Vittorio Di Russo. The charisma of suscitating a historical movement from a dispersed youth.
Vittorio Di Russo brought the incendiary torch from Amsterdam to Milan and Giuseppe Pinelli fueled it.
Giuseppe Pinelli, a railroad worker, was the trustee of the anarchist section Sacco e Vanzetti at the time when Vittorio Di Russo was deported from Amsterdam to Milan. Giuseppe Pinelli first supported Vittorio Di Russo, then the Mondo Beat Movement, once it was created. As I have already described, thanks to Giuseppe Pinelli, we were able to mimeograph the first issue of the magazine Mondo Beat (whose pages are reproduced below}, as he provided the paper for printing and gave his help to do the work, because we didn't know how to do it.
Although not intrusive, Giuseppe Pinelli was constantly close to Mondo Beat. In the reconstruction I am making of the history of the Movement, we will see how important his action was. But what I want to describe now is how, after the time of Mondo Beat, when the Contestation was spreading in Italy and France, Giuseppe Pinelli was vengefully murdered.
In the night between 15 and 16 December 1969, Giuseppe Pinelli was killed with a karate stroke in the neck, in a room on the fourth floor of the Milan police headquarters. Later, his body was thrown out of a window, to simulate suicide.
Giuseppe Pinelli's murder occurred three days after a bomb exploded inside the Banca dell'Agricoltura, Piazza Fontana, Milan, which killed 17 people and injured 88. This was the first act of the so-called strategy of terror (strategia del terrore), conceived by the Vatican and NATO in order to end with the Contestation in Italy.
What we know for sure, about the death of Giuseppe Pinelli, is that, during 3 days, in the police headquarters they put pressure on him to obtain a false testimony, as they wanted to blame an innocent anarchist of the terrorist attack in the Banca dell'Agricoltura. The innocent anarchist was Pietro Valpreda, a Roman, who was selected as a scapegoat because he was a double of Antonio Sottosanti, known as Nino il Fascista (Nino the Fascist), the one who had actually placed the bomb in the Banca dell'Agricoltura. In the police headquarters they wanted Giuseppe Pinelli to attest that on 12 December, that is the day of the explosion of the bomb, he had seen the Roman anarchist Pietro Valpreda in Milan, so that they could blame him as the executor of the attack and dispel any suspect on Nino il Fascista. Obviously, at the Police Headquarters they knew well that Nino the Fascist was the culprit. As I said, the attack on the Banca dell'Agricoltura was the first act of a planned terror strategy. In fact, a few years after that attack, magistrate Giancarlo Stiz, appointed to shedding light on what had happened, wrote that all traces led to NATO.
Back to Giuseppe Pinelli, he had been under pressure for 3 days and 3 nights in the police headquarters. As he knew Pietro Valpreda and Nino il Fascista personally, Pinelli understood what the imbroglio was and, at one point, he said aloud who was the real culprit. At that, police commissioner Luigi Calabresi, fearing that the plan to blame Pietro Valpreda could be sabotaged by Pinelli, killed him with a karate stroke on the neck. The body was then thrown out of a window, to simulate suicide.
In the room where the murder took place, there were Giuseppe Pinelli and five other people, including four police commissioners, Luigi Calabresi, Antonino Allegra, Antonio Pagnozzi, Marcello Guida, and a lieutenant of the carabinieri, Sabino Lo Grano, who compiled a report on the murder of Giuseppe Pinelli and handed it to a general, his superior. In turn, based on the testimony of lieutenant Sabino Lo Grano, that general made a public statement about the murder of Pinelli and he did so because, in Italy, the bad blood always flows between the carabinieri and the police. The statement made by that general, which is conform to what I declare here about the death of Giuseppe Pinelli, cannot be erased from historical memory, since it was published in the newspapers. What the Italian judiciary has done, to turn the murder of Giuseppe Pinelli into suicide, is not worthy of comment.
