The Palgrave Handbook Of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2 [2, 1 ed.] 3031362675, 9783031362675, 3031362683, 9783031362682

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Extremism: History, Issues, and Challenges
Extremism from the Left
The Volume’s Setup and layout
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Anarchist Violence in the United States: 1900 to the Present
Introduction
Causes of Anarchist Violence and the Assassination of President McKinley
Reemergence of Anarchist Violence After 1907
Italian and Eastern European Immigrants in the Vanguard of Anarchist Violence
World War I and a New Wave of Anarchist Violence
Postwar Government Repression and the Climax of Anarchism Terrorism
The Decline of Anarchism and Anarchist Violence, 1920s–1960s
Epilogue: Anarchism and Violence Since the 1960s
Areas for Future Research
Notes
References
2 Antifa: Anatomy of a Movement
Introduction
The Origins of Anti-fascism
Antifa Emerges
The Structure of Antifa
Antifa Strategy and Tactics
Is a Terrorist Designation Justified?
Antifa’s Funding and Support Network
Conclusion: Antifa’s Endgame
Notes
References
3 Are Right-Wing Americans Really More Tolerant of Political Violence?
Introduction
The Question
Methods and Findings
Discussion and Conclusion
Note
References
4 Examining Equity, Extremism, and Left–Right Reciprocal Radicalization
Introduction
The Left-Wing and Equity
Defining a “Woke” Term
Equity and Its (Lack of?) Limits
From Equity to Extremism
The Problematic “Extremism” Definition
Double-Standards in Extremism Designations
Conclusion
Looking Ahead—What to Do
Notes
Bibliography
5 The Revolutionary Left in Central America
Origins: Central American Communism
Post-World War II Societal Changes and the Emergence of New Political Cultures of Opposition
The Long Wave of the New Revolutionary Left
Guatemala
Nicaragua
El Salvador
Costa Rica and Honduras
Recent Developments and Future Research
Notes
References
6 The Little Red Book and the Case of Left-Wing Political Extremism in Colombia
Introduction
How Has It Been Studied?
What Is Extremism? What Is Left-Wing Extremism?
How Can Left-Wing Extremism in Colombia Be Studied?
Characterization of Extremism in Colombia: The Case of Maoism
The Patriotic Boards
Descalzos
Prospects
Final Thoughts
Notes
References
7 Left-Wing Extremism in Peru: Structural Conditions, Leadership, and Political Will
Summary
Introduction
The APRA, the Communist Party, and the Oligarchic Challenge
The 1960 Guerrillas, the Velasco Military Experiment and Its Aftermath
The 1980s: Extreme Diversity and the Centrality of Political Decisions
Future Research
Notes
References
8 Left-Wing Extremism in Venezuela: From Armed Struggle to the United Socialist Party of Venezuela
Introduction
The PCV and the MIR of the Sixties
The Cold War, the Policy of “Peaceful Coexistence” and Revolutionary Cuba
The Two Phases of Guerrilla Warfare
Between 1966 and 1999: PRV, BR and OR-Socialist League
El PRV
Red Flag (BR)
Organization of Revolutionaries-Socialist League (OR-Liga Socialista)
Left-Wing Extremism in the Chavista Era: The MBR-200, the PSUV and Parties of the Great Patriotic Pole 2007–2013
From the MBR-200 to the Seizure of Power (1982–1998)
Against Bourgeois Democracy (1999–2005)
Chavista Hegemony (2006–2013)
The Legacy: The Government of Nicolás Maduro (2013–Present)
Notes
References
9 After the Sun: Slow Hope? Rethinking Continuous Crisis Through China’s Revolutions
Introduction
From Night to Light—The Making of a Trope or: How the Sun Rises
The Sun That Never Sets—Resisting the Trope or: How the Sun Scorches and Blinds
The Light of the Night—Unthinking the Trope or: How the Moon (Re-)enters
Conclusion: “What Lies Ahead?!”—Continuous Crisis in the Heat of the Sun and Resilient Dreams of Slow Hope
Notes
References
10 Left-Wing Extremism in Southeast Asia
Introduction
The Rise of Communism in Indochina
Communism, Ethnicity, and Disunity
Japanese Adventurism and Communism in Southeast Asia
Concluding Remarks
References
11 Left-Wing Extremism in India
Introduction
Left-Wing Extremism—Brief History
Factors that Shaped the Growth of LWE
Land and Insurgency
Forest Rights and Insurgency
Development and Insurgency Linkages
Governance and Insurgency Conundrum
Ideological Roots of LWE
Present Status of LWE
Notes
Reference
12 Militants, Pirates, or Extremists? Frameworks for Conceptualising Left Wing Extremism in Australia
Introduction
Methodology
The Left Party Family
The Three Siblings
The Odd Cousins
Defining Left Wing Extremism
The Australian Context
Sea Shepherd
Extinction Rebellion
Fireproof Australia
Antifa
Outlook
Conclusion
References
13 Left-Wing Revolutionary Violence in Africa
Introduction: Left-Wing Extremism in the African Context
Kwame Nkrumah and the Gold Coast: From Positive Action to Continental Violence
Amílcar Cabral in Portuguese Guinea: The Theory of Peoples’ AntiColonial War
Frantz Fanon and the Algerian War: Nation-Building Through Violence
Conclusions and Future Directions
References
14 Left-Wing Extremism and the War on Civilization
Introduction
Against Technology
Conquering Domestication
Expediting Collapse: Radical Environmentalists
Taking Down the Techno-Prison: Insurrectionalists
At the Intersection of Nature and Insurrection: Wild Individuals
New Convergences and Strange Bedfellows
Note
References
15 Environmental Apocalypticism, Other Forms of Eco-Extremism, and Their Links to the Left-Wing Extremist Scene
Introduction
Academic Discussion on Eco-Extremism and Interconnected Terms
Conceptualization of Eco-Extremism and Its Overlap with Left-Wing Extremism
Brief History of Eco-Extremism
Contemporary Development Trends in Connections Between Left-Wing Extremism and Environmental Apocalyptic Actors
Extinction Rebellion
Other Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements and Networks
Selected State Reactions to Apocalyptic Eco-Movements
Conclusion
References
Part I Contentious Issues—The Mainstreaming of Left-Wing Extremism
16 Left-Modernist Extremism
Introduction
The Rise and Rise of Left-Modernism
The Emergence of Left-Modernism
Cultural Socialism
The Impact of the Sixties Radical Sensibility
The Civil Rights Movement and the Revolution in Public Morality
The Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Racism Taboo
The Rise and Rise of Cultural Socialism
Fundamentalism Spreads off Campus
References
17 The Woke Phenomenon: Its Impact and Different Responses
The Post-protestant Ethic Hypothesis of Woke Resistance
What Is “woke”?
British, American, and French Wokeism
Explaining the Discrepancy: Formulating a First Hypothesis
Why Is This Hypothesis Promising?
Modifying the Hypothesis
Conclusions, and Possibilities for Future Research
References
18 Ideological Corruption of Science: Is the Right Always Wrong?
Introduction
Fact, Passion and Action
“Many Conservatives Have a Difficult Relationship with Science—We Wanted to Find Out Why”
Can Political Bias Be Studied Scientifically?
Climate Change
Disparities and Systemic Racism
Sex and Gender
The Coronavirus Pandemic
Anti-Science
Indoctrination
Mission-Creep
Conclusion
Notes
References
19 The Radicalization of the American Academy
Introduction
Defining Terms
The Psychology of Left-Wing Extremism and Authoritarianism
Support for Restricting Speech
Support for Restricting Academic Freedom
The Psychology of Left-Wing Authoritarianism
The Radicalization of the American Academy
Real-World Events Emblematic of the Radicalization of Academia
Rutgers
Yale
The Saga of Dorian Abbot
The Radicalization of the American Academy: Results from Surveys
The Political Distribution of Americans
The Political Distribution of Academics
Targets: Experiences with Authoritarian Behavior
Perpetrators: Endorsement of Authoritarian Behavior
Institutional and Organizational Implementation of Censorship and Political Intolerance
Threats to Science
Peer Reviewed Journals: Bizarre Claims and Practices in the Name of Social Justice
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2 Edited by José Pedro Zúquete

The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2 “A first full-scale, remarkably broad conceptual and historical study of left-wing extremism. Bringing together some thirty scholars, the book combines perspectives from social psychology, political sociology and history and covers a variety of aspects and regions from the nineteenth century to the present. An indispensable reading in the field.” —Azar Gat, Ezer Weitzman Professorial Chair, School of Political Science, Tel Aviv University, Israel “Until now, remarkably, there has been no serious academic handbook of research on left-wing extremism. This ambitious, international and research-led ‘two-volume set’ not only fills this glaring gap but pushes the frontiers of knowledge. It pulls together a deeply impressive list of academics who are at the cutting edge of research on left-wing extremism. It should be essential reading for students, researchers, and practitioners who are serious about understanding the contemporary challenges faced by liberal representative democracy.” —Matt Goodwin, Professor of Politics, University of Kent, UK “A work of impressive originality, this remarkably comprehensive book is badly needed, providing broad comparative perspective and objective analysis of the extreme left around the world. It will be an indispensable handbook not merely for scholars but also for all those interested in contemporary affairs, for it has no equal in the current literature.” —Professor Stanley Payne, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA “While right-wing extremism has been the subject of a great deal of academic work, left-wing extremism, in all its aspects, has been strangely neglected by scholars of political extremism. We must therefore welcome the publication of this Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, which breaks with the underestimation of a polymorphic phenomenon that can now be observed all over the world. This underestimation derives from the perceived asymmetry between the far right and the far left, a legacy of Soviet anti-fascism that has remained uncriticized, which postulates that the right tends to turn right, and therefore to extremize itself to the point of fascism, which embodies the only existing threat. From then on, left-wing extremism is supposed not to exist or to be reduced to a negligible phenomenon. In a scientific approach aiming for objectivity and a consequent anti-totalitarian perspective, left-wing extremism must be approached as a phenomenon as important and dangerous as right-wing extremism. Its main features are the legitimization of violence as a method of solving political problems, the intolerance associated with sectarianism, and fanaticism, which involves intransigence, Manichaeism and diehardism. Left-wing extremism places the defense of the Cause above all else, which amounts to postulating that “the end justifies the means”, the end being defined either as the liberation or

the emancipation of the human race, or as the realization of the utopia of the perfect society, without inequalities or discrimination. This is why the field explored in this Handbook is as vast as it is diverse: it ranges from revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist or anarchist ideologies and movements, advocating violence as a method of salvation, to the punitive hyper-moralism of “Wokism”. and cancel culture as well as the purifying utopias of radical environmentalism, which, through actions of sabotage, can lead to eco-terrorism. He also does not forget to point out the violence of the “antifas”. The main ideological invariant of left-wing extremisms is a radical anti-liberalism, whose project is to destroy capitalist society and eliminate the liberal-pluralist democracy supposed to be at the service of the globalized financial oligarchies. Left-wing extremist movements often find support in certain autocracies (Russia, China, etc.) or Islamist groups hostile to Western democracies and their allies. This Handbook, which gives an overview of left-wing extremism, is promised to become an indispensable working tool and a precious source of reflection on the new world disorder.” —Pierre-André Taguieff, Director of the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po, Paris

José Pedro Zúquete Editor

The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2

Editor José Pedro Zúquete Institute of Social Sciences Lisboa, Portugal

ISBN 978-3-031-36267-5 ISBN 978-3-031-36268-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Europa Press News This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Anca Pusca for believing in this project since I first pitched the idea in the Spring of 2021. I am also grateful to Supraja Yegnaraman for her continuing assistance to this project. Finally, I am forever indebted to all the authors that contributed to this volume.

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Introduction José Pedro Zúquete

Extremism: History, Issues, and Challenges It has been a long time coming, for sure—in fact, these two volumes stand as the first academic handbook of left-wing extremism. Neither in this century nor in the previous one has a handbook, companion, or even a reader on extremism from the left side of the political spectrum resided upon the bookshelves of college libraries or received any search results in their digital catalogs.1 With this in mind, and before addressing the specific category of left-wing extremism—and why it has been somewhat neglected as a field of research, at least compared with other varieties of the phenomenon—let us first delve into the term “extremism”—starting with its history and continuing with its far from consensual conceptual definition as well as related debates. A brief glimpse at the history of the term shows that its popular usage— both in English and in other languages—began roughly with the twentieth century and the advent of revolutionary times in Russia.2 For example, in a 1916 letter to the Dutch communist poet Henriette Roland Holst, Leon Trotsky, not yet in the Bolshevik camp, noted that “Russian extremism is the product of an amorphous and backward social milieu,” adding “where the initial historical movement of the proletariat naturally requires a simplification and vulgarization of theory and politics.”3 Across the Atlantic a couple of years later, Theodore Roosevelt warned his readers at the Kansas City Star not to “follow the wild-eyed extremists of radicalism or the dull-eyed extremists of reaction,” because “either set of extremists will wreck the Nation just as certainly as the other.”4 In the late 1920s, the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa reflected on the “extremists (of the right or the left)” in the party system and noted that “individuals with criminal instincts naturally converge towards these parties, and towards the doctrines they defend, because these parties and these doctrines instinctively support them and feed their bad instincts.”5

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In these early examples, two traditions that will become consistently linked to the terms extremism and extremist have already begun to emerge. The first is the pejorative tradition—extremism is a derogatory, disparaging term. As a consequence, extremist is rarely a self-designation; it is almost always “the other”—whether an individual or a group—accused of being unreasonable, unacceptable, and unsuitable. The second, inextricably bound to the first, is the middle-of-the-road tradition. According to it, the middle way is the one-and-only path; it is the reasonable, acceptable, and suitable way of doing politics and intervening in human affairs at large. Opposed to the politics of extremism stands then the politics of moderation—the politics of the center. As noted by scholars of extremism,6 the lineage of this last tradition in political thought is ancient. “There are many advantages for those who adopt a middle course; that’s the course I want in the city,” is one of the few words of wisdom of the Greek poet Phocylides that has not been lost to time. Phocylides was duly quoted in Aristotle’s Politics, where he emphasized the middle path of moderation as the condition for a virtuous and legitimate form of government. The extremes, according to Aristotle, led to illegitimate rulers, a way of thinking that has remained prevalent in Western culture.7 In fact, the search for middle way politics only intensified in modern times—especially after the French Revolution and the looming threat of popular upheaval— with the concept of the Juste milieu (or “happy medium”) that was exalted by rulers and statesmen as the bulwark against revolutionary extremism. As noted by the Prussian politician and historian Friedrich Ancillon, the key for any sound government was to strike the right balance, or “the mediation between extremes.”8 The history of extremism—and of any attempt to define it—is therefore intertwined with the history of political moderation—with the pursuit of the golden mean. Thus, as scholars have pointed out, there is an inherent relativism to the term. Not only does the phenomenon referred to by the word extremism need to be understood in a diachronic context, as it is shaped and reshaped as society changes. But extremism also demands a “center” to give it meaning, fluctuating according to the prevailing currents of opinion, either of the elites or of the general public, but not necessarily both.9 Adding another layer to the discussion, if extremism is constructed, this also means that it is not a neutral designation but also serves as a “rhetorical device” of specific actors, with specific agendas, at a specific point in time.10 In this case, it is possible that extremism is a gatekeeping word—a way of offsetting and disqualifying any perceived threats to the status quo.11 The image of the political spectrum as shaped in the form of a horseshoe12 —in which the extreme left and the extreme left approach one another in their opposition to the virtuous midpoint—derives from the middle-of-the road tradition. However, and to further complicate the study of extremism, the hypothesis that extremism is not exclusive to the margins but pervades the political spectrum including the center may also be taken seriously. This “extremism of the center” may take a variety of forms, not least the way that

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so-called centrists can be so hell-bent on their own vision of the “good society” or on the preservation of their own self-interests, that they may become extremists themselves, whether in their exclusion of any alternative views or in the persecution of individuals or rival groups that they label extremists.13 No wonder, then, that the author of a recent volume on the “objective study of extremism” holds as a “crucial truth” that “extremism is rarely simple.”14 One can say that if there is a consensus on what constitutes extremism, it is that there is no consensus on a settled definition of extremism.15 However, this elusive and context-dependent nature of the term—which is often acknowledged in its study—has not stopped the scholarly quest to offer a definition of extremism, and even to identify and catalog the phenomenon’s major characteristics. There have been three major approaches to the scientific study of extremism. The first major approach—and the one most-commonly followed in political sociology—focuses upon the ideology of extremism and extremism in the field of politics. The early 1970s volume by American academics Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason— which opens with a chapter titled “Political Extremism”—has cast a long shadow over this stream of research. Lipset and Raab basically argue that at the heart of extremism is “monism”—a term they took from its philosophical origin—to indicate a kind of thought in which everything emanates from One simple truth. A monistic impulse is pluralism’s nemesis, driven as it is toward the “repression of difference and dissent, the closing down of the market place of ideas.” The monism of political extremism, as alleged by Lipset and Raab, is motivated by a simplistic, dualistic (light against darkness), and conspiratorial spirit that drives a dagger through the heart of pluralist democracy.16 It has become common in political research to brand extremism as the antithesis of democracy; this categorization can be done in myriad ways,17 and with many specificities and characteristics. This category always implies a broad monistic push for power concentration, whether in the system of government or in the marketplace of ideas.18 The second major approach to extremism is largely grounded in social psychology. This approach can be applied in many ways, focusing not only on political extremism but on all kinds of extremisms.19 In broad terms, this approach primarily treats extremism not as an ideology but as a mindset; instead of doctrine and beliefs, the focus of this approach tends to be more on emotions as well as on individual and group psychological strategies and mechanisms. Studies have focused on the role played by hostile emotions such as fear and anger—and resulting hostility—as well as humiliation, resentment, or emotional over-involvement, as constitutive of an extremist state of mind.20 Another field of research deals with theories of uncertainty—in face of ambiguity and unease about life or societal issues, individuals may be predisposed to identify with groups that provide definitive and absolute answers, as well as rigid boundaries between “us” and “them,” thereby offering a feeling of certainty that amplifies the attractiveness of extremist groups.21 “Extremism is a psychological state, where a person aligns their identity with a group

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that is absolute in their moral agenda,” writes the editor of a volume on The Psychology of Extremism.22 This focus on a shared identity based on attributes such as class, nationality, ethnicity, religion, or others, is also at the basis of a recent study that defines extremism as the belief that the success or survival of an in-group is dependent from the need for hostile action against an outgroup—even if, as pointed out by some critics, one accepts that in-group favoritism or bias is hardwired into human psychology, to describe extremism in such a way risks blurring its meaning and contours.23 When both of these approaches are taken into account, the emerging picture is that individuals or groups labeled as extremist are anti-establishment, seek radical change, and are emotionally driven by a sense of mission that they see—and feel—as the struggle of good against evil. In their righteousness—as people who believe “in the inevitable and absolute” as described by the novelist Dana Spiotta in Eat the Document —extremist individuals and groups are naturally driven toward action against the source of the putative evil. As stated by a character from the novel, “I had to do something. I had to put myself at risk, personally. I had to meet the enormity of what they were doing with something equal to it.”24 The question arises about what action entails, and formulating a response to this is the goal of the third approach to extremism, which is common in security and terrorism studies, and is more focused on behavior and on the methods of action and resulting violence.25 For the most part, such analysts see ideas and attitudes in an instrumentalist way: they serve as a springboard for action and a predictor of future acts of a violent extremism that constitutes yet can also eclipse/exceed terrorism. Therefore, the cognitive and behavioral dimensions exist in a continuum—and this is the basis of the analytical paradigm of radicalization, or the making of a violent extremist and potential terrorist. This theoretical approach—central to counter-terrorism—has been challenged by the emerging subfield of the study of non-violent extremism, which puts at the center of analysis individuals or groups that may be anti-establishment, hold extreme ideas, and seek radical change, but do not espouse violent methods. Vocal extremism is not necessarily—or automatically—the first step upon the path to violent extremism.26 In any case, it is safest to say—as argued by some scholars of extremism—that violence is not a necessary condition for extremism.27 Suffice it to say, these three approaches to extremism—ideological, psychological, and behavioral— interrelate, and even if one of the approaches is favored by a scholar, they tend to complement each other.

