Fusillo on Anarchast: Natural law, Legal Positivism, Libertarianism in Italy

by PFS on April 26, 2026

Blast from the past from longtime PFS member Alessandro Fusillo. His Jan. 2016 appearance on Anarchast: Anarchast Ep. 262 Alessandro Fusillo: Ancap Lawyer Breaking the Law in Italy. Transript below.

Jeff interviews lawyer Alessandro Fusillo, topics include: natural law, positivism, changing the law, bureaucratic totalitarianism, an inside view of the sick workings of the state, Libertarianism in Italy, Venice and secessionism, growing European secession movements, most nation states are bankrupt, central banks fund the commercial banks to buy government debt, the growing risk of bank bail-ins, encouragement to bypass laws, avoid taxes and find loopholes, individual rebellion. individual freedom.

Fusillo at PFS:

Transcript

Introduction and Welcome [0:16]

Jeff Berwick: Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of Anarchcast, your home for anarchy on the internet. I have a really interesting guest coming on from Rome, Italy, Alessandro Fusillo. He’s a lawyer in Rome. He actually practices all over Europe in international law and he also has just recently become an anarchist. So we’re going to ask him what happened. But let’s just start with that.

Alessandro Fusillo: Alessandro, how did you become an anarchist?

Alessandro Fusillo: Hi Jeff, thanks for the interview.

Becoming an Anarchist: Education and Legal Positivism [0:38]

Alessandro Fusillo: And yes, it’s a long way becoming an anarchist in Europe if you get the regular education. I went to a German school here in Rome because I’m half German. So there’s a very good German school here. After school, I went to university studying just law. It’s not like college in the United States. You study directly law in order then to have your exam and to be admitted to the bar.

Basically what you get at school and what you get at university is that the state is an unquestionable entity. What is most interesting especially for law students is that the tradition of natural law and especially the philosophy of Britain in the 17th century — I’m thinking about John Locke — and then the philosophy behind the American Revolution is a topic that is not so clean. You shouldn’t ask strange questions as far as the issue is if law is actually just, if law is consistent with principles of justice. This does not enter your curriculum of studies as a law student.

Instead the basic attitude is what we call positivism. That means the only law that has a sense and that has to be studied is the existing law. The positive law. That’s the meaning of positive law — the law that has been established by someone and this someone is the state of course. A lawyer, a scholar in law is not supposed to question this. So he may be a technician. He may be a very fine technician. He knows all possible laws. He knows all subtleties of the law. But that’s it.

You are educated in this firm belief that as a lawyer you cannot exceed the boundaries of these limits. If you try to ask these questions — if a law is an intelligent law or is a useful law — then you get a double response. On one hand they say well this is a matter for politics. If you don’t agree with the existing laws then you should enter politics and try to change the laws by means of the parliament. That’s one answer. The other is this is not law studies but it’s sociology. And so if you are interested in analyzing how the laws affect people and if they are consistent with your views regarding society and so on, this is nothing for lawyers to be interested in. Sociologists should deal with these issues.

This brings about a class of lawyers who are just technicians. They don’t ask questions and they don’t have any doubts. I was one of them of course. I came out of law school. I made my exams for admission to the bar here in Rome and then in other countries and so on. I was pretty successful as a lawyer and I still am.

Encountering the Realities of the State and Bureaucratic Totalitarianism [4:34]

Alessandro Fusillo: But if you come out of university and get in touch with the actual law, how it works in practice, you cannot avoid being very upset about all you see. It’s just a very dirty play. Judges, lawyers, how the whole administration goes on. What you especially experience in Europe is that — I used to say in my early years — we are living in bureaucratic totalitarianism and that’s it.

The state is a gigantic machine which has an enormous amount of people working for the state which is incredibly greedy. It needs money every day more and more money. As an individual citizen you face this huge beast, this gigantic machine and as a lawyer you try to fight it. That was always my experience. I’m rather proud to say I never was on the side of the state even before I became an anarchist because I have a natural tendency to be rebellious. I don’t like the rules. I try to break them. I try to find a way around them.

The more you get in touch with the way things actually work the more it’s depressing. You understand that taxes are just robbery, that the state isn’t there to protect you or to bring about what’s best for you but just to make you work as a slave and that’s it. I was basically very dissatisfied with what I studied in university and with what I saw in life. I didn’t have a personal philosophy that satisfied me.

Discovery of Anarcho-Capitalism and Libertarian Thinkers [6:49]

Alessandro Fusillo: I stumbled upon anarcho-capitalism and upon libertarian philosophy after the big crisis in 2008 because I started to read a lot about economy. I started with the mainstream which of course is not interesting at all but if you research on the internet then it’s easy to get in touch with the Mises Institute with Lew Rockwell.

