 Thank you very much. First of all, I would like to thank Hans and Gulchin for the invitation here as a few years ago, Antony Müller aptly said this conference is the Wimbledon of the Libertarians So I'm really honored to be here I'll be talking about Italy today about Italian history and the theme of my speech is state-making as war-making so the deep connection between state and war and I will start with with Five quotes from different writers and thinkers and so on which can be a good introduction for Italy as a theme the first one is from Francesco Petrarca. We heard about Dante Petrarca is another Outstanding medieval writer and this is a piece from a poetry of Petrarca dedicated to Italy Quote Valor will take up arms against wild attacks and the battle will be short for ancient valor is still strong in Italian hearts This was deeply inspiring for Italian patriots the second one is from the Prince of Machiavelli, you know Machiavelli had two versions the one team referred to yesterday the in his commentaries to Livy and where he advocates for virtue and and Ethical values and then you have the Prince where he advocates for a ruthless Ruler and this is from Machiavelli quote Italy half dead is still waiting for someone to heal its wounds and put an end to the Ravaging of Lombardy and to the extortionate taxing of the kingdom of Naples and of Tuscany Cleansing the source that have festered for so long It's clear that Italy is begging God to send someone who will deliver it from its cruel ill treatment at the hands of the foreigners It's also clear that Italy is ready and willing to march behind a flag if only someone will raise one and quote the third is the most interesting quote and it comes from Fyodor Dostoevsky the Russian writer in his The book it's okay. It's not a book. It's from his diary of a writer Quote take the instance of Count Kavur Kavur was the the prime minister who unified Italy just as a footnote Wasn't his a great mind wasn't he a diplomat? I am citing him because his genius is generally recognized and also because he is dead Yet, what did he do look? Oh, he did achieve his aim He did unite Italy, but what was the result for 2000 years? Italy bore in herself a universal unifying idea not some abstract idea not a speculation of some theoretical mind but a realistic organic idea the fruit of the national and universal life This was the unification of the whole world First the ancient Roman and later the papal unification the peoples who have been growing and disappearing in Italy in the course of these two and one half millennia Understood that they were the bearers of a universal idea while those who did not understand it felt and Divined it science art. Everything was invested and permeated with this universal significance Oh, let us admit that at length this unismersal idea became worn out and wasted there Although hardly so but what in the long run has come in its stead upon what can Italy be? Congratulated what advantage has she achieved after Count Kavur's diplomacy? There arose a second-rate little kingdom which has lost every kind of universal aspiration Which exchanged it for the most worn-out bourgeois principle the 30th repetition of this principle since the French Revolution a Kingdom fully content with its unity, which means nothing a mechanical not a spiritual unity It has not the former universal unity and on top of that a kingdom burdened with Insolvent indebtedness and in addition one specifically content with its own second-ratedness This is what came of it such was Count Kavur's creation unquote and Then the last two quotes This is from Prince Metternich the Austrian general. It's very short quote Italy is a geographical expression unquote and the last is from a Italian singer Giorgio Gabber who had very deep insights about the Italian character and The quote is this I have it from memory. Maybe I'll be a little bit wrong I'm not proud of being Italian but luckily or unluckily I am one So with these quotations in mind will start My reflections about war and state-making with the case of Italy Italy as a place is the birthplace of militarism The militarism we have nowadays with its symbols acronyms medals eagles and so on was invented by the ancient Romans and Militarism is still the Roman tradition changed during the centuries and millennia, but it's still the same tradition It is the tradition of what the ancient Romans called Imperium Imperium is the Right of the military ruler. It is an absolute right It is the right to decide about life and death of the subjects. It is the right of conquest and You cannot but think of Oppenheimer who was Quoted yesterday as well as you know Oppenheimer distinguished between two systems of Social life what he called the economic means which is producing and exchanging goods on a voluntary basis on the basis of contracts and the political means the political means is forced appropriation of other people's goods by violence or fraud and the Roman Empire is the big example of The political means made as a system Rome lived on the exploitation of other countries of wars and conquests for a long time and Once it became impossible to conquer other people. They had to start a war against their own citizens The works of Rostov-Tsev are probably the best ones in describing the fiscal collapse of the Roman Empire and My personal interpretation is that This is the time when Italians were born so until Italians were ancient Romans. They belonged to this great military Republican and later imperial enterprise of conquering other people and and making And grabbing their their wealth the the phrase from Virgil to Romani populus imperio dominares memento is the The idea so the Imperium the military might is