June 6, 2025 • 58 mins
This week, we’re taking a scalpel (or, more accurately, a janky pawn-shop file) to the life of Luigi Lucheni—the anarchist who assassinated Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1898.
We dig into Lucheni’s trash fire of a childhood, the rise of anarchism in Europe, and the absolute disaster that was monarchy back then (and honestly, now too). We’ll follow Cece’s last days, break down what “propaganda of the deed” actually meant, and ask what happens when someone murders a symbol, not a person.
Also: was Lucheni martyred or snuffed out? Did the system silence him, or did he just flame out? And how much does any of this still matter today? A lot, it turns out.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It was not a woman I struck, but an Empress. It was a crown that I had in view. I acted
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on my own initiative, without any pressure, and I alone am responsible for the deed.
I'm Acadia Einstein, and this is Strangel Things.
(00:30):
Hello everybody, welcome and welcome back to Strangel Things. I am Acadia Einstein,
and Grace will be back soon. This episode we're going to be looking at a guy named Luigi who
executed a rich person. No, not that one. This guy was from the late 19th century,
(00:56):
and not only did he assassinate someone, but the woman he assassinated was not even his top
pick of people to assassinate. How much would that suck? Getting killed but finding out before
you die that you were the backup? Tough. So let's dig into the wild world of monarchy,
which we've touched on before, and anarchism, which we haven't. By the late 1800s, Europe's
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imperial order stood at odds with rising revolutionary currents. Remember, as we've
talked about a bunch, Europe really sucked. They were just sailing around, pillaging and
murdering and enslaving, just jerks. And it's not like the gen pop back in the homeland was
benefiting from all the monstrous things their kings and queens and shit were doing. They were
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just living their lives and sending their seven year olds off to work in the factories every
morning. So like now, except the seven year olds can't work yet. Yet. So now that we see that
Europe was fat packed with rich, powerful jerks, we need to talk about anarchism. Anarchism is a
political philosophy built on one core belief. Power corrupts. So get rid of it. Anarchists
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want a world without rulers, without bosses, without states, not chaos for chaos and sake,
but a legitimately reorganized society where people live in voluntary communities, cooperate
without coercion and make decisions together, not from the top down. At its heart, anarchism says
hierarchies are bad. Authority is dangerous. And freedom is only real when no one can force you
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to obey. It's any monarchy, any capitalist, any state, and usually any church, not because
anarchists just pissed off fed up people. I mean, they were, but also they saw those systems as
engines of exploitation, inequality and violence. Anarchists believe that if you abolish governments,
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dismantled class systems and let people organize from the bottom up, you'd get a freer, fairer
world where no one could be born into power and no one could be crushed by it. They forget the part
that technically, we already started that way and got to where we got. So let's just put that
aside. The end goal was liberation, not just rebellion. Think about worker run factories,
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shared land, local councils instead of national governments, mutual education, mutual aid and
no kings ever again. Now you can poke a lot of holes in all those ideas, like a lot of holes in
all those ideas. Because it assumes that everybody is going to be on board with the whole let's just
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share everything idea. And that never works out. And I think it's a slow escalation of that not
working out that gets us to where we are. But if you're constantly getting oppressed, it doesn't
sound bad. In 19th century Europe, industrialization and empire were tearing everybody apart.
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Workers toiled in awful conditions, kings ruled by birthright, and peasants were still dying for
rich men's wars. They still are. So in the mid to late 1800s, anarchism caught fire. France,
Italy, Spain, Russia, everywhere people were pissed and poor. Angry leaflets spread anarchist
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ideas fast. Cities like Geneva and Paris became hubs for exiled radicals. Revolutions failed. But
the anarchists didn't stop. They just changed tactics. And that's where a fun little concept
was born. This part will be on the test. When peaceful ideas weren't working, some turned to
violent spectacle, kill a king, bomb a stock exchange, not just for revenge, but to wake people
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up. It was risky, radical, controversial, even among the anarchists. Some saw it as heroic
resistance and other people thought it just scared everyone and made things worse. But in the late
1800s, during a time when kings and presidents were being taken out by lone actors with knives
and pistols, I was the play Mrs. Lincoln, propaganda of the deed became a terrifying reality for
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Europe's ruling class. Propaganda of the deed. From 1880 to 1910, anarchists assassinated
presidents, prime ministers and royals. Europe's elites were shook. In the top anarchists of the
day had a lot to say about it. The destruction of visible symbols of oppression. The spark that
will ignite the revolution. Or quotes like Mikhail Bakunin's, the passion for destruction is a
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creative passion too. Who is Bakunin? He was a Russian noble turn revolutionary chaos goblin. He
started out as a well off military kid in Russia, but he ditched all that to chase radical philosophy
across Europe. Over time, he became one of the OGs of modern anarchism. A lot of people just
wandered around Europe, just to wander. You know, like poets and anyways, he was like,
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burn it all down and start over. That was his kind of main thing. He thought all government is
oppression doesn't matter if it's a monarchy or a democracy. If it holds power over people, it's
got to go. Revolution is the only answer. He didn't believe in reform. He believed in destruction
as a creative force. No gods, no masters. He was anti-religion and anti-state. The church and
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the state were like the evil twins of oppression to him. And freedom came through collective
action. He wanted a stateless society made up of federations of free communes. No rulers,
just people working together voluntarily. Stuff that like read from that 70s show would have
called hippie and put his foot in their ass. And yeah, these things were pretty idealistic,
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but don't let that make you like poo poo all the stuff that was driving it. Hakunin was part
of the first international, which was a big leftist club with Karl Marx. But the two hated each
other. Marx thought the working class should seize state power. Hakunin was like, nope,
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power corrupts. So burn the whole thing down. Which is kind of a fun distinction. And while he
died, broke and sick and switchaled in 1876 after being sent to prison, escaping, being exiled and
trying to help out a lot of failed uprisings, it was ideas like his that fed the anarchist fire.
And since at the time you couldn't throw a peasant without hitting some aristocrat, late 19th
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century Europe was a target rich environment. And here are some of those targets. The anarchists
were busy little beavers. They needed deeds for propaganda. And holy shit, did they do some
deeds. 1894 French president assassinated 1897 Spanish prime minister shot in the neck. 1901
assassination of President McKinley. They killed the king of Italy. There was the Haymarket affair
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in Chicago. It was a labor rally that exploded when somebody threw a bomb at the police. This
actually turned into May Day, which is the international workers holiday. In the 1890s,
there was a bombing wave through Paris, all from anarchists. 1905. Russian anarchists were behind
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like 4500 assassinations, which kind of makes me think, if you have that many, I don't know if
there's 4500 assassination worthy people. I mean, I guess if you just keep lowering what it means,
or you keep raising what assassination means, some of it just seems like it might have been
murder. In 1910, the Los Angeles Times was bombed. The bomb plot of 1919 was dozens of bombs being
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mailed to judges, capitalists and politicians across the US, including JP Morgan, Rockefeller,
and the attorney general, Mitchell Palmer. One blew up on his doorstep. If the unabomber was
a multi-bomber and only was mad at rich, powerful people. In the early 1900s, there were worker
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revolts and bombings in Argentina. In 1911, Kano Sugako was accused of plotting to assassinate
the Emperor of Japan and became one of the first women executed in modern Japan. And she said,
before her death, even if I should be executed, I will not give up my faith. Now I realize I just
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listed out a bunch of crimes against the establishment, but I don't want anyone to think
I'm condoning these horrible actions. I mean, sure. The people who aren't supposed to get
thrown into the sun are the people who made the rules about who was and was not supposed to get
thrown into the sun. But you know, don't. And don't think about the fact that I was doing this
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thing for work. And I had to use a list of reasons that an insurance company might reject a claim.
There were 256. I shit you not. But don't think about that. The anarchists were bad. And now that
we know that propaganda of the deed probably doesn't work and killing powerful people will
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definitely not draw attention to the kind of power the dead person had, because who cares about
that? Nobody. That's who. So let's talk about Luigi. Not that Luigi. See all this bombing and
killing and whatnot, along with attacks on lesser royals and officials created an atmosphere of
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tension among Europe's elites. Security for monarchs was improving. Yet many still traveled
with minimal protection. I mean, which kind of makes sense, because I think they were still in a
situation where they thought that like the peasants, oh, they love us. We're so important. So against
this backdrop of social unrest and scared big shots, Luigi Locaini, a disenfranchised laborer
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turned anarchist, set out to strike his own blow against the established order. Let's talk about
when I give you the rundown of his life, I want you to think about how his fate may have been
improved if he had had the benefit of magic mind like I do. I have been using magic mind for a
long time now. And there's never been a time it has not made me more alert, better able to pay
(11:37):
attention. For reals, it helped me finish the script. I'm not calling magic mind a cure all.
If it was, then my bones would not be so rickety, but I am calling it a help lots for your brain.
Stress, distraction, stuff that happens to you and everybody else all the time. It is a mental
performance shot, but it's not spinach. You don't just slug one and then go win jeopardy. But if
(12:03):
you stay on it, you'll see the difference. I mean it. Magic mind greases the wheels. So go to
magicmind.com slash StrangefulAPR and use code StrangefulAPR to get 20% off a one time purchase
or up to 48% off for a subscription. Do it. Okay, it's time to see what made Luigi Luigi and
(12:23):
to learn a little bit about how 19th century Europe worked other than all the atrocities.
April 22nd, 1873. Luigi Locaini is born in Paris, France, the illegitimate son of a destitute
Italian made, which sounds like a, like a bad novel, the destitute Italian made by anonymous.
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His unmarried mother leaves him at a Foundling hospital as an infant in August of 1874. When
he's like one, he's sent to Italy where he's shuttled between orphanages and foster families
during his childhood. Why was he sent to Italy? Well, since his mom left him at the fire station
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slash Foundling home, he was sort of up for grabs. And apparently even as an infant, he must have
had a very thick black mustache because the French marked him as an Italian. And France didn't want
some foreign baby who was illegitimate clogging up their social services and eating all their cheese.
So they sent that welfare mooch baby to Italy. Not sure how they pulled it off, mailed him maybe
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or shot him out of a cannon, but whatever it was, Luigi was shit on as a baby. He was only one.
He probably didn't even know he was Italian yet, except for the mustache. Now by age 10 in 1883,
Locaini is forced to start working. Think about that for a second. He's pulled from school and
hired out as a farm laborer. See, why should able bodied 10 year olds be able to suckle off the
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teat of the hardworking taxpayers of Italy, lazy children. So A, he doesn't get to learn anything.
