By Jonathan Hyslop In the period from the mid-1930s to the beginning of the Second World War, a group of German seamen based in Antwerp combined with Amsterdam-based Edo Fimmen, Secretary of the International Transportworkers Federation, to wage a campaign against the Nazi government amongst the sailors of […]
By Chris Weller, Tech Insider Sometimes — most times — our predictions of the future are hilariously wrong. (Looking at you, whale bus.)But sometimes people get it frighteningly right, as J. Elfreth Watkins, a civil engineer from the 19th century, did. Watkins made over a dozen lofty predictions […]
By Robert Graham Anarchist News Here is another excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Anarchist Current, a history of anarchist ideas. Anarchy and the Golden Age of Piracy In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Madagascar was a haven for pirates. One story about them is that […]
By Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal The First? The Second? No, the 14th—the basis for every claim against a state government for violating individual rights. Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick say it’s time to assert its original meaning. What’s the most important amendment to the U.S. Constitution? The […]
Todd Lewis is joined by Keith Preston, Swithun Dobson, and Terminal Philosophy to discuss whether history should be interpreted in terms of revolutionary change or evolutionary gradualism.
The last century essentially rendered the previous thousands of years irrelevant.
By Matt Welch, Reason In 1990s Prague, wonderful things happened in the chaotic space between the end of communism and the rise of its replacement. Reason‘s December special issue marks the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This story is part of our exploration of […]
I usually piss off communists and reactionaries alike with this viewpoint, but communism was largely an outgrowth of monarchism. Communist regimes never came to power on any serious or durable level anywhere outside of largely preindustrial, feudal-agrarian “ancient regime” type of societies. The function of communism was to […]
The state is always the enemy, whether capitalist or communist. By Kevin Carson, Center for a Stateless Society At Reason Ilya Somin, in keeping with his annual practice since 2007, has chosen May 1 — May Day — as his date for observing “Victims of Communism Day.” Somin cites the […]
The state is always the enemy, whether capitalist or communist. By Ilya Somin, Reason While I have long advocated using May 1 for this purpose, November 7 is a worthy alternative candidate, which I am happy to adopt if it can attract a broad consensus. NOTE: The following […]
By Hugo Garcia Fernandez As the source of one of the broadest movements of solidarity in history, the Spanish Civil War represents an ideal laboratory for the culture-oriented and increasingly transnational historiography that has developed since the turn of the century. This chapter examines the discourse and actions […]
The start of motion pictures, late 1890’s. Rare film of cities, towns and countries. High-quality remastered prints from the Lumiere archives and EYE Film Museum. Clips listed in order below. Music Tracks: “Dream Walking” & “What Must Be” by Dhruva Aliman Timestamps: 0:00 April 1897 – Jaffa Gate […]
Trad News Voters in a U.S. state have got bored with their Blue Centrist governor of a few years and have voted in a Red Centrist governor. A few years later they will quite possibly vote in another Blue centrist, in what may be described as a “daring […]
By Dieter Nelles Only after Ken Loach’s film “Land and Freedom“ the wide public heard about what had been deliberately ignored or forgotten for decades: The Spanish Civil War was not only a clash between democracy and fascism; also did it start a social revolution unprecedented for this […]
By Cathy Young, Reason Nearly every form of Soviet nostalgia gets the facts wrong. Reason‘s December special issue marks the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This story is part of our exploration of the global legacy of that evil empire, and our effort to […]
It is true that class divisions are the widest they have been in 100 years, and there are now more strikes going on than at any time since WW2. However, the class-based politics favored by the economic left still faces an uphill battle in terms of becoming the […]
By Julián Casanova READ MORE
By Eduardo Romanos This article studies the reactivation of activist networks in high-risk settings through a longitudinal analysis of the emotional practices of Spanish anarchists under Franco’s dictatorship (1939–75). The anarchists mobilised a series of emotions in their discourse, seeking to change the degree and quality of emotions […]
