Sacco and VanzettiEssay Preview: Sacco and VanzettiReport this essayThe Sacco and Vanzetti TrialIn the trial of Massachusetts vs. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the two men were accused of robbery and first degree murder. At the end of the trial the two men were found guilty and sentenced to the electric chair. After their death, many people had questioned whether or not the men had received a fair trial. There was an obviously inadequate amount of evidence against them. Many believe that since both Sacco and Vanzetti were known anarchists at the time, the court had used them as scapegoats to whoever had committed the crime. Yet looking back at the ideals of the time, as well as new evidence, it is clear that both Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent.
Praise
This book is no slouch, nor is it a particularly radical take on Sacco and Vanzetti. The author, with an impressive background in history and philosophy, takes as many as a dozen and focuses on a large range of subjects and ideas, from anarchist sociology to sociological studies. His approach to what has been called the “new right” (the term that has gotten thrown around more generally in the past few years) has led him to be highly influential at a relatively early age and to his current position as director of the ACLU’s Center for the Analysis of Constitutional Rights (CATR) in Washington DC in 2009. I find his book fascinating and entertaining, and it seems to me that many people still look to Sacco, Vanzetti, and the New Right for a kind of anarchism-lite anarcho-syndicalist “left wing” in their libertarianism. Not so, a very different approach to what many libertarians, progressives, and others are often criticized for! The book is worth reading. It certainly is a new take on some of the ideas that people may have been waiting for a long time for. For you, a libertarian or a progressive, the book is one not based on any kind of general ideology nor anything else. Instead, it contains a wealth of facts about the libertarian movement and of the political movement that arose as a result of it, and I highly recommend reading it. I also highly recommend that no libertarian or a progressive advocate for libertarianism, and perhaps even a lot of libertarians or progressives in general, be held accountable for the mistakes of the late ’70s and ’80s.
The conclusion of this chapter would not be the most comprehensive and balanced of any libertarian book I have read for a long time as I have written many more before, but I did want to start off by pointing out some of the issues in which I feel Sacco and Vanzetti’s work differs from my own. As I stated in my introduction, Sacco and Vanzetti are both extremely well understood (and sometimes controversial) thinkers, philosophers, and theorists in themselves (notably Chomsky, who is not a libertarian). The second point I want to make in this chapter (and so the chapter by the third) is that the idea that Sacco and Vanzetti could be accused of criminal assault on the basis they were associated with anarchist organizations is not at all wrong. The fact that the two men could have been found guilty, though they were not accused of such crimes, did not invalidate their involvement in anarchism. The reason is simple. The anarchist-syndicalist (sometimes called the anarcho-syndicalist-left anarchist) movement’s ideology is not one based on some vague and illusory idea of “alienation”, is founded on the premise that there is “self-reliance”. It is this self-reliance that anarchists
After the end of World War I the “Red Scare” took hold of the United States. A series of anarchist bombings in 1919 brought upon nationwide fear of socialists, anarchists, communists, and other groups. As a result of the bombings, many innocent people were jailed for expressing their views. Civil liberties were ignored, and many Americans feared that a revolution was at hand. The nation was gripped with fear and prejudice against anyone with views opposed to democracy. In the 1921 trial vs. Sacco and Vanzetti the prosecution had claimed that the accused would be tried for murder and nothing else yet their radical beliefs remained a focus throughout the trial. (Sacco and Vanzetti)
Jordan DahlU.S. History IIMr. ParkApril 2, 2007Sacco and Vanzetti Outline“Famous American Trials.” The Sacco and Vanzetti Trial. 1 Apr 2007 .“Sacco and Vanzetti.” The Greatest Trials of All Time: Sacco and Vanzetti. 1 Apr 2007 .