Extremism from the Left Research interest in extremism has been uneven—individuals, groups, parties, and subcultures associated with religious (especially Islamic) and rightwing extremism have triggered substantially more interest from journalists, academics, and policymakers than left-wing extremism has. The number of mainstream media investigations and exposés, watchdog reports, and academic

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papers and monographs on the phenomenon pale in comparison with those on other types of extremism. This is especially evident in Europe and the American continent—to be sure, there are other regional and national contexts, often tied with separatist causes, such as in the Indian Subcontinent, where left-wing extremists are often on the media and academic radar. A look at history helps to account, at least in part, for this disparity. Compared to the last decades of the twentieth century—especially to the period between the 1960s and early 1990s, when left-wing political violence of an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist variety, both in the West and in the developing world, was rampant, in what was dubbed a “third wave” of terrorism—the threat and lethality of left-wing armed resistance faded away. This fact—the quasi-absence, especially in Western democracies, of abductions, bank robberies, hijackings, bombing and murder campaigns—helps to explain the limited attention from researchers and practitioners from the turn of the century to the present day. The widespread sentiment is that it is not as burning a topic as it once was. This perception may have helped generate, since the turn of the century, a significant blind spot to other instances of left-wing extremism: intimate knowledge of left-wing extremist milieus, their internal dynamics, discourses and drivers of radicalization, and also its violent manifestations. These manifestations can range from violence at protests, harassment, threats and intimidation of rivals, politicians and journalists to physical attacks on the putative enemies of their cause. As noted by the authors of a recent report on militant anti-fascism, for a security research center, “scholarly understanding of this violent form of extremism is still lacking,” and “as neglected actors, militant anti-fascists have been left in the academic cold.”28 Further, the lesser threat paradigm of left-wing extremism may also be connected to the historical trauma of fascism and Nazism and the way in which their legacies are portrayed in collective memory as the most destructive threat to the stability of liberal democracies. This production of a collective memory in which rightwing extremism is the ultimate, dangerous “Other” facilitates the perception of left-wing extremism as the default lesser evil. At the same time, there is the idea that the self-designated values of leftwing extremism—for example, anti-discrimination, anti-racism, anti-fascism— are more attuned to the values of the wider society than those of other types of extremism—they do not clash with the center of society but are a radicalization of its primordial values. This not only reinforces the soft-pedaling of left-wing extremist manifestations—which may not even be perceived as extremist by researchers—but also justifies for practitioners the lessening of its position in the hierarchy of democratic and security threats.29 Finally, this asymmetry between interest and research on left-wing extremism and other sorts of extremism may be justifiable in theory given the fact that—in terms of political violence—the data show that left-wing groups and networks have been comparatively less lethal than right-wing and Islamist groups.30 This latter fact must not be taken on its own as constituting a sufficient reason

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for disregarding left-wing extremism as a subject of study, at least not to the extent that it has been disregarded. Many other non-violent dimensions of the phenomenon remain unexplored—for example, vocal extremism and its consequences on the public sphere. Also, a new wave of political violence, as in the past, may remerge. In fact, it can be argued that, at least in some Western European countries, as well as in North America, this variety of extremism is intensifying, not only in regard to a monistic impulse by some groups to shut down pluralism but also in terms of violence itself against political adversaries and enemies. Since the 2010s, a dissident strain of scholarship has challenged the dominant orientation in the study of extremism. This dissident strain is best encapsulated by the call from the German scholar Eckhard Jesse that, for the sake of academic integrity, “we need an anti-extremist consensus,” tout court, instead of a selective one, loaded with double-standards, in which demonization is a one-way street.31 Another German, the political scientist Klaus Schroeder—who co-authored a history of left-wing political violence32 —says that its downplaying “It’s a phenomenon I’ve been observing for years. Many believe that it is about a good cause and that when the boys go overboard again, you have to turn a blind eye. If that came from the right it would never be accepted.”33 Another critical voice has been Pierre-André Taguieff who has written extensively about the phenomenon of extremism in France and acknowledges the inequality of treatment between the extremes. “Leftwing extremism is often perceived as tolerable, even deemed sympathetic (the ‘intentions’ of far-left activists being presumed to be good, even among thugs and terrorists),” he notes. By contrast, “right-wing extremism is hateful and condemnable in all cases, never benefiting from mitigating circumstances or attempts at understanding or contextualization.”34 Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go in the process of filling the gaps in the knowledge of left-wing extremism. It will take time—and maybe a new generation of scholars. There are reasons for this caveat. For a start, there is a reluctance to accept “extremism” as a valid analytical key to unlocking an understanding of a variety of discourses and other political activities coming from the left. As pointed out by an academic to justify his refusal to contribute to this volume, “If the title of the book or its organizing intellectual principle is ‘Left-wing Extremism’, then I’m not interested. Extremism is a pejorative term and gives the project an ideological orientation that undermines understanding the subject in its own terms.” This reasoning would hardly be applied to any other type of extremism. Further, for many scholars, studying the left in its extremist manifestations runs the risk, whether explicitly or implicitly, of accepting a moral or political equivalence between left-wing and right-wing extremisms. The fact that the extreme-left claims an ideological foundation based on a humanist and universalist vision of society—that is, at the antipodes of the particularism of the extreme-right—plays a role in this refusal. This is regardless of the fact that, in practice, the situation is more complex. Not

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only is this humanism often denied to those perceived as enemies35 ; empirical research also illumines both a “common ground” and a set of shared psychological and ideological structural characteristics in the extremist mindset regardless of the political bent.36 Contrary to work on right-wing extremism, most scholarly work on left-wing extremism as such has been done not by researchers at universities—certainly not in the social sciences—but by law enforcement agencies, intelligence assessments, and think tanks. There is, however, a new stream of academic research emerging that often brings up two fundamental challenges to the research: first, the lack of literature and empirical studies from which to build on their work, and, second, the greater difficulty—compared to other types of extremism—in defining and delimiting the object of study. This later aspect complicates the ideological approach to left-wing extremism—there is no clean, “concise” definition of it.37 It is true that left-wing extremism has traditionally been associated with two major strands: communism and anarchism—with sub-varieties in between. It is also true that, if we take their advocates at their word, the communist and anarchist variants of left-wing extremism are driven by an extreme egalitarianism that, when enforced upon sociopolitical realities, clashes with established liberties, institutions, and the constitutional order.38 Marxism and anarchism, in the post-Cold War, remain two paramount frames of reference. However, present-day left-wing extremism does not seem steered so much by a structured ideology—at least not to the same extent as in the past. Rather, it is driven by a diversity of issues and causes, often fought for simultaneously39 —broadly under a tent that includes anti-fascism/ human rights/environment and animal themes40 —which may be taken upon by justice-seekers, thrill-seekers, or both. Moreover, present-day left-wing extremism at least seems always to be intentionally oriented—and here we get close to an objective meaning of left-wing extremism—toward taking down oppressive powers, seeking radical change, and ushering in a new society as envisioned, exclusively, by their own community of believers. These goals are frequently articulated in more or less diffuse communist or anarchist shades, and either as a collective or as an individual emancipation here on earth. There is also a further testament to the centrality of praxis in left-wing extremism and not merely a static attachment to an ideology: left-wing extremism must also be understood in dynamic relationship with different forms of extremism, particularly coming from the right, in what has been characterized as cumulative extremism.41 These feeding dynamics, in which actions set off further reactions, often intensified by interactions in the digital environment, are characterized not only by extreme narratives (vocal extremism) but also extreme forms of action—from violence and counter-violence at protests to the physical targeting of each side’s chief enemies.42

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The Volume’s Setup and layout The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism brings in more than thirty political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, criminologists, and historians who give a comprehensive view of the phenomenon of left-wing extremism— conceptually and empirically, with coverage of historical cases as well as contemporaneous trends and topics. These two volumes reflect the diverse and wide range of cases and themes that characterize left-wing extremism. At the beginning of each chapter authors address, some briefly and others in greater detail, the concept of leftwing extremism and at the end lay out prospective scenarios for the specific subject analyzed. Many other themes and research areas could obviously have been added to the volume; it is the editor’s hope that this handbook will serve to encourage other researchers to navigate left-wing extremism and contribute their own insights to the evolving literature. The handbook consists of three main sections. The first segment focuses on the theory and practice of left-wing extremism, and addresses conceptual and empirical issues. “Nobody will ever have the final word on an essentially contested concept,” writes Uwe Backes on the first chapter about the conceptual dimension of left-wing extremism. After offering his own conceptualization of the term, Backes suggests a “balancing act” in the study of the subject between understanding left-wing extremism as a self-concept— —how its advocates conceive of it—and analyzing it in conjunction with other categories, such as democratic theory, in order to avert the risk of misunderstanding or trivializing it. In Chapter Two, Garth Davies and Vanja Zdjelar map out the evolution of left-wing extremism through its changes and adaptations in order to give a better grasp of its current incarnations and to conjecture future developments. Katharina Krüsselmann and Daan Weggemans survey the individual pathways, and the impact had upon them by the sociopolitical context, that lead to non-violent activism or left-wing radicalization—which other scholars, as pointed out earlier, categorize as non-violent extremism. Irina Jugl and Daniel Koehler give an overview of women’s involvement in left-wing extremism, identify the determinant factors for engagement, and—through an analysis of empirical cases—indicate that female agency should not be underestimated in research. Philip Gray then assesses the concept of vanguardism, spotlights its epistemology and influence on left-wing extremist ideologies and organizations, and suggests that rather than a dead weight from a bygone era, the concept plays a role today with the mainstreaming of forms of vanguardist thinking. Ignacio Sanchez-Cuenca delves into the issue of the role played globally by revolutionary violence in left-wing extremism—from clandestine groups to open insurgencies—and proposes that even though it has subsided today, it may be reenergized in the near future. Josh Vandiver’s chapter explores a phenomenon connected with both vanguardism and violence, exploring contemporary theorizations of strategy and war against the global order and showing how the

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concept of a decentralized, transnational left-wing revolutionary warfare lives on in the work of vanguardist political philosophers. The last two chapters of this segment plunge into the empirical analysis of left-wing extremism and explore the operationalization of the concept. For Sebastian Jungkunz, the measurement of left-wing extremist attitudes—and the development of research tools to capture and measure them—is crucial, especially regarding “latent” or implicit extremist attitudes within the population. Arjie Antinori, in his chapter, expands on the theme of research techniques applied to the study of left-wing extremism, and illumines the potential benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research tools in supporting this study. The second section looks at manifestations of left-wing extremism both in specific country and regional case studies, and beyond borders. Focusing on Germany, Eckhard Jesse sees left-wing extremism as one of the major challenges to its democratic order and traces its development in political parties, violent direct action groups, and the intellectual sphere as well as in attitudinal values in the wider population. Isabelle Sommier, writing about France, emphasizes the new nature of French left-wing extremism—which is less attached to orthodox ideologies as in the past, more decentralized and fluid in terms of organization, and fundamentally action-based; as in Germany, dynamics of reciprocal radicalization (between the extremes) seem to be under way. Assessing the extreme-left spectrum in the United Kingdom—political parties, affiliated groups, and inorganic direct action subcultures—Luke March argues that left extremism has had a limited sociopolitical impact there, even though a new window of opportunity may emerge in the future. Unlike the UK, Greece has a long history of left-wing and anarchist extremist violence, and Lamprini Rori and Vasiliki Georgiadou outline its evolution and changes, from the first generation of Marxist-Leninist organized violence to the current more fluid, doctrinally flexible, and decentralized Greek anarchist and nihilistic milieu of violent actors. In Spain, Carles Viñas analyzes how since the regime change in the 1970s, the extreme left has shifted its axis from MarxistLeninist Parties to new actors with a wider range of causes, often coming from the milieu of social movements and anti-globalization. Viñas suggests that the failure of the institutional-political experience of the populist left may precipitate the further radicalization of the Spanish extremist, anti-system left. Like Greece, Italy has a long history of left-wing extremism, and in his chapter, Francesco Marone traces its origins from the “Years of the Lead”— where Marxist-Leninist groups played a central role—to the present day where autonomist groups and insurrectionary anarchists play first fiddle. Next, looking at Scandinavia, and particularly to the empirical cases of Denmark and Sweden, Jan Jämte, Måns Lundstedt, and Magnus Wennerhag—who refrain from using the word extremism and prefer instead the word radicalism—scrutinize the non-violent and violent direct actions of activists in both countries (including violence against objects or even human beings) and note a decrease since the 2010s in favor of protests that are more conventional in terms of institutional routines and norms.

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The four subsequent chapters turn the lens to the United States. Rick Jensen examines anarchist violence—most of it propelled by the invention of dynamite in the previous century—in the first decades of the twentieth century, of which the Wall Street Bombing was its “climax.” He notes that, compared to the Propaganda by the Deed of classical anarchism, there hasn’t been any subsequent revival of anarchist terrorism. Moving on to contemporary times, George Michael looks over militant anti-fascism, vulgo Antifa: its emergence, structure, strategy and tactics, and support network. Michael ends with a reflection on the impact of Antifa, polarization, and subsequent urban unrest on America’s civil society. Examining a US national public opinion survey, George Hawley reassesses the assumption that those on the right are more likely to support violence than their counterparts on the left. According to Hawley, data indicate that the left, instead, is more supportive of political violence than the right—“though even on the far left, support for political violence of any kind remains a minority position.” Concluding the US subsection, Jacob Zenn, using the concept of reciprocal radicalization—and how extremisms may feed off each other—explores how the triad of Charlottesville, the BLM Antifa riots, and January 6th, 2021, has served as a turning point for far-left extremism in the country. Turning the attention to the southernmost region of North America, Alberto Martín Álvarez looks at the trajectory of the revolutionary left in Central American countries—the dynamics of armed struggle and guerillas in the last decades of the twentieth century—and the later integration of revolutionary leftist individuals and movements within each country. On the South American continent, Juan Federico Pino Uribe and Andrea Marcela Cely survey the case of Colombia—which has had some of the largest leftist guerilla networks of the twentieth century—focusing on the influence and impact of Maoism on the decades-long insurgency. Martin Tanaka turns to Peru and two of its Marxist-Leninist groups, including one of the most brutal revolutionary insurgencies—the Maoist Shining Path, led by a former philosophy professor—to explore the persistence of the radical tradition that is a legacy of those movements. In Margarita López Maya and Juan Luis Sosa’s account of the Venezuelan case study, the origins of left-wing extremism—in anti-imperialist mode—can be traced back to the armed struggle period that began in the 1960s. Decades later parties, groups, and leaders of this extremist tendency entered as allies in the political coalition of the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, and, the authors argue, contributed to the radicalization and autocratization of these governments. This section of the handbook then shifts to the Asia–Pacific region, starting with China. Barbara Mittler gauges how the revolutionary trope of Chairman Mao as the all-powerful and undying red sun is at the center of his sacralization and continuing influence at both an intellectual and popular level in the People’s Republic. Writing about Southeast Asia, Matthew Galway charts how the Communist Parties in several countries rose post-World War II to the forefront of anti-colonial and nationalist politics—with varying degrees of

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success. Niranjan Saho probes the conflict between Maoist insurgent groups and the Indian State—with a focus on the Naxalite Movement, its history since the late 1960s, and its evolution and future prospects. Finally, exploring the contemporary landscape of Australian left-wing extremism—from environmental groups to militant anti-fascism—Kristy Campion explains that “thus far the line dividing civil disobedience from extremist violence and terrorism has not been crossed.” From the Asia–Pacific, John LeJeune turns attention to the African continent and to specific case studies of anti-colonial movements in the Gold Coast, Guinea-Bissau, and Algeria. LeJeune investigates the ways that intellectual support for revolutionary violence, and defense of its legitimacy— of which Frantz Fanon’s work is central—boosted and shaped the strategies of liberation. The second section ends with a look beyond regions and countries and covers the whole world—with a foray into the theme of global collapse and the ways that, in the twenty-first century, it has become a master framework for a variety of groups and networks on the extreme left. José Pedro Zúquete scrutinizes the struggle against civilization—understood as the techno-industrial system, a multifaceted phenomenon that comprises groups of primitivists, environmentalists, anarchists, and other networks that operate within a shared frame of collapsism. In addition, Miroslav Mareš gives a sweeping view on eco-extremism—the debates around it, dynamics, modus operandi, apocalyptic overtones, and future perspectives. Finally, the third and final section of the handbook is dedicated to contentious issues that both are polarizing and speak to the theme of the mainstreaming of extremism—a topic prevalent in the study of rightwing extremism but that merits also being explored in regard to left-wing extremism. In different ways, these chapters cover the issue of the normalization of the extreme left—the way that fringe beliefs make their way into the mainstream and come to be seen as dominant and natural. Or to put it another way, the adoption of the language, modes of thought, and behavior of extremists by political parties, media actors, universities, and sectors of civil society at large. Eric Kaufmann traces the rise to cultural power of an outof-control ideology of an extreme and illiberal “left-modernism” at the basis of “Woke fundamentalism” and its weaponization of cancel culture to ban heretics, its threat to individual liberties, and a whole series of downstream negative sociopolitical effects. Pierre Valentin delves into the phenomenon of Wokeism, or Wokeness, comparing its expansion in the Anglosphere to other parts of the world and exploring the reasons for the somewhat dissimilar reception in Protestant and Catholic countries. The remaining two chapters are dedicated to academia. John Staddon reevaluates the statement that the “right is anti-science”—arguing instead that the relegation of science to second rank status for ideological and political reasons is much more prevalent on the left. The other chapter, on the “radicalization of academia”—with the United States as a case study—is a collective effort by Lee Jussin, Nathan Honeycutt, Akeela Careem, Danica Finkelstein, Joel Finkelstein, and Pamela

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Paresky. These authors reviewed evidence that, they argue, confirm not only such extreme-left radicalization but its link with the production of ideologically corrupt and invalid scholarship. “If little or nothing is done, the American academy is on a course to become the intellectual wing of Far Left political movements,” the authors somberly conclude, in the final chapter of a handbook that does not shy away from the hot topics of our age.

