In April 1921, a group of Italian fascist squadristi conducted one of their then-routine attacks on leftists, targeting the Tuscan village of Foiano. Armed with weapons from a local army barracks and led by a serving military officer, the squadristi spent a happy morning in beatings and intimidation. But as they traveled back to Arezzo, they were ambushed by local communists in the village of Renzino. Three fascists, and between eight to ten of their opponents, died in the resulting melee.

The Renzino ambush became a crux of fascist propaganda. Mussolini’s Il Popolo d’Italia raged against a “ferocious ambush” executed by “cowards.” La Nazione, a Tuscan daily, described an “explosion of the most brutal forms of hatred,” with peasants “in a sort of competition to see who could act in the cruelest way.” In revenge, squadristi went on an arson and murder spree across Tuscany. Among the arrests were 107 anti-fascists and no fascists. Indeed, the non-fascist victims of those bloody days were ignored and remain ignored by today’s fascist successor parties.

The events after Renzino are worth conjuring now not because the unimaginative muse of history is prone to repetition. Clio knows better. But neither should we assume that history the second time will be farce, not tragedy again. This snapshot of blood-dappled Tuscany offers a reminder of how the Left can become a main victim of violence allegedly conducted in its own name. Those events don’t elucidate the specific tools available now to empty political space. Between times and places, the technologies of repression are mobile.