And B, I'm sure he didn't get to keep the money that he supposedly made while he was working.
His social standing as an illegitimate child in a conservative society
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marked him with stigma and resentment from pretty much the jump. That seems fair.
And nothing, he should have at least had the opportunity to say his father died in some war from
consumption. But nope, he was just labeled as a bastard and that was that. In his late teens,
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Luigi works a series of menial jobs in Italy. Stable groom, construction worker, sewer cleaner,
sewer cleaner, which is very close to plumber. At 20, he's conscripted into the Italian army,
because of course, and he serves for approximately three years in apparently an artillery regiment.
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He reportedly, though I could not confirm, takes part in the Italian campaign in Abyssinia,
which is Ethiopia, in 1895 to 96, witnessing the brutal colonial war in which Italy was
defeated, which by the way is on my topics list. So many topics. This experience, coupled with
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Italy's economic hardships, deepens his disillusionment with authority. In 1897,
he gets an honorable discharge because he was apparently a good artillery guy. So he leaves
Italy for French speaking Switzerland in search of work and a new life. He drifts through
Swiss towns, chas au lausanne, Geneva, among others, taking on odd jobs. He was a railway worker,
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went back to stable hand. That must have been either there were lots needed or he was good at
it. But he never escaped poverty. Funny how that works. Poor people staying poor. But unlike America
now, apparently poor people in Europe didn't think it was their own fault that they were poor.
In Lausanne, he comes into contact with anarchist circles and literature, sharpening his political
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convictions. By this time, he openly identifies as an anarchist and rails against social elites
for the misery of the working class. And there was lots of misery to rail against. To sum it all up,
Luigi was pretty sick of the powerful really giving it to the working man. And it was not
just political jerks. The church was right up in there too. All of them. He's sleeping under
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bridges like a troll while the fat cats are all fat cat and sleeping in fancy feather beds.
Now in early September 1898, Luigi arrives in Geneva, Switzerland, with murder on his mind.
Inspired by recent anarchist attacks, he plans to assassinate a member of the elite as a protest
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against the ruling class. And you can argue that that's probably not the best plan.
But remember, he had in his head a propaganda of the deed. Don't just say shit, do shit.
Right? So naturally, he was going to do something. And initially, he targets Prince Henri-Philippe
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de Orlon. The prince was a French royal who happened to be in town. And Luigi reasoned
that killing any aristocrat of note will, quote, get in the papers and inspire the oppressed.
A member of France's former royal family, Prince Henri, born 1867, was the son of the Duke of Charte.
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Charte and a relative of the Orléanist pretender to the French throne. In 1898,
the 30-year-old prince was known as an avid explorer and travel writer,
not a particularly influential political figure, but certainly a high-profile noble. And I think
that's it. So he was a prince, he was a noble, a fat cat, you see. He had spent time in Africa
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and Asia on expeditions, earning medals from the Geographical Society of Paris. And by chance,
he was passed through Switzerland in September of 1898. Unfortunately for our story, he also
spent less time in Geneva than Luigi thought he was going to. The slippery prince squirted
right out of town before Luigi even got there. Though I could find no written account of it,
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I am pretty sure when Luigi got off the train, there was a toad-looking guy who said,
thank you, Luigi, but our targeted prince is in another castle. Perhaps you should be bummed
out and go read the newspaper. So on September 9th, 1898, Luigi did just that. He reads a news item
that Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary, traveling under the alias Countess of Hohenimps,
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is currently visiting the city incognito. I don't understand how that got in the paper. Like,
if you want to say she's, okay, there's a lot wrong with that. If you've got an alias
and you're visiting the city incognito, don't tell the newspaper. Or newspaper,
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don't tell everybody. I don't fucking, I don't know. Maybe the newspaper should, I don't know.
Elizabeth, known popularly as Cece, is the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph and one of Europe's most
famous women. Luigi can't believe his luck. A sovereign is in reach, and not just any sovereign.
Cece was sort of interesting. She might have been an interesting topic on her own in other
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circumstances, but I already told you how long the topic list was, so this is what we get.
She was born into Bavarian royalty, and since Europe is gross, she was made to marry Emperor
Franz Joseph I of Austria when she was just 16. This made her fancy and important,
yet court life in Vienna stifled Elizabeth. She bristled at the strict protocol of the
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Habsburg Imperial Court and the domineering influence of her mother-in-law Archduchess Sophie.
The young Empress had no real political power and felt like a decorative figurehead
expected only to produce heirs. One biographer said outright she had no personal rights.
I'm not sure how badly I feel about that, but man, let's talk about some weird stuff.
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Well, this part isn't weird. Elizabeth was widely renowned for her extraordinary beauty
and charismatic presence. In her youth, she wore her chestnut hair in famously long flowing tresses
that captivated painters and subjects alike. She became a trendsetter in fashion and fitness.
Elizabeth was fanatically committed to exercise, riding, hiking, and maintaining a wasp waist figure.
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She was no Elizabeth Bathory, but she was obsessed with beauty and staying young.
She slept with raw veal on her face, had a strict diet, and refused to be photographed
after she turned 30. Let's back up to the veal thing, though. That is a big difference between
rich people and the rest of us. The 1% puts veal on their face when they sleep, while the rest of
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us, that are old enough anyway, wistfully remember when Burger King sold veal-pimed sandwiches.
Oh, I used to love them. And I never put on my face ever, not once. I ate them.
Also, I'm very sure it was not veal. Not being photographed was probably pretty easy back then,
too, since the paparazzi had to hope you got frozen in time somehow, so they had time to
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put the towel over their head and do the big thing when they took the picture. The aforementioned
chestnut hair was waist length, and it took her three hours a day to style. And by her,
I mean not her. I'm very sure somebody else did. She was painfully shy, and she avoided public
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life whenever possible. She even wrote melancholy poetry about being trapped in her role. I mean,
whatever, though. Gotta go on to America with Meghan Markle's great, great, great,
great grandfather and not Ben involved. Probably, well, maybe. She learned Hungarian
and was adored in Hungary. She helped create the Austro-Hungarian compromise of 1867,
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which I am not explaining because fuck, that sounds so boring. She snubbed the Austrian court,
became a perpetual traveler, barely seen in Vienna by the 1890s. So she was kind of like
Philippe, although she was like way more powerful and important than Philippe, but she still was
like, eh, I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna wander around. On the sad side, her son,
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Crown Prince Rudolph, died in a murder suicide at Maryland in 1889. She wore morning black every day
after that. I am not going to look this up now, no matter how intriguing it is, because it has taken
me too long to do the script. So I'm sorry, Crown Prince Rudolph, you are for another day.
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She lost multiple other close family members in the years that followed, which is kind of how time
works. By the time she hit 60, she was gaunt, withdrawn, and almost completely disengaged from
politics and public life. As it said in the paper, she often traveled incognito, preferring to be called
Mrs. Nicholson, or Countess of Honums, rather than draw attention to her status. She also refused
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police protection in her later years, headstrong as she was. Cece insisted she did not want a
phalanx of guards disrupting her freedom of movement. That is definitely not going to become
a factor in this story. Cece was indeed not a typical royal. But as far as Luigi was concerned,
he viewed her like he viewed all royalty, as odious parasites. He decides to change plans
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and make Elizabeth his target. I mean, like, that gives him a little more credit now that I think,
like, Philippe was gone. Yes, he changed his plan. If he's going to kill somebody, he's got to kill
whoever's there. He can't, like, get nuke Philippe from orbit. He later admits that for his purposes,
it did not matter who the sovereign was. Any exalted target would do. And don't think for a
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second that I do not appreciate the irony of Princess Cece wanting to avoid the limelight,
but then it got put in the paper that she was coming to town under an alias. I'm sure she wasn't
thinking about assassins when she didn't want to be bothered. She probably meant peasants asking
to lick the remnant veal juice off of her face because they were starving. But still, she did
want privacy. So all the pieces we have are in place. We have Luigi, who truly believed that
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assassinating a member of the ruling class would be not a crime, but an act of justice,
even a noble deed for humanity. You have Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary,
who doesn't want to be a big deal about anything, but you don't always get what you want.
Anything else we need to do in assassination? We have the asser. We have the assie. What else we
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need? Oh, a plan and a murder weapon, I guess. But Luigi came to Geneva to kill the slippery
prince, so he must have had a plan, right? Wrong. It's not like he had a shotgun down his pants
as he was bumming around Europe shoveling shit. Honestly, if he had, he probably would have been
gotten killed in a shootout with the richest baker in Barolo or some other port on town in Italy
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way before that and not even been in the story. But the fact that he just figured he would work
it out when he got there is kind of fun, from a certain point of view, I guess. Anyway, on the
night of September 9th, 1898, Luigi prepares his weapon. Since he was poor and had been oppressed by
the fat cats his whole life, he couldn't pick up a weapon in Geneva. I mean, the country is neutral,
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but you figure he might have found a rifle or a cool butterfly knife. But alas, all he had
enough money for was a cheap triangular needle file from a pawn shop. This is not a file shaped
like a needle, you boobs. It's a slender 10 centimeter four inches metal file used for
sharpening industrial needles. I actually looked it up and blade wise, it had a wide end and a pointy
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end. And while it was not supposed to be jabbed into people, if you were Luigi's friend and he
asked, Hey, can I just jab you with this for a test? You would definitely say no. But not to say
Luigi had no friends in Geneva. He had a buddy named Gabriel Martinelli, who was a fellow Italian
anarchist, who was not close enough a friend to let, you know, Luigi stab him. But it was good
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enough to improvise a wooden handle for the file, effectively turning it into a dagger,
more accurately, a less shitty dagger that would not stab you as much as the person you
were trying to stab. If both ends of the things were kind of sharp, even if one was
better than the other, the weapon is sharpened on three sides and easily concealable in a pocket.
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Now armed, Luigi stalks the city in anticipation of the right moment. Now I get this was a long
time ago, and his name is Luigi and anarchism never went anywhere and blah, blah, blah. But think
about the fact that this dude was walking around Geneva with a busted ass dagger waiting for some
royalty to pop up so he could stab them. There are probably so many more people like that now.
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Not just people that walk around wanting to stab somebody rich, but so many people that are like
rich. And the thing that kind of sucks for those people that pores like us think are rich, the rich
people just think of them as other pores. Like that's how fucked up it is. When they say 1%,
you don't, let's jump to the 10th of September, 1898, the next day. So it's not much of a jump.
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1.30 p.m. Empress Elizabeth, age 60, who probably, you know, got up earlier but then the whole
three hour hairdo thing, she checks out of the Hotel Beaurevage on Lake Geneva for an afternoon
excursion, refusing any escort or police protection true to her habit of avoiding fuss.