Furthermore, everyone in Milan knew, a few days after the explosion of the bomb in the Banca dell'Agricoltura, that the culprit was Nino il Fascista. He was a homosexual and, a few days before the explosion of the bomb, he told a group of very young guys that he would do something that every newspaper in the world would write about. Those young guys soon ended up in a juvenile rehabilitation institute and when the bomb exploded, having understood that it had been placed by Nino il Fascista, they informed their tutors. Then the news spread throughout Milan. Editor Giangiacomo Feltrinelli stated "Sottosanti places the bombs but they accuse the anarchists" and this statement was published verbatim by the weekly "L'Espresso". But after 50 years of trials, as the judiciary has found no culprits, the relatives of those who died in the explosion were sentenced to pay court costs. Italian masks are famous in the world, especially the classic ones with wigs.
Antonio Sottosanti, nicknamed Nino the Fascist (Nino il Fascista)
*
(below, the reproduction of the pages of the first issue of the magazine "Mondo Beat")
"Mondo Beat Numero Unico" (Issue 1) - November 15, 1966 - print run 860 copies
Comments on the articles and on those who wrote them:
page 1-
- The "Mondo Beat" logo was drawn by Enea, a 17-year-old Milanese who traced it with a pin on a mimeograph matrix.
- Translation of what is written under the logo Mondo Beat: Management, Administration, Advertising, Milan, Piazza del Duomo, at the equestrian statue of (King) Vittorio Emanuele II - This issue is sponsored by the world citizen Vittorio Di Russo, mimeograph assistant and street vendor - Cooperation open to all, with the exception of mental masturbators. This strip and the editorial were written by Melchiorre Paolo Gerbino (M.P.G.). In the editorial, I advocated nonviolence as a necessity for the survival of humanity, hence the need for a new morality and, in perspective, the development of a superior human nature.
page 2-
- Continuation of the editorial by M.P.G. (Melchiorre Paolo Gerbino);
- On the same page 2, "No poetics but poets" (NON POETICHE MA POETI) by Edoardo, on the need for a renewal of Italian literature. Edoardo was a colleague of Melchiorre Gerbino in the Alitalia airline, where Melchiorre Gerbino worked 2 months and 3 weeks, waiting to receive authorization from the Court to publish the magazine Mondo Beat as editor in charge.
- On the same page 2, a thought by Boris Vian is quoted.
page 3-
- "Beat Phenomenology" (FENOMENO BEAT) (1) by Renzo Freschi, a 18-year-old Milanese who attended high school.
page 4-
- "Beat Phenomenology" (FENOMENO BEAT) (2) by Renzo Freschi. He had tried to participate in the Fernanda Pivano's literary salon but had been ignored. So, he came to Mondo Beat, where we welcomed everyone and this attitude of ours would have been the great strength and the great weakness of the Movement.
page 5-
- "Beat Phenomenology" (FENOMENO BEAT) (3) by Renzo Freschi. What Renzo Freschi wrote in this article was an almost conforming copy of what Fernanda Pivano had already published on the subject. In those days, in Italy, there was a deafening publicity about the Beat Generation and in particular about Allen Ginsberg, made by all the media of the Establishment, and Fernanda Pivano, who was actually a mediocre translator, was depicted as a great character. As I have already said, she was actually a CIA agent who had the task of confusing the Italian provincials and Renzo Freschi was one of those who had been confused by Fernanda Pivano.
- On the same page 5, "The reason why I don't want to undergo compulsory military service" (PERCHÉ MI RIFIUTO DI DIVENTARE SOLDATO) (1) by Ivo della Savia. He was a Sacco e Vanzetti anarchist.
page 6-
- "The reason why I don't want to undergo compulsory military service" (PERCHÉ MI RIFIUTO DI DIVENTARE SOLDATO) (2) by Ivo della Savia. He was a draft dodger who lived in hiding, supported by the Sacco e Vanzetti anarchists.
page 7-
- "Why I don't want to undergo compulsory military service" (PERCHÉ MI RIFIUTO DI DIVENTARE SOLDATO) (3) by Ivo della Savia. In Italy, he has been the first conscientious objector to obligatory military service (before him there were some Jehovah's Witnesses, for religious reasons).
