Journal for the Study of Radicalism

Editor's Introduction

2022-12-31T15:41:59-05:00

Introduction to JSR 17.1.

The Revue International Anarchiste’s World Survey (1924-1925)

2022-12-12T13:47:30-05:00

This article focuses on a survey carried out in the polyglot newspaper Revue International Anarchiste on the present and future tacks of anarchism. The RIA was a unique experiment in transnational anarchist relations with each edition being 72 pages; 24 in French, 24 in Spanish and 24 in Italian. The RIA’s World Survey’ was launched in its first issue and anarchists from around the world were invited to particate. Responses come from many prominent anarchists of the time, most of them from the three national groups in charge of publication. This article is based predominantly on these responses. The survey was a transnational attempt to reappraise and reinvigorate the anarchism movement and possibly revise certain ideological or tactical aspects of contemporary anarchism itself in the light of the failure of different national movements to achieve tangible advances during the post-World War 1 revolutionary wave of 1918-1923. The rise of authoritarian regimes in Span and Italy explaining the large group of exiles in France that helped enable the editorial project. The article compares and contrasts the arguments put forward showing the similarities and differences between the responses from militants from the three countries as well as the differences in the selection of surveys published in each national section (not all the responses were published in all three sections).

Sacred Socialism

2022-12-16T21:18:00-05:00

In 1890, Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy read, “with more than great interest,” Our Destiny: The Influence of Socialism on Morals and Religion, a book written by Laurence Gronlund (1844-1899), considered as the “foremost” and “ablest exponent" of Marxist socialism adapted for an American audience. Gronlund made significant revisions to Marx by rejecting class warfare and instead prioritized the work of a divine power in cooperation with humanity as the true driving force behind history. What was attractive to Tolstoy was the way in which Gronlund showed how the purity of religion and morality came out of a well-developed socialism. Gronlund believed that unrestrained industrial capitalism, typified in Gilded Age America, created forlorn individuals, made cooperation nearly impossible, and stymied the evolution of humanity toward a collective state of being, impeding, as Tolstoy wrote, “the Kingdom of God on earth.” This “Kingdom,” as demonstrated in Our Destiny, was nothing less than the realization of the divine in and as part of human consciousness accomplished through collective cooperation. Gronlund himself wrote that his religious beliefs had “always” been part of his social philosophy, the most consistent feature of his thought. This essay prioritizes this aspect of Gronlund’s socialism as manifested in his most important work on the topic, Our Destiny, a work that helped shape religious progressivism in the U.S.

Spitting at Jim Crow

2022-12-08T21:58:00-05:00

Sociologist E. Franklin Frazier’s article, “The Pathology of Race Prejudice” (1927), arguing that a “Negro complex” caused by repressed sexual desire for black people was responsible for pervasive anti-black racism among white people in the United States South, has become legendary. According to this legend, not only did reaction to the article cause Frazier and his wife to have to leave Atlanta abruptly, but it caused him to be fired from his position as director of the Atlanta School of Social Work. This article demonstrates, instead, that the article was the culmination of years’ long tension between Frazier and the Atlanta School, and that Frazier had already resigned before the article was published. Further, “The Pathology of Race Prejudice” is best understood not as a straight-forward application of Freudian concepts to racial prejudice, but a satire of Jim Crow attitudes towards race and sex and a parody of social scientific arguments that legitimated American racism. The article helps to illuminate Frazier’s political radicalism, which infused much of writings during and after his time in Atlanta. Furthermore, the article should be read in context of a tradition of radical black writing against the sexual hypocrisy of Jim Crow, most famously expounded by Ida B. Wells in her anti-lynching book Southern Horrors (1892).

“Reclaiming the Revolutionary: Harry Haywood, Communist Organizing, and the Carlock Murder Protest in Memphis, Tennessee, 1933”

2022-12-18T14:12:58-05:00

Communism served throughout the 20th Century as a platform for emerging, marginalized groups. Not surprisingly, African Americans often participated in Communist activities to beneficial ends. This work examines the impact of communism on the African American freedom struggle in the southern United States during the interwar period. Due to his legacy as an African American intellectual, and his efforts to effect change in both the Soviet Union and the Black Belt South, the “Black Bolshevik” Harry Haywood serves as a vehicle through which to analyze African American intellectuals’ struggle for equality. Haywood’s work in the Soviet Union and Memphis exemplifies how African Americans who engaged with communist activity during the interwar period were not only important members to various organizations but also assumed important leadership roles. Through his early radical development in the Soviet Union, Harry Haywood parlayed his skills as a theoretician and a Communist Party leader into tangible results for African Americans during the Levon Carlock murder protest in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1933. An examination of this period in his life not only informs scholars about the impact of regional organizing upon Black struggles for equal rights in America, but also leads to new insights about how African American intellectuals’ influenced policy locally and globally.

Ecology, Anti-Christianity and the Far Right:

2022-12-12T14:45:43-05:00

We propose, with this article, to return to the use made by the New Right of Lynn White Junior's text, "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis". We will show that it has: 1/ made it possible to reformulate an ideologically oriented discourse without citing far-right authors with too many political connotations; 2/ to develop a very virulent anti-Christian discourse, by highlighting an indisputable reference.

Neo-gnosticism and the American Dissident Right

2022-12-31T13:51:14-05:00

In this article, we examine a neo-gnostic symbolic system in the online culture of the dissident right and identify three principal levels of political and spiritual awakening along which such expression tends to self-organize. I begin with a general appraisal of the term neo-gnosticism in the contemporary culture of the American right and analyze this culture across a variety of online platforms or books and with reference to what is often self-described as “the dissident right.” What we find is a widespread cultural understanding of neo-gnosticism expressed in what we may term levels. The first level hinges upon the paradigmatic symbolism of the red pill and entails an awareness that something is awry in society, which can be described as a pathocracy or as pathocratic control; the second is an awakening awareness of higher spiritual dimensions to human life, understood in various terms ranging from a new Christian Great Awakening to lightworking to ascension to meditation or other contemplative practices, as well as interest in ancient civilizations and alternative health. The third level is less common, but is characterized by fuller engagement in a spiritual practice and is relatively apolitical.

Review of The American Counterculture: A History of Hippies and Cultural Dissidents by Damon Bach

2022-12-27T14:04:55-05:00

The American Counterculture: A History of Hippies and Cultural Dissidents. Bach, Damon. R. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2020; 358 pages. $70 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-7006-3009-7

Reconsidering the Stories of SNCC

2022-12-25T12:00:55-05:00

Anarchism

2022-12-23T19:00:12-05:00

[Book review]

Review of Vietnam’s Prodigal Heroes: American Deserters, International Protest, European Exile, and Amnesty

2022-12-30T09:38:48-05:00

Vietnam’s Prodigal Heroes: American Deserters, International Protest, European Exile, and Amnesty by Paul Benedikt Glatz

Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021; 412 pages. $125 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1793616708

Review of "The Red Thread: the Passaic Textile Strike," by Jacob A. Zumoff

2023-01-02T17:03:49-05:00

Jacob A. Zumoff, The Red Thread: the Passaic Textile Strike (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021).

Review by Ryan S. Pettengill, Collin College.