Notes 1. The only exception to this state of affairs is Cas Mudde’s edited collective 4-volume set on “Political Extremism”. One volume is dedicated to “LeftWing Extremism”. Cas Mudde. 2014. (ed.) Political Extremism, Volume III , London: Sage. 2. Backes, Uwe. 2014. “Meaning and Forms of Political Extremism in Past and Present,” in Cas Mudde (ed.) Political Extremism, Volume 1: Concepts, Theories and Responses, Los Angeles: SAGE, p. 5. 3. Cliff, Tony. 1989. Trotsky—Volume 1: Towards October 1879–1917 , London: Bookmarks. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/cliff/trotsky_v ol1_towards_october-cliff.pdf. 4. Roosevelt, Theodore. 1918. “Good luck to the anti-Bolsheviks of Kansas,” in Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star: War-Time Editorials, 1921, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/ epub/67811/pg67811-images.html. 5. Pessoa, Fernando. “Podem os elementos militares, que promoveram o pronunciamento recente.” Available at: http://arquivopessoa.net/textos/4340. 6. See Backes (2014: 5–6) and Taguieff, Pierre André. 2022. Qui est l’extrémiste? Paris: Éditions Intervalles, pp. 15–17. 7. On the permanence of this Aristotelian tradition see Backes, Uwe. 2010. Political Extremes: A conceptual history from antiquity to the present, London: Routledge, pp. 25–38. 8. Caruso, Amerigo. 2019. “In Medio Stat Virtus ? The Adaptability of the Moderate Project of Politics in Mid- nineteenth-Century Europe (1830– 1870),” in The Politics of Moderation in Modern European History, edited by Ido de Haan and Matthijs Lok (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 111–115. 9. On this issue see Darren Mulloy discussion of his “alternative approach” to define extremism. Mulloy, D. J. 2004. American Extremism: History, politics, and the militia movement, London: Routledge, pp. 29–32; See also, Michael, George. 2013. Extremism in America, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. 10. Ido de Haan and Matthijs Lok (eds.). 2019. The Politics of Moderation in Modern European History, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 16. 11. On this point see, for example, Jungkunz, Sebastian. 2022. The Nature and Origins of Political Extremism in Germany and Beyond, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 36–38. 12. Pels, Dick. 2000. The Intellectual as Stranger: Studies in Spokespersonship, London: Routledge, p. xv. 13. See, for instance, Backes 2014, p. 7; Also, Taguieff 2022, 17. 14. Berger, J.M. 2018. Extremism, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, p. 23.

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15. See, for example, Michael 2013 p. 2; Also, Ross, Jeffrey Ian. “Misidentified and Misunderstood,” Extremism in America, edited by George Michael, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, p. 290. 16. Lipset, Seymour Martin and Raab, Earl. 1970. The Politics of Unreason: RightWing Extremism in America 1790–1970, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, pp. 1–33. 17. For example, Jeffrey M. Bale does not equate monism with extremism but sees monism as one of the core characteristics of extremism. See Bale, Jeffrey. M. The Darkest Side of Politics, I: Post-War Fascism, Covert Operations, and Terrorism, London: Routledge, 2018, p. 167. 18. See, for example, Bobbio, Norberto. 1997. Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 21, who sees the “rejection of democracy” as a “point of contact between the ‘opposing extremes’”; see also, Mudde 2014, p. xxiv; Backes 2014, pp. 9–10; Jungkunz 2022, pp. 21, 46–48. 19. Cassam 2021, 84. 20. Cassam 2021, p. 112. 21. Michael A. Hogg, Danielle L. Blaylock. 2011. Extremism and the Psychology of Uncertainty, Wiley-Blackwell. 22. Katherine V. Aumer (ed.). 2021. The Psychology of Extremism, Cham, Switzerland: Springer. 23. Berger 2018, pp. 23–26. 24. Spiotta, Dana. 2007. Eat the Document: A Novel, London: Picador, pp. 14, 188–89. 25. Cassam see this as one type of extremism (“methods extremism). 2021, p. 65. 26. See Orofino, Elisa and Allchorn, William. 2023. “Introduction—Why Do We Need a Handbook of Non-Violent Forms of Extremism?” in Routledge Handbook of Non-Violent Extremism: Groups, Perspectives, and New Debates, edited by Elisa Orofino and William Allchorn, London: Routledge. 27. Berger writes that “not all extremist movements begin and end with violence,” 2018, p. 47; Jungkunz says, “ we conclude that violent behavior can be a manifestation of political extremism, but it is not a necessary condition for it,” 2022, p. 23; George Michael, writing on the link between extremism and terrorism notes, “While it is axiomatic to say that terrorism is usually perpetrated by extremists, the vast majority of extremists are not terrorists,” in Michael, George. 2003. Confronting right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA, London: Routledge, p. 2. 28. Copsey, Nigel and Merrill, Samuel. 2021. Understanding 21st-CenturyMilitant Anti-Fascism, Full Report, April, CREST: Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats, p. 8. 29. See Ellefsen, Rune and Jamte, Jan. 2021. “Violent extremism is not a uniform phenomenon: The key differences in prevention of left-wing, right-wing, and Islamist extremism,” January 8. Available at: http://www.diva-portal.org/ smash/get/diva2:1515490/FULLTEXT01.pdf. 30. Jasko, Katarzyna, LaFree, Gary, Piazza, James and Becker, M.H. 2022. “A comparison of political violence by left-wing, right-wing, and Islamist extremists in the United States and the world,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119 (30), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2122593119.

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31. Jesse, Eckhard. 2018. “Extremismus: Warum wir linke Gewalt milder bewerten als rechte Gewalt,” Der Tagesspiegel, September 20, available at: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/warum-wir-linke-gewalt-milderbewerten-als-rechte-gewalt-5532439.html. 32. Schroeder, Klaus, Deutz-Schroeder, Monika. 2019. Der Kampf ist nicht zu Ende: Geschichte und Aktualität linker Gewalt, Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Herder. 33. Schroeder, Klaus. 2021. “Increase in violent left-wing extremism,” April 30, available at: https://gettotext.com/researcher-klaus-schroeder-increase-in-vio lent-left-wing-extremism/. 34. Pierre-André Taguieff. 2022. “L’extrémisme: représentation et anathema,” Cités 4 (N° 92), pp. 127–140. He sees this as the result of the “heritage still present in the political imagination: the supposed heirs of communism remain less unacceptable than those of fascism.” See also, Taguieff 2022, p. 61. 35. As argued by Bale, about left-wing extremists, “In short, one can be a fanatically intolerant, self-righteous anti-authoritarian ideological extremist, just as one can be a fanatically intolerant, self-righteous authoritarian or totalitarian ideological extremist.” See Bale, 2018, p. 170. 36. See, for example, Jungkunz 2022, pp. 45–49; Also Taguieff 2022, pp. 96–97. 37. Jungkunz 2022, p. 27. 38. Backes 2014, p. 12. 39. See, for example, Farinelli, Francesco and Marinone, Lorenzo. 2021. Contemporary Violent Left-wing and Anarchist Extremism (VLWAE) in the EU , RAN, Luxembourg: EU, pp. 12–13. 40. See, for example, the study by Tom van Ham et al. on left-wing extremism in the Netherlands. Van Ham, Tom, Hardeman, Manon, van Esseveldt, Juno, Lenders, Anouk and Anton van Wijk. 2018. A View on Left-Wing Extremism: An exploratory study into left-wing extremist groups in the Netherlands, Available at: https://www.bureaubeke.nl/doc/2018/Summary_A_view_on_left_wing_e xtremism.pdf. 41. Eatwell, Roger. 2006. “Community Cohesion and Cumulative Extremism in Contemporary Britain,” The Political Quarterly 77, 2, pp. 204–216. 42. Busher, J. and Macklin, G. 2015. “Interpreting “cumulative extremism”: six proposals for enhancing conceptual clarity.” Terrorism and Political Violence, volume 27 (5), pp. 3–4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2013.870556; for an example from Denmark see Larsen, Chris Holmsted. 2020. “ Partners in crime? A historical perspective on cumulative extremism in Denmark,” available at: https://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/news-and-events/right-now/2020/ partners-in-crime.html.

Contents

1

1

Anarchist Violence in the United States: 1900 to the Present Richard Bach Jensen

2

Antifa: Anatomy of a Movement George Michael and Garth Davies

3

Are Right-Wing Americans Really More Tolerant of Political Violence? George Hawley

41

Examining Equity, Extremism, and Left–Right Reciprocal Radicalization Jacob Zenn

53

4

19

85

5

The Revolutionary Left in Central America Alberto Martín Álvarez

6

The Little Red Book and the Case of Left-Wing Political Extremism in Colombia Juan Federico Pino Uribe and Andrea Marcela Cely

101

Left-Wing Extremism in Peru: Structural Conditions, Leadership, and Political Will Martín Tanaka

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Left-Wing Extremism in Venezuela: From Armed Struggle to the United Socialist Party of Venezuela Margarita Lopez Maya and Neller Ochoa Hernandez

137

After the Sun: Slow Hope? Rethinking Continuous Crisis Through China’s Revolutions Barbara Mittler

159

7

8

9

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10

Left-Wing Extremism in Southeast Asia Matthew Galway

185

11

Left-Wing Extremism in India Niranjan Sahoo

203

12

Militants, Pirates, or Extremists? Frameworks for Conceptualising Left Wing Extremism in Australia Kristy Campion

219

13

Left-Wing Revolutionary Violence in Africa John LeJeune

241

14

Left-Wing Extremism and the War on Civilization José Pedro Zúquete

257

15

Environmental Apocalypticism, Other Forms of Eco-Extremism, and Their Links to the Left-Wing Extremist Scene Miroslav Mareš

277

Part I Contentious Issues—The Mainstreaming of Left-Wing Extremism 16

Left-Modernist Extremism Eric Kaufmann

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17

The Woke Phenomenon: Its Impact and Different Responses Pierre Valentin

313

18

Ideological Corruption of Science: Is the Right Always Wrong? John Staddon

19

The Radicalization of the American Academy Lee Jussim, Nathan Honeycutt, Pamela Paresky, Akeela Careem, Danica Finkelstein, and Joel Finkelstein

Index

327 343

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Notes on Contributors

Alberto Martín Álvarez holds a Ph.D. on Latin American studies from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and he is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of Girona (Spain). He has undertaken extensive research on the origins and development of the Salvadoran revolutionary left. He is the author of Building the Radical Identity: The Diffusion of the Ideological Framework of the New Left (Peter Lang, 2022, ed. with Eduardo Rey Tristán), Latin American Guerilla Movements: Origins, Evolution, Outcomes (Routledge, 2020, ed. with D. Kruijt and E. rey Tristán), and Revolutionary Violence and the New Left: Transnational Perspectives (Routledge, 2016, ed. with Eduardo Rey Tristán). Arije Antinori Ph.D. in Criminology for Investigation and Security, Ph.D. in Communication and Media Studies, is a Professor of Criminology and Sociology of Deviance at Sapienza University of Rome. Some of his publications are “Terrorism in the early Onlife Age: From propaganda to ‘propulsion’” in “Terrorism and advanced technologies in psychological warfare: new risks, new opportunities to counter the terrorist threat” (Nova Science Publications, 2020) and “The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the impact on the extremeright infosphere. Strategic communication challenges for EU Member States” RAN Policy Support ad-hoc strategic paper (European Union, 2022), Uwe Backes is a Deputy Director at the Hannah Arendt Institute on Totalitarianism Research and teaches Political Science at the University of Dresden, Germany. His research focuses on the history and present of extremism and autocracy. He is an editor of the Yearbook “Extremismus & Demokratie” (Baden-Baden: Nomos, vol. 34, 2012) and latest monograph, (Autokratien, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2022). Kristy Campion is a Senior Lecturer and Discipline Lead of Terrorism and Security Studies at Charles Sturt University, Australia. She primarily researches

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right-wing and left-wing terrorism in the Australian threat context, with reference to ideology, strategy, and transnational networks. In 2022, she published a comprehensive history of terrorism in Australia, called Chasing Shadows. Akeela Careem is a Social Psychology Researcher at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her research focuses on political protest, social movements, and authoritarianism. Andrea Marcela Cely Ph.D. in Latin American Social Studies from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba—Argentina, was Assistant Professor at the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. Her main lines of research are social movements, political action, and feminism. Her latest publications are “Women and the social reproduction of the peasant struggle in Colombia” (Revista Controversia, 2022) and “Together, there and here” (Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History, 2022). Garth Davies is the Associate Director of the Institute on Violence, Extremism, and Terrorism at Simon Fraser University. Because he has a short attention span, he is currently interested in anything related to violent extremism. His article “A Witch’s Brew of Grievances: The Potential Effects of COVID-19 on Radicalization to Violent Extremism” was published in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. Danica Finkelstein is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Social Psychology at Rutgers University. With a passion for using research to create positive social change and make contributions to the field of digital misinformation and extremism, she is a Lead Researcher at Network Contagion Labs. Joel Finkelstein is the co-founder and Chief Science Officer of the Network Contagion Research Institute, which deploys machine learning tools to expose the growing tide of hate and extremism on social media. He is a graduate of Princeton University, where his award winning, doctoral work focused on the Psychology and Neuroscience of addiction and social behavior. He currently directs the Network Contagion Lab, at the Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience at Rutgers University, where he trains the next generation of students in the field of critical intelligence, social-cyber threat identification, and threat forecasting. His work on hate in social media has appeared in 60 minutes, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and other media outlets. Matthew Galway is Senior Lecturer, Chinese History, at The Australian National University. He is the author of The Emergence of Global Maoism: China’s Red Evangelism and the Cambodian Communist Movement, 1949– 1979 (Cornell University Press, 2022) and primary editor and contributor to Experiments with Marxism-Leninism in Cold War Southeast Asia (ANU Press, 2022). His research interests include intellectual history, the Chinese diaspora, and Chinese intelligence operations abroad.

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Vasiliki Georgiadou is Professor at the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences of Athens and Director of the Centre for Political Research. Her research interests focus on far-right parties, political radicalism, and violent extremism. She has co-edited the special section “Aspects of Political Violence in Greece” (Journal of Modern Greek Studies, vol. 40/1, 2022) and published on non-state violence, far-right vote, and extremist organizations. Phillip W. Gray is a Scholar of extremism and totalitarianism, and taught at Texas A&M University at Qatar, the US Coast Guard Academy, and various universities in Hong Kong. He primarily focuses on the interaction between ideational and organizational structures in extremist movements and parties. His most recent book is Vanguardism: Ideology and Organization in Totalitarian Politics (Routledge, 2020). George Hawley is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Alabama. His research interests include politics and religion, political extremism, the conservative movement in America, and the radical right. He is the author of seven books, including Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism (2016), Making Sense of the Alt-Right (2017), and Conservatism in a Divided America: The Right and Identity Politics (2022). Nathan Honeycutt is a Research Fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and recently received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Rutgers University. His research primarily focuses on political diversity, bias, and discrimination among university faculty and students. Most recently, he co-authored a critical, theoretical, and empirical review of political bias in the social sciences. Jan Jämte is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the School of Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences at Örebro University in Sweden. His research focuses on social movements, political activism, and the interplay between movements and institutionalized politics. He has written extensively on the radical left and the anti-racist and anti-fascist movements, as well as on policies and practices to “prevent radicalization and violent extremism.” Eckhard Jesse studied political science at the FU Berlin, was a Research Assistant at the University of Trier and Professor at the Technical University of Chemnitz. His main areas of focus are: extremism and totalitarianism, parties and elections, and historical foundations of politics. Most recently, as co-editor: Yearbook Extremism & Democracy, Vol. 34, Baden-Baden 2022. Richard Bach Jensen is Professor Emeritus of Modern European history at the Louisiana Scholars’ College, Northwestern State University. His specialties are nineteenth- and twentieth-century anarchist terrorism and modern Italian history. Cambridge University Press published The Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism, 1878–1934: An International History in 2014. His most recent articles have explored the evolving understanding and definition of sub-state terrorism as well as its history.

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Irina Jugl is a forensic Psychologist and a Researcher at the Competence Center Against Extremism in Baden-Wuerttemberg at the State Bureau for Criminal Investigation in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Her fields of study include the prevention of crime and violent extremist radicalization with a focus on left-wing extremism. Sebastian Jungkunz is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Chair of Political Sociology at the University of Bamberg, Germany. His research focuses on (youth) political participation, populism, and political extremism. He published his work, among others, in the European Journal of Political Research, Political Research Quarterly, and West European Politics. His latest book “The Nature and Origins of Political Extremism In Germany and Beyond” was recently published by Palgrave. Lee Jussim is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. His research focuses on stereotypes and prejudice, radicalization and online social contagions, and the reform and improvement of social science methods and practices. His most recent book is Jussim, L., Stevens, S. T., & Krosnick, J. A. (Editors, 2022), Research Integrity: Best Practices in the Behavioral Sciences (Oxford University Press). Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham. He is the author of Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities (Penguin/Abrams, 2018/19), Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth (Profile Books 2010), The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America (Harvard 2004), The Orange Order (Oxford, 2007), and one other book. He is coeditor, among others, of Political Demography (Oxford 2012) and editor of Rethinking Ethnicity: Majority Groups and Dominant Minorities (Routledge 2004). Daniel Koehler is a Researcher at the Competence Center Against Extremism in Baden-Wuerttemberg at the State Bureau for Criminal Investigation in Baden-Wuerttemberg. His work focuses on terrorism (far-right, jihadist, and left-wing), radicalization, and deradicalization processes and programs. He is the Editor in Chief of the peer-reviewed Journal on Deradicalization and member of the Editorial Board of the International Centre for CounterTerrorism in The Hague (ICCT). He is also a Research Fellow at the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at the American University in Washington DC and at the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI) in the UK. His most recent publication is “From Traitor to Zealot: Exploring the Phenomenon of Side-Switching in Extremism and Terrorism” with Cambridge University Press (November 2021). Katharina Krüsselmann is Ph.D. Researcher at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University. Her research centers around different types of violence, including firearm violence in Europe. She has also been involved in projects focusing on radicalization, including intergenerational radicalization.

