Marinetti is an Italian poet and editor best known for his key role in the influential Futurist movement. In 1909 Marinetti wrote the Futurist Manifesto, which appeared on the front page of the most prestigious French daily newspaper Le Figaro on 20 February. Marinetti and his fellow Futurists proposed a severance with all art of the past, to "destroy the museums, the libraries, every type of academy". The movement seemed to glorify warfare which it saw as the the world's only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman". Of the many manifestos brought out by the group in this early period the most famous was perhaps the "Manifesto Against Past-Loving Venice" in which Marinetti demands "fill(ing) the small, stinking canals with the rubble from the old, collapsing and leprous palaces" to "prepare for the birth of an industrial and militarised Venice, capable of dominating the great Adriatic, a great Italian lake". As well as the numerous manifestos and political writings, Marinetti also produced some (mostly poorly received) poetry, as well as a novel Mafarka the Futurist, An African novel published in 1910 (after being cleared of all charges at an obscenity trial). As perhaps to be expected, with such an emphasis on militarisation and "progress", in addition to the Anarchist elements, the Futurists were also closely aligned with Fascism - with Marinetti later becoming an active supporter of Benito Mussolini. Throughout the 20s and 30s Marinetti seemed to contradict many of his anti-establishment ideas by trying to ingratiate himself with Mussolini's party. He died of cardiac arrest in Bellagio on 2 December 1944 while working on a collection of poems praising the wartime achievements of the Decima Flottiglia MAS.