By Matt Taibbi Interview with David Sirota, creator of the new Audible podcast series about the aftereffects of the 2008 financial crash, produced by Oscar-winner Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions. “What’s really cool is I have very few friends in DC,” says Meltdown podcast creator David Sirota. “When this […]
By Paul Gottfried, Chronicles Imgard Furchner, a 96-year-old resident of a special care facility in Germany, is being investigated as a war criminal. She will appear in court in a wheelchair, which is now her customary way of moving about, the Swiss magazine DieWeltwoche reports. She did try […]
This will probably end up getting vandalized. By Julian Glover OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) — The revolutionary founder of the Black Panther Party Huey P. Newton will be honored with a bronze bust to be unveiled Sunday to commemorate the party’s 55th anniversary. The statue, to be installed at […]
The general point the meme makes is valid enough but it’s over-simplistic. Classical bourgeois capitalism that developed during the industrial revolution more or less collapsed during the Great Depression, and for the reasons Marx said it would, i.e. the growing concentration of wealth would result in underconsumption to […]
On a daily basis, I come across more and more commentary from all over the political spectrum about the possibility of civil war, a coup, a revolution, or secession. Documentarian Ken Burns compares the current crises in the US to World War II, the Great Depression and the […]
By Lizzie Wade Science Ordinary people had a voice in some early Mesoamerican societies, though these democracies apparently lasted only 200 to 300 years. The candidate for political office stood in a plaza, naked, bracing himself against the punches and kicks. The crowd roared, pulsing around him like […]
By Isha Jalan Scoop Whoop In a world with so many countries, religions, tribes and customs, it is impossible for everyone to like everything. While we have come a long way since civilisation began, some communities are stuck with age-old traditions. While some of these may be mystical, […]
By Victor Davis Hanson Independent Institute Our Byzantine interior and Roman coasts are quite differently interpreting their shared American heritage as they increasingly plot radically divergent courses to survive in scary times. In A.D. 286 the Roman emperor Diocletian split in half the huge Roman Empire administratively—and peacefully—under the control […]
By Morris Brodie Morris Brodie tracks 80 years of historiography on the Spanish Civil War, from caricatures of anarchists as idealistic and/or bloodthirsty (by fascist, liberal and orthodox communist historians) to an ‘anarchist renaissance’ in civil war historiography in the last twenty years. He includes a list of […]
By Scott Ritter Special to Consortium News Regime change, not disarmament, was always the driving factor behind U.S. policy towards Saddam Hussein. Powell knew this because he helped craft the original policy. The New York Times Magazine has published a puff piece soft-peddling former Secretary of State Colin […]
By David Convery Captain James Robert White (1879-1946), commonly referred to as Jack, appears in many publications as the man who conceived of, and then subsequently trained, the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) in I 9 I 3. Born into an upper-class family in Broughshane, County Antrim, White served […]
By Hjoit Hansen Spain has a particular historic significance for the world anarchist movement. The extent and breadth of publications on the Spanish civil War and the Revolution of 1936-9 is ever-expanding. Nevertheless, little has been written on the economics of that revolution, in which hundreds of collectives […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Fred Hampton had a dream. It was a little more militant than Doctor King’s, but no less ambitious. The young chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party dreamed of a grand coalition of revolutionaries spanning […]
By Juan Villa The words fascism, communism, socialism, and anarchism often times have been loaded words in terms of how everyday Americans have been schooled to interpret them. Therefore, the objective was to revisit these words through the interpretations of Intellectual Marxists themselves in order to understand these […]
By Spengler Starting this column, I couldn’t have envisioned what smartphones and social media would do to a generation. This series of essays debuted in January 2000 with a meditation on tech stocks. I forecast that – contrary to the then-prevailing wisdom – internet equities would blossom by […]
By Coral Cuadrada Undoubtedly, the events of 18, 19 and 20 July 1936 constitute one of the most excessively interpreted historical facts in recent Catalan history. And, all the same, after eighty years we still know very little about them. The originality of the 1936 social revolution, which […]
