Summary

Author Pankaj Mishra begins the first chapter of Age of Anger by describing the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio’s occupation of the town of Fiume in Italy in September 1919. The author explains that this spectacle of violent reassertion of manhood is a forgotten event in history which inspired Hitler, Mussolini, and many others in direct and indirect ways. This “terroristic violence” (9) is seen as the expression of a new mode of politics, from nationalism to terrorism, and was the result of global capitalism’s first crises. The author explains D’Annunzio’s appeal to successors as such: “Today, as alienated radicals from all over the world flock to join violent, misogynist and sexually transgressive movement…D’Annunzio’s secession – moral, intellectual, and aesthetic as well as military – from an evidently irredeemable society seems a watershed moment in the history of our...