the way to be the rulers of the world once this ended and once The Roman citizens began to be exploited by the taxes of the Empire typically during the third century after Christ and in the later in the later centuries there Was established Deep divide between the state and the citizens and this is in my opinion the birthplace of Italy Italians Don't like the state there. Sometimes you say they are natural anarchists. Although this is not the case anymore, but anyway lots of barbarians who invaded the Western Empire were saluted as Liberators because they brought with them very light states, of course They were warriors and and conquerors, but they had not the organization of the Roman Empire Especially the fiscal organization of the Roman Empire and they could not get so many taxes from the from the from the citizens After the so-called dark ages and the and the Period of the first middle-aged Italy Experienced what Peter Schwartz was referring to An incredible flourishing of arts of building of wealth banking was invented in the in Italy the city-states were very powerful were very rich and They could enjoy a situation where the Political cloud of the German emperors and of the popes was in place, but was not so strong Italians Won very important battles against the the German emperors the most important one Which is always cited is the battle of legnano against the Emperor Federico Frederick Barbarossa and the League of Northern Italian cities defeated the Emperor and The independence of city-states the Different laws different rules is maybe one of the best examples of Spontaneous order of an anarchist society Not exactly what we would like as a as a private law society, but it was pretty close the situation of Italy and the wealth of the Italians attracted of course foreigners and Starting from the late 15th and early 16th century Italy became Territory of conquest for the Spanish for the French for and later for the Austrians Italians didn't really care about this. There's a saying in Italy, which is Franza or Lemania This means France or Germany the important thing is that we eat and this is a yeah Yeah, this is a very very Good description of the Italian attitude Italians don't care who the ruler is and the ruler is someone who is very far away Maybe French maybe Spanish that's that makes no difference. The important thing is that their private life is a good life and There was a famous Expert on Italian literature in the 19th century Francesco de Santis who Criticized this Italian attitude in his opinion there were two Two ideas of Italy one represented by Machiavelli. So the idea of the ruthless ruler war as the System to build up states and this was his ideal We will speak of it later The other one is another historian who is not so famous as Machiavelli, but in my opinion who was the best Interpreter of the Italian attitude towards life and social life who was Francesco with Cerdini and in his Book of the remembrances, it's a book of short pieces where he remembers his life as a diplomat He was a high-ranking diplomat of the of Florence and he said Italians Look after their own business. We would say in English in Italian in Italian. It's the particula re suo We have also very vulgar expression to say this but anyway, I won't mention it here But it this is a is a typical attitude of Italians, so I mind my own business. I I don't care about the state I don't care about the others. So there's a lack of of solidarity a lack of of unity between Italians, but This is a very intelligent Description of of Italians And not withstanding the fact that Italy had been conquered by foreign powers the Flourishing in in arts in literature in architecture continued Every everyone who has visited Italy has it Before his eyes we have wonderful churches palaces Works of art even after the French stole them and brought them to Paris we still have an amount of of works of art which is incredible and The idea of Italy as a concept began to Be gathered around a cultural unity So the first ones during the 18th century speaking of Italy as an idea where especially writers I can Quote Alfieri Vittorio Alfieri. He was a writer for of tragedies for the theater and the very famous Hugo Foscolo who was a poet and The idea was that there was some kind of cultural unity of Italians of course at that time this was no more than an illusion the little elite who were in who had the capacity of Reading Dante Petrarch and understand even understanding Italian They were just a few the majority of the Italians spoke dialect never read anything. It couldn't even She conceived the idea of of Italy as a cultural unity anyway The idea became stronger and stronger, but the problem is The most of these writers were deeply Connected with the classical culture. So instead of Going to the to the liberal tradition which was starting in England in the United States so the idea of a minimal state of Freedom of personal freedom They went back to the classical writers who saw freedom political freedom as the freedom to be part of a political community and so they tried and they the idea was to Bring back the idea of of ancient Rome and of ancient Greek cities to Italy, which was of course completely impossible and ancient writers always celebrated war and Violence as a way of establishing political power This became particularly important with the Napoleonic conquests of Italy Napoleon changed the political geography of Italy completely because he established Different republics and and independent states in Italy and for the first time Italians got the idea that they could be involved in politics and That they could build their own state The the Napoleon hadn't really an interest to build an independent Italian