Accidental Death of an Anarchist satirizes a remarkable chapter from the political turmoil of 1960s Italy: after a deadly bomb attack on a major Milan bank, the police detained and interrogated an anarchist activist, who died mysteriously after falling out of the police station window. The official investigation labeled the death an accident, but many activists and intellectuals suspected foul play on the part of the police. In Fo’s play, a “certified psychotic” and talented actor (the Maniac) convinces the policemen who murdered the anarchist that he is actually the judge responsible for investigating their conduct. He interrogates the interrogators, mocking (and secretly tape-recording) their ridiculous attempts to explain the anarchist’s death and avoid accountability. The play indicates that the police never actually wanted to stop the bombing—in fact, Fo implies that they helped carry it out, in collaboration with a far-right fascist paramilitary. Rather, the police merely wanted to blame the bombing on left-wing activists then use it as an excuse to crack down on them.
Fo’s play not only shows how the police brutalize innocent people and face no consequences; it also suggests that their real purpose in modern capitalist countries like Italy is not to keep citizens safe, but rather to protect the interests of a corrupt, wealthy economic and political elite against anyone who fights for a more equal political and economic system. Indeed, Fo extends his criticism to the whole Italian state, which he presents not as a democratic republic created to represent and protect common people, but rather as a repressive institution with roots in the fascist past. Fo suggests that the state’s real purpose is to control people so that the capitalist class can exploit their labor. Furthermore, the play suggests that the capitalist nations that called themselves democracies were just as willing to use underhanded tactics like purges, assassinations, and coups d’état as the authoritarian countries they labeled unfree.
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State Repression and Violence Quotes in Accidental Death of an Anarchist
BERTOZZO: (To Audience) Good evening. I am Inspector Francesco Giovanni Batista Giancarlo Bertozzo of the Security Police. This is my office on the first floor of our notorious headquarters here in Milan. Notorious following a sordid little incident a few weeks ago when an anarchist, under interrogation in a similar room a few floors above, fell through the window. Although my colleagues claimed quite reasonably, that the incident was suicide, the official verdict of the enquiry is that the death of the anarchist was “accidental.” Bit ambiguous you see. So there’s been public outrage, accusations, demonstrations and so on flying around this building for weeks. Not the best atmosphere in which a decent nine to five plainclothes policeman like myself can do an honest inconspicuous day’s work.
MANIAC: Ah ah. Strait-jacket or nothing. Article 122 of the Penal Code states, “Whoever in his capacity as a public official imposes non-clinical instruments of restraint upon a psychologically disturbed person in a manner liable to provoke a crisis in the disturbance shall incur charges punishable by five to fifteen years with forfeit of pension.”
CONSTABLE: Ah. (He backs off, terrified of losing his pension)
MANIAC: Who wants to be a barrister? I don’t want to be passive. I don’t want to defend. I’m like you, Inspector. I like to accuse, convict, judge and pass sentence.
BERTOZZO: Never actually impersonated a judge, have you? Just for the record?
MANIAC: Unfortunately the opportunity hasn’t arisen so far,
CONSTABLE: Shame.
MANIAC: Yes, but oh I’d love to do a judge. You see the thing about judges is that they never retire. That’s the beauty of it. Your ordinary humdrum sons and daughters of toil, they hit sixty and they’re finished, they slow down, get sloppy, sluggish, whoops onto the scrap heap—at that very same moment that your average magistrate blooms into a high court judge...
MANIAC: Let me stay
BERTOZZO: Out!
MANIAC: I can help you.
BERTOZZO: Throw yourself down the stairs you fruitcake!
MANIAC: No need to be so rough.
MANIAC struggles to gain possession of his plastic carrier bags lying in a heap by his chair
BERTOZZO: Put your fucking head under a bus.
MANIAC: I can help you make subversives talk.
BERTOZZO: Slash your wrists.
MANIAC: I can injure without visible signs.
BERTOZZO: Do what you like! I don’t care!
MANIAC: I know how to make nitroglycerine suppositories!
BERTOZZO: OUT!!