By Jose Moya Shows how Eastern European Jews in the international anarchist movement and how the stereotypes of Jews as radicals may have stirred antisemitism among the native-born upper and middle classes in Argentina but promoted sympathy from the leftist sectors of the immigrant working classes READ MORE
A great interview with Paul Gottfried explains what historic fascism actually was, why it’s largely anachronistic nowadays, and why today’s “antifascists” have nothing to do with historic socialism and communism. Tom Woods Show Paul Gottfried joins us to discuss the “antifascist” movement and what it’s really about (it’s […]
By Taylor & Francis Phys.Org New analysis of ancient writings suggests that sailors from the Italian hometown of Christopher Columbus knew of America 150 years before its renowned ‘discovery’. Transcribing and detailing a, circa, 1345 document by a Milanese friar, Galvaneus Flamma, Medieval Latin literature expert Professor Paolo […]
By Ashley Lucas, Plough I. FATHER, PANTHER, SOLDIER, SPY In 2014 in Pennsylvania, Russell Maroon Shoatz was released from twenty-two consecutive years of solitary confinement into the general prison population. This is twenty-one years and fifty weeks longer than the length of time in solitary the United Nations […]
By PEDRO GARCIA GUIRAO Available for the first time in English: “The thesis that John Brademas wrote in Oxford in 1953 was entitled ‘Revolution and social revolution: a contribution to the history of the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Spain, 1930-1937’ and it was overseen by Gerald Brenan and Raymond […]
By Hanzi Freinacht Meta Moderna It’s difficult to be playful around fascism. It arose in shaky times, gathered absolute power in the hands of fanatic psychopaths who not only oppressed their own populations but also got us the Second World War and the Holocaust. To this day, we […]
I have argued in the past that a convincing case can be made that Trump is essentially a neo-Nixonian, i.e. a Rockefeller Republican with a faux right-wing populist gloss. I would also argue that Biden is essentially a Rockefeller Republican as well, albeit one who is formally a […]
By Steven G. Marks This article examines the global legacy of the Russian Revolution by making comparisons with revolutions dating back to the sixteenth century. It finds similarities in how communications, counterrevolutions, and national liberation movements formed the legacies of both the Russian Revolution and its antecedents in […]
By Larry Gambone Until the outbreak of the First World War, the Confederation General du Travail (CGT) was a revolutionary anarcho-syndicalist union federation. Thereafter, the CGT was taken over by reformists and became an ordinary conservative trade union. So goes the accepted viewpoint. Murray Bookchin makes a statement […]
By Raymond Craib José Astorquiza had no patience for insolence. The special minister appointed to oversee the prosecution of subversives looked at the young man in front of him. “Are you an anarchist?” he asked. José DomingoGómez Rojas answered: “I do not have, dear Minister, sufficient moral discipline […]
Civility is overrated.
By Sonny Laymatina “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” – Book of Ecclesiastes (1:18) Every time I hear someone say the U.S. lost its innocence on November 22, 1963, I say tell it to all the Blacks, Indians and […]
By Jorge Molero-Mesa This article analyzes the debate on neo-Malthusianism and eugenics in Spanish anarchist publications in the first third of the last century. Using theoretical frameworks that have been under-utilized thus far, it provides new interpretations of what the term ” eugenics ” meant in pro-anarchist neo-Malthusian […]
The good old days. By Becky Little, History.Com The Senate had just adjourned on May 22, 1856, when Representative Preston Brooks entered its chamber carrying a cane. The pro-slavery southerner walked over to Senator Charles Sumner, whacked him in the head with the cane and then proceeded to […]
By Peter Van Buren, The American Conservative I know it’s almost October, but I’m not done with 9/11. I know we had the 20th anniversary, promised for a day to never forget whatever, and then an old-looking Bruce Springsteen rose to sing about everyone dying around him. (Read […]
By Jason Garner From its creation in 1910 until the end of the Civil War the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) represented the revolutionary wing of the Spanish labour movement. As such it warmly welcomed the October revolution of 1917 and the pages of its press were soon […]
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson
Recent Comments