Introduction
In the visions of nationhood and association professed by Italian revolutionary, Guiseppi Mazzini, I find inspiration, and freedom from limitations in the U.S. American perspective within the larger historical contexts of Republicanism. After the failures of the Carbonari, Mazzini founds Young Italy in his hopes for Italy’s unification. Mazzini saw the American Republic as backwards, because it did not abolish chattel slavery. Mazzini and Pike did not have the same outlook on life. Whereas Pike is a man shaped by his times, trying to break out of his limitations, and ultimately could not, the world and perspective of Mazzini is different.
While Mazzini’s weakness was his poor military expertise, Mazzini was anxious for the American Republic to get rid of slavery, which he considered evil. In contrast to propaganda in schoolbooks of early representations of the United States as the land of liberty and opportunities, Italian performers during the time began to use theater as a point from which to critically assess the United States. In this Oath, the members of Young Italy are given a republican vision by Mazzini of progress and destiny to bind together and unify Italy. Mazzini, as I have written influenced both Liberal Internationalists and the early Fascist Philosophers. Fascism claims Mazzini as its prophet, but in truth, Mussolini and Gentile merely interprets Mazzini. The race science element in Fascism was not initially its position, but Mussolini in the 1920s shows vulnerability in his belief in Arthur de Gobineau’s theory of racial demography and use of the term Aryan. For Mazzini, the nation is transcendental as said in Mazzini’s Democratic World Republic. Likewise, Theosophy in the Mazzinian form that H.P. Blavatsky expresses is full of a power that wakes up entire peoples, races and nations from mass spiritual slumber. Social theories today remain mechanistic, and meant to make you feel overwhelmed by the growing insurmountable complexity, like a slave to processes. Whereas, for Mazzini as it was in Gentile’s Actualism, it can be described as, if we take action, or revolt in motion, God is moving with us.
One of the great contradictions in the United States, is that the government is a Republic, yet a great mass of its citizens believe that the Universe is a monarchy and is ruled by an Invisible King. Listen to Alan Watts on American Spiritual Settler Movements: ‘Why America is a Republic and not a Monarchy’ explain this. This makes the Americans ever vulnerable to subversion and authoritarianism. For Mazzini, God is definitely not a King or is symbolized chiefly as a monarch (see Alan Watts: “Ecology and Religion” on the limitations of over-reliance on this symbol of God). God for Mazzini is Universal Motion as expressed in this line, “Revolutions Will Spring…Creeds and Powers Will Crumble.”
In the United States, there is so much conservative, or right-wing propaganda against the right to protest and revolt against those who abuse political power as representative of Communism and rebellious Gnosticism (a propaganda campaign of Catholic neo-traditionalist that has spilled into the “culture wars” or language of ordinary citizens). The political Right, however, are able to make every clever excuse for their insurrectionism and attack on people’s freedoms and rights to live. This is only now a tactic in the field of combat in our minds and in the streets. Studying the global context of the Republican Revolutions during these times of Garibaldi and Mazzini pushes against all of that propaganda, and that is necessary for our times, when the next young generation need it the most.
Oath taken by members of Young Italy, 1831
⚔
Young Italy is a brotherhood of Italians who believe in a law of Progress and Duty, and are convinced that Italy is destined to become one nation, — convinced also that she possesses sufficient strength within herself to become one, and that the ill success of her former effort is to be attributed not to the weakness, but to the misdirection of the revolutionary elements within her, –that the secret of force lies in constancy and unity of effort. They join this association in the firm intent of consecrating both thought and action to the great aim of reconstituting Italy as one independent sovereign nation of free men and equals. . . . . Young Italy is Republican. . . .Republican, — Because theoretically every nation is destined, by the law of God and humanity, to form a free and equal community of brothers; and the republican is the only form of government that insures this future…. Each member will, upon his initiation into the association of Young Italy, pronounce the following form of oath, in the presence of the initiator: In the name of God and Italy;
In the name of all the martyrs of the holy Italian cause who have fallen beneath foreign and domestic tyranny; By the duties which bind me to the land wherein God has placed me, and to the brothers whom God has given me; By the love — innate in all men — I bear to the country that gave my mother birth, and will be the home of my children; By the hatred — innate in all men — I bear to evil, injustice, usurpation, and arbitrary rule; By the blush that rises to my brow when I stand before the citizens of other lands, to know that I have no rights of citizenship, no country, and no national flag; By the aspiration that thrills my soul towards that liberty for which it was created, and is impotent to exert; towards the good it was created to strive after, and is impotent to achieve in the silence and insolation of slavery; By the memory of our former greatness, and the sense of our present denigration. By the tears of Italian mothers for their sons dead on the scaffold, in prison, or in exile; By the sufferings of the millions, —
I,…believing in the mission intrusted by God to Italy, and the duty of every Italian to strive to attempt its fulfillment; convinced that where God has ordained that a nation shall be, He has given the requisite power to create it; that the people are the depositaries of that power, and that in its right direction for the people, and by the people, lies the secret of victory; convinced that virtue consists in action and sacrifice, and strength in union and constancy of purpose: I give my name to Young Italy, an association of men holding there same faith, and swear: To dedicate myself wholly and forever to the endeavor with them to constitute Italy one and free, independent, republican nation; to promote by every means in my power–whether by written or spoken word, or by action–the education of my Italian brothers towards the aim of Young Italy; towards association, the sole means of its accomplishment, and to virtue, which alone can render the conquest lasting; to abstain from enrolling myself in any other association from this time forth; to obey all the instructions, in conformity with the spirit of Young Italy, given me by those who represent with me the union of my Italian brothers; and to keep secret of these instructions, even at the cost of my life; to assist my brothers of the association both by action and counsel — NOW AND FOREVER. This is I do swear, invoking upon my head the wrath of God, the abhorrence of man, and the infamy of the perjurer, if I ever betray the whole or a part of this my oath.
GUISEPPI MAZZINI
Source: Guiseppe Mazzini, Joseph Mazzini: His Life, Writings, and Political Principles (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1872), pp. 71-74.
The American Minervan 
Leave a comment