The fascist regime staged Gramsci’s trial as exemplary political punishment

Evidence

The trial, which began on 28 May 1928, was planned as a political showpiece. A special tribunal had been created to judge Gramsci, Terracini, Scoccimarro and twenty other defendants. The prisoners were accused of organising an armed insurrection. Legal arguments or evidence were largely irrelevant—the regime had decided that a conviction was necessary, to be followed by exemplary punishment. “For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning”, declared the Public Prosecutor, pointing to Gramsci. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 228

Categorization

• XREF: Exemplary punishment anticipates the biopolitical/necropolitical frame central to later Islamophobia readings — the state controlling a body and mind deemed dangerous.