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John LeJeune is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia Southwestern State University. His research interests include the study of violence and revolutions, and the political thought of Hannah Arendt. His recent publications include “Revolutionary Terror and Nation-Building: Frantz Fanon and the Algerian Revolution” (2019) in the Journal for the Study of Radicalism. Måns Lundstedt is a Project Researcher at the Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Malmö University, Sweden. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology and political science from the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy. His research concerns political violence, migration, and local political processes. Luke March is Professor of Post-Soviet and Comparative Politics at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include the politics of the European (radical) Left, Russian domestic and foreign politics, nationalism, populism, radicalism, and extremism in Europe and the former Soviet Union. His books include The Communist Party in Post-Soviet Russia (2002), Radical Left Parties in Europe (2011), and Europe’s Radical Left. From Marginality to the Mainstream? (edited with Daniel Keith, 2016). His latest publication (edited, with Fabien Escalona and Daniel Keith) is The Palgrave Handbook of Radical Left Parties in Europe (2023). Miroslav Mareš is Professor at the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Studies Masaryk University. He is guarantor of the study program Security and Strategic Studies and Researcher at the International Institute of Political Science of the FSS MU. He focuses on the research on extremism, terrorism, and security policy in the Central and Eastern European context. He is member of the steering committee of the European Expert Network on Terrorism Issues. He co-authored (with Jan Holzer and Martin Laryš) the book “Militant Right-Wing Extremism in Putin’s Russia: Legacies, Forms and Threats” (London: Routledge, 2019). Francesco Marone is Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Teramo, Italy. He is also a Fellow of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, USA, an Associate Fellow of the International Center for Counter-Terrorism—The Hague (ICCT), Netherlands, and an Associate Research Fellow of ISPI—Italian Institute for International Political Studies, Italy. His current research interests include violent extremism, political violence, and contemporary security threats. Margarita Lopez Maya is a Senior Professor at the Center for Development Studies of Universidad Central de Venezuela. Historian and Ph.D. in Social Sciences her research is Latin America and particularly Venezuela’s Contemporary Political History, Popular Protest, Civil Society, and left-wing parties. Currently, she is President of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).

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George Michael received his Ph.D. from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy. He is a Professor of criminal justice at Westfield State University in Massachusetts. Previously, he was an Associate Professor of nuclear counter-proliferation and deterrence theory at the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama. He teaches courses in terrorism, homeland security, and organized crime. He is the author of seven books: Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA (Routledge, 2003), The Enemy of my Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right (University Press of Kansas, 2006), Willis Carto and the American Far Right (University Press of Florida, 2008), Theology of Hate: A History of the World Church of the Creator (University Press of Florida, 2009), Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance (Vanderbilt University Press, 2012), Extremism in America (editor) (University Press of Florida, 2014), and Preparing for Contact: When Humans and Extraterrestrials Finally Meet, (RVP Press, 2014). In addition, his articles have been published in numerous academic journals. He has lectured on C-SPAN2’s Book TV segment on six occasions and once on C-SPAN3’s Lecture in History program. Barbara Mittler holds a Chair in Chinese Studies at the University of Heidelberg where she co-founded the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS). Her research covers a range of topics from music, print media to visuality, and cultural revolutions in (greater) China’s long modernity. In Why China did not have a Renaissance and why that matters —an interdisciplinary dialogue (Berlin: de Gruyter 2018), co-authored with historian Thomas Maissen, she develops new ideas for re-writing global history. Neller Ochoa Hernandez MA in Latin American Literature (USB), Graduate in History (UCV), is Project Assistant at ILDIS-FES Venezuela. He is interested in the Cultural and Sociopolitical History of Latin America and Venezuela. His latest publication is : Cata, desde 1610 cultivamos cacao (2020). Pamela Paresky is a Visiting Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and a Senior Scholar at the Network Contagion Research Institute. Her project, “Habits of a Free Mind: Psychology for Democracy and The Good Life,” is a toolkit for, among other things, engaging across lines of difference without feeling traumatized and without dehumanizing others. Lamprini Rori is Assistant Professor in Political Analysis at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, member of the ECPR steering committee on Political Violence, and Press Relations officer of the PSA Greek Politics Specialist Group. She has previously been Lecturer in Politics at Exeter University, Jean Monnet fellow at the EUI, Early Career fellow at the British School at Athens, Post-Doctoral fellow at Oxford University, Marie Curie fellow at Bournemouth. She is a comparativist, specializing on party change, the far right and far left in Europe, and political violence. She has co-edited the

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special section “Political Violence in Greece.” Her latest publication “Political Violence in Crisis-Ridden Greece: Evidence from the Far Right and the Far Left” appears in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies. Niranjan Sahoo is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, a leading think tank in New Delhi. He now leads ORF’s studies and programs on democracy and governance in South Asia. A recipient of Ford Asia Fellowship (2009) and Sir Ratan Tata Fellow (2010), he currently serves as expert for the Carnegie Rising Democracies Network, Washington, D.C. He serves a regional coordinator for Asia Democracy Research Network (ADRN), Seoul. His forthcoming book is on “Exclusion and Insurgency: Exploring Governance Dimensions of Left-wing Extremism in India.” Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca is Professor of Political Science at Carlos III University of Madrid. His main research area is political violence. He has published articles on conflict and terrorism in journals, such as Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Terrorism and Political Violence, and several others. His last book is The Historical Roots of Political Violence: Revolutionary Terrorism in Affluent Countries (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Isabelle Sommier is Full Professor of Sociology in the Department of Political Science at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Researcher at the European Centre for Sociology and Political Science of which she is Deputy Director. Specialist in social movements and political violence, she has recently published Violences politiques en France de 1986 à nos jours, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2021. John Staddon is James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Professor of Biology emeritus at Duke University. Three recent books are The New Behaviorism: Foundations of behavioral science, 3rd edition (Psychology Press, 2021), Unlucky Strike: Private health and the science law and politics of smoking Second edition (2022 PsyCrit Press) and Science in an age of unreason (Regnery, 2022). Martin Tanaka is Peruvian, Ph.D. in Political Science from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), in Mexico City. He is Full Professor at the Department of Social Sciences at the Pontifical Catholic University of Perú (PUCP) and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP). He is also weekly political columnist at the newspaper El Comercio. His main research interests are related to Latin American politics, democratization, and political institutions. His latest publication in English is “Peru - The Armed Forces in Search of a Place in the World,” in D. Kruijt and K. Koonings, eds., Latin American Military and Politics in the Twenty-first Century. A Cross-National Analysis (Oxford, Routledge, 2023). Josh Vandiver is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and the Director of European Studies at Ball State University. His research interests include extremist thought, organizations, and strategic cultures in Europe and the

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USA, with focus upon men and masculinities. Among his recent publications, “‘Apollo Has Saved Us!’ Global Ambition and Metapolitical Warfare in Alt-Right Religion,” appears in the Journal for the Study of Radicalism. Carles Viñas is Assistant Professor in Contemporary History at the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Barcelona (UB), member of the Expert Network of the International Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence of the C-REX (University of Oslo) and of the ECPR. Her research interests focus on far-right, political and sport extremism, terrorism, and social movements. She has coordinated Història de l’Esquerra Independentista (2021). Daan Weggemans is Director of Security Studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University. His research focuses on contemporary security and terrorism. Recent publications discuss the reintegration and rehabilitation of terrorists, the role of family members in radicalization processes, and the use of digital technologies in the field of security. Juan Federico Pino Uribe is Professor at Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales-Flacso, Ecuador. His research interests range across comparative politics, subnational democracy, Colombian Politics, and political left and right parties ideological transformations. His latest publications “New rightists or simply opportunists? The new right parties in power in Latin America and Europe between 2010 and 2019. An analysis of its ideological dimensión” and “Rethinking political competition: Contracts and nationally located linkages in Colombian municipalities (1988–2015)” appear in Nationalities Papers and Journal of Latin American Policy. Pierre Valentin is a graduate student at Paris II Panthéon-Assas University and author of “L’idéologie Woke” (2021) for the French think tank Fondapol. He will soon publish “Comprendre la Révolution Woke” for Gallimard in 2023, which centers on the relationship between leftist political philosophy and woke ideology. He studied philosophy and politics as an undergraduate at the University of Exeter as well as the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität of Munich. Magnus Wennerhag is Professor in Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. His research focuses on social movements, political participation, social stratification, climate protests, political violence, and sociological theory. His most recent publication is “Social class and environmental movements” (co-authored with Anders Hylmö), in Maria Grasso & Marco Giugni (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Movements (2022). Vanja Zdjelar is a Ph.D. student in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University and a recipient of a Doctoral Canada Graduate Scholarship. Her research interests include modern left- and right-wing extremism, misogynist extremism, and countering violent extremism. Her most recent publication,

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“Let’s not put a label on it: right-wing terrorism in the news,” was published in Critical Studies of Terrorism. Jacob Zenn is an Adjunct Associate Professor on African Armed Movements and Violent Non-State Actors in World Politics at the Georgetown University Security Studies Program (SSP) and editor and fellow on African and Eurasian Affairs for The Jamestown Foundation in Washington DC. He wrote the book, Unmasking Boko Haram: Exploring Global Jihad in Nigeria, which was published in April 2020 by Lynne Rienner in association with the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrews.

List of Figures

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

3.1 3.2 3.3 9.1

Fig. 16.1

How justified is violence in support of political goals? % opposed to all violence by ideology Probability of supporting political violence Shenzhou Ribao 1908 in commemoration of the first anniversary of the Shenzhou Ribao 神州日報, 1908 (Holy Country—China—Daily) Ma (1908) Frequency of terms ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’ in American English Books (Source Google 2019)

46 46 48

162 306

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 6.1 Table 19.1

Logit model for supporting political violence Typology of the dimensions of left-wing extremism Faculty and graduate students identifying as radical, political activist, Marxist, or Socialist, and those who “selected at least one of these.”

48 108

352

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CHAPTER 1

Anarchist Violence in the United States: 1900 to the Present Richard Bach Jensen

Introduction Anarchism occupies the most extreme point on the spectrum of left-wing extremism. It aims to restore all social and economic power to workingclass people by abolishing every authoritarian structure in society. Anarchism embodies a libertarian socialism to be sharply distinguished from the more authoritarian socialism of Social Democracy and Marxism. In the decades at the end of the nineteenth—beginning of the twentieth centuries—anarchists embraced violence as a form of political action more explicitly and frequently than any other American group. In September 1920, a bomb that blew up on New York’s Wall Street proved to be the bloodiest act of anarchist violence in world history. It followed thirty-five years of anarchist-instigated assassinations and explosions in the United States. It was probably the deadliest single terrorist act in centuries. While sporadic bombings continued through the mid-1930s, after that anarchist violence became increasingly rare. This essay will seek to understand the evolving contours of anarchist “propaganda by the deed,” why it occurred, and the reasons for its decline.

R. B. Jensen (B) Louisiana Scholars’ College, Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, LA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_1

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Causes of Anarchist Violence and the Assassination of President McKinley A crucial factor was socioeconomic. The “classical” anarchism of the nineteenth century to World War II was obsessed with the Social Question, i.e., the vast levels of social and economic inequality and injustice in American society and the resultant suffering this caused the mass of the population. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the top 2% of the nation held 60% of the wealth (Gage 2009, 24). The Social Question was the fundamental reason for the anarchist Leon Czolgosz’s assassination of US President McKinley in September 1901. A few months before he shot McKinley, Czolgosz told a Cleveland anarchist that “things were getting worse and worse—more strikes and they were getting more brutal against the strikers, and that something must be done” (Briggs 1921, 321). Czolgosz had personally experienced such harsh treatment. In 1893, his employer cut worker wages and he went out on strike. But the strike was broken and he was blacklisted from future employment. He changed his name to “Nieman” (“nobody” in German) in order to get a job that paid less than his previous employment. Czolgosz was also upset by the “outrages” committed by the American government in the Philippine Islands against a native uprising in favor of independence (Rauchway 2003, 102). Since McKinley was commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he could be blamed for American actions in the Philippines and, due to his cozy relationship with the leaders of big business, he could also be held partially responsible for the sufferings of American workers. On one occasion, McKinley had sent federal troops to intervene in a labor dispute in Coeur d’Alene leading to the deaths of several miners (although the miners themselves were guilty of plenty of violence). In America between 1880 and 1900 “hundreds, if not thousands, of striking workers died at the hands of policemen and armed guards, and …almost a hundred were killed each day in industrial accidents” (Gage 2009, 6–8, 43). Several authoritative studies claim that the United States experienced the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world (Taft and Ross 1969; Jones 2015, 132, 137). Czolgosz’s favorite text, which he studied for years, was no anarchist tract but Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. This book envisioned a utopian America in which a government-owned trust worked for the common interest of every citizen, leading to the end of the violent conflicts between capital and labor (Briggs 1921, 305, 312). The anarchists’ bitter reaction to the brutality of employers (and their private guards, like the Pinkertons) and the police was the fundamental reason for their violent attacks against the established order between 1884 and the end of the 1930s (Jensen 2014b, 86–94).1 A contributory cause inspiring Czolgosz and other anarchists was the sensational coverage of anarchist assassinations in the “New Journalism” at the end of the nineteenth century. Czolgosz was so fascinated by one newspaper’s coverage of Gaetano Bresci’s assassination of Italian King Umberto in 1900 that, for some months, he carried a copy to bed with him every night. The

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fact that so many of the assassins made little effort to escape, were quickly apprehended, and then sentenced to either execution or life imprisonment transformed them into inspiring martyrs for the anarchist cause.

Reemergence of Anarchist Violence After 1907 Following McKinley’s murder in 1901 and until 1907, a pause occurred in anarchist violence in America. These were economically prosperous years in comparison with the Great Depression at the end of the nineteenth century. Moreover, Theodore Roosevelt, the new president who succeeded McKinley, captured the imagination of America, not only by his rhetorical denunciations of the anarchists, but also by his initial refusal to send in Federal troops to crush strikes and his denunciations of the huge business trusts that dominated America’s economy. He seemed to be no enemy of the ordinary worker or corrupt pal of the rich elites. In the fall of 1907, however, a financial panic led to a depression and severe unemployment. This left many workers receptive to the ideas of the anarchists and other radicals. The anarchists themselves were energized by the partial success of the 1905 revolution in Russia where for the first-time violent anarchists emerged as a potent political force. In these circumstances, a series of violent incidents led to an anarchist scare that the newspapers exaggerated and turned into a widespread conspiracy. In the initial months of 1908, brutal police dispersions of groups of the unemployed in Philadelphia and Chicago led to violent riots blamed on anarchist agitators (Avrich 1978, 133–136). In Denver on February 23, 1908, Giuseppe Alio (or Alia), an unemployed shoemaker and Italian anarchist recently arrived in the US from Argentina, shot the administering priest in the heart while receiving the Eucharist. After his arrest, he told a policeman that “I have a grudge against all priests in general. They are all against the workingman” (New York Times, 24 February 1908, 1; and 13 March 1908, 13). Hatred of the Catholic church was rampant among both Spanish and Italian anarchists who saw the church as hierarchical, authoritarian, and a pillar of a repressive society. The Italian consul in Denver, however, thought the real reason for Alio’s attack was insanity compounded by epilepsy. He feared that unless this was established by a proper medical evaluation (for which the Italian government refused to pay), prejudice against Italians residing in the United States would only increase. At least fifty Italians were lynched, most between 1890 and 1924, including, in 1893, an Italian residing in Denver (Archivio Storico, Italian foreign ministry 1908; Deaglio 2015).

Italian and Eastern European Immigrants in the Vanguard of Anarchist Violence Immigrant Italians, and to a lesser extent, migrants from the repressive Russian Empire, with its autocratic monarchy and vast prison camps in Siberia, formed the backbone of anarchist violence in America after 1900. Many of the Italian

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immigrants were from southern Italy and had a darker skin tone than the northern Europeans who had previously settled in America. They were considered to be intermediary between black and white, “a hybrid between man and gorilla,” in the words of the famous anarchist Luigi Galleani, and suffered unpleasant consequences for their darker skin. Italian immigrants were given the worst jobs and paid less than their whiter brothers and sisters for the same work (Tomchuk 2015, 108–109). A week after Alio killed the priest, a Jewish-Russian immigrant allegedly tried to assassinate the police chief of Chicago and his son, but Chief Shippy was able to fend him off before killing him. The New York Times warned that this attempt was closely connected to the murder of the Denver priest and to a wider plot affecting other cities (New York Times, 3 March 1908, 1). Subsequently, researchers have noted the complete lack of evidence that Averbuch was an anarchist and raised questions as to whether he even tried to shoot the police chief. Averbuch’s sister said he could not afford a gun and did not know how to shoot. Shippy retired soon after this event and a year and a half later committed himself to a sanitarium, eventually going insane (Roth and Kraus 1998, 161, 166, 167, 174, 179, 187; Johnson 2009). The final incident of the anarchist scare took place on March 28 when a bomb exploded in New York City’s Union Square. It was intended for the police who were roughly dispersing a meeting of the unemployed but blew up prematurely in the hands of another Jewish-Russian immigrant, Selig Silverstein. The bomb fatally injured him and killed a bystander. Before he died, Silverstein said he had been clubbed by the police a week earlier and had brought the bomb to the park to seek revenge (New York Times, 30 March 1908, cited by Goldstein 1974, 69). Reacting to these events, on April 9, 1908, President Roosevelt declared to Congress that “when compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance. The anarchist is the enemy of humanity, the enemy of all mankind, and his is a deeper degree of criminality than any other (Congressional Record).” Roosevelt’s statement emphasized the wide gap perceived at the time to exist between anarchist violence and the violence of other leftist groups, such as the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries, who embraced organized terrorism as a tactic and perpetrated numerous assassinations. Since the Social Revolutionaries threatened only one bad government, however, they were seen as less dangerous than the anarchists, who threatened every society and government (Jensen 2018). Despite Roosevelt’s fears, no grand anarchist conspiracy was unfolding nor at this time did anarchist violence pose a significant threat to the United States. A 1908 article claimed that there were only half a dozen anarchist newspapers in the country, and of these only one advocated violence. The number of anarchists who preached violence “probably did not exceed one thousand” (Tobenkin 1908, 484; Goldstein 1974, 58). On the eve of World War I, however, a more formidable wave of anarchist violence would arise.