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She walks along the lakefront promenade with only one lady in waiting, Countess Irma Sdare.
They're going to catch the steamship Geneva departing at 1.40 p.m. for Montreux. So
like it was close because they only gave themselves 10 minutes. Meanwhile, Luigi waits by the lakeside,
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probably thinking to himself that while his knife is bad, his intentions are good,
from a certain point of view. He spots two elegant women in black leave in the hotel.
He confirms Elizabeth's identity, later noting she was quote, quite old already,
unquote, and not immediately recognizable as an Empress. Honestly, I feel like if he didn't know
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she was 60, or what 60-year-old Empress's Emperor should look like, he might have wanted to check
himself, or maybe she didn't look like he thought she would look because of the veil. As the ship
bell rings for departure, Luigi rushes towards Elizabeth. September 10th, 1898, 1.35 p.m. Luigi
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Leceney assassinates Empress Elizabeth on the Geneva waterfront, and the way he did it,
while ultimately effective, was corny as shit. He feigned a stumble, like Benny Hill, pretending
to fall so he can grab her boobs, but instead of grabbing her boobs, he stabs her. Apparently,
that was his plan, because after what I assumed was a comically badly accurate, whoa, he suddenly
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drives his sharpened file into Elizabeth's chest. The attack is so swift and discreet
that Onlookers scarcely realize what happened. Elizabeth collapses to the ground as if knocked
over, then, astonishingly, stands back up. The Empress, who adheres to a strict regimen of
tolerance for pain, believes that she's only been struck or shoved, which, well, I don't know how
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we know she believed that, but years of tight corsets and fasting and anchor tattoo had made
her hearty. Before you ask, yes, the tattoo was real. She got it while visiting Greece
in 1888 at age 50. It was a blue anchor placed on her left shoulder. She had it done aboard a
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British warship, the HMS Dreadnaught, or possibly another vessel near Corfu. Some accounts are vague
on the ship's name, but Dreadnaught's like the famous one. It was administered by the ship's
surgeon using a needle and India ink the old-fashioned way. So, with Stare's support,
she continues to walk to the pier, insisting on boarding the ship. Now, between 140 and 145,
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Elizabeth and Stare managed to board the Geneva steamer, having walked around 100 yards despite
the Empress's injury. Once on deck, Elizabeth's strength gives out, she falls unconscious,
and Stare now notices blood staining the Empress's bodice. I'm not sure why she could not have
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mentioned the fact that she was stabbed, like they say earlier on in some of the research that she
thought she had just been shoved, so she must have told somebody that. I guess that kind of goes
together, you know. She didn't realize what happened to her, or she did, and she really didn't like
to make a fuss. Alarmed, the Countess cries for help. The ship's captain, unaware of his
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distinguished passenger's identity, turns the vessel back to Geneva's dock as soon as the
gravity of the situation is clear. So, that's sort of a vote for the common jerk in a way.
Unless the ferry was not for pores, he went back for help even though he didn't know she was super
fancy. So, good for you, Captain, whoever. Elizabeth is carried back onto shore on an
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improvised stretcher fashioned from sails and oars. They got her back to the hotel by 2.10 pm,
but there is no happy ending for Elizabeth in this story. Apparently, for a while though,
she was saved by fashion. They didn't have a doctor at the hotel, but they did have a former nurse
and the wife of the guy who ran the hotel. That's pretty official. They cut open the Empress's dress
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and unlaced her fashionable corset and found not but a tiny pinprick hole in her chest,
with only a couple drops of blood. Odd. But later investigations show the whole story.
Turns out that Luigi's DIY dagger punctured her lung and her left ventricle. No fix in that. But,
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turns out that if you have a ridiculously tight corset on, your blood can't really come out
because your whole torso was in a giant tourniquet. Technically, if they had not taken the corset off,
she may have lived long enough for the doctors to get there, but you can't really say. So,
the Empress with the tattoo died within an hour of being stabbed, her final words being,
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what has happened? Probably not how she thought she would go out. That's not usually a thing
people get to pick, which we will find out more about later. For his part, Luigi is captured
within hours of the stabbing. He had fled the scene at once, melting into the panicked crowd
on the dock. However, Elizabeth's fall was witnessed by bystanders who soon realized
(34:02):
a violent assault had occurred, which kind of feels like low-key shitting on the Empress
because she didn't seem to realize that a violent assault had occurred and thought that she just
fell. So, this may have been the savviest, most SVU-taught crowd ever. Some of the crowd,
(34:25):
including a coachman, chased after the assailant who was wearing blue overalls, a green shirt,
and a green hat, and had a thick mustache. No, not really. His hat was brown. Luigi was
tackled and detained by these passersby not far from the site. And, notably,
these good Samaritans had no idea that the unknown woman was the Empress of Austria.
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They just acted to subdue a mugger, or they liked beating up Italians. So, really,
they were like the boat captain, kind of, unless they just liked beating up Italians.
Geneva police take Luigi into custody and recover the murder weapon, the small file with the homemade
handle, which had been discarded in some bushes. It would only be found the next day. Now, what kind
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of shithead is standing near a big lake and throws his weapon in the bushes? Yes, we'll find out why
I think that happened later. In the outline for the script, I titled a whole main heading,
Catching Luigi, but this ended up to be pretty anti-climactic. Seems like the Geneva townsfolk
(35:33):
caught him before he could jump down a big green pipe. One last thing I should point out, though.
In reality, I doubt he really tried to get away. One of the things he said not long
after being caught was, I got her good. She must be dead. So, not a good start to his defense.
The next day, on September 11th, 1898, a partial autopsy is conducted on Elizabeth's body
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by Professor Epilit Goss in Geneva, confirming that a slender puncture wound to the heart
caused a pericardial tamponade, blood filling the heart sac, leading to her death.
Emperor Franz Josef, grieving in Vienna, had granted permission for the post-mortem. He reportedly
(36:21):
first feared his wife had died by suicide until assured it was murder. I have to check myself on
this one, because I understand that the only way anyone knew anything was hearsay, and written
hearsay, which I think legally is readsay. But, I do wonder what tipped the scales for the emperor.
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Did he think for a little while that she made a knife while she could have just bought one,
then hired some fool to bump into her while she stabbed herself, then gave him the knife so he
could throw it in the bushes? She was cool, but I don't think she was that cool. Elizabeth's body
is embalmed and returned to Vienna for a state funeral on 17 September, 1898. So, that's that
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for the Empress. Weird way to go out. But, I guess her death may have given the corset industry a
temporary boost. So, that's something. On September 16th, 1898, Luigi, now Geneva's most notorious
prisoner, writes to Swiss federal authorities demanding the death penalty. But, Swiss politics
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interfered. Switzerland is divided into 26 cantons, which is like states in the US,
or provinces in Canada, prefectures in Japan. They have their own laws, government, and judicial
system. The canton of Geneva surrounds the city of Geneva, which is the capital of the canton.
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It borders France on three sides and is one of the smallest cantons by area, but one of the richest
and most cosmopolitan. What a surprise. It has a long tradition of liberalism and neutrality,
which is exactly why anarchists and exiles love to hang out there. You know, Switzerland's always
neutral, Swiss bank accounts, all that kind of shit. Now, Luigi, our penniless 25-year-old
(38:16):
assassin, is furious. He figured execution would make him a martyr in the eyes of fellow anarchists,
and he wasn't wrong. I mean, if someone thinks an idea is good enough to die for, then not only
would the people who believe like he did take notice, but the gen pop might too. That will also
(38:36):
be on the test. He petitions to be transferred for trial to another canton like Lucerne or
Alabama, or even extradited to Italy where a death sentence was possible. I'm not sure why
he thought this would work. Like, what's the argument? Well, I know I stabbed her in Geneva,
but like, I really want to die so I can be a symbol for other people to maybe murder rich,
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fancy people, so can you help me out? But maybe he did it in a, it's a me accent, or maybe I
demand to be beheaded. That was actually a trick question. He actually said the second one. He
demanded to be beheaded. But just like the Empress, you don't really get to pick how you go out.
(39:24):
The Swiss Federal Council meets an emergency session and flatly rejects his request.
Luigi will be tried under Geneva's jurisdiction, which does not allow execution. They did not cite
the fact that they, as the Swiss Federal Council, were the exact kind of rich, fancy people that he
(39:45):
was talking about, should all be killed, pretty much on principle. In a Geneva courtroom packed
with some 60 journalists from across Europe, Luigi goes on trial for murder on November 10,
1898. He does not hide his guilt. In fact, he seems pretty fucking smug about the whole thing.
(40:06):
One of the good pieces of evidence against him was when he told investigators,
I came to Geneva to kill a sovereign. It did not matter to me who. It was not a woman I struck,
but an Empress. It was a crown that I had in view. Eyewitnesses at the time describe the Italian
as having an unnerving smile and proud demeanor throughout the proceedings. Luigi uses the
(40:30):
trial as a platform to espouse his anarchist beliefs, declaring that he killed not Elizabeth
the Person, but the Empress, a symbol of oppression. And a trial? And in truth, even when the cops
were questioning him after his arrest, Luigi was defiantly unapologetic. When asked why he
committed such a heinous act, he launched into an impromptu manifesto. Because I am an anarchist,
(40:55):
because I am poor, because I love the workers and I desire to see the death of the rich.
In his eyes, slaying a royal was a blow struck for the downtrodden.
Where is the lie? He went so far as to call himself a benefactor of humanity,
asserting that by eliminating a high-born idler, he had done a virtuous service.
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I think it's interesting that even in the way I told this story, I made Elizabeth,
who was in fact a person, a person. Like when that CEO of UnitedHealthcare got
(41:40):
assassinated by a guy named Luigi, he was a father. He was a family man. Now, when a poor gets killed,
they don't say that. I mean, people try to say that, but it usually gets drowned out by
one time he did a pot. And I'm not saying this is universal. I'm saying that
(42:06):
we are geared towards pointing out the most basic normal things as virtues for rich people.
Like how fucking low is the bar? You know what I mean? I don't know.
The verdict is never in doubt. He's found guilty of murder after a brief deliberation
(42:27):
and sentenced to the maximum penalty, which to his chagrin is life in prison. After hearing it,
Luigi SEEDS that he won't be allowed to die. He outright said that he wanted to go down in
history through a public execution. Instead, he's led a way to begin a life term at Geneva's
prison day, Saint-Antoine. Now, I already gave you a big list of shit that anarchists did that were
(42:53):
at least as bad as what Luigi did. Some cases you could say worse. Some cases better might not
be the right word, but in 1899, anxious governments coordinate a crackdown on anarchist movements.