I am a very greedy reader — whatever I find I read. I’m very fast. I started buying books. The first one I read is The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek. That gave me a first paradigm shift. From Hayek I started reading Murray Rothbard and I think Lysander Spooner. If you once read one of these books then it’s done — there’s no way back. Especially if you start reading Murray Rothbard you cannot but be convinced of libertarian philosophy and that was my experience.

I started reading I think around 2010 so five years ago and I’m still reading. I try to improve my education and to read the classics. For me it’s Rothbard as well as modern authors. Now I’m reading Freedom by Adam Kokesh. That’s a wonderful small book but very clear. You feel the enthusiasm for the philosophy.

Reading and reading, once I read a very interesting article by a lawyer from Phoenix whom you know — Mark Victor. It was a very interesting article about the mission of the defense attorney who is a fighter for freedom even if all the people around just say you know that’s the bad guy who has to go to jail or has to be condemned. But the defense attorney is the one who stands up and tries to defend the rights of the accused person. I liked the article very much so I simply sent him an email and that was the beginning of a very strong friendship. We met in Berlin here in Europe once and recently I visited him in Phoenix. That’s how I got in touch with other anarcho-capitalists, US anarcho-capitalists like Ernie Hancock and others. It’s very nice to be part of this community. It’s not a community in the religious sense — I would shun that — but you feel that you have the same ideas. You share the same philosophy.

And that’s in a nutshell my story as a libertarian.

Jeff Berwick: That’s great. I’m glad to have you on board. Of course you mentioned so many great names — Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, Spooner. Those four are definitely great. And then of course you mentioned some of the newer ones like Adam Kokesh in his book Freedom. You mentioned Ernie Hancock. Mark Victor is great. Actually all three of those — Adam Kokesh, Ernie Hancock and Mark Victor — are going to be at Anarchapulco and so are you. You’ve agreed to come and speak at Anarchapulco. So that’s going to be great.

Anarchapulco Announcement and Italian Libertarian Scene [10:38]

Jeff Berwick: For people who don’t know about it — it’s February 19th to 21st in Acapulco, Mexico. Going to be a great worldwide audience of anarcho-capitalists coming here to talk about all manner of things. So, I’m interested, Alessandro, because you’re from Italy. I don’t think I’ve ever had someone on from Italy before. What is the take in Italy about libertarianism? I know that Venice recently tried to secede?

Alessandro Fusillo: Yes, as usual, the anarcho-capitalist community in Italy is very, very small. It’s much smaller than in the United States. Also because the main bulk of the literature that you can find is of course in English and not everyone speaks English in Italy and reads or writes English. So it’s difficult to get the information and to be part of such a community.

But there are indeed some very good anarcho-capitalists. There is a very interesting law professor whose name is Carlo. He wrote very deep and very interesting books about anarcho-capitalism and he knows all the relevant authors very well. He wrote two books which are very interesting. One about anarcho-capitalism as a philosophy and another one titled Why Should We Believe in the State? It’s quite remarkable because he’s a law professor in a public university and that’s very very rare indeed.

There are some persons — there’s Leonard Doaco who runs a very interesting website which is called Movimento Libertario (Libertarian Movement). So there are a few persons but it’s just a few. As you mentioned one of the ways to get in touch with the libertarian movement in Italy as in other countries is secessionism.

Venetian Secessionism and Historical Context [12:55]

Alessandro Fusillo: We have a region in northeastern Italy which is called Veneto. It’s the region of the ancient city of Venice. There is a very strong and very committed secessionist movement. In brief the history of that region is scarcely connected with Italy. That region was part of the Austrian Empire in the 19th century. As a result of the independence wars of Italy and of the defeat of the Austrians, Veneto was annexed to Italy. This wasn’t so much a decision by the population there. Of course they held some plebiscites, some elections, but these elections were mostly rigged and falsified and most people didn’t even understand what they were voting for or against.

That’s how Veneto came connected to Italy according to the ancient doctrine of Mazzini, our political philosopher of the 19th century, that each linguistic community should be a nation and a state. That’s the idea of the 19th century.

In fact they are very different because Venice was an independent country for more than a thousand years. It was one of the most powerful sea powers of the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and they have very different traditions and they don’t fit in Italy actually. They want to break free. They want to get away. They may not be so famous as the Catalonians in Spain but they made very strong assertions. There is a law by the local state parliament that decided to bring about a procedure for independence. In fact, the independence was declared last year. There was even an internet referendum in order to ask the people to vote and the internet referendum was in fact very in favor of independence.