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This wave, or phase, of the longer wave of anarchist terrorism that continued into the 1930s has frequently been associated with the name of Luigi Galleani. In 1901 Galleani, originally from northern Italy, emigrated to the United States. An eloquent writer and a spell-binding speaker, “one of the greatest radical orators of his time,” he spoke only in Italian although, remarkably, even French and English speakers were said to be captivated by his words and gestures. He recruited thousands of followers for the anarchist cause, most of whom were manual laborers (Avrich 1991, 52; Ghio 1903, 140). Galleani opposed formal organization and was not interested in anarchosyndicalism (Avrich 1991, 48). Anarcho-syndicalism represented anarchism’s most influential contribution to the field of labor organizing. While anarchosyndicalists fought for the rights and wages of workers, their ultimate goal was to overthrow capitalist society through massive revolutionary strikes. Invented in the mid-1890s in France, revolutionary syndicalism offered a new outlet for anarchist energies and an escape from the dead-end tactics of terroristic propaganda by the deed with its bombings and assassinations. In the 1890s, these had only led to a vehement, and sometimes violent, public backlash and ferocious government repression. But Galleani felt that any prominent anarchist involvements in unions, anarcho-syndicalist or not, would only blunt their and the working people’s revolutionary impulses, create bureaucracy, and betray the central anarchist ideal of personal liberty (usually combined with a strong sense of workingclass solidarity). Galleani was quite happy for anarchists to oppose capitalism with violent acts. In 1902 he led a march of 1000s of workers to seize the silk mills of Paterson, New Jersey, hoping this would expand into a general strike throughout the city. This goal was the same as the syndicalists’ but arrived at spontaneously, without even the modicum of planning and organization employed by the syndicates. In subsequent confrontations with the police and national guard, ten people were injured; according to several sources, nine died (Tomchuk 2015, 14). In retrospect, the failure of the Paterson silk workers’ strike may have been decisive in turning Galleani away from less toward more extreme forms of violent opposition to the status quo. After fleeing Paterson to avoid prison for inciting to riot, Galleani founded Cronaca Sovversiva, first published in Barre, Vermont, and later in Lynn, Massachusetts. Cronaca Sovversiva broadcast Galleani’s exhortations to “individual action” (a euphemism for violence) and glorification of past anarchist martyrs who had sacrificed their lives to murder tyrannical rulers. Despite its limited circulation (4–5000), it was “one of the most important and ably edited periodicals in the history of the anarchist movement” with an international influence (Avrich 1991, 50). Galleani was one of America’s three foremost anarchist proponents of violence, preaching the overthrow of capitalism and government through dynamite and assassination. (The other two were Johann Most, who published a weapons manual in the 1880s, and Alexander Berkman, who tried to assassinate the general manager of Carnegie Steel in 1892) (Pernicone 1993, 478).

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Galleani wrote that all acts of rebellion, including violent rebellion and robbery (i.e., expropriation from the bourgeoisie), “engrave a lesson; they do the work of revolution” (Pernicone 1993, 481). In 1905 he published the pamphlet La salute è in voi! (Health [or Salvation] is in you!), regularly advertised for sale in Cronaca Sovversiva, that provided directions on making dynamite and other explosives. The introduction called upon the exploited to learn from history and to utilize the weapons provided by science to achieve redemption and revenge for the atrocities committed by the exploiters of the people. As is often the case, deeds took a long time to follow words, and for bombmakers to start putting into action the prescriptions laid out in Galleani’s bomb book. Many commentators have pointed out that it contained an error in the formula for making nitroglycerine that Galleani did not correct for three years. Subsequently, a number of anarchists blew themselves up trying to make bombs. Ann Larabee has pointed out, however, that this was not due to Galleani’s faulty formula, because that would have ended up producing “a smelly mess of corrosive acids” and not an explosion (Larabee 2015, 40). To give him his due, Galleani strongly recommended that rebels steal dynamite rather than try to make it, given the difficulty of doing so safely. Professional engineers, miners, or others used to working with explosives might be able to make dynamite without hazard but most anarchists did not possess the necessary expertise. What ignited seven years of anarchist assassination attempts and bombings (1914–1920) was not Galleani’s bomb book or his incendiary rhetoric, although they helped, but a stunning massacre of women and children. In 1914, America was in the midst of a severe recession with hundreds of thousands out of work. Peaceful protests and demonstrations by the unemployed demanding food and work were met by savage police beatings (Avrich and Avrich 2012, 218–223). In the coal mines of southern Colorado low wages and terrible working conditions, including abnormally high levels of workrelated accidents in non-unionized mines, led to a strike by thousands of workers. The owners of the coal mines, prominently John D. Rockefeller Jr., refused to recognize the union that had called the strikes, and fired the coal miners, ejecting them from their company-owned homes in Ludlow. The United Mine Workers of America then erected a tent city for the miners and their families at the entrance to the mines. In response the coal mine owners brought in brutal strike breakers. Eventually, the governor ordered in the state national guard to calm the situation but this militia soon began to take the side of the coal mine owners. Shootings broke out between the miners and the government forces. Finally, the latter attacked the tent city, looting and then pouring oil on the tents before setting them on fire. They severely beat and then murdered several miners. In the most horrific, and widely publicized, episode eleven children and two women suffocated and then burned in a pit dug beneath a tent to protect them from the gunfire above. One report claimed that fifty-five women and children were killed. The Ludlow Massacre shocked the nation; the New York Times described it as a “story of horror

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unparalleled in the history of industrial warfare” (Avrich 1991, 99; Courtney 1914; Simon 2022, 56).2 While the anarchists had nothing to do with unleashing this violence, they were as enraged as everyone else, but more willing than anyone else to take forceful action. The prime villain in the piece seemed to be John D. Rockefeller Jr., who presided over the business empire that his father, now retired, had created. The Rockefellers were the richest people in America, perhaps in the entire world. The younger Rockefeller had been determined to break the coalminers’ strike at any cost. When, a few weeks before the massacre, he was summoned before a congressional committee to justify his antiunion stance, Rockefeller strongly implied that he preferred to lose all his property and have all his employees die than give up his principle of “open mines” (Simon 2022, 56). At first the anarchists and others in New York City organized peaceful protests against Rockefeller at his office and homes. The famous author Upton Sinclair, no anarchist, led one anti-Rockefeller vigil. Anarchists journeyed to protest in Tarrytown, where the Rockefellers maintained a family estate, only to be clubbed by the police and driven out of town. This incident may have shifted the anarchists’ “focus from passive demonstration to violent expression” (Avrich and Avrich 2012, 228; Jones 2012). Alexander Berkman was at the center of the conspiracy, a plot devised at the Ferrer Center to blow up Rockefeller’s Pocantico Hills mansion. Berkman wrote that he was “sick of appeals to legality, sick of the hope for class justice. It is high time to begin to fight Satan with his own hell fire. An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth!” (Mother Jones 1914, August 9:6, p. 183). Arthur Caron, one of the other leading conspirators, had participated in the peaceful protests against Rockefeller. For his efforts he had been twice imprisoned, constantly insulted, and savagely and repeatedly beaten by the police. Caron seethed with outrage at the murders of the men, women, and children at Ludlow. Only about six individuals were involved in the conspiracy. This was a small number, but significantly more than the one or two individuals who had carried out previous anarchist bombings and assassinations in the United States. It would be a harbinger of the even bigger anarchist conspiracies to come. An attempt to bomb the Rockefeller mansion failed, either because the anarchist conspirators, Caron, Carl Hanson, and Charles Berg (the latter two Latvian anarchists), could not gain entrance to the heavily guarded estate or because the explosive failed to detonate. “Perhaps intending to store it temporarily until they could make another try at Rockefeller, they took the bomb with them to their apartment in Harlem, which was filled with stolen dynamite.” The bomb accidentally exploded on July 4, destroying the upper three floors of the tenement, killing the three anarchists and an innocent renter, and injuring twenty others (Avrich and Avrich 2012, 228–233). After the Lexington Avenue bombing, the New York City police established a Bomb Squad to keep an eye on violence-prone anarchists and discover their plots. Unfortunately, this may have contributed to more plots. Thomas J. Tunney, its head, believed that the bomb conspiracy against Rockefeller was

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carried out by members of the Italian anarchist “Brescia [sic] Circle” (the actual name was Gruppo Gaetano Bresci, named after the assassin of King Umberto). Later historians have repeated this claim but in our most detailed discussion of the bomb explosion to date, by Paul Avrich, the leading historian of American anarchism, no clear connection is made to the Bresci Circle. Those whom Avrich has been able to identify as in on the plot were either immigrants from the Russian Empire (like Berkman) or native-born Americans (Charles Plunkett and Caron) (Tunney 1919, 42; Avrich and Avrich 2012, 219–235).3 While the Lexington Avenue explosion may not have had direct links to the Bresci group, some nine additional explosions, or attempted bombings, over the next year could be attributed to the Galleanists, as Galleani himself strongly suggested (Avrich 1991, 101). These bombings were mostly symbolic since they caused only minimal damage to the buildings and no deaths. Two churches were targeted, including St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was bombed on October 13 on the fifth anniversary of the execution of the Spanish anarchist educator Jose Ferrer, a proponent of scientific schooling and a foe of the Catholic church and religious education. The bomb caused little damage. One suspects that the explosives used were akin to fireworks, which the Italians were familiar with, as opposed to dynamite, with which they were not. The bombing was reminiscent of an unprecedented November 1906 explosion inside St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, attributed to the anarchists, that caused a tremendous roar, dense smoke, and panic among church-goers, but no damage or injuries (New York Times, 19 November 1906). On November 11, the anniversary of the execution of the anarchists falsely blamed for the 1886 Haymarket bombing, a Bronx courthouse suffered minor damage. On November 14, a bomb found near the seat of the magistrate in the Tombs police court was discovered in time and removed. The judge involved had sentenced anarchists to harsh terms in prison simply for leading protests of the unemployed (Simon 2022, 63–64). Since the police could not find the presumed anarchists who had carried out these bombings, the Bomb Squad decided to resort to an agent provocateur. The anarchists, unlike other terrorists such as the Socialist Revolutionaries, created no special terrorist organizations that might be penetrated by informers who could convey information about plots to the authorities. As far as we know, Galleani did not specifically order any bombings although he certainly inspired them. Instead, angry individual anarchists decided spontaneously to carry out violent deeds. To find out ahead of time who these people might be, a police spy would need to give them significant help and encouragement. Therefore, an Italian-speaking member of the Squad started attending meetings of the Bresci “Circle” and eventually involved himself with two young (18 and 25) Italian immigrants in a plot to blow up St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Accompanied by the disguised policeman, Frank Abarno placed his bomb in the church and then was immediately arrested. At his trial, Abarno and his friend Carmine Carbone claimed that they had been framed

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and that the undercover policeman had participated very actively in the plot and bought the ingredients for the bomb (or bombs). In his book discussing this event, Tunney admits that his agent provided at least some of the ingredients (Tunney 1919, 43). Tunney claims that the directions for creating the bombs were out of Galleani’s notorious La salute è in voi! Evidence to this effect was presented at the trial in order to convict Abarno and Carbone. But Larabee has established that the ingredients mentioned in Tunney’s book and elsewhere for the making of the bomb were not from the recipe for dynamite found in La salute. Rather, they constituted a kind of explosive mixture used in fireworks (Larabee 2015, 42–43). On July 5, 1915, an explosion blew off the doors of New York’s police headquarters but this proved to be the end of the 1914–1915 explosions. Anarchist bombings now ceased for more than a year (but not quixotic incidents. In February 1916 a Galleanist chef poisoned the soup of two hundred guests at a dinner intended to honor the archbishop of Chicago’s elevation to the cardinalate; many became sick but none died). Tunney claims that the temporary end of the explosions was due to the bad scare anarchists had received from the successful infiltration of their ranks and the harsh prison sentences meted out to Abarno and Carbone. These revelations and sentences sowed discord and disorganization in the Bresci group (Tunney fails to mention that this did not prevent the July 5 bombing) (Tunney 1919, 66). The pause, however, may have been due more to the conclusion of the recession with its unemployment and hardship and the end of the coalminers’ strike in Ludlow.

World War I and a New Wave of Anarchist Violence A rash of anarchist, or probably anarchist, attacks began in the summer of 1916 as protests against militarism and fears that America would become involved in the Great War raging on the European continent. Galleani and most American anarchists were staunchly against war. Galleani’s slogan was “Against the War, Against the Peace, For the Revolution!” On July 22, 1916, a suitcase bomb placed by the side of a San Francisco street along which a military Preparedness Day parade was marching killed 10 and injured 40 people. This was the bloodiest act of anarchist violence in America since the Haymarket bomb of 1886 (although then panicky police firing had probably killed more people than the bomb). Two labor leaders were framed and imprisoned for this deed on the basis of perjured testimony and fabricated evidence. At first, one of the men, Tom Mooney, was sentenced to execution. Avrich is convinced, based on Galleani’s statement at his November 1918 deportation hearing and interviews with other anarchists, that Mooney and Billings were innocent. The bomb was the work of the San Francisco members of Gruppo Anarchico Volontà as an act of antimilitarist protest; they were disciples of Galleani (Avrich and Avrich 2012, 265–266). Another anti-war preparedness rally took place in Boston ending in a violent struggle with the police and an anarchist stabbing the hand

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of a policeman. On December 17, in reprisal for the arrest of three anti-war protesters, an anarchist, presumably, placed a bomb at the harbor police headquarters, causing considerable damage. Once again, a familiar scenario was being enacted. Initially, either the anarchists or the police provoked the other, leading to heavy-handed repression and anarchist acts of violent reprisal. This pattern of provocation, repression, and reprisal grew even more pronounced after the United States declared war on the Central Powers in April 1917. Before the war, anarchists had often, but not always, been allowed to protest peacefully and publish their extremist ideas. Now little or no toleration was permitted anti-war protests and speech. After Galleani came out with a statement in June 1917 discouraging men from registering for the draft, Cronaca Sovversiva was raided and Galleani arrested. When members of a Galleanist faction in Milwaukee tore down an American flag displayed at a loyalty rally, the police fired on the anarchists, killing two. In retaliation, in November a bomb was placed inside the church of the pastor who had organized the rally. Taken to police headquarters for disposal, it exploded, killing nine policemen and a woman. In revenge for the hasty and draconian justice administered to the eleven anarchists who had been involved in tearing down the flag (but had had nothing to do with the explosion), in April 1918 bombs were placed at the home of the Milwaukee prosecutor, but they were dismantled without detonating (Avrich 1991; Simon 2022; Pernicone 1993). As wartime government repression grew more and more severe, the anarchist responses became more and more organized and violent. In May 1918, Congress passed the Sedition Act leading in July to the suppression of Cronaca Sovversiva. In October 1918, it enacted the anarchist exclusion act, excluding and expelling “aliens who are members of the anarchist or similar classes.” In an ominous prelude to what was to come, on December 20, 1918—shortly before midnight—the Philadelphia homes of the President of the Chamber of Commerce, the Superintendent of Police, and a Judge were heavily damaged by explosions within fifteen minutes of each other. A fourth bomb outside the office of the US Attorney failed to go off. Leaflets found in the vicinity of the homes attacked “the priests, the exploiters, the judges and police, and the soldiers” whose rule would soon be ending (Avrich 1991, 138). Two months later, Philadelphia also produced a plot to assassinate President Wilson. This time the scheme was not hatched by Galleanisti but by Grupo Pro Prensa made up of anarchists from Puerto Rico, Spain, and Cuba (Shaffer 2013, 146).

Postwar Government Repression and the Climax of Anarchism Terrorism Anarchist anger over threatened and actual deportations of their comrades was compounded by the sharp recession and high unemployment that occurred after the end of World War I. The US “witnessed the apex of industrial conflict in [its] history” (Jones 2015, 137). In February 1919, soon after Galleani had been ordered deported, a circular entitled “Go-Head” appeared throughout

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New England. It stated in part that: “You have shown no pity to us! We will do likewise. And deport us! We will dynamite you! Either deport us or free all!” This was signed: the American anarchists. In an inept beginning to this new era of dynamite, on February 28, four anarchists, all ardent Galleanists, blew themselves up while placing a bomb at an American Woolen Company mill in Franklin, Massachusetts. The explosion also wrecked a dozen mill dwellings and slightly injured a score of people. This showed once again how a certain level of incompetence often characterized anarchist terrorism. More effective in spreading terror, but having its own amateurish quality, was a spectacular Galleanist effort to commemorate May Day 1919. Historians estimate that some 50–60 followers of Galleani were involved (Avrich 1991, 157). Ironically for a group that labeled themselves “anti-organizattori,” this effort and one more in June represented the greatest organized terrorist conspiracy in anarchist history worldwide. At the end of April, the Galleanists mailed bombs to thirty or more prominent people whom they viewed as their enemies. This time the bombs were carefully crafted by experts and did not blow up in the faces of their creators. The recipients ranged from the Attorney General and a Supreme Court justice to mayors, congressmen, a Bureau of Investigation agent, and the wealthy tycoons J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. While the use of mail bombs goes back to the eighteenth century, never before had they been sent to so many people in a single coordinated effort. Unfortunately for the anarchists, only a few of the package bombs, disguised as novelty samples from Gimbel Brothers department store, reached, or almost reached, their intended targets. In large part this was due to the insufficient postage placed on the packages. The post office temporarily held these packages but then realized that they were bombs after one of them exploded at the home of a Senator, blowing off a maid’s hands and leading to nationwide publicity. Did the anarchists not realize that Senators and Rockefellers rarely open their own mail? Much better executed than the mail bomb plot, although not without its own flaws, was the anarchist campaign to dynamite the homes of their adversaries in seven cities on June 2. Explosions severely damaged all nine targets in Boston, New York City, Paterson, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C. In two cases the wrong house was mistakenly hit since it was similar and close to the intended destination. Those targeted were three judges who had sentenced anarchists to long terms, the president of a silk company who had refused to grant his workers a forty-four-hour week, a priest’s rectory, an immigration official active in deporting anarchists, a Massachusetts state representative who had introduced an anti-sedition bill into the legislature, and most prominently, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Anarchists felt that Palmer, as head of the Justice Department and therefore of the Bureau of Investigation, was their chief persecutor. A leaflet, entitled “Plain Words” and revealing the anarchists’ murderous anger and self-righteous idealism, was left at all the bombed houses. Signed “The Anarchist Fighters,” it read in part:

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A time has come when the social question’s solution can be delayed no longer; class war is on and cannot cease but with complete victory for the international proletariat….We have been dreaming of freedom, we have talked of liberty, we have aspired to a better world, and you jailed us, you clubbed us, you deported us, you murdered us whenever you could…..the proletariat has the same right to protect itself, since their press has been suffocated, their mouths muzzled, we mean to speak for them the voice of dynamite, through the mouth of guns.