state He wanted satellite countries, which would be buffer states around France But anyway, his public proclamations, especially during the first time when he still was Council and not not emperor where along these lines and he stirred interest among Italians for this kind of new idea of politics What is very interesting? Napoleon gave the beginning also to a another Let's say political movement that was very important during the 19th century Which is the wars of resistance against Napoleonic invasions In Italy you had something similar or comparable to the resistance against Napoleon in Spain Although not as a national movement, but what is very important is especially in the south of Italy the king recruited criminals to fight against against Napoleon and this may be the birth of the mafia in and of the criminal organizations in southern Italy since Napoleon wasn't Able to keep in check the territory and since the king has had been ousted of his territories the only way of establishing a kind of control on on the territory and on the citizens where an alliance with criminals with the so-called banditie and they were the ones who fought even with great success against the French soldiers very famous criminals were promoted to generals of the army and the very strict connection between State power and organized criminality began during these years During the beginning of the 19th century there were attempts at revolutions attempts to build unified state The main idea which came from Two very prominent persons in the Italian unifications of the so-called Risorgimento the new birth of Italy Namely, Mazzini and Garibaldi Was to build a national character because they all knew that there is there was no national character of the Italians and especially they knew that Italians didn't have a big interest in Unified Italy especially in the south so the idea was to build Italy by means of a war of blood of They say that they always said the baptism of fire and blood. This was the idea so the idea was to build a war-like nation although Italians never had been war-like and very fond of war and to Achieve unification of Italy during by means of war. It's significant that Germans Did the same a few years after Italy because the the idea was the same to achieve unity through a war in this case Against France for the Italians. It was Austria in fact Unification of Italy was not an achievement of a war-like nation Italian armies Did not so well during the wars of your unification who was the real maker of Italy was Camillo Kavur It's interesting to note he had a French surname and his first language was French He usually wrote French in his letters to other to the king and to other politicians yet he had this idea of Italy and how did he achieve Italian unification mainly by means of intrigues secret services he exploited very very ruthlessly the sexual appetites of the French Emperor Napoleon the third and of the Italian King he provided high-ranking prostitutes to get in the beds of these two monarchs and He bribed the army officers of the southern Kingdom he Had a very ambiguous position as far as Garibaldi was concerned You know it Italian unification was achieved by means of the expedition of the thousand so-called to boats left the port of Quarto in the near near Jenova and they sailed to Sicily to invade Sicily and free southern Italy from the Bourbon Kings from King Francis and When Garibaldi arrived the more or less thousands Soldiers were joined by rebels. This is the official official history and big rebellion in Sicily ousted the king then he passed over to the mainland Italy and Was joined by the by the army of of Piedmont of the King of Sardinia and Piedmont and they achieved unification of Italy and Garibaldi and the King were described as sort of brothers in this Venture of unifying Italy. In fact, it was also a thing of secret service of British financing to the whole enterprise and most important Garibaldi could achieve this result only by an alliance with the local criminal organization the mafia Otherwise, he couldn't have done it. It is very interesting that the ship where the whole accounting of the expedition of the thousand soldiers of Garibaldi the ship was called Hercules and commanded by young Italian writer Ippolito Nievo who was only 30 years old the Ship disappeared with all the documents. No corpses were found Nothing was found at all of the ship and this made impossible to See how the money had been spent who paid the money because probably it came from from Britain who had an interest of building up power against the French in the Mediterranean and so the whole official narrative is very very Unlikely there is a very interesting book that not many know of a Filippo Curletti who was a spy a secret service agent for for Kavur who Described exactly what he did to bribe the people in the southern Italy to Bring about elections in favor of the unification of Italy which were completely fake like maybe in the United States now They they brought the people to the to the to the polls with with the With the election slides already with yes, we want unification of Italy. They couldn't even read and so on anyway Italy was more or less unified in 1861 During the next ten years we had a brutal civil war which is always not usually Described in in mainstream history books in southern Italy we had a civil war of former militaries of the of the southern army together with Criminals the so-called banditi in fact they were Freedom fighters or fighters against an invasion from a foreign country because this was the unification of southern Italy There were very famous Banditi Carmine crocco Ninko nanko they were very romantic figures because they could held in check