To observe what would have been the 149th birthday of Gaetano Bresci, the anarchist who assassinated King Umberto of Italy to impose consequences for the deaths of hundreds of poor people, we have produced what may be the world’s first singing zine—or at least, certainly the first anarchist singing zine.

“The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox,” Gil Scott-Heron famously declared. All the same, we have long maintained a passionate faith in the power of zines. Enthusiasm about print media is a part of our anarchist heritage; early anarchists including Proudhon and Kropotkin worked as printers, and some of us cut our teeth in the copying wars of the 1990s. Every once in a while, we express our appreciation for this traditional format by attempting to improve on it.

So it is that our Experimentation Committee has produced a new prototype—a singing zine. This particular zine performs “Alla stazion di monza,” one of several traditional Italian songs about Bresci’s courageous act of self-sacrifice. “With the guts of the last priest / We will hang the pope and the king,” et cetera!

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We’ve only produced a very limited edition of the singing version of the Bresci zine. You might be able to find a copy at the CrimethInc. tables at the Boston Anarchist Book Fair on November 17-18 or at the Howard Zinn book fair in San Francisco on December 2. Otherwise, if you are intent on purchasing one, write us. It could be the perfect holiday gift for the fire-breathing anarchist in your life.

In any case, please visit our well-stocked online zine library to print and distribute your own copies of the zine:

Click the cover to download the PDF.