You know what? I'm just thinking about it now. It's maybe because she wasn't
(43:20):
important. I mean, important, but not powerful. Like she didn't, she was just,
I mean, like he said, an idle rich. She wasn't hurting anyone, they'd say. Well, she wasn't
really helping anyone either, which is kind of the anarchist's point. Anyway, we were talking
(43:43):
about the crackdown at the International Conference of Rome for the Social Defense Against
Anarchists, which went on from November to December in 1898. 21 nations agreed a more
aggressively surveil anarchists and even allow the extradition or execution of those who kill
(44:04):
heads of state. What a surprise. This marks one of the first international efforts to combat what
we today call, quote, italics terrorism, unquote. Switzerland kind of got shit on for letting
all these, you know, anarchists and whatever run around their country. But they kind of just said,
(44:28):
fuck you, deal with it. We'll get back to the terrorism thing. I also want to point out Mark
Twain even weighed in on the assassination. He said that not even Caesar's murder could electrify the
world as much as Elizabeth's, which is interesting. Elizabeth's grieving husband, Emperor Franz Joseph,
funds a new secessionist church in Geneva as a local memorial. And the spot of the attack is
(44:54):
eventually marked by a plaque that reads, Here, Empress Elizabeth of Austria was assassinated
on September 10, 1898. I looked up the plaque. It's right on the fucking railing with the water
on the other side of it. Luigi totally could have thrown his chintzy knife in the lake.
There's also a nice memorial tour, and it was pretty. Now, Luigi. Luigi Lucchini lives out the
(45:18):
next 12 years as a convict. He's anything but a model prisoner. Reports describe him as unruly
and bitter, prone to clashes with gods and bouts of brooding resentment. I mean, I have bouts of
brooding resentment. Behind bars, he busies himself writing his memoirs and childhood recollections in
(45:40):
notebooks. These writings record his unapologetic reflections on the assassination and his life
of hardship. One entry famously reads, How I would like to kill someone, but it must be someone important
so it gets in the papers. A chilling insight into his craving for notoriety, but not for its own
sake, remember, propaganda of the deed. He didn't particularly care which aristocrat died under his
(46:06):
blade. Empress Elizabeth was simply the one who crossed his path. As he famously told investigators,
I came to Geneva to kill a sovereign. It did not matter to me who. It was not a woman I struck,
but an empress. It was a crown that I had in view. He showed no remorse for Elizabeth's death,
only regret that he could not kill more highborn leeches. He also was pen pals with a few anarchist
(46:33):
admirers. He got fan mail praising him for ridding the world of an idol aristocrat.
Those letters bolster his self-image as a heroic class warrior, despite the fact that he didn't
die. Another one of his letters called the Empress, quote, a disgrace who never worked, unquote,
congratulating Lucani for stabbing her. All of this eventually led to the gods cutting off
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all correspondence for him, to him, from him, etc. They even took his memoir manuscript that he'd
been working on. This was on October 8th of 1910, deprived of his writing project and having long
lost hope of martyrdom. Lucani apparently took his own life the very next day on October 19th,
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1910, at age 37. Gods found him Epsteined in his cell, hanging from a strip of his leather belt.
This could make sense. He was very driven to inspire, and if all his means of inspiring anyone
outside of the jail were taken away, maybe he just despaired.
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Not sure if he could have any visitors. I mean, if Geneva was as liberal as it seems it was,
it seems like he could have had a steady stream of visitors to gas him up, you know.
The prison he was in was right there in town. Then again, I guess the crackdown shows us that
showing up to meet a famous anarchist to talk about anarchist shit would be a good way to get
(48:08):
self on a list. Fuckers. Now, given his troublesome behavior prior to his death, some speculated
the prison staff were not unhappy to be rid of him and may have facilitated his death. Someone who
thinks this is nonsense might say they could have done this at any time, so why wait until after
they took away his communications? Well, that would be the point. When he was talking to people,
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his life had a purpose. Without it, where did he have? In fact, given that it was the day after
his shit got taken away, it makes the possibility of it being a setup even more likely. Luigi appealed
the fact that he couldn't be executed based on him wanting to be executed, so he had no problem
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using the system to further his ends. Why would he not at least kick up some kind of fuss? The
publicity itself would have furthered his cause. I mean, and now I've convinced myself that they
killed him. Just think about it. If he said, okay, well, your censor, I don't know, I don't know what
the fuck kind of rights prisoners had in Geneva at the beginning of the 20th century. I'm just
(49:23):
saying, I don't think he went from, I'm going to brag about how I killed this lady and wish that I
could have killed everyone she knew that was fancy to, oh, I'm just going to hang myself with
part of my belt, not even my whole belt. I don't want my pants to fall down. Then I'd look a fool.
(49:44):
Unfortunately, I was not there. Since no conclusive evidence of murder ever emerged,
it was ruled a suicide, and Lacani's death closed the chapter on one of Europe's most infamous
assassins. End of the story? No. Let's get back to the terrorism thing. This is kind of, you know,
the stuff that I said would be on the test. It's all kind of culminating to this.
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I'm not pretending that the assassination of Empress Elizabeth started the concept of states
fighting individual groups. It's a time-honored tradition brought to you by the status quo.
Here are a few examples. Athens versus Socrates, 399 BCE. The state didn't like that he encouraged
(50:30):
critical thinking and questioned authority. So he was charged with corrupting the youth and impiety,
and he was made to drink hemlock. Rome versus Spartacus' slave revolt, 73-71 BCE. The state
didn't like enslaved people organizing a massive uprising, so Rome deployed multiple legions,
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crushed the slave rebellion, and crucified 6,000 survivors as a public deterrent.
Rome appears again this time versus the early Christians during the first to fourth centuries
BCE. The state didn't like that Christians rejected state religion, refused emperor worship,
and were seen as subversive. So they were arrested, tortured, and publicly executed
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for defying Roman religious authority and refusing to conform to civic norms.
The witch hunts in the 13th to 16th centuries. We don't like these independent, non-conforming
individuals. So let's burn them and hang them and pile rocks on them. Spanish Inquisition,
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well, the state didn't like heretics, non-Catholics, and converted Jews or Muslims,
so they tortured them and gave them secret trials and executed them. 1524 to 1525,
the German state didn't like peasants' demand and land reform and lower taxes,
so the nobility killed over 100,000 of them. England versus the Luddites.
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Workers destroyed industrial machinery to protest job losses, so the British government
criminalized machine breaking and sent thousands of troops to where the Luddites were and executed
or imprisoned them. British Empire versus Irish Nationalists, Russia versus Nihilists and Neurodenics.
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The Paris Commune of 1871, the United States versus labor movements, sort of 1880s to 1910s,
but really you could just count the whole time. Example after example after example
of the people saying, well, this sucks, we should have it be different
and getting their ass handed to them as a lesson. So you may be asking, big whoop,
(52:47):
why is this episode dragging on so long? Well, if you stuck around this long,
you must really want to find out, so let me tell you. Think about the things I just listed
and then tell me what's the difference between those and Occupy Wall Street or Black Lives Matter
or January 6th, don't freak out, I'll explain, or that other Luigi assassinating that important
(53:10):
person or Gaza. The answer of course is nothing. They are all examples of the little guy saying
the establishment sucks and we should change it and the powerful institutions that run our lives
pointing their guns at them and knocking their dicks into dirt. I use January 6th as an example
because while reasoning behind what they did was terrible in my opinion, it is the application of
(53:36):
reason that helps the state keep their boot on our neck. And what did unfitler do? He pardoned them
because he's pointing out to all of us, even though we're not getting it, the fact that
having people who will bleed for you is really fucking valuable and the people that resist the
things that he and the January 6th stand for do so by complaining to the mechanisms that are doing
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the thing we are complaining about. Think about the fact that during the Black Lives Matter protests
the media talked about a fucking empty Wendy's more than anything else, as far as I recall.
I actually have an ex-friend who decided he didn't want to talk to me anymore because I
repeatedly made him feel badly by pointing out all the shitty things he thought and said,
(54:25):
brought the fucking Wendy's up all the time, as if that was, it evened it all out. Why does that
matter? Because the reasoning that has been beaten into our heads is that stuff is more important
than people. What is an empty Wendy's worth in human terms? Think about it, folks. The mood needs to
change. I'm not sure if this is getting through or not, but I have one last thing I can use to try
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and get my point across to explain that at least in my head, the story of that Luigi and the now
Luigi have the same ideals behind them. And I'll use your own sense of American identity to hopefully
get this job done. Sorry if you don't live in America, but I think you'll get it. The good old
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US of A has distinguished itself for ideals twice as far as I can tell. The original revolution was
us saying that being free of Britain was worth dying for. The Civil War was us saying that
getting rid of slavery was worth dying for. And don't give me any nonsense that it was about
anything else. I know what Lincoln said, shut the fuck up. Everything else we've done was because we
(55:37):
were worried about something or wanted something. Those aren't principles. And I would argue that
the two things I mentioned were the two things you thought of before I said them. And that's not the
only thing that they have in common. They both have that worth dying for part at the end. That's
the really important part. Luigi Lacani thought that getting rid of the fat cats and making the
(56:00):
wealth and power in the world more equitable was worth dying for. And ultimately he did.
But it didn't take. He was called a terrorist. But imagine for a second that somehow the anarchist
succeeded. Not with everything they wanted to do because she's some of it was just completely
(56:21):
impractical and would never work. But the whole equity thing, if that had taken root,
if people who accumulated too much wealth and power were constantly afraid that they would
definitely be sidelined, the first time they poked their fucking head out of their castle,
would we have rich people go into space because they feel like it while other people starved to
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death? I think not. And I think you should pay attention to our Luigi's trial. This shit just
keeps happening over and over, folks. And I genuinely think that we are running out of road.
So you decide what your ideals are. What is worth what to you? What is worth your blood?
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And if you think I'm full of shit, you can find me and the show by heading to allmylinks.com
slash strangeful things. From there, you can get to Discord or Moss Isley or wherever you're going.
And fight with me. Just please or agree that I don't care. You can agree with me, but fighting's
fun. You can also go to patreon.com slash strangeful and give us money. So I can afford files that
(57:30):
already have handles on them. Jokes. Not making broke ass team daggers. I'm not joking about the
Patreon though. You should go there. And please do yourself a favor and get to magicmind.com slash
strangefulAPR and use code strangefulAPR to get your discount on the juice your brain so desperately
(57:52):
needs. Hopefully Grace will be back soon, so I don't keep getting further radicalized. I need
to further radicalize her. That's the important thing. Until then, bye bye.