a very organized army like the Piedmontese army for ten years more or less They were defeated at the end and This gave rise to true movements which are very important in Italian modern history on one side the Emigration there were lots of southern Italians who felt that they didn't have a fatherland anymore They did not it identify with Italy and they left Italy millions of Italians Sailed to the United States to Argentina to South America to Brazil and We still have so many Italians in the whole world and this comes from that time and it continued for more or less 100 years Another very important movement that came out of the war of conquest is Italian anarchism Italian anarchism is one of the most Strong anarchist movement was one of the most strong anarchist movements in the in the 19th century and For a certain time. It was really a danger for the newborn Italian state Both Prime Minister Chris P who was a very important Prime Minister during at the end of the 19th century and Jolieti fought against the anarchist with special laws with ruthless police interventions, but the anarchists weren't Peaceful people at this must be said. There have been lots of Kings and Queens killed by the anarchists the most Important episode of the anarchist fight against the Italian government is that of Gaitano Brischi in 1898 a new tax was passed on on on Bread and flour and this made for many Italians the the Bread really expensive so it meant hunger Servation for lots of Italians and in Milano There was there were big protests in the city with barricades and people protesting against this tax and King Umberto the first ordered one of his generals Baba Beccaris to Finish the rebellion ruthlessly and with violence and Baba Beccaris shot the the crowd with cannons and killed officially 90 persons probably around 300 400 it was a great tragedy and Not happy of that the King awarded the general with a with a medal for his brave and outstanding results during the rebellion in Milano And this Sturred the reactions of the anarchists, especially of one gaitano Brischi He was one of the many Italians who Went to the United States to escape the the Italian state He was living in the same city where later very famous anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were living it was a sort of Anarchist enclosure in the United States. He went back to Italy with the idea to shoot the king and in fact In on July 1900 he shot the king in Monza and Umberto primo died of this Brischi was very successfully Defended by a great anarchist lawyer whom I admire very much Francesco Savei Merlino And he was incredibly condemned to life and not to to to lifelong sentence and not Hanged what would have been the the natural thing, of course He was killed in in jail a few a few years after but anyway Anarchists were a strong force at the beginning of the 20th century in Italy and The Polarization of Italian politics at the beginning of the 19th century were along two lines on one side Anarchists and socialists at that time they were still allied Although there had been a big divide between anarchists and socialists because Anarchists didn't believe in the state and socialists of course believed in the state as a means of acquiring the control of the means of production on the other side nationalists and of course Catholics who were a little bit outside the the Italian politics because they The conquest of Rome by the Italian state in 1870 created a big divide between the Pope and the Italian state But yet there was a let's say a bourgeois alliance of liberals of a little some Catholics Who called the shots in Italy on the other side where the revolutionaries the anarchists the socialists and so on in this Political situation there rose a very important political movement, which is Not often mentioned and which is Really the birthplace of fascism, which is nationalism you can cite as very important persons of nationalism Gabelle D'Annunzio the poet the futurists so Magneti the movement of the futurism and they wanted to Establish the same thing that was the ideal of the Risorgimento They wanted to establish a strong country with a strong army and possibly to achieve military victories In 1915 this movement was the movement behind the interventionism of Italy in World War one Italy had an alliance with Germany and Austria and According to the treaty Italy was entitled to Remain neutral during World War one which was the idea of Jolitti. He was a liberal prime minister He was well aware that Italy hadn't the possibility to join the war and He wanted to keep Italy out out of the war It would have been a very intelligent course of action, but the nationalists weren't of that idea They began a very hard and strong campaign in favor of the intervention of Italy in World War one They were joined by Mussolini at that time still a socialist and The Jolitti Government fell he was substituted by another politician Antonio Salander who Made a secret treaty with with Great Britain and France in order to get Italy into Into World War one and he presented the treaty as a feta complet to the parliament and to the to the king The majority of the members of parliament went to Jolitti and pledged their Assistance to him in order to reverse the treaty, but Jolitti was afraid of Not holding the promises to to Great Britain and France and this is how Italy entered World War one World War one was aptly called by Pope Benedict the 15th as the suicide of Europe and the useless massacre He was very against World War one when Italy entered World War one. He Called it not a war, but a big war. It will run an enormous war and Okay, he was right Starting with World War one as in many countries Italy changed completely we had command