Propaganda of the deed
It is primarily associated with acts of violence perpetrated by proponents of insurrectionary anarchism in the late 19th and early 20th century, including bombings and assassinations aimed at the state, the ruling class in a spirit of anti-capitalism, and church arsons targeting religious groups, even though propaganda of the deed also had non-violent applications.
[10] When Italian activists such as Carlo Cafiero, Andrea Costa and Errico Malatesta joined the nascent anarchist movement, they organised political demonstrations and strike actions, with the aim of inciting an uprising that would escalate into a generalised insurrection.
[14] Among the people convinced by Malatesta's arguments was the French anarchist Paul Brousse, who became a leading proponent of propaganda of the deed, causing conflict between him and the moderate James Guillaume.
Brousse called for workers to seize the means of production, peasants to occupy agricultural land, and for people to rise up in insurrection and establish a free association of producers.
On 18 March 1877, the sixth anniversary of the Paris Commune, Paul Brousse led a political demonstration in which he carried a red flag through the streets of Bern; he saw this as an act of propaganda of the deed, through which he aimed to raise class consciousness.
Cafiero and Malatesta were driven into exile, the Anti-authoritarian International was banned in Italy and its former members turned to acts of terrorism; in 1878, the new King Umberto I survived a stabbing by an Italian anarchist.
In August 1877, Brousse wrote an article for the Jura Federation's Bulletin, in which he proposed that propaganda of the deed was intended to set an example, educate people and incite further action.
[17] In an article published in Le Révolté in December 1880, he called for anarchists to use any means necessary to incite permanent revolution, whether it be by writing and public speaking, by violent attacks, or by voting.
[19] At the time, propaganda by the deed was defined as any act of rebellion against the existing system, even those that were not carried out to gain support for the anarchist movement; it did not yet have the inherent implication of violence that it would later assume.
[21] However, he was not outright opposed to violent actions, so long as they were carried out as part of a larger revolutionary movement, had a clear purpose and were directed against a specific oppressive structure.
[26] He toured the country giving speeches inciting revolutionary violence against Wall Street and the capitalist ruling class,[27] during which he gained notoriety for claiming that every criminal was an anarchist.
The dismemberment of the French socialist movement, into many groups and, following the suppression of the 1871 Paris Commune, the execution and exile of many communards to penal colonies, favored individualist political expression and acts.
[30] The anarchist Luigi Galleani, perhaps the most vocal proponent of "propaganda by the deed" from the turn of the century through the end of the First World War, took undisguised pride in describing himself as a subversive, a revolutionary propagandist and advocate of the violent overthrow of established government and institutions through the use of "direct action," i.e., bombings and assassinations.
[33] By all accounts, Galleani was an extremely effective speaker and advocate of his policy of violent action, attracting a number of devoted Italian-American anarchist followers who called themselves Galleanisti.
"The anarchist prophets of the 'propaganda by the deed' can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses," he wrote in 1911, "Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise."
Then Versailles seized the moment to attack and, in one horrifying week, executed roughly 20,000 Communards or suspected sympathizers, a number higher than those killed in the recent war or during Robespierre's 'Terror' of 1793–94.