Veneto is a very rich region where most taxes don’t go to the people living there but go to the rest of Italy especially southern Italy. So there’s a strong economic argument for breaking free from Italy and it’s a very important movement.

Libertarian View on Secession [16:21]

Alessandro Fusillo: Of course, as far as a libertarian and anarcho-capitalist is concerned, it’s not so interesting to have another state which will do the same things as the Italian Republic. We will have a smaller Venetian Republic which will use coercion and will initiate force against its citizens. It will steal money by taxes and so on and so forth.

But as Hans-Hermann Hoppe usually says it’s the first step. The important thing in my opinion is the secessionist principle because once you accept the idea that smaller countries are able and should secede from the main country, you can’t stop it logically. There’s a very interesting page from Mises where he actually said that the secessionist principle which is correct and which is consistent with principles regarding freedom brought to its extreme consequences has the result that anarchy is the result. Because you can’t avoid even for the individual to secede from the state, to opt out and say I don’t want to participate anymore. I don’t want to finance your wars. I don’t want to finance your crazy welfare programs and so on.

That’s why secessionism is very important in Europe now and in the whole world because it could be the principle that you could use to convince people to think about the logic which is behind states and the logic which is behind the coercion of the states. I’m very in favor of secessionism in this regard. I was very disappointed that Scotland didn’t vote to go away from Britain, even if the Scottish secessionists are socialists. I don’t like them from their political mindset, but the principle would be great. I’m very in favor of Catalonia breaking apart from Spain and so on.

Who knows? Maybe we can see it because the states are bankrupt. For instance, Italy is a bankrupt state. The welfare isn’t working. The whole system of the taxes is rotten. They just kick the can another few meters along the road. But how long it can last, I don’t know. And that’s my hope that once there will be a major event and maybe a country succeeds or whatever.

Jeff Berwick: Yeah. I always say if at first you don’t succeed, try try again. And we’ve — I’d like to see of course 7 billion governments on earth. I think in general as anarcho-capitalists or libertarians, we want to see more governments. We want to see thousands of them and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands until we get up to billions. I think that’s the logical sort of way that we can get towards more freedom. The more that we can have more governments is of course the antithesis of that is one government — one world government — which is what they’re essentially trying to do with the UN and what they’re doing with the Euro zone and all over the world and the bankers trying to make that happen. That would be the most tyrannical horrible thing that could ever happen for freedom.

Current State of Secession Movements [20:09]

Alessandro Fusillo: Vienna I believe it was like 90% said they wanted to secede. Scotland I believe that was highly rigged from everything I’ve looked into the voting. But none of them have had any major success yet in actually succeeding. So is it your point that you think that these big nation states like Italy and Spain and Scotland, all these nation states need to collapse first before we can have secession?

Alessandro Fusillo: Maybe it won’t be necessary. I would like to see major nation states collapse. I think if a collapse comes then probably there won’t be a new Italian Republic or a new United Kingdom or Germany or whatever but probably smaller communities will form. Even if one small community succeeds to secede from the bigger country — and it could be wherever in Spain, in Italy or in Scotland or whatever — this could be the first step to something bigger.

What’s interesting in our time I think is that there are different forces that work together and that more or less are very strong each other and they set off one another. So there is a huge movement in the direction of supernational entities — the European Union, the United Nations and other similar aggregations of states. The dream is the world government or the banker like Lord Keynes was thinking about one currency one world government and so on. On the other side, there are equally strong movements even if they don’t get so much attention on the media that want to bring about secession, that want to bring about individual freedom. There are both forces working together and who knows who’s going to win. Of course, I hope that we will win eventually. Maybe we won’t see it in our lifetime, but I think it’s worth fighting for it. At least we will be fighting for freedom and not to be slaves. That would be great in any way.

Italy’s Economic Situation [23:02]

Jeff Berwick: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s definitely what’s going on. This is definitely we’re going to see a lot happen in the next few years, few decades. You pointed out how the nation states — most of them are bankrupt, including Italy. Let me ask you about Italy in particular. How is the economy there right now?

Alessandro Fusillo: The economy is going bad, very bad indeed. If you read the newspapers, especially Italian newspapers, but I think the few information about Italy aren’t that different. If you’re reading the newspapers we are recovering and there is more employment and the government is doing a very fine work and the European Central Bank is doing a wonderful work printing euros in order to drive the economy. But that’s of course complete nonsense.

If you live in Italy and if you see what happens from day to day, you see that the economy is going from bad to worse. There are no jobs. There is no money. The huge amount of money that was printed by the European Central Bank went to the Italian banks that made a very brilliant operation. They bought with this money the I.O.U.s of the Italian government and that’s it.

