WOSU Public Radio, “Some Left-Wing Protesters Were Ready To Trade Blows In Charlottesville”
Antifa members say they trace their history to an anti-fascist street movement that’s existed in Europe for decades. Some claim inspiration from anarchist political ideas that are broadly anti-authoritarian and often anti-capitalist. In Charlottesville, they clashed repeatedly with neo-Nazis and white power activists. Video of one brawl was posted to YouTube. Continue Reading
People, “The Unfair and Ridiculous Reasons Black Cats Are Considered Unlucky”
Cat-hating carried over with the Puritans into America, and the Salem Witch Trials cemented it as an everlasting part of witchcraft and cat lore. Fast forward a few hundred years, and black cats became a symbol of something else entirely: The labor movement, and in particular, anarchism. Continue Reading
The Washington Post, “Anarchists and the antifa: The history of activists Trump condemns as the ‘alt-left’”
“Many anarchists disagree with the idea of breaking a window. But it’s a practical tactical disagreement, not a moral one,” Grubacic said. “Breaking windows is a way of showing that we are not going to just go into the good night,” he said. “We are here and we are going to do everything we can […]
New York Daily News, “The unsolved murder of famous anarchist Carlo Tresca”
Meanwhile, he was also a noisy anti-Stalinist, energetically crusading to keep Reds out of the unions, and the Communists all hated him too. Chiefly, Tresca was a formal anarchist, meaning he wanted down with pretty much everything. Everybody in the phone book might have been a suspect. Continue Reading
New York Daily News, “The 1920 Wall Street bombing: Authorities blamed agitators for the deadly explosion amid the first Red Scare”
Authorities kept unmasking Red plots all through 1921. NEW YORK ANARCHISTS REORGANIZED, the papers said. REDS OF AMERICA UNITED UNDER ONE HEAD. AGENTS SOWING CLASS HATRED, DISSENSION, SABOTAGE. One million immigrants continued to arrive in the U.S. every year. At least 15 million more, warned U.S. Immigration Commissioner Frederick Wallis, were certain to come unless […]
New York Daily News, “Teddy Roosevelt’s road from ‘damned cowboy’ to first NYC-born president”
Young Leon Czolgosz was a silly Cleveland millworker who fancied himself an anarchist. “I done my duty!” he cried as horrified mobs fell upon him with their fists. McKinley did not initially seem to be in grave danger. Resting Comfortably, the papers reported. Will Recover. When he died eight days later, his vice president was […]
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Eyewitness 1892: Frick returns to work via streetcar”
Frick, the chairman of Carnegie Steel, had been sitting at his desk in the Hussey Building on Pittsburgh’s Fifth Avenue when he was attacked by anarchist Alexander Berkman. The assault occurred on the afternoon of July 23, and it turned much of the public in Pittsburgh against the workers who were on strike at the […]
Salon, “What can we learn from 1967’s Summer of Love to help us through our current political nightmare?”
They were often confrontational with radical political groups that they felt were too mired in old ideology. In some ways, they were the forerunner of the most intolerant anarchists of the Occupy period. But they also had the creativity to create some of the purest expressions of countercultural idealism. Continue Reading
The Weekly Standard, “Flowers in Their Hair”
Coyote — he chose the name after he saw coyote tracks in the snow; he was high at the time — is the most prominent surviving figure from the Summer of Love and the counterculture it encapsulated. He helped found the Diggers, a swashbuckling group of crypto-anarchists who moved among the hippies and tried to […]
The Atlantic, “Why Liberalism Disappoints”
Frankfurter worked tirelessly to save the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti from the accusations that sent them to death row. He eloquently transformed their fate into the quintessential liberal crusade of the ’20s—and was apoplectic that when he tried to enlist Lippmann in his effort, he struggled to rouse him from his icy evenhandedness. Continue Reading