Although the perpetrators were never brought to trial, in a scenario accepted by other historians, Avrich has laid out a plausible reconstruction of the mechanics of the anarchists’ stunning assault. He states that it was in Boston, near to where Galleani and Cronaca Sovversiva had formerly operated, that the grand conspiracy was hatched. The taciturn and big-nosed Mario Buda (his nickname was Nasone) and the handsome and outgoing Carlo Valdinoci (who blew himself up when placing a bomb at the home of Attorney General Palmer) originated the plot in collaboration with members of the Gruppo Autonomo of East Boston. That Sacco and Vanzetti were included in those participants is a “virtual certainty.” Avrich assumes that after preparations in Boston were completed, Valdinoci carried the incendiary Plain Words leaflets and bombs to local comrades in New York, Paterson, and Philadelphia before going on to Washington, D.C., where he himself would plant a bomb and leaflets. While Valdinoci traveled south, Buda went west, stopping at Pittsburgh and Cleveland with his explosive items (Simon 2022, 124–125, 139–140; Gage 2009, 325–326; Avrich 1991, 81, 157–162). These bombings provoked the infamous Palmer raids between November 1919 and January–February 1920 in which 6 to 10,000 alleged radicals were arrested, most of whom were aliens, but some were American citizens. Many were not connected in any way with anarchism, communism, or Bolshevism. They were often arrested illegally, without warrants, and sometimes beaten. Hundreds, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, were deported to Russia in December 1919. This was the first mass political deportation in American history. In April 1920, soon after the raids, two people were killed during an armed robbery in Braintree, Massachusetts, leading to Sacco and Vanzetti being arrested and charged with, and then indicted for, murder. While the trial that convicted the two and led to their execution was a travesty of justice, historians are still unsure whether one or both or neither was involved. Their indictment on September 11 was probably the spark, together with the anger produced by the vast illegalities perpetrated during Palmer’s raids and deportations, that led Buda to carry out the deadliest act of anarchist violence in global history (Gage 2009, 122; Avrich 1991, 5–6; Simon 2022, 159). Buda, like his best friends Sacco and Vanzetti, had not been an anarchist before he traveled from Italy to America. It was the harsh working conditions in his new home that converted him, as well as Sacco and Vanzetti, to anarchism. Buda worked at a variety of jobs, including gardening and construction. In 1917, he spent time in Michigan’s iron-mining district and

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“could very well have become more experienced with dynamite there.” In any case, he was a practiced hand at bomb-making. The bomb he placed on Wall Street on September 16, 1920, “with its timed detonator and gelatin dynamite… was far more sophisticated than anything found in La salute” (Avrich 1991, 146; Larabee 2015, 46). This was the first car, or actually horse-cart, bomb in American history. The terrific blast that ensued was aimed at the symbolic heart of American capitalism: Wall Street. The targets were government and business buildings: the US Assay Office and the Sub-Treasury Building, directly across from the House of J. P. Morgan and Company. Besides 233 dead and wounded, much of the interior of the House of Morgan was wrecked. One historian has emphasized that the Galleanists in America, like Buda, did not target innocuous, “innocent” targets, like the cafes, religious processions, and opera performances bombed by anarchists in Europe (the European anarchists believed these were the iniquitous haunts of the bourgeoisie). But while Buda may have wanted to destroy the titans of American capitalism and government officials, his powerful bomb killed mostly ordinary people, a chauffeur, a student, runners, stenographers, secretaries, clerks, and accountants (Pernicone 1993; Avrich 1991, 206).4 The Wall Street Bombing was the climax of anarchist violence in America, never equaled let alone surpassed. But it had a powerful coda. Perceived injustice fans the flames of terrorism and the approaching execution of Sacco and Vanzetti (August 1927) led to anarchist violence in the United States, France, Bulgaria, and most significantly, Argentina. This was the first time since the Haymarket bombing and trial that American anarchism had exercised such a worldwide impact. A female French anarchist tried to assassinate the American ambassador to France; presumed anarchist-instigated explosions damaged the American consulates in Marseilles and Sofia, Bulgaria. In May 1926, the Italian anarchist Severino di Giovanni, who had visited the United States and was bankrolled by Raffaele Schiavina—for several years Galleani’s right-hand man, bombed the US embassy in Buenos Aires. Earlier, two American-identified banks in Buenos Aires had been bombed, killing two people (Pernicone 1993, 488; Jensen 2014a, 361–362; Temkin 2009, 40–41, 50–57, 127–133). In the United States, following an appeal in 1926 from Sacco and Vanzetti to “[r]emember…La salute è in voi!,” referring to the infamous bomb manual, a series of violent attacks took place. These bombings, between June 1926 and September 1927, were followed in 1932 with the climactic destruction of the home of Webster Thayer, Sacco, and Vanzetti’s trial judge.

The Decline of Anarchism and Anarchist Violence, 1920s–1960s By the late 1920s, anarchist violence had largely petered out in the United States and the world. Prosperity and full employment returned to America during the roaring twenties. Severe government repression also played a role in the decline of American anarchism. The most dedicated anarchists, like

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Emma Goldman and the terrorism-advocates Berkman and Galleani, were deported. In 1924 new laws heavily restricted Italian and Eastern European immigration. The annual number of immigrants, a few of whom were anarchists or eventually became anarchists, declined over 50% from what it had been in the prewar years. Italian anarchists, who in the past had been at the forefront of promoting violent direct action, proved unable to move beyond the boundaries of Italian communities and, for example, refused to publish English-language versions of their Italian newspapers. This was just as the younger generation of Italian-Americans was being rapidly assimilated into American society, where prejudice against Italians declined together with the drastic reduction in immigration. Yet the anarchists failed to organize the African-Americans who increasingly filled the same poorest-paid ranks in the American economy that the southern Italians and eastern Europeans had filled in the past. At the same time that they lost many of their leading figures, the anarchists became increasingly ineffective, fragmented “by incessant rivalries and disputes” (Tomchuk 2015, 190; Jensen 2014a, 363; Avrich 1991, 211). Reformist political policies after 1920 played a role in the decrease of anarchist violence, just as they had with Teddy Roosevelt at the beginning of the Progressive Era. In the mid-1930s Franklin Delano Roosevelt enacted federal protections that the American labor movement had been demanding since the 1870s. The New Deal’s recognition of trade unions dampened anarchist radicalism. Anarchists also faced competition for worker support from the newly formed Communist Party. Consequently, by the 1930s and until the mid1960s, the number of activist anarchists shrank to a few hundred or less (Gage 2009, 311; Cornell 2016, 21, 138, 148–149, 212). During and after World War II, the anarchists shifted from trying to guide and inspire the labor movement and champion the imperatives of the social question, to anti-war and anti-racist initiatives. They transitioned from organizing industrial workers to organizing a middle-class constituency. During the 1940s and 1950s, “anarchists served as a hinge linking radical pacifists with avant-garde artists and writers, developing new political analyses, strategies, institutions, and aesthetics that helped shape the Beat Generation, the civil rights movement, the 1960s counterculture, and the New Left.” Even before this, in the 1930s, the anarchist-influenced Catholic Worker movement had been promoting radical pacifism. Some scholars have concluded that the inspiring Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, anarchists and co-founders of the Catholic Worker movement, came to exercise a type of informal leadership similar to Galleani’s influence over the readers of Cronaca Sovversiva. During the war “anarchist draft resisters befriended Gandhian pacifists in conscientious objector camps and federal penitentiaries, where they jointly resisted racial segregation and influenced one another’s politics.” Pacifism, rather than violence, dominated American anarchist actions between 1940 and 1965 (Cornell 2016, 136, 148, 228, 284; Jones 2015).

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Epilogue: Anarchism and Violence Since the 1960s Anarchist influence increased during and after the 1960s, with various authorities noting a pronounced revival in the 1980s and 1990s. This was reflected predominantly in various protest groups, e.g., the Earth and Animal Liberation Fronts (ELF and ALF), who did not explicitly identify as anarchists (although many of their members were), but adopted such anarchist methods as direct action and decentralized organization. Support for feminism, gay rights, and anti-racism, along with environmental concerns, dominated anarchist thought. There was no revival of anarchist terrorism comparable to the Propaganda by the Deed of Classical Anarchism. Killings by right-wing extremists vastly outnumbered the handful that could be attributed to the anarchists or Antifa (The Guardian 2020, July 27 and October 22).5 In 1999 anarchists and “Black Bloc” groups, together with many non-anarchists, became involved in violent riots in Seattle protesting the World Trade Organization and globalization, but they did not spearhead the event. The Direct Action Network (DAN), the organizer of the marches, however, utilized some anarchist methods. While only a few of the tens of thousands who participated in the Occupy Wall Street encampments in 2011–2012 were anarchists, they frequently acted according to anarchist principles, although eschewing violence. In America today, anarchism is made up of individuals and myriad, often transient groups (e.g., Antifa is hardly a single or stable organization) that frequently do not cooperate with one another and seldom resort to violence (Jones 2015, 139; Kuhn and Cohn 2009; Bray 2017, 56–57, 168). Ironically, anarchism, so closely associated in the past with “direct action,” at present exercises its influence overwhelmingly indirectly, by providing tactics and models for groups and movements they do not control or spearhead.

Areas for Future Research Mystery enshrouds several of the most famous cases of anarchist violence. Why did the anarchists fail to plant a bomb at Rockefeller’s Tarrytown estate and instead, disastrously, take the bomb back to their tenement apartment? Who placed the bombs at several sites in New York City in 1914–1915? Who conspired to place the dynamite on Wall Street in September 1920? Were Sacco and Vanzetti responsible for the Braintree robbery and killings? These questions may never be answered. Easier to investigate would be the relationship between Luigi Galleani and Alexander Berkman, particularly Galleani’s influence on Berkman’s views of violence. A larger issue deserving more research and thought is the relationship between socioeconomic conditions in the United States and anarchist terrorism.

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Notes 1. The print media and politicians frequently labelled anarchist assassins “insane” whether or not they suffered from mental illness. No convincing evidence exists that Czolgosz was mentally ill. Rauchway (2003, 39–43, 114–116,204–206). Rauchway remains our best source on Czolgosz and McKinley’s assassination. 2. Simon (2022, 56), gives a death toll of sixty-six people. 3. Although Caron claimed to be American-born, he may have been Canadian. Jones 2014, 227, 373–4. 4. Gage 2009, 329–330, provides a list of the thirty-eight victims with their professions who died within days of the explosion. Charles H. McCormick (2005), 157n8, gives a figure of forty deaths by mid-November. 5. Since the mid-1990s, only one person, an armed member of a right-wing organization, could be said to have been killed by a person who identified with Antifa. The perpetrator, apparently suffering from PTSD, claimed it was in self-defense.

References Archivio storico. Italian foreign ministry, Consul Giuseppe Tosti, Denver, to Ambassador Mayor des Planches, Washington DC, 28 February and 9 March 1908, Rappresentanze diplomatiche italiane negli Stati Uniti, Busta 174, “Affari privati.” Avrich, Paul. 1978. An American anarchist: The life of Voltairine de Cleyre. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1991. Sacco and Vanzetti: The anarchist background. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———, and Karen Avrich. 2012. Sasha and Emma: The anarchist odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bray, Mark. 2017. Antifa: The anti-fascist handbook. Brooklyn and London: Melville House. Briggs, L. Vernon. 1921. The manner of man that kills. Boston: Richard G. Badger. Congressional Record, 60th Cong., 1st sess., vol. XLII, part 5 [Senate, 9 April 1908], p. 4526. Cornell, Andrew. 2016. Unruly equality: U.S. anarchism in the twentieth century. Oakland: University of California Press. Courtney, Julia. 1914. Remember Ludlow! Mother Earth, May, p. 73. Deaglio, Enrico. 2015. Storia vera e terribile tra Sicilia e America. Palermo: Sellerio. Gage, Beverly. 2009. The day Wall Street exploded. The story of America in its first age of terrorism. New York: Oxford University Press. Ghio, Paul. 1903. L’anarchisme aux États-Unis. Paris: Pris Librairie Arman Colin. Goldstein Robert J. 1974. The anarchist scare of 1908: A sign of tensions in the Progressive Era. American Studies, 15: 55–78. Jensen, Richard Bach. 2014a. The battle against anarchist terrorism: An international history, 1878–1934. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2014b. The pre-1914 Anarchist ‘Lone Wolf’ terrorist and governmental responses. Terrorism and Political Violence, 26:1, 86–94. https://www.tandfonline. com/journals/ftpv20. ———. 2018. The 1904 assassination of Governor General Bobrikov: Tyrannicide, anarchism, and the expanding scope of ‘terrorism.’ Terrorism and Political Violence, 30:5, 828–843.

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Johnson, Geoffrey. 2009. The Lost Boy. Chicago Magazine. May 19. http://www. chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2009/Lost-Boy/The-Lost-Boy/index. php?cp=1&si=0. Jones, Thai. 2012. More powerful than dynamite: Radicals, plutocrats, progressives, and New York’s year of anarchy. New York: Walker. ———. 2015. Anarchist terrorism in the United States. In Randall D. Law, ed., The Routledge history of terrorism, 130–142. London and New York: Routledge. Kuhn, Gabriel, and Jesse Cohn. 2009. Anarchism in the United States, 1946–present. In Immanuel Ness, ed., The international encyclopedia of revolution and protest: 1500 to the Present, 1:158–160. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Larabee, Anne. 2015. The wrong hands: Popular weapons manuals and their historic challenges to democratic society. New York City: Oxford University Press. McCormick, Charles H. 2005. Hopeless cases: The hunt for the Red Scare terrorist bombers. Lanham: University Press of America. Mother Jones. 1914. August, 9:6, p. 183. New York Times. 1908, 24 February, 13 March, 3 March 1908 and 19 November 1906. Pernicone, Nunzio. 1993. Luigi Galleani and Italian anarchist terrorism in the United States. Studi Emigrazione/Etude Migrations, 30:111, 469–489. Rauchway, Eric. 2003. Murdering McKinley: The making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America. New York: Hill and Wang. Roth, Walter, and Joe Kraus. 1998. An accidental anarchist. San Francisco: Rudi Publishing. Shaffer, Kirwin R. 2013. Black Flag Boricuas: Anarchism, antiauthoritarianism, and the left in Puerto Rico, 1897–1921. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Simon, Jeffrey. 2022. America’s forgotten terrorists: The rise and fall of the Galleanists. Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books. Taft, Philip, and Philip Ross. 1969. American labor violence: Its causes, character, and outcome. In Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, eds., The history of violence in America: A report to the National Commission on the causes and prevention of violence, 221–301. Praeger. Temkin, Moshik. 2009. The Sacco-Vanzetti affair: America on trial. New Haven: Yale University Press. The Guardian. 2020, July 27 and October 22. Tobenkin, Elias. 1908. Anarchists and immigrants in America. World Today, May, 482–485. Tomchuk, Travis. 2015. Transnational radicals: Italian anarchists in Canada and the U.S., 1915–1940. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Tunney, Thomas J. 1919. Throttled! The detection of the German and anarchist bomb plotters. Boston: Small, Maynard.

CHAPTER 2

Antifa: Anatomy of a Movement George Michael

and Garth Davies

Introduction Political extremism has a long tradition in the United States. Numerous radical protest and dissident movements have long punctuated American history. Nevertheless, centrism has historically characterized the American political tradition, as the two-party system has long been able to accommodate numerous interests. In recent years, however, an acute polarization has gripped both the American body politic and culture. A growing chasm appears to be growing within the public on a number of important issues including the proper role of government, multiculturalism, immigration, abortion, religion in the public sphere, and America’s position in global affairs. A renascent extremist subculture is flourishing. On the political left, the movement known as Antifa has gone from virtual obscurity to widespread notoriety in a relatively short span of time. Although its origins can be traced back to the punk scene in the mid-1980s, it remained a marginal movement until the Trump presidential campaign gained traction in 2016. Concomitant with the rise of the so-called alt-right was the ascendance of renascent left-wing radicalism exemplified by Antifa. Antifa sees

G. Michael (B) Westfield State University, Westfield, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] G. Davies Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_2

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itself as willing to do the dirty work shunned by the more respectable antiracist groups by confronting their ideological opponents directly in the streets. For example, it featured prominently at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. In the summer of 2020, Antifa activists joined with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest movement. Working in tandem, they attained a synergy that has proven to be quite destructive in cities throughout the United States. This chapter focuses on militant anti-fascism, with special focus on the movement known as Antifa. First, the origins of anti-fascism are explored. After that, the genesis of Antifa is recounted. Next, the structure of Antifa is examined. Following that, there is discussion of Antifa’s strategy and tactics. Inasmuch as violence is an integral part of Antifa’s repertoire, the debate over designating it as a terrorist movement is examined as well. The question of who is responsible for funding and supporting Antifa is addressed in the following section. Finally, the conclusion endeavors to elucidate Antifa’s endgame and speculates on the movement’s future.

The Origins of Anti-fascism Anti-fascism emerged just as fascism was on the cusp of attaining political power. In 1921, Argo Secondari, an anarchist, created a militant anti-fascist organization in Rome called the People’s Daring Ones to fight against Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts (Ngo 2021). Although there is no direct continuity, the Antifa movement of today draws inspiration from Antifaschistische Aktion (Anti-Fascist Action) which was established by the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1932. Contemporary Antifa activists have even adopted a twoflag logo—one red, one black—characteristic of the original group (Red symbolizing communism and black anarchism) (Ngo 2021). Both the KPD and Anti-Fascist Action were funded by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in an effort to influence domestic German politics (Nadales 2020a). For a brief interregnum, there was a rapprochement between Adolf Hitler and Stalin, as exemplified by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact negotiated in August 1939. But the agreement broke down with the launch of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. With the defeat of the Axis powers at the end of World War II, the specter of fascism receded and the major ideological fault lines centered on the conflict between communism and liberal democracy. Nevertheless, minor fascistic parties emerged in Europe, for instance, the MSI (Italian Social Movement) and the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany). In the United States, George Lincoln Rockwell’s unabashedly fascist American Nazi Party gained notoriety in the 1960s. Despite the sensation these parties generated, their political influence was inconsequential. Perhaps fascism exerted a greater influence in the realm of culture rather than politics. For instance, In England during the 1970s, punk music became popular and gave rise to a unique subculture, some of whose denizens

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embraced symbols such as the swastika. Most of the youths were of workingclass background and some gravitated toward far-right politics, for example, identifying with the National Front. Hence, an ideological rift emerged in the subculture, as evidenced by the creation of Anti-Fascist Action in London in 1985 (Shideler 2020). But the Antifa movement as it is known today, really crystalized in Germany during the 1980s as part of the Squatter’s Movement where it coalesced with the politics of Autonomism—that is, basically, an anarcho-Marxist ideology which first gained popularity among Europe’s communist urban guerillas of the 1960s and 1970s. Prominent groups that came out of this milieu included the Red Army Faction in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy (Shideler 2020). Anti-fascism has a rich pedigree in North America as well. For example, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee was created in 1978 as a front organization of the May 19th Communist Organization (M19CO), which was a splinter group of the Weather Underground. The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee promoted the idea that the United States was inherently white supremacist and coined the slogan “No KKK, No Fascist USA,” which was later popularized by Antifa (Shideler 2020). One event in particular that served as a Lexington and Concord moment of sorts for the anti-fascist movement was the Greensboro Massacre, which occurred on November 3, 1979, in North Carolina. At the event, members of a neo-Nazi party called the National Socialist Party of America, and a local Ku Klux Klan organization clashed with demonstrators in a “Death to the Klan rally,” which was sponsored by a local group called the Communist Workers’ Party. The confrontation was a culmination in a series of disputes between the two sides. In a shootout, five members of the Communist Workers’ Party were fatally wounded. The Klansmen and Neo-Nazis suffered no serious casualties (Wheaton 1987). In two subsequent trials—one local and one federal—juries acquitted all of the defendants. This clash was significant because it was the first high-profile incident of right-wing violence since the Civil Rights era. Moreover, it demonstrated that Klansmen and neo-Nazis could cooperate together. Previously, Klansmen looked askance at the foreign and un-American orientation of the neo-Nazis. Henceforth, neo-Nazism would have a significant influence on the ideology of a much broader portion of the racialist right. For the political left, this event was the catalyst for the creation of a progressive-oriented watchdog group, the National Anti-Klan Network, which would go on to become the Center for Democratic Renewal based in Atlanta, Georgia. Furthermore, the slain were lionized as martyrs for the anti-fascist cause.

