. ''Cuban Anarchism: The History of A Movement''](_blank)
/ref> Arrigoni also translated articles written by Ferro which were published in the anarchist press of France, Italy, Mexico, and Argentina. According to Ferro, “In the majority of our milieus hese articleswere received with displeasure,” owing to the “enthusiasm” with which the Cuban Revolution had been received in them. But in other cases, anarchists rallied to the Cuban libertarian cause. ''Reconstruir'' (“To Reconstruct”) in Buenos Aires, whose publishing house, Colectivo, fully identified with the Cuban anarchists, published all of Ferro's works."
He died in New York City when he was 92 years old on December 7, 1986.
American anarchist writer Hakim Bey in 1991 talked about Arrigoni in this way: "Like the Italian Stirnerites (who influenced us through our late friend Enrico Arrigoni) we support all anti-authoritarian currents, despite their apparent contradictions."
Written works
* ''The totalitarian nightmare'' (1975)
* ''The lunacy of the Superman'' (1977)
* ''Adventures in the country of the monoliths'' (1981)
* ''Freedom: my dream'' First published by the Libertarian Book Club in 1937, reprinted by Western World Press in 1986, and LBC Books (Little Black Cart), March 2012.
References
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arrigoni
1894 births
1986 deaths
People from the Province of Milan
Italian anarchists
American writers of Italian descent
American anarchists
Italian emigrants to the United States
Individualist anarchists
Egoist anarchists
House painters
American bricklayers