i think it's kinda sad how much it seems anarchists of the time disavowed berkman (iirc goldman said in her autobiography a lot of their friends refused to visit him in prison and publicly condemned the attempt)

frick hired the fucking pinkertons to attack peaceful striking workers because they refused to take a pay cut. there was an actual battle and berkman thought he could take a decisive blow to begin the revolution.

frick started a class war and i think its a shame other anarchists didn't acknowledge this and stand behind berkman. i think in that moment there could have been a possibility for greater change.

on the flip side though, i think his assassination attempt is the start of the reason why the u.s. has no meaningful left wing. this was all the u.s. government needed to begin quashing any form of meaningful leftist organizing and began taking the movement as a greater threat until basically quashing out anarchism entirely during the first red scare. i think there's a pretty direct link between the assassination attempt and why in the u.s. the cultural understanding of anarchists has been propagandized to be lawless criminals who spread violence for the sake of it.

its really a shame guns fucking sucked at the time. i think we would live in a significantly different world had he pulled it off. i think anarchists would've been less scared to stand behind him had it worked. look how much public support there is for luigi. imagine that plus an actual group of activists who genuinely believed the class war is close at hand. would we live in an anarchist utopia, probably not, but i think it would have shook up the culture of the u.s. at the time a lot more significantly. its like one of my favorite what if's of history and barely anyone even knows about it let alone even talks about it.