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Antifa Emerges Stanislav Vysotsky, an associate professor of sociology and former Antifa activist, traces the origins of the Antifa movement in the United States to the 1980s and 1990s, when some American punks, mimicking their European counterparts, adopted stylistic elements of Nazi iconography, including the swastika and SS insignia. This resulted in a civil war within the punk subculture in which anti-Nazi punks sought to expurgate what they saw as a creeping fascism from taking hold in their milieu. This sentiment was exemplified in the punk band known as the Dead Kennedys’ classic 1981 anthem “Nazi Punks Fuck Off.” Related to the punks was the skinhead movement many of whose ranks openly embraced Nazi aesthetics and ideology. In opposition to this development, Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) was founded in New York in 1987 (Vysotsky 2021). In 1980s America, the term fascism had not yet attained the notoriety and currency that it had held in the vernacular in Europe. Hence, anti-racism seemed to be a more persuasive rallying cry for organizing. According to some accounts, the first Anti-Racist Action (ARA) chapter was formed in Minneapolis in 1986, when an anti-racist skinhead gang, the Baldies, joined forces with a group of self-styled punks, the Revolutionary Anarchist Bowling League (RABL). Together, they began a campaign to rid the twin cities of a racist skinhead gang called the White Knights. They were largely successful and, through working with youths from other cities, the ARA model began to be adopted elsewhere. From there, ARA chapters soon spread throughout the Midwest thanks in large part to an anti-racist network known as the Syndicate (Ferguson 2000a). By around the year 2000, ARA claimed to have chapters in over 130 cities and towns in the United States and Canada, and plans to open chapters in Mexico, Columbia, and Asia (Ferguson 2000a). ARA was very loosely organized, as it was characterized by an informal, non-bureaucratic, highly decentralized, and consensual structure with no formal positions of authority (Ferguson 2000a). Its platform, the “Four Points of Unity,” was succinct, thus allowing for a good deal of organizational flexibility among its various chapters: 1. ARA intends to do the hard work necessary to build a broad, strong movement against racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, antichoice zealotry, discrimination against the disabled, the oldest, the youngest, the poorest, and the most disenfranchised of our society. We intend to win! 2. WE GO WHERE THEY GO. Wherever racists are organizing or active, we’re there. Ignoring a problem doesn’t mean the problem no longer exists. In order to solve it, it has to first be confronted. For this reason, we are committed to ensuring that bigots and terrorists never feel safe openly in our communities. We will never let the Nazis have the streets!

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3. WE DON’T RELY ON THE COPS OR THE COURTS. This doesn’t mean that we rule out using the legal system to achieve our goals. But when the legal and policing institutions themselves are clearly corrupted by racism, how can we trust them to do what’s right? We understand that we must rely on ourselves to protect ourselves and our communities and to stop the fascists. 4. NON-SECTARIAN DEFENSE OF OTHER ANTI-RACISTS. Our chapter, and the other ARA chapters across the globe, consists of lots of different groups and individuals. We don’t agree on everything and we have a right to differ openly. This diversity of opinion is our strength, enabling us to work together with people of all different backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints to combat hatred (Ferguson 2000a). A very close facsimile of these principles would later be adopted by Antifa (Vysotsky 2021). What really separated ARA from other anti-racist organizations was its explicit intention to directly confront far-right activists in the streets. Moreover, unlike anti-racist monitoring groups such as the AntiDefamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, ARA generally eschewed cooperation with law enforcement agencies, as they were viewed as representatives of a system grounded in white supremacy. Although ARA claimed to have many chapters, it was usually shunned by community leaders and authorities because of its reputation for street confrontations and violence related thereto. Despite this drawback, ARA managed to attract a number of youths to its organization. What’s more, inasmuch as many ARA members identified as anarchists, they were able to ride on the coattails of an anti-globalism movement, which gained momentum, as demonstrated by the so-called Battle of Seattle that shut down an important meeting of the World Trade Organization in November of 1999. The ARA’s nihilistic orientation resonated with younger thrill-seeking activists. Based in Portland, Rose City Antifa (RCA) was founded in 2007 and is believed to be the oldest Antifa group in the United States (Ngo 2021). In 2013, Anti-Racist Action rebranded as the Torch Network, which consists of a loose coalition of roughly a dozen Antifa groups. RCA joined the Torch Network in 2016 (Congressional Research Service 2018). Still another affiliated group is Redneck Revolt, which was founded in 2009, and gained prominence around 2017, when members began attending Antifa events and protests in a supporting role. They have been described as an “armed Antifa who have the training to kill” (Ngo 2021). The amorphous structure of Antifa has enabled it to adapt to changing conditions over the course of its history.

The Structure of Antifa Antifa has been described as a diffuse bottom-up organization including a horizontal network of networks not unlike criminal street gangs or even outlaw motorcycle clubs (Shideler 2020). As a former Antifa activist, Gabriel Nadales

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explained, it is an open-admissions movement in the sense that any group or individual can join the network if they accept two principles—first, embrace Antifa’s violent ideology, and second, be willing to use any means available to put that ideology into action. Nadales recounted that he was never really recruited into joining Antifa; rather, he was the one searching for a way to be involved. In this regard, he pointed out that flyers that are targeted at specific venues, such as left-wing bookstores or concerts can be quite effective (Nadales 2020b). The smallest Antifa organizational units are affinity groups, which usually range from four to twenty members. Typically, tactical decisions are made in small affinity groups that prioritize direct democracy and strive for consensus (Vysotsky 2021). Generally, fewer members are preferred insofar as decisions are expected to be made through unanimous consent; thus, smaller numbers facilitate both decision-making and operational security (Shideler 2020). Multiple affinity groups coalesce to form a chapter. According to a noted Antifa insider, there are roughly five to fifteen members in most US cities where Antifa operates (Bray 2017). But not all groups adopt the Antifa moniker. Instead, some front groups have overlapping memberships (Shideler 2020). Although Antifa units are usually loosely organized embodying the leaderless orientation of contemporary terrorist movements, (Michael 2012) three broad categories of leaders can be discerned. First, there are the national thought leaders. To date, no widely recognized charismatic figurehead has emerged. However, the Dartmouth College History Professor Mark Bray, whose book Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook, has become a manifesto in that it expresses the ideology and basic strategy of the movement, which by doing so has propelled him as a national leader. Second, there are regional leaders who organize large protests. Finally, there are independent leaders who organize locally (Nadales 2020b). Over time, local activists can acquire “street cred” or “subcultural capital” which can enable them to aspire to national leadership (Vysotsky 2021). How skillfully they apply strategy and tactics determines much of their influence.

Antifa Strategy and Tactics Much of Antifa’s work consists of rather pedestrian activities including leafleting, holding meetings, education campaigns, intelligence gathering, and recruiting. But what ultimately sets Antifa apart from other leftist movements is its willingness to use force against their ideological adversaries. Antifa argues that violence is integral to the ethos of fascism; for that reason, in a kind of tit-for-tat logic, Antifa maintains that fascism must be resisted by violence as well. In his Anti-Fascist Handbook, Mark Bray justifies violence by pointing out in one of his “Historical Lesson for Anti-Fascists” that fascists in history have never succeeded in seizing power by way of revolution; instead, they have gained power legally, such as Mussolini’s appointment to prime minister

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by King Emanuel III and Hitler’s appointment to chancellor by Reich President Paul von Hindenburg (Bray 2017). Bray rejects the apocryphal quote often attributed to Voltaire “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” After Auschwitz, he maintains that such free speech absolutism is untenable, averring that anti-fascists must commit themselves to fighting to the death the ability of organized Nazis to say anything (Bray 2017). This position is reminiscent of the Frankfurt School luminary Herbert Marcuse’s notion of “repressive tolerance,” which argued that some viewpoints should not be allowed in the marketplace of ideas and not receive protection under the guise of free speech (Ngo 2021). For this reason, Marcuse has been dubbed “the philosopher of Antifa” (D’Souza 2020). Antifa’s tactics seemingly owe much to Saul Alinsky’s 1971 classic Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. In particular, Rule 13 admonishes leftist activists to: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics, there are certain rules that the organization should always regard as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singles out as the target and “frozen.” By this I mean that in a complex, interrelated urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil. There is a constant, and somewhat legitimate, passing of the buck. […] When you freeze the target, you disregard these arguments, and for the moment, all the others to blame. Then as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all of the “others” come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by the support of the target. The other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract such as a community’s segregated practices or a major corporation or City Hall. It is not possible to develop the necessary hostility against, say, City Hall, which after all is a concrete, physical, inanimate structure, or against a corporation, which has no soul or identity, or a public-school administration, which again is an inanimate system. With this focus comes a polarization. As we have indicated before, all issues must be polarized if action is to follow. (Alinsky 1971)

According to this line of reasoning, people tend not to care much about abstract issues; rather, there needs to be a human component, that is, something relatable which people can champion, and an enemy to vilify. It follows, for example, that protestors would be more effective in targeting Jeff Bezos rather than Amazon Nadales 2020a). In that same vein, on Inauguration Day 2017, the recognized leader of the alt-right, Richard Spencer, was punched in the face on two separate occasions as he was giving an interview. This prompted a debate on the legitimacy of “punching a Nazi” not only within anti-fascist circles, but also in mainstream discourse as well (Stack 2017).

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Such examples of “direct action” suggest that protestors should take matters into their own hands to effect political change. Some critics characterize such tactics as vigilante justice (Nadales 2020a). Moreover, Antifa’s use of violence challenges the legitimacy claimed by local law enforcement agencies. As Max Weber once explained, the legitimacy of the state was based on the ability to maintain a monopoly on the use of force in a particular region (Vysotsky 2021). One controversial tactic used by Antifa is outing or doxing those people they deign as fascist. Doxing is often combined with protests at or near the homes and workplaces of far rightists in an effort to increase pressure and mobilize social stigma on them as exemplified by the slogan of the One People’s Project—“hate has consequences” (Vysotsky 2021). These demonstrations are often noisy and boisterous and are meant to draw attention to neighbors of the targeted home that extremists are in their midst. Other measures in this regard include putting posters complete with the subject’s photo and home address on lampposts and mailboxes. The purpose of these outings is to shame the person among his neighbors and family members in such a way to dissuade him from continuing his extremist activities (Ferguson 2000b). Antifa doxing includes not only fascists, but also critical journalists, some of whom have been beaten and robbed. The most notorious example was the assault on Andy Ngo on June 29, 2019. Ngo was filming a rally organized by the right-wing group the Proud Boys during which he was punched and kicked. As a result of the attack, he suffered a brain hemorrhage (Ngo 2021). In another notable illustration of this tactic, a Washington, D.C.-based Antifa group called Smash Racism D.C. organized a protest outside the home of the Fox News Host Tucker Carlson’s home (Concha 2018). Some critics of Antifa have argued that doxing would not pass First Amendment muster since the unlawful publication of identifying information about a person could intentionally result in the victim being attacked, fired, ridiculed, or subjected to illegal behavior. Consequently, doxing would not meet the socalled Brandenburg test because it is deliberately intended to cause violence against the victim, placing him in imminent danger from those inspired by the threats (Nadales 2020a).1 More than anything else, what has really propelled Antifa into the national consciousness is its proclivity for street violence. Over the past several years, Antifa has been in the forefront of various protests in cities throughout the United States. In some cases, they have adopted a “black bloc” approach, which essentially involves a large mass of black-masked rioters who confront rivals at some event. By donning nearly identical attire—black masks and black clothing—protestors acquire greater anonymity making it difficult for authorities to identify their individual identities. Blocs usually come in one of three types. First, open blocs permit anyone who wishes to participate, provided that they wear the appropriate bloc uniform. They are typically used when a big crowd is present. Second, the closed bloc permits no outside members

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to participate and is implemented when security and secrecy are paramount. Finally, the semi-open bloc combines the most strategically useful elements of both of the aforementioned blocs. It allows the hard-core affinity groups to engage in direct action, but hide within the mass of open participants, who may not be aware of all of the actors involved in the bloc’s operation. Conceivably, the professional cadres could lure unsuspecting participants and manipulate them into situations where they are put in danger or harm. By doing so, it can create the appearance of unfortunate results, spreading the imagers on social media, thus stoking moral outrage against the police (Shideler 2020). Inasmuch as Antifa is decentralized and flexible, its participants tend not to march in tightly regimented formations with a series of easily identifiable ranks. Instead, Antifa is more likely to flow like water around obstacles thrown up in their path, rather than charging head-on. They tend to take advantage of speed and misdirection. That is not to say that they will not engage in pitched melee battles when the conditions are right; rather, they prefer to have a significant advantage in numbers when dealing with any kind of organized resistance (Smith 2020). An anarchist “think tank” called CrimethInc. produced a manual entitled “Why We Break Windows: The Effectiveness of Political Vandalism,” which justifies mayhem, arguing that taxpaying businesses are fair game to target because some public money goes to the police (Ngo 2021). Turning the concept of “Fixing Broken Windows”2 on its head, Antifa strategy posits that breaking a window sets off a chain reaction which draws in non-Antifa participants, thus serving as a powerful force multiplier. In this fashion, the smashing of windows serves as a kind of open invitation that allows opportunistic looters and rioters to wreak havoc. All that Antifa needs to do is light the match (Ngo 2021). On Inauguration Day, January 21, 2017, numerous protests occurred in Washington, D.C. Over two hundred people were arrested that day, mostly for violating the Riot Act (Roston 2021). Antifa was well-represented at the event. It also featured prominently in the protest at the University of California, Berkeley, on February 1, 2017, when the Breitbart tech editor and right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak on campus. An estimated 1500 protestors amassed outside of Sproul Hall, where Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak. In light of the tenuous security situation, campus authorities canceled the event, but militants continued to riot. The cancelation was seen as a big victory for Antifa (Ngo 2021). Antifa also loomed large at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Ostensibly organized to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from the city square, the event attracted an assortment of rightists including neo-Nazis and Klansmen. During the fracas, a young woman, Heather Heyer, was killed when James Fields drove his Dodge Challenger into a mob of protestors. Although President Donald Trump stated that there

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was “blame on both sides,” the alt-right in particular was held largely responsible and vehemently condemned, not only by Democrats and the mainstream media, but also by some Republicans, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mitt Romney. In the months that followed, Antifa activists and their fellow-travelers were instrumental in discouraging alt-right activists from giving speeches in venues throughout the country. Eventually, Richard Spencer conceded that “Antifa is winning.” Not long after Antifa activists fought his supporters at a speech he gave at Michigan State University in March 2018, Spencer decided to make a strategic retreat, eschewing future speaking events (Kenney and Clarke 2020). He lamented that “Any event was impossible because they [Antifa] were willing to fight. They made things so violent and toxic that I could never go to these events again” (Roston 2021). Antifa’s penchant for mayhem was most glaringly illustrated during the riots which convulsed American cities in the summer of 2020. On May 25, 2020, a black man named George Floyd was arrested by police in Minneapolis, for passing a counterfeit $20 bill. During his detainment, Floyd stopped breathing and eventually died. A video of police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck to restrain him went viral. The coroner who performed the original autopsy concluded that Floyd died because of a combination of intoxication, damage to his organs due to cocaine addiction, and excessive roughness by the police (Donaghue 2020). Not long thereafter, the Floyd family hired a celebrity forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, and Dr. Alicia Wilson from the University of Michigan, to conduct an independent autopsy. Disagreeing with the original report, they found that Floyd had died of asphyxiation, which would support a homicide charge against Chauvin. Afterward, the county amended its report by acknowledging that the knee on the neck restraint combined with fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use, along with Floyd’s existing heart disease, caused his death (Perira 2020). Consequently, Chauvin was charged with second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter. Three other police officers who were at the scene—Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao—were later arrested and charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder (Higgins 2020). Less than a week after his death, widespread urban mayhem ravaged cities all over America, which rivaled the intensity of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests a few years before. For this series of riots, BLM and related activists were joined by those who identified with Antifa. Reports emerged of stacks of bricks being left in front of buildings, seemingly for the convenience of rioters to use to vandalize. Some observers suspected that they had been strategically planted by Antifa activists. Working in tandem, BLM and Antifa attained a synergy that has proven to be quite destructive in cities throughout the United States (Kingson 2020; Polumbo 2020). A study conducted by Kerby Goff and John D. McCarthy of the Washington Post using data from the Crowd Counting Consortium and the Armed

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Conflict Location and Event Data Project found that when Antifa did attend protests, the incidence of violence was extremely high compared to the level at protests that it not attend. Of the 37 racial justice protests that Antifa appeared in, 30% involved injuries to the crowd. Conversely, when Antifa did not appear, only 2% of the protests involved crowd injuries. When Antifa was present, 14% of the protests involved injuries to the police, but without Antifa, only 2% did. Antifa participation also increased the probability of property damage as well. With Antifa present, 27% of protests involved property damage, but without Antifa, only 4% did. Finally, with Antifa appearing, 30% of protests involved arrests, while only 7% of protests without Antifa did. Furthermore, Goff and McCarthy found no evidence that the appearance of right-wing groups at protests resulted in greater violence, for there was no difference between events in which Antifa was facing off with groups such as the Proud Boys and when they were protesting unopposed. The Goff and McCarthy concluded that Antifa appearances at racial justice protests greatly increased the risk of violence (Goff and McCarthy 2022). In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, violent crime has surged in the United States at least in part because more and more police officers feel the pressure to pull back for fear of being fired or prosecuted (also known as the “Ferguson effect” (Johnson 2021; Lind 2016). Because of its association with violence, some critics insist that Antifa deserves to be officially designated as a terrorist movement.