MANIAC: Nobody move. Justice has arrived.
He empties files out of the window.
MANIAC: You’re free, free, absolutely free! Not so free.
He opens top drawer of filing cabinet and looks through.
MANIAC: Oooh I see, the big fish. Pesci grossi! Diamond smugglers, drug racketeers. You can all stay there. Where are all the little people? I know.
Closes top drawer and opens bottom drawer. Looks through.
MANIAC: That’s more like it. Heads!
Takes an armful of files and empties them out of the window
(Blows-a huge raspberry down the phone) That was Bertozzo blowing you a raspberry, He says you can both rot for all he cares, you’ve stood in his way long enough, about time you were re-posted or pensioned off … Where? … Where? … South, probably, some flea-infested station in the arsehole of the world where the bandits use the fuzz for target practice when the melons are out of season … Ha ha OK, I’ll tell him. (Phone away) … He says he’s going to push our faces in at the earliest opportunity ha ha … (To phone) You and whose army … ? (Raspberry) Heil Himmler!!
SUPERINTENDENT: Who is this dribbling cretin?
PISSANI: Professor Marco Maria Malipiero!
SUPERINTENDENT: What!
PISSANI: First Councillor to the High Court!
SUPERINTENDENT: What!
PISSANI: His honour, the judge is here to conduct the new enquiry…
SUPERINTENDENT: (To PISSANI) Why didn’t you warn me. (To MANIAC) We were expecting you, your Honour, but not so soon.
MANIAC: “Forth from the sterilising flame…
SUPERINTENDENT: …shall burst an instrument of steel.”
MANIAC and SUPERINTENDENT: Ssssh!
SUPERINTENDENT’s eyes fill with wonder and awe at, the MANIAC. Comes to attention and clicks his heels. The MANIAC winks knowingly. They sing a few bars of the fascist youth song and do a few salutes at each other, giggling.
MANIAC: What imaginations! Is it any wonder with your incredible inventions battering him from all sides that the suspect is seized with the most enormous raptus and launches himself into space? I’ll be frank. You two are done for. You will be charged forthwith with instigating this man to commit suicide.
Both protest.
PISSANI: The second version.
CONSTABLE: What second version do you want?
SUPERINTENDENT: That one.
CONSTABLE: No. That’s the second first version.
PISSANI: Well where’s the first second version?
CONSTABLE: Here.
All three give file to MANIAC
ALL THREE: The second version!
MANIAC: So there has been a re-writing of events.
SUPERINTENDENT: A slight correction.
MANIAC: Yes?
SUPERINTENDENT: We corrected the time of the original interrogation in which we employed the…
MANIAC: The lies?
SUPERINTENDENT: … Er deception strategy. The session ended at eight instead of nearly midnight as previously stated.
MANIAC: You moved everything forward four hours.
PISSANI: Except the fall from the window. There were witnesses to that.
PISSANI: We only behaved according to specific directives.
MANIAC: Exactly. “You must provoke the kind of atmosphere in which we can justifiably demand greater repressive powers.” That’s what they told you, right?
PISSANI: They were very persuasive.
SUPERINTENDENT: The subhuman filth are threatening to engulf our beloved country.
MANIAC: “Society is falling apart.”
SUPERINTENDENT: Action has to be taken. I appeal to your finer instincts, Kamerad.
MANIAC: “Strengthen the state.”
SUPERINTENDENT: Were we wrong?
MANIAC: “Crack down on hooligans, drop-outs, drunks addicts, squatters, demonstrators, infiltrate the union militants, round up activists, fatten up the files, polish your rubber bullets…”
PISSANI: He’s right!
He climbs onto the window sill.
PISSANI: I can’t bear the disgrace! Famiglia, pardona me!
SUPERINTENDENT: No! No! No! There has to be another way!
MANIAC: Can’t you feel the raptus boiling up inside you?
PISSANI: Oh oh oooh.
Swaying there, about to jump.
MANIAC: One great liberating leap!
SUPERINTENDENT: (Suddenly) I’ve got it! Don’t panic! I’ve got it!