So the system is feeding itself. The European Central Bank prints money, gives it to the commercial banks and the commercial banks buy the debt of the states and that’s it. What they are saying “yes but now we will give money to the regular guy. We will give money to the entrepreneurs so they can start consuming again and they can start hiring people.” It’s all lies and it’s not true.

What’s interesting is what you see on television or what you read in newspapers it’s another world. It’s a fairy tale. But then you speak with the people and they are all very upset. They are convinced that government is a bunch of robbers and of thieves and that the banks are thieves too. This gives me hope because people are understanding what’s going on, what’s happening to our country and to the rest of Europe and they are gaining consciousness of the fact that the fairy tales that they are telling us in the newspapers and on television — it’s just not true.

This is very important. Whenever I have the occasion to speak to people I try to just make them think what’s all about. One of the most interesting things — my favorite victims in fact are taxi drivers who have to listen to me for the whole duration of the trip because here we have very hard traffic. So sometimes it’s a long time. But it’s interesting because I love to explain to them how money works, where money comes from. Because if you ask regular persons “yes, but where does money come from? What is money?” Most of them never thought about this topic because it’s a topic that you are not supposed to think about.

Most of them tell you “well of course I put my money in the bank and the bank holds the money for me.” Wrong. Some say — the smarter ones — “yes of course I put the money in the bank and then the bank can use the money to make loans to other guys, and that’s how the money is used and goes on and circulates.” Wrong again. But once you explain to the people how money really works and where it does come from and how money is just printed and how much of your money the bank is supposed to keep in store and that the banks are all inherently bankrupt then you see that people start thinking. This is one of the most effective ways to bring people to think about not so much anarcho-capitalist philosophy but the crazy world we’re living in.

Banking Risks and Public Awareness in Italy [28:00]

Alessandro Fusillo: It was Henry Ford who said in the early 1900s in the US if people understood how the monetary system worked they’d revolt tomorrow. And that’s why they’ve been trying to make sure no one really understands how it works. And that’s been going on for over a century now.

You’d think in Italy — being quite close to Greece and Cyprus where they both had major crises. Cyprus had bank bail-ins where they took 50% of people’s money in the bank to pay off bank debts and in Greece where they shut down the banks. Have people in Italy not realized that that might be coming to Italy soon?

Alessandro Fusillo: Yes. People are realizing that the risk is serious. In Greece meanwhile they opened again the banks but the people already know that this can come about. If you see the statistics regarding Italy and regarding Greece lots of people are taking money out of the country. There is a huge movement towards Switzerland still although starting from 2018 Switzerland is supposed to share the information regarding the bank accounts with the European community. But anyway people are trying to take the money out of Italy and of other countries like Greece and Spain and so on.

Then there is a very strong movement towards gold and towards other real values. People are buying jewelry simply. This is one of the traditional ways how Italian families put away some money in real values and not in printed sheets of paper. If you speak to owners of shops that sell jewelry, they are making really good money in the last months and years because people instead of keeping the money in the bank maybe buy a nice ring for their wives and that’s a store of value anyway. Gold and nice stones and so on.

The people know exactly that the risk is that the banks can be closed and that the money is at risk. But it’s not all of the people. There are lots of persons especially the most uneducated ones who simply don’t understand.

Recently, very recently, we had here the first application of a law from the European Union regarding bankrupt banks and regarding the bail-in instead of the bailout of these banks. Four smaller banks, but not so small, were basically rescued by other banks of the Italian commercial banks. But the shareholders of the banks and most importantly people who bought bonds from these banks had to take the loss. Two days ago a guy committed suicide because he had invested all his money in the bonds of one of these banks. You see how the people don’t know what they are doing. There were people who had small amounts of money — maybe older people who had just $50,000-$60,000 set apart — and they invested their whole money in the bonds of this bank that was quite obviously bankrupt and now they are taking the loss. They are ruined for their life.

This shows you how lots of people don’t understand anything at all. But again, there are lots of people who understand very well what is going on and are trying to rescue their goods from the greedy hands of the states and from the banks of course.

Closing Thoughts and Mission [32:54]

Jeff Berwick: Almost everything you say about Italy is very similar to the US. The US is bankrupt. They’re financing themselves by just printing their money and financing their own debts. The banks are so highly leveraged they’re essentially insolvent. So this is happening all over the place. People don’t even really know where to run at this point.

Well we should sort of finish up here. Why don’t you let people know anything else you want to talk about as well? We should let people know you will be at Anarchapulco coming up and so I’ll be seeing you in a couple months but let people know anything else you want to finish up with.

