Career
He took the pseudonym "Brand" from a fictional character in one of Henrik Ibsen´s plays. In the 1910s, he become involved in anarchist and anti-war activism around Milan. From the 1910s until the 1920s, he participated in anarchist activities and popular uprisings in various countries including Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Argentina and Cuba.
He lived from the 1920s onwards in New York City, and there he edited the individualist anarchist eclectic journal Eresia in 1928.
He also wrote for other American anarchist publications such as L" Adunata dei refrattari, Cultura Obrera, Controcorrente and Intessa Libertaria. During the Spanish Civil War, he went to fight with the anarchists but was imprisoned and was helped in his release by Emma Goldman.
He lived in the United States of America as an illegal immigrant. During the 1960s, he helped Cuban anarchists who were suffering the repression of the recently established Fidel Castro´s Marxist-Leninist regime.
Along with the exiled Cuban anarchist Manuel Ferro, they "began a campaign in Italy itself..They turned to the most important Italian anarchist periodical, Umanita Nova (“New Humanity”), the official publication of the Federazione Anarchica Italiana, with the idea of counterbalancing the undeniable influence of L’Adunata in the Italian-American anarchist community, and more especially of responding to a series of pro-Cuban Revolution articles published in that weekly by Armando Borghi.
Umanita Nova refused to publish Ferro’s articles (translated by Arrigoni), saying that they didn’t want to create a polemic. At that point, Arrigoni accused them of being in the pay of the Communists, and they eventually published Ferro’s responses to Borghi. According to Ferro, “In the majority of our milieus were received with displeasure,” owing to the “enthusiasm” with which the Cuban Revolution had been received in them.
But in other cases, anarchists rallied to the Cuban libertarian cause.
Reconstruir (“To Reconstruct”) in Buenos Aires, whose publishing house, Colectivo, fully identified with the Cuban anarchists, published all of Ferro’s works."
He died in New York City when he was 90 years old on December 7, 1986.