It was not a woman I struck, but an Empress. It was a crown that I had in view. I acted
(00:07):
on my own initiative, without any pressure, and I alone am responsible for the deed.
I'm Acadia Einstein, and this is Strangel Things.
(00:30):
Hello everybody, welcome and welcome back to Strangel Things. I am Acadia Einstein,
and Grace will be back soon. This episode we're going to be looking at a guy named Luigi who
executed a rich person. No, not that one. This guy was from the late 19th century,
(00:56):
and not only did he assassinate someone, but the woman he assassinated was not even his top
pick of people to assassinate. How much would that suck? Getting killed but finding out before
you die that you were the backup? Tough. So let's dig into the wild world of monarchy,
which we've touched on before, and anarchism, which we haven't. By the late 1800s, Europe's
(01:19):
imperial order stood at odds with rising revolutionary currents. Remember, as we've
talked about a bunch, Europe really sucked. They were just sailing around, pillaging and
murdering and enslaving, just jerks. And it's not like the gen pop back in the homeland was
benefiting from all the monstrous things their kings and queens and shit were doing. They were
(01:41):
just living their lives and sending their seven year olds off to work in the factories every
morning. So like now, except the seven year olds can't work yet. Yet. So now that we see that
Europe was fat packed with rich, powerful jerks, we need to talk about anarchism. Anarchism is a
political philosophy built on one core belief. Power corrupts. So get rid of it. Anarchists
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want a world without rulers, without bosses, without states, not chaos for chaos and sake,
but a legitimately reorganized society where people live in voluntary communities, cooperate
without coercion and make decisions together, not from the top down. At its heart, anarchism says
hierarchies are bad. Authority is dangerous. And freedom is only real when no one can force you
(02:30):
to obey. It's any monarchy, any capitalist, any state, and usually any church, not because
anarchists just pissed off fed up people. I mean, they were, but also they saw those systems as
engines of exploitation, inequality and violence. Anarchists believe that if you abolish governments,
(02:51):
dismantled class systems and let people organize from the bottom up, you'd get a freer, fairer
world where no one could be born into power and no one could be crushed by it. They forget the part
that technically, we already started that way and got to where we got. So let's just put that
aside. The end goal was liberation, not just rebellion. Think about worker run factories,
(03:17):
shared land, local councils instead of national governments, mutual education, mutual aid and
no kings ever again. Now you can poke a lot of holes in all those ideas, like a lot of holes in
all those ideas. Because it assumes that everybody is going to be on board with the whole let's just
(03:40):
share everything idea. And that never works out. And I think it's a slow escalation of that not
working out that gets us to where we are. But if you're constantly getting oppressed, it doesn't
sound bad. In 19th century Europe, industrialization and empire were tearing everybody apart.
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Workers toiled in awful conditions, kings ruled by birthright, and peasants were still dying for
rich men's wars. They still are. So in the mid to late 1800s, anarchism caught fire. France,
Italy, Spain, Russia, everywhere people were pissed and poor. Angry leaflets spread anarchist
(04:24):
ideas fast. Cities like Geneva and Paris became hubs for exiled radicals. Revolutions failed. But
the anarchists didn't stop. They just changed tactics. And that's where a fun little concept
was born. This part will be on the test. When peaceful ideas weren't working, some turned to
violent spectacle, kill a king, bomb a stock exchange, not just for revenge, but to wake people
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up. It was risky, radical, controversial, even among the anarchists. Some saw it as heroic
resistance and other people thought it just scared everyone and made things worse. But in the late
1800s, during a time when kings and presidents were being taken out by lone actors with knives
and pistols, I was the play Mrs. Lincoln, propaganda of the deed became a terrifying reality for
(05:17):
Europe's ruling class. Propaganda of the deed. From 1880 to 1910, anarchists assassinated
presidents, prime ministers and royals. Europe's elites were shook. In the top anarchists of the
day had a lot to say about it. The destruction of visible symbols of oppression. The spark that
will ignite the revolution. Or quotes like Mikhail Bakunin's, the passion for destruction is a
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creative passion too. Who is Bakunin? He was a Russian noble turn revolutionary chaos goblin. He
started out as a well off military kid in Russia, but he ditched all that to chase radical philosophy
across Europe. Over time, he became one of the OGs of modern anarchism. A lot of people just
wandered around Europe, just to wander. You know, like poets and anyways, he was like,
(06:09):
burn it all down and start over. That was his kind of main thing. He thought all government is
oppression doesn't matter if it's a monarchy or a democracy. If it holds power over people, it's
got to go. Revolution is the only answer. He didn't believe in reform. He believed in destruction
as a creative force. No gods, no masters. He was anti-religion and anti-state. The church and
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the state were like the evil twins of oppression to him. And freedom came through collective
action. He wanted a stateless society made up of federations of free communes. No rulers,
just people working together voluntarily. Stuff that like read from that 70s show would have
called hippie and put his foot in their ass. And yeah, these things were pretty idealistic,
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but don't let that make you like poo poo all the stuff that was driving it. Hakunin was part
of the first international, which was a big leftist club with Karl Marx. But the two hated each
other. Marx thought the working class should seize state power. Hakunin was like, nope,
(07:19):
power corrupts. So burn the whole thing down. Which is kind of a fun distinction. And while he
died, broke and sick and switchaled in 1876 after being sent to prison, escaping, being exiled and
trying to help out a lot of failed uprisings, it was ideas like his that fed the anarchist fire.
And since at the time you couldn't throw a peasant without hitting some aristocrat, late 19th
(07:43):
century Europe was a target rich environment. And here are some of those targets. The anarchists
were busy little beavers. They needed deeds for propaganda. And holy shit, did they do some
deeds. 1894 French president assassinated 1897 Spanish prime minister shot in the neck. 1901
assassination of President McKinley. They killed the king of Italy. There was the Haymarket affair
(08:09):
in Chicago. It was a labor rally that exploded when somebody threw a bomb at the police. This
actually turned into May Day, which is the international workers holiday. In the 1890s,
there was a bombing wave through Paris, all from anarchists. 1905. Russian anarchists were behind
(08:32):
like 4500 assassinations, which kind of makes me think, if you have that many, I don't know if
there's 4500 assassination worthy people. I mean, I guess if you just keep lowering what it means,
or you keep raising what assassination means, some of it just seems like it might have been
murder. In 1910, the Los Angeles Times was bombed. The bomb plot of 1919 was dozens of bombs being
(09:01):
mailed to judges, capitalists and politicians across the US, including JP Morgan, Rockefeller,
and the attorney general, Mitchell Palmer. One blew up on his doorstep. If the unabomber was
a multi-bomber and only was mad at rich, powerful people. In the early 1900s, there were worker
(09:22):
revolts and bombings in Argentina. In 1911, Kano Sugako was accused of plotting to assassinate
the Emperor of Japan and became one of the first women executed in modern Japan. And she said,
before her death, even if I should be executed, I will not give up my faith. Now I realize I just
(09:43):
listed out a bunch of crimes against the establishment, but I don't want anyone to think
I'm condoning these horrible actions. I mean, sure. The people who aren't supposed to get
thrown into the sun are the people who made the rules about who was and was not supposed to get
thrown into the sun. But you know, don't. And don't think about the fact that I was doing this
(10:06):
thing for work. And I had to use a list of reasons that an insurance company might reject a claim.
There were 256. I shit you not. But don't think about that. The anarchists were bad. And now that
we know that propaganda of the deed probably doesn't work and killing powerful people will
(10:29):
definitely not draw attention to the kind of power the dead person had, because who cares about
that? Nobody. That's who. So let's talk about Luigi. Not that Luigi. See all this bombing and
killing and whatnot, along with attacks on lesser royals and officials created an atmosphere of
(10:49):
tension among Europe's elites. Security for monarchs was improving. Yet many still traveled
with minimal protection. I mean, which kind of makes sense, because I think they were still in a
situation where they thought that like the peasants, oh, they love us. We're so important. So against
this backdrop of social unrest and scared big shots, Luigi Locaini, a disenfranchised laborer
(11:14):
turned anarchist, set out to strike his own blow against the established order. Let's talk about
when I give you the rundown of his life, I want you to think about how his fate may have been
improved if he had had the benefit of magic mind like I do. I have been using magic mind for a
long time now. And there's never been a time it has not made me more alert, better able to pay
(11:37):
attention. For reals, it helped me finish the script. I'm not calling magic mind a cure all.
If it was, then my bones would not be so rickety, but I am calling it a help lots for your brain.
Stress, distraction, stuff that happens to you and everybody else all the time. It is a mental
performance shot, but it's not spinach. You don't just slug one and then go win jeopardy. But if
(12:03):
you stay on it, you'll see the difference. I mean it. Magic mind greases the wheels. So go to
magicmind.com slash StrangefulAPR and use code StrangefulAPR to get 20% off a one time purchase
or up to 48% off for a subscription. Do it. Okay, it's time to see what made Luigi Luigi and
(12:23):
to learn a little bit about how 19th century Europe worked other than all the atrocities.
April 22nd, 1873. Luigi Locaini is born in Paris, France, the illegitimate son of a destitute
Italian made, which sounds like a, like a bad novel, the destitute Italian made by anonymous.
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His unmarried mother leaves him at a Foundling hospital as an infant in August of 1874. When
he's like one, he's sent to Italy where he's shuttled between orphanages and foster families
during his childhood. Why was he sent to Italy? Well, since his mom left him at the fire station
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slash Foundling home, he was sort of up for grabs. And apparently even as an infant, he must have
had a very thick black mustache because the French marked him as an Italian. And France didn't want
some foreign baby who was illegitimate clogging up their social services and eating all their cheese.
So they sent that welfare mooch baby to Italy. Not sure how they pulled it off, mailed him maybe
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or shot him out of a cannon, but whatever it was, Luigi was shit on as a baby. He was only one.
He probably didn't even know he was Italian yet, except for the mustache. Now by age 10 in 1883,
Locaini is forced to start working. Think about that for a second. He's pulled from school and
hired out as a farm laborer. See, why should able bodied 10 year olds be able to suckle off the
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teat of the hardworking taxpayers of Italy, lazy children. So A, he doesn't get to learn anything.
And B, I'm sure he didn't get to keep the money that he supposedly made while he was working.
His social standing as an illegitimate child in a conservative society
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marked him with stigma and resentment from pretty much the jump. That seems fair.