Alessandro Fusillo: What I think our mission should be and what I’d like to do is first of all to spread the anarcho-capitalist philosophy and the libertarian mindset. I’m trying to take my time in order to start writing something. I started writing some articles. I’d like to write maybe one or more books in order to try to make our philosophy known in Italy and in Europe where it is not so much.

What I would say our mission should be is first individual rebellion. Try to circumvent and cheat on the laws of whatever nation state is possible whenever you can. I think this is — and this is coming from a lawyer — yeah, this is my mission as a lawyer. Whenever I can, I try to find a way around the laws and this is the kind of lawyer we Italians are very good at. I must say we lawyers especially — we are not like in most countries where the lawyers just stick with the rules and so on. We try to solve the problem for the client and to go around the rules. This is very important.

Then it is important that you try to use any loophole which is possible as far as taxes are concerned and to starve the beast. This is very important. If each and any person would stop paying taxes right now, all nation states would have maybe a couple of weeks but maybe even less and that would be it.

This is very important — individual rebellion. Then secession, we already spoke about it. I would like to do something to help secessionist movements, to say something in favor of them.

And then everything that is in favor of individual freedom — freedom to use drugs for example, to use your body as you want, freedom to have arms in order to have the possibility of defending yourself and to assert your right to self-ownership. These should be the topics which all anarcho-capitalists and libertarians should be involved with. This is what I try to do in order to maybe help the movement and maybe who knows maybe we can see something interesting in our lives or maybe not then our grandchildren will say well they had the right ideas once upon a time in 2015.

Jeff Berwick: Absolutely. One idea for you is we last year in Anarchapulco we had Jorge Tró who lives in Argentina and he translated the book The Market for Liberty into Spanish, and he got it published throughout Latin America, and it’s apparently doing quite well. If you don’t want to write a whole new book, you might want to look into translating a few of the really great books into Italian. The Market for Liberty is a great one. Also Freedom by Adam Kokesh, maybe you can talk to him at Anarchapulco about doing something like that.

Alessandro Fusillo: Yes. Very interesting. I’m reading Freedom and I read The Market for Liberty. It’s a great book and so why not?

Jeff Berwick: Yeah. They’re both short, so it wouldn’t take too long either. And they’re both excellent books that can really very quickly open people’s eyes. So that might be something we talk about in Anarchapulco.

I’d really like to thank you, Alessandro, for coming on. For people who don’t know what’s going on in Anarchapulco, we’ve just announced a whole ton of new things. There’s going to be so many things involved. On February 17th, before the conference, we’re going to have the Anarchapulco Entrepreneur Boot Camp, which is going to be a one-day seminar on becoming an entrepreneur. On February 18th is Łukasz’s We Are Change “Change Media University” boot camp, how to start up your own media enterprise, become an independent journalist. On the same day is the Dollar Vigilante Investment and Internationalization Summit which is talking about a lot of things Alessandro brought up about how to find loopholes and get your money outside of your own nation state and get it outside of the system essentially. Then interestingly after the conference we’re going to have an I.A.S.A. ceremony. Then on Monday after the conference there’s going to be a rational physics conference. We’re also going to have an unschooling and peaceful parenting workshop on that day. And on the same day, we’re going to have a direct dating summit, which is sort of like how men can become better at picking up women, which is a problem in the libertarian community. All these kind of things at Anarchapulco. So it’s going to be a huge week coming up. Really happy that Alessandro is coming all the way from Italy. Check that out at anarchapulco.com. And if you like this video, just like, subscribe, share down below. And that’s it for Anarchcast, your home for anarchy on the internet. Peace, love, and anarchy.

Final Remarks on Anarchapulco and Responsibility [38:13]

Alessandro Fusillo: I think it’s interesting in your introduction in the show you said it’s the world’s largest anarcho-capitalist gathering and I certainly don’t dispute that but wouldn’t it be a great world if people did dispute that and people were arguing about different anarcho-capitalist conferences — how many are you aware of many different anarcho-capitalist conferences around the world because these bastards have no power but that which we give them. We’ve given them that power and we’ve allowed them to run roughshod over the world. We’ve allowed millions of people’s lives to be destroyed. And I don’t give a what anybody wants to say. I have no interest in political correctness. We are directly responsible for that. And this is why we must stop it. No one else is coming in to save us. There is no savior. We have to change this circumstance. So I say it because I don’t believe we have any chance of handing over this world to our children and future generations in a better state unless we take responsibility.

Fusillo on Anarchast: Natural law, Legal Positivism, Libertarianism in Italy

Transcript

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