PISSANI: If I want to panic, I’ll panic! I’m going!
As he leaps the SUPERINTENDENT grabs him and pulls him back in.
MANIAC: Besides being evident garbage your stories lack the tiniest vestige of humanity. No warmth. No laughter. No pain. No remorse. SING! (Guitars) For God’s sake. Show a human heart beating beyond the sordid tangle of lies you have left in your wake. Before it is too late, give the public something to believe in. SING! (Cast begin to sing) Sing and they may forgive the superficial facts. Three tortured human souls, albeit they are policemen, singing their suspect’s song with him to cheer him through his darkest hour. The song of anarchy itself. “Our homeland is the whole world. Our law is liberty. We have but one thought, revolution in our hearts.”
MANIAC suddenly turns on them.
MANIAC: This explains why so many perfectly ordinary, bored people suddenly dress themselves up as anarchists and revolutionaries—they are completely innocent, they just want to get themselves arrested so they can have a fucking good laugh for once in their lives. Our cunning anarchist is obviously in his grave right now, pissing himself!
Pause. The irony has got through.
PISSANI: I was just scaring him. You are the nutter!
SUPERINTENDENT: I’m a nutter!?
CONSTABLE: Please.
PISSANI: Well you bloody pushed him, chum!
SUPERINTENDENT: Did I? Did I? That is a laugh alright! All on my own, was I!
Suddenly all three realise at the same instant that the MANIAC is listening. They freeze. Slowly turn. The MANIAC has a beatific smile. Pause. No one speaks.
The MANIAC is outrageously costumed. He wears false moustache, glasses, wild wig, wooden leg, false hand, eye patch, carries a crutch.
MANIAC: Delighted!
He proffers his false hand.
MANIAC: Pardon my stiff hand. It’s wooden. Memento of the Algerian campaign. Nasty business. We don’t talk about it.
They stare at his wooden leg. He gives it a slap.
MANIAC: Vietnam. Green Berets. All past history. Do sit down.
Slowly they all sit.
MANIAC: (To Audience) No cigarettes please. All dry wood here. Right, young woman, don’t mind me. I’ll just park my old timbers over here and you get stuck in. What’s the subject?
FELETTI: Window straddling.
MANIAC: (He sits awkwardly) Splendid.
FELETTI: So! Notwithstanding knowing that to handle, let, alone make, bombs of this kind probably requires military skill, you completely ignored all other avenues of investigation and concentrated your entire effort on the most pathetic and disorganised group of anarchists in Italy.
SUPERINTENDENT: Pathetic they may look, but their disorganisation is only a cunning façade.
FELETTI: And what do we find behind this cunning façade. Superintendent? I’ll tell you. A group of ten, one of whom was a spy employed by this office, two detectives from the crime squad, and a fourth member turns out to be a notorious fascist well known to everyone except this feeble bunch of anarchists. How many more government employees have you got scattered amongst the far left?
MANIAC: You are a journalist Miss Feletti, so you want to use your pen to lance the public boil, but what will you achieve? A huge scandal, a heap of big nobs compromised head of the police force shunted off into retirement.
FELETTI: Not a bad day’s work.
MANIAC: It’s just another chance for the pristine beauticians of the Communist Party to point out another wart on the body politic and pose themselves as the party of honesty But the STATE, Miss Feletti, the State remains, still presenting corruption as the exception to the rule, when the system the State was designed to protect is corruption itself. Corruption is the rule.
MANIAC: Why not ask yourself Miss Feletti, what sort of democracy requires the services of dogs such as these? I’ll tell you. Bourgeois democracy which wears a thin skin of human rights to keep out the cold, but when things hot up, when the rotten plots of the ruling class fail to silence our demands, when they have put half the population on the dole queue and squeezed the other half dry with wage on cuts the to keep themselves in profit, when they have run out of promises and you reformists have failed to keep the masses in order for them; well then they shed their skins and dump you, as they did in Chile; and set their wildest dogs loose on us all.
MANIAC: Oh Dio! Whichever way it goes, you see, you’ve got to decide. Goodnight.