And nothing, he should have at least had the opportunity to say his father died in some war from
consumption. But nope, he was just labeled as a bastard and that was that. In his late teens,
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Luigi works a series of menial jobs in Italy. Stable groom, construction worker, sewer cleaner,
sewer cleaner, which is very close to plumber. At 20, he's conscripted into the Italian army,
because of course, and he serves for approximately three years in apparently an artillery regiment.
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He reportedly, though I could not confirm, takes part in the Italian campaign in Abyssinia,
which is Ethiopia, in 1895 to 96, witnessing the brutal colonial war in which Italy was
defeated, which by the way is on my topics list. So many topics. This experience, coupled with
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Italy's economic hardships, deepens his disillusionment with authority. In 1897,
he gets an honorable discharge because he was apparently a good artillery guy. So he leaves
Italy for French speaking Switzerland in search of work and a new life. He drifts through
Swiss towns, chas au lausanne, Geneva, among others, taking on odd jobs. He was a railway worker,
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went back to stable hand. That must have been either there were lots needed or he was good at
it. But he never escaped poverty. Funny how that works. Poor people staying poor. But unlike America
now, apparently poor people in Europe didn't think it was their own fault that they were poor.
In Lausanne, he comes into contact with anarchist circles and literature, sharpening his political
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convictions. By this time, he openly identifies as an anarchist and rails against social elites
for the misery of the working class. And there was lots of misery to rail against. To sum it all up,
Luigi was pretty sick of the powerful really giving it to the working man. And it was not
just political jerks. The church was right up in there too. All of them. He's sleeping under
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bridges like a troll while the fat cats are all fat cat and sleeping in fancy feather beds.
Now in early September 1898, Luigi arrives in Geneva, Switzerland, with murder on his mind.
Inspired by recent anarchist attacks, he plans to assassinate a member of the elite as a protest
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against the ruling class. And you can argue that that's probably not the best plan.
But remember, he had in his head a propaganda of the deed. Don't just say shit, do shit.
Right? So naturally, he was going to do something. And initially, he targets Prince Henri-Philippe
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de Orlon. The prince was a French royal who happened to be in town. And Luigi reasoned
that killing any aristocrat of note will, quote, get in the papers and inspire the oppressed.
A member of France's former royal family, Prince Henri, born 1867, was the son of the Duke of Charte.
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Charte and a relative of the Orléanist pretender to the French throne. In 1898,
the 30-year-old prince was known as an avid explorer and travel writer,
not a particularly influential political figure, but certainly a high-profile noble. And I think
that's it. So he was a prince, he was a noble, a fat cat, you see. He had spent time in Africa
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and Asia on expeditions, earning medals from the Geographical Society of Paris. And by chance,
he was passed through Switzerland in September of 1898. Unfortunately for our story, he also
spent less time in Geneva than Luigi thought he was going to. The slippery prince squirted
right out of town before Luigi even got there. Though I could find no written account of it,
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I am pretty sure when Luigi got off the train, there was a toad-looking guy who said,
thank you, Luigi, but our targeted prince is in another castle. Perhaps you should be bummed
out and go read the newspaper. So on September 9th, 1898, Luigi did just that. He reads a news item
that Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary, traveling under the alias Countess of Hohenimps,
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is currently visiting the city incognito. I don't understand how that got in the paper. Like,
if you want to say she's, okay, there's a lot wrong with that. If you've got an alias
and you're visiting the city incognito, don't tell the newspaper. Or newspaper,
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don't tell everybody. I don't fucking, I don't know. Maybe the newspaper should, I don't know.
Elizabeth, known popularly as Cece, is the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph and one of Europe's most
famous women. Luigi can't believe his luck. A sovereign is in reach, and not just any sovereign.
Cece was sort of interesting. She might have been an interesting topic on her own in other
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circumstances, but I already told you how long the topic list was, so this is what we get.
She was born into Bavarian royalty, and since Europe is gross, she was made to marry Emperor
Franz Joseph I of Austria when she was just 16. This made her fancy and important,
yet court life in Vienna stifled Elizabeth. She bristled at the strict protocol of the
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Habsburg Imperial Court and the domineering influence of her mother-in-law Archduchess Sophie.
The young Empress had no real political power and felt like a decorative figurehead
expected only to produce heirs. One biographer said outright she had no personal rights.
I'm not sure how badly I feel about that, but man, let's talk about some weird stuff.
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Well, this part isn't weird. Elizabeth was widely renowned for her extraordinary beauty
and charismatic presence. In her youth, she wore her chestnut hair in famously long flowing tresses
that captivated painters and subjects alike. She became a trendsetter in fashion and fitness.
Elizabeth was fanatically committed to exercise, riding, hiking, and maintaining a wasp waist figure.
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She was no Elizabeth Bathory, but she was obsessed with beauty and staying young.
She slept with raw veal on her face, had a strict diet, and refused to be photographed
after she turned 30. Let's back up to the veal thing, though. That is a big difference between
rich people and the rest of us. The 1% puts veal on their face when they sleep, while the rest of
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us, that are old enough anyway, wistfully remember when Burger King sold veal-pimed sandwiches.
Oh, I used to love them. And I never put on my face ever, not once. I ate them.
Also, I'm very sure it was not veal. Not being photographed was probably pretty easy back then,
too, since the paparazzi had to hope you got frozen in time somehow, so they had time to
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put the towel over their head and do the big thing when they took the picture. The aforementioned
chestnut hair was waist length, and it took her three hours a day to style. And by her,
I mean not her. I'm very sure somebody else did. She was painfully shy, and she avoided public
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life whenever possible. She even wrote melancholy poetry about being trapped in her role. I mean,
whatever, though. Gotta go on to America with Meghan Markle's great, great, great,
great grandfather and not Ben involved. Probably, well, maybe. She learned Hungarian
and was adored in Hungary. She helped create the Austro-Hungarian compromise of 1867,
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which I am not explaining because fuck, that sounds so boring. She snubbed the Austrian court,
became a perpetual traveler, barely seen in Vienna by the 1890s. So she was kind of like
Philippe, although she was like way more powerful and important than Philippe, but she still was
like, eh, I'm not gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna wander around. On the sad side, her son,
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Crown Prince Rudolph, died in a murder suicide at Maryland in 1889. She wore morning black every day
after that. I am not going to look this up now, no matter how intriguing it is, because it has taken
me too long to do the script. So I'm sorry, Crown Prince Rudolph, you are for another day.
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She lost multiple other close family members in the years that followed, which is kind of how time
works. By the time she hit 60, she was gaunt, withdrawn, and almost completely disengaged from
politics and public life. As it said in the paper, she often traveled incognito, preferring to be called
Mrs. Nicholson, or Countess of Honums, rather than draw attention to her status. She also refused
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police protection in her later years, headstrong as she was. Cece insisted she did not want a
phalanx of guards disrupting her freedom of movement. That is definitely not going to become
a factor in this story. Cece was indeed not a typical royal. But as far as Luigi was concerned,
he viewed her like he viewed all royalty, as odious parasites. He decides to change plans
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and make Elizabeth his target. I mean, like, that gives him a little more credit now that I think,
like, Philippe was gone. Yes, he changed his plan. If he's going to kill somebody, he's got to kill
whoever's there. He can't, like, get nuke Philippe from orbit. He later admits that for his purposes,
it did not matter who the sovereign was. Any exalted target would do. And don't think for a
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second that I do not appreciate the irony of Princess Cece wanting to avoid the limelight,
but then it got put in the paper that she was coming to town under an alias. I'm sure she wasn't
thinking about assassins when she didn't want to be bothered. She probably meant peasants asking
to lick the remnant veal juice off of her face because they were starving. But still, she did
want privacy. So all the pieces we have are in place. We have Luigi, who truly believed that
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assassinating a member of the ruling class would be not a crime, but an act of justice,
even a noble deed for humanity. You have Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary,
who doesn't want to be a big deal about anything, but you don't always get what you want.
Anything else we need to do in assassination? We have the asser. We have the assie. What else we
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need? Oh, a plan and a murder weapon, I guess. But Luigi came to Geneva to kill the slippery
prince, so he must have had a plan, right? Wrong. It's not like he had a shotgun down his pants
as he was bumming around Europe shoveling shit. Honestly, if he had, he probably would have been
gotten killed in a shootout with the richest baker in Barolo or some other port on town in Italy
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way before that and not even been in the story. But the fact that he just figured he would work
it out when he got there is kind of fun, from a certain point of view, I guess. Anyway, on the
night of September 9th, 1898, Luigi prepares his weapon. Since he was poor and had been oppressed by
the fat cats his whole life, he couldn't pick up a weapon in Geneva. I mean, the country is neutral,
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but you figure he might have found a rifle or a cool butterfly knife. But alas, all he had
enough money for was a cheap triangular needle file from a pawn shop. This is not a file shaped
like a needle, you boobs. It's a slender 10 centimeter four inches metal file used for
sharpening industrial needles. I actually looked it up and blade wise, it had a wide end and a pointy
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end. And while it was not supposed to be jabbed into people, if you were Luigi's friend and he
asked, Hey, can I just jab you with this for a test? You would definitely say no. But not to say
Luigi had no friends in Geneva. He had a buddy named Gabriel Martinelli, who was a fellow Italian
anarchist, who was not close enough a friend to let, you know, Luigi stab him. But it was good
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enough to improvise a wooden handle for the file, effectively turning it into a dagger,
more accurately, a less shitty dagger that would not stab you as much as the person you
were trying to stab. If both ends of the things were kind of sharp, even if one was
better than the other, the weapon is sharpened on three sides and easily concealable in a pocket.
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Now armed, Luigi stalks the city in anticipation of the right moment. Now I get this was a long
time ago, and his name is Luigi and anarchism never went anywhere and blah, blah, blah. But think
about the fact that this dude was walking around Geneva with a busted ass dagger waiting for some
royalty to pop up so he could stab them. There are probably so many more people like that now.
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Not just people that walk around wanting to stab somebody rich, but so many people that are like
rich. And the thing that kind of sucks for those people that pores like us think are rich, the rich
people just think of them as other pores. Like that's how fucked up it is. When they say 1%,
you don't, let's jump to the 10th of September, 1898, the next day. So it's not much of a jump.
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1.30 p.m. Empress Elizabeth, age 60, who probably, you know, got up earlier but then the whole
three hour hairdo thing, she checks out of the Hotel Beaurevage on Lake Geneva for an afternoon
excursion, refusing any escort or police protection true to her habit of avoiding fuss.