economy government spending and the whole of the economy was Was Used for the interests of the state so the beginning of big state in Italy is the beginning of is Connected with World War one. So since that time In my opinion fascism was born the idea there is a very Important phrase by Mussolini. He said everything in the state nothing outside the state nothing against the state and This attitude began during World War one. In fact Mussolini came to power in 1922 with the march on Rome But the origins of what was later to become fascism can be searched in World War one World War one was for the Italian brutal war Conscripts from all From all of Italy most of them Ignorant peasants who didn't understand anything not even the officers commanding them because they spoke a dialect and they didn't understand the officers were forced to assault against Austrian machine guns and just die Italian the Italian front was organized on two lines on the first line There were the soldiers who were supposed to attack against the Austrians behind them. They were the carabinieri or the Guardia di finanza the the tax police who had their own machine guns And so the choice was to go to the Austrian machine guns Oh if someone Retreated to be shot by the carabinieri and the Guardia di finanza. So this was the World War one the on the front there was ruthless discipline with summary shootings of soldiers on by officers with Decimations which I think were the only army who who did this was the Italian army if Part of the army wasn't Obedient to the orders and if it was impossible to establish who was the responsible for this obedience The commanders ordered that one in ten soldiers to be shot There is a very interesting book by a writer whose name is Emilio Lussu A year on the high mountains and he describes this atmosphere and there is also a very interesting movie about about this From this book by Francesco Rossi the movie was prohibited in the 70s as Offense to the armed forces still so This is Italy I'll try to be fast after World War one as everyone knows Fascism was established As Umberto Eco said Fascism is eternal. It never went away Italians were enthusiastic about Mussolini about fascism They liked the idea of having a big nanny state which would provide for the Italians from the cradle to the tomb and If it had not been for the errors of Mussolini of entering the war at a timing when when Italy wasn't Capable of Sustaining the war we would still be fascists in Italy I think or maybe would have abandoned fascism as the Spanish Frankism in the 70s or something like that and the Italy was Liberated by the Americans and not by the resistance fighters as the common legend goes and The most important thing to say is that after fascism as in part in Germany, but more so than that the high-ranking bureaucrats and the Fascist system was not abandoned So we had a constitution in 1948 and the constitution provides for certain Fundamental rights, but the main architecture of the fascist state remained in place and in part still is in place one of the interesting things which give you an impression of how it went in Italy after the war is that the President of the racial Commission in Italy who was a Lawyer Gaetano at Zeriti it was the Commission who had could decide if someone belonged to the Jewish race and then had this thus had to be deported or not He became the first president of the Italian constitutional court. So this gives you a good impression of what Italy is We did have in the 50s and the 60s these short retreat of the state You can see it from the from the public debt In 90 in the 1960s public debt was around 20 30 percent of GDP In 1970 it soared to 40 percent in 1990 we came close to 100 percent now we are to 155 percent of GDP so the presence of the state which was a little bit lighter during the 50s and the 60s Retreated and then came back. We had a big comeback of the state during the years of terrorism and Later so during the years where when Italy joined the the euro and became part of of of the monetary union and during the last years the very last years We had a big big comeback of of the state The fiscal oppression in Italy is crazy Milton Friedman famously said when he they asked him what is the the biggest economic resource of Italy he said it's tax evasion and in fact It still is like this, but it's going back so the Thanks to technology the fiscal authorities are becoming more and more efficient and so they are just extortioning around 65 70 percent of the of the national revenue. This can't go on in fact, we witness it The end of democracy more or less since the government of Mario Monty Elections have no importance whatsoever as far as the prime ministers are concerned and during the covid crisis and here I end The oppression of the state became unbearable I leave you with a glimmer of hope in this very Sad description of Italy a big protest movement is Building up in Italy I myself are I'm one of the of the They call police called me the leader of the rebellion I'm I'm fighting the government and The interest for anti-state movements is coming back. I have funny conversations with State employees who asked me about Rothbard and Frank Choderoff and what they can read about About the idea of getting rid of the state. I Recommended them to read Hans's books so Something is changing. Maybe we can achieve it. Maybe we can We can achieve at least to go back a little bit more in the direction of a minimal state maybe we can achieve to Give force to secessionist movements like in Sardinia and in Veneto if not, we will be in a statist nightmare, which was the dream of the fascists and which will be Unluckily the end of my country. Thank you very much for your attention