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Czolgosz was an Anarchist, or he atleast considered himself one. He said the following in his statement to the police:

I killed President McKinley because I done my duty. I didn’t believe one man should have so much service and another man should have none.

When asked about his motive he claimed

I am an anarchist, a disciple of Emma Goldman. Her words set me on fire.

And later

I don’t believe in a Republican form of government and I don’t believe we should have any rulers, it is right to kill them. I had that idea when I shot the President, and that is why I was there. I planned to kill the President three or four days after I came to Buffalo. Smething I read in Free Society suggested the idea. I thought it would be a good thing for the country to kill the President. I don’t believe in voting; it is against my principles. I am an anarchist; I don’t believe in marriage. I believe in free love. I fully understand what I was doing when I shot the President. I realize that I was sacrificing my life. I am willing to take the consequences.

Another inspiration was Gaetano Bresci, the assasssin of the Italian king, by whom Gzolgosz was fascinated, reading the newspaper article about him regularly and keeping it in his pocket.

So he mentioned people who he considered to have inspired him, but he did also vehemtly state that he had no accomplices and did it alone:

I had no confidants— no one to help me. I was alone absolutely.

He still did this when the police, shortly before his execution, lied to him about Goldman denouncing him in the hope of getting a confession of her being complicit:

I care not what Emma Goldman or others say about me. I had no accomplices. I did it for the dear people, and I am ready to die.

He previously had explained his relationship with Goldman by saying

I knew Emma Goldman and some others in Chicago, and I heard Emma Goldman speak in Cleveland. None of these people ever told me to kill anybody. Nobody told me that. I done it all myself. Emma Goldman, in her lecture, did not say that rulers should be assassinated. She did not mention Presidents but only government— that she did not believe in it. She did not tell me to kill McKinley. I had decided to do it . . . [because] McKinley was going around the country shouting prosperity when there was no prosperity for the poor man.

He also claimed that he only met her two times, once at the above mentioned lecture in Cleveland and once he had escorted her to a train station in Chicago. Goldman herself did confirm this claim, she had met him at those two occasions but noted that these were rather short meetings.

I had not been with Czolgosz except for a few minutes in Cleveland on May 5, and for half an hour in Chicago on July 12.

And also that she did not in any way encourage him or know of his plans:

I am an anarchist— a student of socialism, but nothing in anything I ever said to Leon Czolgosz knowingly would have led him to do the act. Am I accountable because some crack- brained person put a wrong construction on my words?

She did however, recommend him anarchist literature when he asked for it after the lecture noting that:

I recalled his eagerness to secure the right kind of books. It was apparent that he had sought in anarchism a solution of the wrongs he saw everywhere about him.

And she also had recommended him some of her friends in Chicago he could meet with, among them Max Baginski.

She claimed however that she did not know his actual name until she saw his picture in a newspaper since he had introduced himself with the name „Nieman“.

He had, thru her, come into contact with the Anarchist newspaper „Free society“ one of it's members noting how „Everybody about here knew that we had met the man through Emma, and that he used to visit us.“ But Free Society had disassiociated themselves from him on the first September (five days before the assassination) because he had "asked suspicious questions and tried to get into the anarchist ranks" causing them to believe he was a police spy and officially labeling him one.

(Edit.: Some formatting.)