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She walks along the lakefront promenade with only one lady in waiting, Countess Irma Sdare.
They're going to catch the steamship Geneva departing at 1.40 p.m. for Montreux. So
like it was close because they only gave themselves 10 minutes. Meanwhile, Luigi waits by the lakeside,
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probably thinking to himself that while his knife is bad, his intentions are good,
from a certain point of view. He spots two elegant women in black leave in the hotel.
He confirms Elizabeth's identity, later noting she was quote, quite old already,
unquote, and not immediately recognizable as an Empress. Honestly, I feel like if he didn't know
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she was 60, or what 60-year-old Empress's Emperor should look like, he might have wanted to check
himself, or maybe she didn't look like he thought she would look because of the veil. As the ship
bell rings for departure, Luigi rushes towards Elizabeth. September 10th, 1898, 1.35 p.m. Luigi
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Leceney assassinates Empress Elizabeth on the Geneva waterfront, and the way he did it,
while ultimately effective, was corny as shit. He feigned a stumble, like Benny Hill, pretending
to fall so he can grab her boobs, but instead of grabbing her boobs, he stabs her. Apparently,
that was his plan, because after what I assumed was a comically badly accurate, whoa, he suddenly
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drives his sharpened file into Elizabeth's chest. The attack is so swift and discreet
that Onlookers scarcely realize what happened. Elizabeth collapses to the ground as if knocked
over, then, astonishingly, stands back up. The Empress, who adheres to a strict regimen of
tolerance for pain, believes that she's only been struck or shoved, which, well, I don't know how
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we know she believed that, but years of tight corsets and fasting and anchor tattoo had made
her hearty. Before you ask, yes, the tattoo was real. She got it while visiting Greece
in 1888 at age 50. It was a blue anchor placed on her left shoulder. She had it done aboard a
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British warship, the HMS Dreadnaught, or possibly another vessel near Corfu. Some accounts are vague
on the ship's name, but Dreadnaught's like the famous one. It was administered by the ship's
surgeon using a needle and India ink the old-fashioned way. So, with Stare's support,
she continues to walk to the pier, insisting on boarding the ship. Now, between 140 and 145,
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Elizabeth and Stare managed to board the Geneva steamer, having walked around 100 yards despite
the Empress's injury. Once on deck, Elizabeth's strength gives out, she falls unconscious,
and Stare now notices blood staining the Empress's bodice. I'm not sure why she could not have
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mentioned the fact that she was stabbed, like they say earlier on in some of the research that she
thought she had just been shoved, so she must have told somebody that. I guess that kind of goes
together, you know. She didn't realize what happened to her, or she did, and she really didn't like
to make a fuss. Alarmed, the Countess cries for help. The ship's captain, unaware of his
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distinguished passenger's identity, turns the vessel back to Geneva's dock as soon as the
gravity of the situation is clear. So, that's sort of a vote for the common jerk in a way.
Unless the ferry was not for pores, he went back for help even though he didn't know she was super
fancy. So, good for you, Captain, whoever. Elizabeth is carried back onto shore on an
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improvised stretcher fashioned from sails and oars. They got her back to the hotel by 2.10 pm,
but there is no happy ending for Elizabeth in this story. Apparently, for a while though,
she was saved by fashion. They didn't have a doctor at the hotel, but they did have a former nurse
and the wife of the guy who ran the hotel. That's pretty official. They cut open the Empress's dress
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and unlaced her fashionable corset and found not but a tiny pinprick hole in her chest,
with only a couple drops of blood. Odd. But later investigations show the whole story.
Turns out that Luigi's DIY dagger punctured her lung and her left ventricle. No fix in that. But,
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turns out that if you have a ridiculously tight corset on, your blood can't really come out
because your whole torso was in a giant tourniquet. Technically, if they had not taken the corset off,
she may have lived long enough for the doctors to get there, but you can't really say. So,
the Empress with the tattoo died within an hour of being stabbed, her final words being,
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what has happened? Probably not how she thought she would go out. That's not usually a thing
people get to pick, which we will find out more about later. For his part, Luigi is captured
within hours of the stabbing. He had fled the scene at once, melting into the panicked crowd
on the dock. However, Elizabeth's fall was witnessed by bystanders who soon realized
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a violent assault had occurred, which kind of feels like low-key shitting on the Empress
because she didn't seem to realize that a violent assault had occurred and thought that she just
fell. So, this may have been the savviest, most SVU-taught crowd ever. Some of the crowd,
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including a coachman, chased after the assailant who was wearing blue overalls, a green shirt,
and a green hat, and had a thick mustache. No, not really. His hat was brown. Luigi was
tackled and detained by these passersby not far from the site. And, notably,
these good Samaritans had no idea that the unknown woman was the Empress of Austria.
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They just acted to subdue a mugger, or they liked beating up Italians. So, really,
they were like the boat captain, kind of, unless they just liked beating up Italians.
Geneva police take Luigi into custody and recover the murder weapon, the small file with the homemade
handle, which had been discarded in some bushes. It would only be found the next day. Now, what kind
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of shithead is standing near a big lake and throws his weapon in the bushes? Yes, we'll find out why
I think that happened later. In the outline for the script, I titled a whole main heading,
Catching Luigi, but this ended up to be pretty anti-climactic. Seems like the Geneva townsfolk
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caught him before he could jump down a big green pipe. One last thing I should point out, though.
In reality, I doubt he really tried to get away. One of the things he said not long
after being caught was, I got her good. She must be dead. So, not a good start to his defense.
The next day, on September 11th, 1898, a partial autopsy is conducted on Elizabeth's body
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by Professor Epilit Goss in Geneva, confirming that a slender puncture wound to the heart
caused a pericardial tamponade, blood filling the heart sac, leading to her death.
Emperor Franz Josef, grieving in Vienna, had granted permission for the post-mortem. He reportedly
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first feared his wife had died by suicide until assured it was murder. I have to check myself on
this one, because I understand that the only way anyone knew anything was hearsay, and written
hearsay, which I think legally is readsay. But, I do wonder what tipped the scales for the emperor.
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Did he think for a little while that she made a knife while she could have just bought one,
then hired some fool to bump into her while she stabbed herself, then gave him the knife so he
could throw it in the bushes? She was cool, but I don't think she was that cool. Elizabeth's body
is embalmed and returned to Vienna for a state funeral on 17 September, 1898. So, that's that
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for the Empress. Weird way to go out. But, I guess her death may have given the corset industry a
temporary boost. So, that's something. On September 16th, 1898, Luigi, now Geneva's most notorious
prisoner, writes to Swiss federal authorities demanding the death penalty. But, Swiss politics
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interfered. Switzerland is divided into 26 cantons, which is like states in the US,
or provinces in Canada, prefectures in Japan. They have their own laws, government, and judicial
system. The canton of Geneva surrounds the city of Geneva, which is the capital of the canton.
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It borders France on three sides and is one of the smallest cantons by area, but one of the richest
and most cosmopolitan. What a surprise. It has a long tradition of liberalism and neutrality,
which is exactly why anarchists and exiles love to hang out there. You know, Switzerland's always
neutral, Swiss bank accounts, all that kind of shit. Now, Luigi, our penniless 25-year-old
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assassin, is furious. He figured execution would make him a martyr in the eyes of fellow anarchists,
and he wasn't wrong. I mean, if someone thinks an idea is good enough to die for, then not only
would the people who believe like he did take notice, but the gen pop might too. That will also
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be on the test. He petitions to be transferred for trial to another canton like Lucerne or
Alabama, or even extradited to Italy where a death sentence was possible. I'm not sure why
he thought this would work. Like, what's the argument? Well, I know I stabbed her in Geneva,
but like, I really want to die so I can be a symbol for other people to maybe murder rich,
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fancy people, so can you help me out? But maybe he did it in a, it's a me accent, or maybe I
demand to be beheaded. That was actually a trick question. He actually said the second one. He
demanded to be beheaded. But just like the Empress, you don't really get to pick how you go out.
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The Swiss Federal Council meets an emergency session and flatly rejects his request.
Luigi will be tried under Geneva's jurisdiction, which does not allow execution. They did not cite
the fact that they, as the Swiss Federal Council, were the exact kind of rich, fancy people that he
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was talking about, should all be killed, pretty much on principle. In a Geneva courtroom packed
with some 60 journalists from across Europe, Luigi goes on trial for murder on November 10,
1898. He does not hide his guilt. In fact, he seems pretty fucking smug about the whole thing.
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One of the good pieces of evidence against him was when he told investigators,
I came to Geneva to kill a sovereign. It did not matter to me who. It was not a woman I struck,
but an Empress. It was a crown that I had in view. Eyewitnesses at the time describe the Italian
as having an unnerving smile and proud demeanor throughout the proceedings. Luigi uses the
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trial as a platform to espouse his anarchist beliefs, declaring that he killed not Elizabeth
the Person, but the Empress, a symbol of oppression. And a trial? And in truth, even when the cops
were questioning him after his arrest, Luigi was defiantly unapologetic. When asked why he
committed such a heinous act, he launched into an impromptu manifesto. Because I am an anarchist,
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because I am poor, because I love the workers and I desire to see the death of the rich.
In his eyes, slaying a royal was a blow struck for the downtrodden.
Where is the lie? He went so far as to call himself a benefactor of humanity,
asserting that by eliminating a high-born idler, he had done a virtuous service.
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I think it's interesting that even in the way I told this story, I made Elizabeth,
who was in fact a person, a person. Like when that CEO of UnitedHealthcare got
(41:40):
assassinated by a guy named Luigi, he was a father. He was a family man. Now, when a poor gets killed,
they don't say that. I mean, people try to say that, but it usually gets drowned out by
one time he did a pot. And I'm not saying this is universal. I'm saying that
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we are geared towards pointing out the most basic normal things as virtues for rich people.
Like how fucking low is the bar? You know what I mean? I don't know.
The verdict is never in doubt. He's found guilty of murder after a brief deliberation
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and sentenced to the maximum penalty, which to his chagrin is life in prison. After hearing it,
Luigi SEEDS that he won't be allowed to die. He outright said that he wanted to go down in
history through a public execution. Instead, he's led a way to begin a life term at Geneva's
prison day, Saint-Antoine. Now, I already gave you a big list of shit that anarchists did that were
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at least as bad as what Luigi did. Some cases you could say worse. Some cases better might not
be the right word, but in 1899, anxious governments coordinate a crackdown on anarchist movements.
