Il ruolo di Saverio Friscia e Antonino Riggio nello sviluppo della Prima Internazionale in Sicilia

Abstract

In the period between the birth of the International Working Men’s Association in 1864 and the establishment of the first internationalist groups, Mikhail Bakunin engaged in a sort of “entryism” in the Masonic lodges of southern Italy with the aim of recruiting militants, according to an organizational tradition implemented by the revolutionary Filippo Buonarroti during the first years of the Restoration. Through the political and initiatory commitment of Saverio Friscia and Antonino Riggio, it is possible to trace a useful path to understand the relations that were established between internationalists of Bakuninist inspiration and some freemasonry realities aligned on progressive and in some cases even anti-system positions. There was no such thing as “pro-internationalist” or “Masonic” internationalism, but only men who, passing through the lodges, matured a political path that led them to join