Nicola Alongi

Nicola Alongi (; January 22, 1863 – February 29, 1920), was a Sicilian socialist leader, involved in the Fasci Siciliani (Sicilian Leagues) a popular movement of democratic and socialist inspiration in 1891–1894. He was killed by the Mafia.

Socialist leader With Giuseppe Marò and Salvatore Tortorici, he was one of the founders of the Fasci in Prizzi in 1893 following the example of Bernardino Verro in the neighbouring town of Corleone.

In the early 20th century, with the agrarian strike in 1901 and the resumption of struggle for land reform, he joined other peasant leaders like Verro and Lorenzo Panepinto from Santo Stefano Quisquina with whom he designed a change of strategy of political struggle, aiming to organise peasants in collective leaseholds through cooperatives and agricultural banks, to reduce dependence on the leaseholders (gabelloto) of the large rural estates.

After the murders of Panepinto in 1911 and Verro in 1915, he became the leader of the peasant movement in the region and built a solid political and human relationship with Giovanni Orcel, leader of the metalworkers in Palermo. They theorized the need for unity between peasants and industrial workers for social change even before Antonio Gramsci, one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century.

Biennio rosso After World War I, Sicilian peasants returning from the front found a disastrous economic situation. During their military service their fields had been abandoned and overgrown, and inflation reduced them to starvation. The only people who had become rich by taking advantage of this situation, were the landowners and their leaseholders. Social tension began to rise across the country, known as the biennio rosso (red biennium – 1919–1920), and the government feared that the Soviet revolution could be extended to Italy.

Murder In August 1919, the alliance between peasant and workers promoted by Alongi and Orcel materialized when peasants in the area of Corleone and Prizzi began a strike, claiming not only the improvement of wages, but also radical legislation for agrarian reform. Orcel and other socialist leaders supported this position by organizing a national rally in Palermo to support the agitation of the peasants in Sicily and the expropriation of land.

On October 14, 1920, Alongi's ally Giovanni Orcel was killed as well. With the killing of Orcel and Alongi, the undisputed leaders of "red biennium" union movement in Sicily was repressed. The advent of Fascism in the following years definitively ended the period of agitation. The story of the murders of Alongi and Orcel had its ending January 21, 1921, with the killing of the man who is regarded as the principal behind the killings, Silvestre Gristina. His murder is still unsolved and is considered to be a case of "proletarian justice".

Biography Marino, Giuseppe Carlo (1997), Vita politica e martirio di Nicola Alongi, contadino socialista, Palermo: Edizioni Novecento