You know what? I'm just thinking about it now. It's maybe because she wasn't
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important. I mean, important, but not powerful. Like she didn't, she was just,
I mean, like he said, an idle rich. She wasn't hurting anyone, they'd say. Well, she wasn't
really helping anyone either, which is kind of the anarchist's point. Anyway, we were talking
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about the crackdown at the International Conference of Rome for the Social Defense Against
Anarchists, which went on from November to December in 1898. 21 nations agreed a more
aggressively surveil anarchists and even allow the extradition or execution of those who kill
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heads of state. What a surprise. This marks one of the first international efforts to combat what
we today call, quote, italics terrorism, unquote. Switzerland kind of got shit on for letting
all these, you know, anarchists and whatever run around their country. But they kind of just said,
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fuck you, deal with it. We'll get back to the terrorism thing. I also want to point out Mark
Twain even weighed in on the assassination. He said that not even Caesar's murder could electrify the
world as much as Elizabeth's, which is interesting. Elizabeth's grieving husband, Emperor Franz Joseph,
funds a new secessionist church in Geneva as a local memorial. And the spot of the attack is
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eventually marked by a plaque that reads, Here, Empress Elizabeth of Austria was assassinated
on September 10, 1898. I looked up the plaque. It's right on the fucking railing with the water
on the other side of it. Luigi totally could have thrown his chintzy knife in the lake.
There's also a nice memorial tour, and it was pretty. Now, Luigi. Luigi Lucchini lives out the
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next 12 years as a convict. He's anything but a model prisoner. Reports describe him as unruly
and bitter, prone to clashes with gods and bouts of brooding resentment. I mean, I have bouts of
brooding resentment. Behind bars, he busies himself writing his memoirs and childhood recollections in
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notebooks. These writings record his unapologetic reflections on the assassination and his life
of hardship. One entry famously reads, How I would like to kill someone, but it must be someone important
so it gets in the papers. A chilling insight into his craving for notoriety, but not for its own
sake, remember, propaganda of the deed. He didn't particularly care which aristocrat died under his
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blade. Empress Elizabeth was simply the one who crossed his path. As he famously told investigators,
I came to Geneva to kill a sovereign. It did not matter to me who. It was not a woman I struck,
but an empress. It was a crown that I had in view. He showed no remorse for Elizabeth's death,
only regret that he could not kill more highborn leeches. He also was pen pals with a few anarchist
(46:33):
admirers. He got fan mail praising him for ridding the world of an idol aristocrat.
Those letters bolster his self-image as a heroic class warrior, despite the fact that he didn't
die. Another one of his letters called the Empress, quote, a disgrace who never worked, unquote,
congratulating Lucani for stabbing her. All of this eventually led to the gods cutting off
(46:58):
all correspondence for him, to him, from him, etc. They even took his memoir manuscript that he'd
been working on. This was on October 8th of 1910, deprived of his writing project and having long
lost hope of martyrdom. Lucani apparently took his own life the very next day on October 19th,
(47:19):
1910, at age 37. Gods found him Epsteined in his cell, hanging from a strip of his leather belt.
This could make sense. He was very driven to inspire, and if all his means of inspiring anyone
outside of the jail were taken away, maybe he just despaired.
(47:43):
Not sure if he could have any visitors. I mean, if Geneva was as liberal as it seems it was,
it seems like he could have had a steady stream of visitors to gas him up, you know.
The prison he was in was right there in town. Then again, I guess the crackdown shows us that
showing up to meet a famous anarchist to talk about anarchist shit would be a good way to get
(48:08):
self on a list. Fuckers. Now, given his troublesome behavior prior to his death, some speculated
the prison staff were not unhappy to be rid of him and may have facilitated his death. Someone who
thinks this is nonsense might say they could have done this at any time, so why wait until after
they took away his communications? Well, that would be the point. When he was talking to people,
(48:32):
his life had a purpose. Without it, where did he have? In fact, given that it was the day after
his shit got taken away, it makes the possibility of it being a setup even more likely. Luigi appealed
the fact that he couldn't be executed based on him wanting to be executed, so he had no problem
(48:57):
using the system to further his ends. Why would he not at least kick up some kind of fuss? The
publicity itself would have furthered his cause. I mean, and now I've convinced myself that they
killed him. Just think about it. If he said, okay, well, your censor, I don't know, I don't know what
the fuck kind of rights prisoners had in Geneva at the beginning of the 20th century. I'm just
(49:23):
saying, I don't think he went from, I'm going to brag about how I killed this lady and wish that I
could have killed everyone she knew that was fancy to, oh, I'm just going to hang myself with
part of my belt, not even my whole belt. I don't want my pants to fall down. Then I'd look a fool.
(49:44):
Unfortunately, I was not there. Since no conclusive evidence of murder ever emerged,
it was ruled a suicide, and Lacani's death closed the chapter on one of Europe's most infamous
assassins. End of the story? No. Let's get back to the terrorism thing. This is kind of, you know,
the stuff that I said would be on the test. It's all kind of culminating to this.
(50:08):
I'm not pretending that the assassination of Empress Elizabeth started the concept of states
fighting individual groups. It's a time-honored tradition brought to you by the status quo.
Here are a few examples. Athens versus Socrates, 399 BCE. The state didn't like that he encouraged
(50:30):
critical thinking and questioned authority. So he was charged with corrupting the youth and impiety,
and he was made to drink hemlock. Rome versus Spartacus' slave revolt, 73-71 BCE. The state
didn't like enslaved people organizing a massive uprising, so Rome deployed multiple legions,
(50:52):
crushed the slave rebellion, and crucified 6,000 survivors as a public deterrent.
Rome appears again this time versus the early Christians during the first to fourth centuries
BCE. The state didn't like that Christians rejected state religion, refused emperor worship,
and were seen as subversive. So they were arrested, tortured, and publicly executed
(51:14):
for defying Roman religious authority and refusing to conform to civic norms.
The witch hunts in the 13th to 16th centuries. We don't like these independent, non-conforming
individuals. So let's burn them and hang them and pile rocks on them. Spanish Inquisition,
(51:35):
well, the state didn't like heretics, non-Catholics, and converted Jews or Muslims,
so they tortured them and gave them secret trials and executed them. 1524 to 1525,
the German state didn't like peasants' demand and land reform and lower taxes,
so the nobility killed over 100,000 of them. England versus the Luddites.
(51:59):
Workers destroyed industrial machinery to protest job losses, so the British government
criminalized machine breaking and sent thousands of troops to where the Luddites were and executed
or imprisoned them. British Empire versus Irish Nationalists, Russia versus Nihilists and Neurodenics.
(52:19):
The Paris Commune of 1871, the United States versus labor movements, sort of 1880s to 1910s,
but really you could just count the whole time. Example after example after example
of the people saying, well, this sucks, we should have it be different
and getting their ass handed to them as a lesson. So you may be asking, big whoop,
(52:47):
why is this episode dragging on so long? Well, if you stuck around this long,
you must really want to find out, so let me tell you. Think about the things I just listed
and then tell me what's the difference between those and Occupy Wall Street or Black Lives Matter
or January 6th, don't freak out, I'll explain, or that other Luigi assassinating that important
(53:10):
person or Gaza. The answer of course is nothing. They are all examples of the little guy saying
the establishment sucks and we should change it and the powerful institutions that run our lives
pointing their guns at them and knocking their dicks into dirt. I use January 6th as an example
because while reasoning behind what they did was terrible in my opinion, it is the application of
(53:36):
reason that helps the state keep their boot on our neck. And what did unfitler do? He pardoned them
because he's pointing out to all of us, even though we're not getting it, the fact that
having people who will bleed for you is really fucking valuable and the people that resist the
things that he and the January 6th stand for do so by complaining to the mechanisms that are doing
(54:02):
the thing we are complaining about. Think about the fact that during the Black Lives Matter protests
the media talked about a fucking empty Wendy's more than anything else, as far as I recall.
I actually have an ex-friend who decided he didn't want to talk to me anymore because I
repeatedly made him feel badly by pointing out all the shitty things he thought and said,
(54:25):
brought the fucking Wendy's up all the time, as if that was, it evened it all out. Why does that
matter? Because the reasoning that has been beaten into our heads is that stuff is more important
than people. What is an empty Wendy's worth in human terms? Think about it, folks. The mood needs to
change. I'm not sure if this is getting through or not, but I have one last thing I can use to try
(54:50):
and get my point across to explain that at least in my head, the story of that Luigi and the now
Luigi have the same ideals behind them. And I'll use your own sense of American identity to hopefully
get this job done. Sorry if you don't live in America, but I think you'll get it. The good old
(55:14):
US of A has distinguished itself for ideals twice as far as I can tell. The original revolution was
us saying that being free of Britain was worth dying for. The Civil War was us saying that
getting rid of slavery was worth dying for. And don't give me any nonsense that it was about
anything else. I know what Lincoln said, shut the fuck up. Everything else we've done was because we
(55:37):
were worried about something or wanted something. Those aren't principles. And I would argue that
the two things I mentioned were the two things you thought of before I said them. And that's not the
only thing that they have in common. They both have that worth dying for part at the end. That's
the really important part. Luigi Lacani thought that getting rid of the fat cats and making the
(56:00):
wealth and power in the world more equitable was worth dying for. And ultimately he did.
But it didn't take. He was called a terrorist. But imagine for a second that somehow the anarchist
succeeded. Not with everything they wanted to do because she's some of it was just completely
(56:21):
impractical and would never work. But the whole equity thing, if that had taken root,
if people who accumulated too much wealth and power were constantly afraid that they would
definitely be sidelined, the first time they poked their fucking head out of their castle,
would we have rich people go into space because they feel like it while other people starved to
(56:42):
death? I think not. And I think you should pay attention to our Luigi's trial. This shit just
keeps happening over and over, folks. And I genuinely think that we are running out of road.
So you decide what your ideals are. What is worth what to you? What is worth your blood?
(57:04):
And if you think I'm full of shit, you can find me and the show by heading to allmylinks.com
slash strangeful things. From there, you can get to Discord or Moss Isley or wherever you're going.
And fight with me. Just please or agree that I don't care. You can agree with me, but fighting's
fun. You can also go to patreon.com slash strangeful and give us money. So I can afford files that
(57:30):
already have handles on them. Jokes. Not making broke ass team daggers. I'm not joking about the
Patreon though. You should go there. And please do yourself a favor and get to magicmind.com slash
strangefulAPR and use code strangefulAPR to get your discount on the juice your brain so desperately
(57:52):
needs. Hopefully Grace will be back soon, so I don't keep getting further radicalized. I need
to further radicalize her. That's the important thing. Until then, bye bye.
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