- On the same page 7, a miscellany of quotations on pacifism, by Pope John XXIII, Albert Einstein, Arthur Koestler.
page 8-
- "Buddhists and war. A letter from a resurrected man to J.P. Sartre" (I BUDDISTI E LA GUERRA. Lettera di un risuscitato a J.P. Sartre) (1) by Ho Huu Tuong. This was an open letter to Jean-Paul Sartre written by an atheist Vietnamese, an intellectual who had been forced by circumstances to live among Buddhists during the Vietnam War.
page 9-
- "Buddhists and war. A letter from a resurrected man to J.P. Sartre" (I BUDDISTI E LA GUERRA. Lettera di un risuscitato a J.P. Sartre) (2) by Ho Huu Tuong. The Vietnam War was still in progress at the time of publication of this open letter and was in one of its worst escalation moments.
page 10-
- "Fireworks" (FUOCHI D'ARTIFICIO) by Renzo Freschi.
As you can see, Renzo Freschi was incontinent with his writings. He believed he would succeed as a writer, so he wrote incessantly and pressed to be published. After the time of Mondo Beat, when the dream of the successful writer vanished, Renzo Freschi began the business of oriental art dealer and, in a crisis of rejection, he destroyed the documentation of his participation in the Mondo Beat Movement. But, over the years, he has realized that he wouldn't be remembered for what he had sold as a merchant, but, maybe, for his participation in the Mondo Beat story. And so he made one more wrong operation, that is, he tried to mystify the history of Mondo Beat on Facebook, with the aim of cutting a noble part for himself, that of one of the founders of Mondo Beat. A noble part he hasn't had.
page 11-
- "Milano Beat" by Giuseppe Poppi Ranchetti, the famous set designer. He attended Mondo Beat at the beginning. In this writing, the young Poppi expressed his annoyance to be among robotized people in that Milan of those days.
- On the same page 11, "Shadows in the sun" (OMBRE AL SOLE) by Renzo Freschi. In the second issue of the magazine Mondo Beat, Renzo Freschi would have had much less space and the quality of the Magazine would have greatly improved, thanks the writings of original contributors as Antono Pilati and Marco Maria Sigiani.
- On the same page 11, a poem, in French, by Nazim Hikmet, who had died 3 years earlier.
page 12-
- "Practical souls" (ANIME PRATICHE) and "Let's remain in our world" (RESTIAMO NEL NOSTRO MONDO) by Cina. In these two poems there are the bitter memories of someone who had been locked up in a reformatory. Nicknamed "Cina" (China), he was an intimate friend of Vittorio Di Russo.
page 13-
- "The mentally retarded principal" (IL PRESIDE TARDO MENTALE) by Gennaro De Miranda- It was a harsh criticism on the school teaching system in Italy. Gennaro De Miranda, a 36-year-old Neapolitan, was the oldest contributor to the magazine Mondo Beat. Together with Carmen Russo, Gunilla Unger, Giuseppe Pinelli, Umberto Timoni, Melchiorre Gerbino, he was one of the 6 who have printed this first issue of the Magazine, in the anarchist section Sacco e Vanzetti.
- On the same page 13, "Mr. Todisco and Love" (IL SIGNOR TODISCO E L'AMORE) (1) by M.P.G. (Melchiorre Paolo Gerbino).
page 14-
- "Mr. Todisco and Love" (IL SIGNOR TODISCO E L'AMORE) (2) by M.P.G. (Melchiorre Paolo Gerbino);
- "Mr. Di Tosco and War" (IL SIGNOR DI TOSCO E LA GUERRA) by Vittorio Di Russo;
With these two writings, Melchiorre Gerbino and Vittorio Di Russo, respectively, were making fun of Alfredo Todisco, a Corriere della Sera journalist who wrote nonsense about the Beats.
Note that this writing by Vittorio Di Russo is the only one that has been published in the pages of the magazine Mondo Beat. In fact, Vittorio sculpted and painted assiduously but did not write much.
- On the same page 14, "Quiz", signed "La Redazione" (the editorial staff). It was written by Melchiorre Gerbino. It was controversy with the publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.
