Louis Lingg (1864-1887) was a German anarchist who was convicted and sentenced to hang as a member of a criminal conspiracy behind the Haymarket Square bombing.
Louis Lingg’s statement to the court in Chicago:
” The rest of the accused have told you that they do not believe in force. I may tell you that they have no business in this dock with me. They are innocent, everyone of them; I do not pretend to be. I believe in force just as you do. That is my justification. Force is the supreme arbiter in human affairs. You have clubbed unarmed strikers, shot them down in your streets, shot down their women and their children. So long as you do that, we who are Anarchists will use explosives against you.
Don’t comfort yourselves with the idea that we have lived and died in vain. The Haymarket bomb has stopped the bludgenings and shootings of your police for at least a generation. And that bomb is only the first, not the last…
I despise you! I despise your society and its methods! Your courts and your laws, your force-propped authority… Hang me for it!! “