Is a Terrorist Designation Justified? As far back as 2016, the US Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation began warning state and local law enforcement agencies of the potential “domestic terrorist violence” posed by left-wing extremists associated with Antifa (Ngo 2021). As America’s home front became increasingly chaotic in the summer of 2020, federal authorities weighed in and planned a response. Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray expressed concern that both ends of the political spectrum were inciting violence which added “to the combustibility and danger of the situation.” On June 26, 2020, US Attorney General William Barr announced that the Justice Department had created a task force to investigate anti-government extremists that had disrupted cities and attacked members of law enforcement. In the memo, both the right-wing movement known as Boogaloo and Antifa were identified (Benner 2020). And in May 2020, President Donald Trump announced by way of a tweet that the US government would designate both Antifa and the Ku Klux Klan as terrorist organizations (Turley 2020). At the present time, however, only foreign entities can receive the terrorist organization designation by the US State Department. It was unclear on what legal authority the president could have made that determination for domestic extremist groups (MacFarquhar 2020).

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According to the FBI’s definition, domestic terrorism consists of “acts of violence that [violate] the criminal laws of the United States or any state, committed by individuals or groups without any foreign direction, and appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, or influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States” (Congressional Research Service 2018). Kyle Shideler, the director and senior analyst for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy (a national security think tank founded by members of the Reagan administration’s national security team in 1988), opined that “Antifa’s activities clearly meet the definition of an organized criminal conspiracy and terrorism established by federal law” (Shideler 2020). Shideler has argued that Antifa-themed websites, such as CrimeInc. and It’s Going Down, exhort activists to commit violent acts in a similar style as al Qaeda’s online Inspire magazine or the Islamic State’s Dabiq propaganda outlet (Shideler 2020). Although individual activists could conceivably be charged with terrorism, inasmuch as there is no formal entity, designating Antifa as a terrorist organization would still be problematic. If Antifa were designated as a terrorist organization, conceivably those who affiliate with the movement could be subjected to prosecution under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act, which when it was enacted in 1970, was originally intended to target traditional organized crime syndicates, such as the Mafia. Members would not be punished for adhering to a specific ideology; rather, they would be prosecuted because Antifa participates in racketeering activities (Nadales 2020a). There have been specific episodes in which self-identified Antifa activists have been involved in violence that could be reasonably characterized as terrorism. For instance, on July 13, 2019, Willem van Spronsen, a 69-yearold carpenter, attacked a detention center located in Tacoma, Washington, which was being used by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to quarter immigrants. Spronsen hurled firebombs at the facility and cars parked on the street. Further, he attempted to ignite a 500-gallon propane tank that was attached to one of the facility’s buildings. Reportedly, Spronsen had fired rounds from a rifle after which he was shot dead by the police. Previously, Spronsen identified with the John Brown Gun Club. Before he commenced his attack, he sent a printed manifesto to friends in which he explicitly identified with Antifa: “I am antifa. I stand with comrades around the world who act from the love of life in every permutation. Comrades who understand that freedom means real freedom for all and a life worth living” (Ngo 2021). Numerous Antifa groups issued eulogies to Spronsen after news of his death was reported. One of his admirers, Connor Betts, carried out a deadly shooting in a Dayton neighborhood on August 4, 2019, killing nine people, including his sister and injuring twenty-seven others. The police responded to

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the shooting spree and killed Betts. Although he did not leave behind a manifesto, Betts maintained a Twitter account in which he voiced Antifa themes, such as “Kill every fascist” (Ngo 2021). It is not clear, however, that these killings were politically motivated or were carried out for other reasons. There is, though, at least one documented death stemming directly from Antifa violence. On August 20, 2020, Michael Forest Reinoehl, an Antifa activist, shot and killed Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a supporter of Patriot Prayer, after the latter participated in a pro-Trump caravan which drove through Portland, Oregon. On his Instagram account, Reinoehl identified himself as “100 percent antifa” and wrote lengthy posts about the need for violent revolution (Ngo 2021). A few days later on September 3, 2020, Reinoehl was shot and killed by a federally led fugitive task force in Lacey, Washington. If Antifa is eventually designated as a terrorist movement, an important question to ask would be who funds and supports it?

Antifa’s Funding and Support Network The fact that Antifa styles itself as anti-establishment has not prevented high-level public officials from voicing their support for the movement. For example, in January 2018, Keith Ellison, the attorney general for the state of Minnesota, tweeted his endorsement of Mark Bray’s sympathetic book Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Ngo 2021). Later, Ellison’s son openly declared his support for Antifa on Twitter as well (Nadales 2020a). Congresswomen Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Aryanna Pressley participated in fundraisers to bail Antifa activists out of jail (Nadales 2020b). In Portland, Oregon, Antifa received encouragement from the city government. Mayor Ted Wheeler voiced support for the protestors and ordered the police not to use tear gas as a method of crowd control (Ngo 2021). But on August 31, 2020, more than two hundred protestors marched on his condominium where his residential unit was located and demanded his resignation (Horowitz 2021). For her part, Oregon Governor, Kate Brown, resisted efforts by federal officials to restore order in the city (Ngo 2021). Even at the federal level, some officials appeared sympathetic. Although not specifically identifying Antifa, Senator, and vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris exclaimed on the TV program The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that the protestors were “not going to let up. And they should not, and we should not.” And during a 2020 presidential debate, when pressed by President Donald Trump if Joe Biden would condemn Antifa, the latter answered that Antifa was “an idea, not an organization” and countered that white supremacists posed a greater danger to the country (Bernstein 2020). Sympathetic attorneys and legal groups have assisted arrested Antifa activists. For instance, the National Lawyers Guild, a group with historic ties to the Communist Party United States, formally declared its support for Antifa on its website in 2017 (Ngo 2021). The International Antifa Defense Fund provides financial support to activists in 22 different countries (Shideler 2020).

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For years, George Soros has been the bête noire of the political right. A billionaire investor and philanthropist, he has donated billions of dollars to liberal causes, most notably, through his Open Society Foundations. It has become practically an article of faith in far right and conservative circles that Soros’s Open Society has been heavily involved in funding the protestors. For example, the popular Black conservative, Candace Owens, averred in a series of tweets that “The Minneapolis chief of police just confirmed that many of the protesters that are burning down the city are NOT FROM MINNEAPOLIS. My guess: As he did with Antifa, Democrat George Soros has these thugs on payroll. He is funding the chaos via his Open Society Foundation.”3 The implication was that Antifa and groups such as BLM were essentially “Astroturf” movements without much authentic grassroots support. For their part, defenders of these protests reject this conspiratorial characterization, arguing that it amounts to an insult to the initiative and agency of those who were involved in them (Tamkin 2020). To be sure, Soros has pushed hard for criminal justice reform as far back as the 1990s, long before it was popular. For example, backed by Soros then Baltimore Mayor, Kurt Schmoke, initiated efforts to decriminalize drug use and treat it through the public health system. Moreover, Soros funded numerous progressive prosecutors in district attorney races throughout the country (Tamkin 2020). And, in July 2020, the Open Society Foundations announced that it was investing $220 million in Black advocacy groups (Herndon 2020). But even Antifa’s most strident critics have failed to demonstrate a concrete connection between the movement and George Soros.4 As the former Antifa activist Gabriel Nadales recalled, no one ever paid him for protesting. He knew of no Antifa activists who ever received money from George Soros. Typically, Antifa groups raise money through sponsoring events such as concerts, cash donations, and selling merchandise. Some chapters have used internetbased crowdfunding technology, such as Rally.org or Fundrazer.com (Shideler 2020). Left-wing-oriented bookstores are sometimes used as venues for Antifa activists to congregate, raise money, and plan activities. Nadales rejected the notion of a national Antifa conspiracy orchestrated by elites. Instead, he asserts that “there are multiple localized efforts to disrupt events throughout the country in a classic grassroots manner” (Nadales 2020a). Social media have been crucial in this regard. As Siva Vaidhyannathan noted in his 2018 book Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, the popular platform tends to amplify content that hits strong emotional registers, whether joy or indignation. The algorithms that guide Facebook are designed to generate strong reaction, thus propagating the most provocative, polarizing messages and images. Highly charged content serves to feed our worst appetites (Vaidhyannathan 2018). These features make Facebook the ideal platform for foreign cyber operatives to incite disorder and undermine faith in the democratic process in the United States (Koffler 2021). Rumors abound that the Chinese Communist

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Party and the Kremlin have funded BLM, Antifa, and related protest groups in order to sow discord in America and weaken the fabric of the nation (Ries and Gonzales 2020 and Martyniuk 2020). This approach is consistent with the strategy of accelerationism, which is based on the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s notion of “worse is better” (Weeks 1980). The more chaotic conditions became in the capitalist nations, he reasoned, the greater likelihood that his Bolshevik party could succeed in their revolutionary goals. Therefore, the best course of action is to accelerate their demise by sowing chaos and creating political tension. In some instances, the agendas of America’s foreign adversaries and domestic revolutionary groups can align, thus fostering potential collaboration.

Conclusion: Antifa’s Endgame Inasmuch as Antifa is organized to explicitly oppose fascism, it amounts to the quintessential countermovement (Vysotsky 2021). The movement’s stated aim is to fight fascism and more broadly, any vestige of white supremacy. However, the concept of fascism is left ill-defined, as over time its definition has been inflated. The term is extremely vague in contemporary discourse, as Democrats and Republicans routinely lob insults like “dictator” or “fascist” to describe politicians of the other party who are in power. As the historian Roger Griffin once argued, the essence of fascism was a program of national renewal inspired by an ultranationalist “palingenetic myth” (Griffin 1993). Thus Griffin saw a strong revolutionary element in fascism and some variants of right-wing extremism. This could explain in part why Antifa so vehemently opposes fascists. Both could be viewed as rivals trying to win the hearts and minds of revolutionary-oriented youths who often share a similar demographic profile, viz., the white working class (Vysotsky 2021). Even one of Antifa’s most vociferous critics, Andy Ngo, sought to disabuse people of the notion that the movement is composed mainly of “upper-class spoiled brats.” In the course of his research, he found that although there are highly educated and white-collar activists, those involved in street violence were “disproportionately individuals dealing with housing insecurity, financial instability, and mental health issues like gender dysphoria” (Ngo 2021). The so-called horseshoe theory posits that the political left and right tend to converge on the extremes. But to date, there seems to be scant evidence for a meeting of the minds of the far left and far right. Nevertheless, some observers, such as Alexander Reid Ross, have noted a trend of “creeping fascism.” Rather than seeing a fascistization of the political left, it seems that the far right now seems more amenable to certain leftist principles such as opposition to neoliberalism and globalism (Ross 2017). Furthermore, as Mark Bray points out, fascist movements often appropriate the imagery, strategy, and culture of leftwing ideologies (Bray 2017). After all, the formal title of Hitler’s Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

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According to Stanislav Vysotsky, Antifa’s efforts are “prefigurative” in the sense that they are intended to create a new world that they envisage through everyday practices within a particular space in which they predominate (Vysotsky 2021). As an illustration, Antifa activists were instrumental in the creation of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) later called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, in June 2020. The protestors demanded a defunding of the local police and shifting the money to community programs and services in historically black communities (Gupta 2020). Although it was ostensibly established as an “anti-racist zone,” before long, activists began segregating along racial lines. Once the Seattle Police were given the directive to clear the area, the three-week siege was over (Ngo 2021). Overall, it is unlikely that this experiment endeared Antifa to the local population; during the period of occupation, there were a reported five shootings, two deaths, arson, property destruction, and several alleged sexual assaults (Burns 2020). More recently, five Antifa activists in Atlanta, Georgia, were arrested after they illegally occupied land where a future public safety training center is planned to be built. One protestor was killed during a confrontation with the police (Sassoon and Rojas 2023). Arguably since World War II, anti-fascism has been an integral part of the Zeitgeist. The foundational myth of the contemporary West came to be characterized as the struggle against fascism and racism as exemplified by the so-called “last good war” or World War II. Essentially, the new dispensation was intended to prevent the return of Adolf Hitler and any form of totalitarianism. To be sure, as R. R. Reno explained in his book Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West, this “post war consensus” developed for good reasons, as totalitarianism in its various forms took a tremendous human toll during the twentieth century. But as he sees it, the most serious threat we face today is not a resurgence of fascism, but a decline in solidarity and breakdown of trust between the leaders and the led. An oligarchical and unaccountable elite pose a far more serious threat in his mind to the future of liberal democracy than the return of Hitler. It is this Manichean outlook that Reno posits that “blinds our leadership class to the realities of the twenty-first century, poisoning our politics with an all-ornothing moralism that is self-serving as it is destructive.” This hyper-moralistic sense of mission—“either us or Hitler!”—ultimately prevents us from dealing with the real and most pressing issues of the day. Reno warns it is the rich and powerful, not the populists, who will shipwreck our nations (Reno 2019; Gottfried 2021). Bray admonishes his readers to right “everyday fascism” meaning not only unabashed far rightists, but also conservative populists and MAGA supporters as well. He points out that when local fascist organizing declines, so does local anti-fascist organizing (Bray 2017). But this admonition seems open-ended, leading to an unending crusade to combat any form of political conservatism: “Our goal should be that in twenty years those who voted for Trump are

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too uncomfortable to share that fact in public. We may not always be able to change someone’s beliefs, but we sure as hell can make it politically, socially, economically, and sometimes physically costly to articulate them” (Bray 2017). But the issues that give rise to the far right—to wit—massive immigration concomitant with fears of white demographic displacement, remain salient issues, not only to right-wing extremists, but also to many ordinary white Americans. There is certainly an element of fact to the Great Replacement narrative in the sense that white ethnic demographic groups have been declining vis-à-vis non-whites in the West.5 Thus it remains likely that conservative populism will remain a force with which to be reckoned for the foreseeable future. Hence, the opposition, viz., Antifa will persist as well. Concomitant with these developments is the shrill rhetoric from the political left which castigates white people as morally inferior and inherently evil, for example, the popularity of the “white privilege” discourse in academia. For the far right, these are ominous indications that the future for white people in twenty-first-century America is precarious. Increasingly, these anxieties are finding expression in the mainstream.6 In his 2019 book White Shift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities, Eric Kaufman predicted that as whites decline as a proportion of the population in the West, the confidence that incubated political liberalism was likely to wane; hence, he sees a growing unwillingness on the part of the white masses to indulge in the anti-white ideology of the cultural left (Kaufmann 2019). As the political scientist Francis Fukuyama pointed out, liberal democracy is currently under attack both by the progressive left and the populist right. As he notes, classical liberalism can best be understood as an institutional solution to the problem of governing over diversity. He is concerned that if diverse societies move away from liberal principles and instead try to base national identity on race, ethnicity, or religion, they could be inviting a return to violent conflict (Fukuyama 2020). Perhaps most troubling is the return of urban unrest on a scope and scale that the nation has ever experienced before. In a worst-case scenario, America could become a failed state. The continuing political and social polarization in the United States and the seeming reticence on the part of federal, state, and local authorities to deal resolutely with increasing urban crime make what formerly seemed fantastical to be within the realm of possibility. Although it still seems unlikely that Antifa will lead a vanguard to dismantle capitalism and install a socialist/anarchist regime, the damage it wreaks on civil society could be incalculable.

Notes 1. Nadales. Behind the Mask, p. 112. The landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brandenburg v. Ohio (1960) centered on Clarence Brandenburg, the leader of an Ohio-based Ku Klux Klan organization in the 1950s. During a rally, which

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2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

was filmed by reporters, Brandenburg expressed his desire to expatriate JewishAmericans and African-Americans to Israel and Africa respectively. Moreover, several of his fellow Klansmen were shown to be armed with firearms. Based on this film, Ohio authorities charged Brandenburg with violating the Ohio Syndicalism law enacted in 1919 which forbade the spread of unpatriotic views and the advocacy criminal syndicalism. In Whitney v. California (1927) and Dennis v. United States (1951), the Court upheld the right of the state to proscribe advocacy of violent means of effecting political change. However in Brandenburg the Court sought to distinguish between the abstract advocacy of the use of force or law violation and the actual planning of an illegal act that was likely to result in its likely fulfillment. In doing so, the Court overruled Whitney v. California by deciding that the mere abstract advocacy of an illegal act that was not likely to incite or produce an illegal action was protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. In the Court’s view, Brandenburg’s actions did not constitute a “clear and present danger.” For more on Brandenburg v. Ohio see Lee Epstein and Thomas G. Walker. Constitutional Law for a Changing America. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1992), pp. 143–145. First propounded in 1982, the Broken Windows Theory posits that when visible signs of crime and social disorder (e.g., broken windows left unrepaired) prevail it creates an atmosphere where both minor and serious crime can flourish. The recommended policy is to remove these signs of dysfunction and foster the semblance of order. George Kelling and James Q. Wilson, “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” The Atlantic, (March 1982), https:// www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/. See https://twitter.com/RealCandaceO/status/1266061954285740033?s=20. For example, I found no references to a connection between Soros in Andy Ngo’s Unmasked, Dinesh D’Souza’s United States of Socialism, David Horowitz’s I Can’t Breathe, or Mark R. Levin’s American Marxism. However, a Project Veritas investigation did purport to uncover that George Soros funded a group called Refuse Fascism, a far left anti-fascist group similar to Antifa. Matthew Vadum, “The Murky Money Trail,” in Kyle Shideler (ed.). Unmasking Antifa: Five Perspectives on a Growing Threat. (Washington, D.C.: The Center for Security Policy, 2020), p. 85. For more on Camus and the great replacement, see José Pedro Zúquete. The Identitarians: The Movement Against Globalism and Islam in Europe. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018), pp. 146–151. Although the Great Replacement is often castigated as a baseless conspiracy theory, some liberal academics and journalists have essentially recognized it while adding a sense of triumphalism in that whites would be reduced to minority status with a concomitant loss of political, social, and cultural influence. See for example, Michelle Goldberg, “We Can Replace Them.” The New York Times, October 29, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/opinion/staceyabrams-georgia-governor-election-brian-kemp.html. For instance, back in 2018, the popular Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham sparked controversy when she opined on her television segment that the “America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore” because of “massive demographic changes that have been foisted upon the American people.” Laura

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Ingraham: Demographic changes ‘national emergency’” BBC News, August 10 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45146811.

References Alinsky, Saul D., Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (New York: Vintage Books, 1971). “Antifa—Background,” Congressional Research Service, March 1, 2018, https://crs reports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10839/2. Benner, Katie, “Justice Dept. to Take Aim at Antigovernment Extremists,” The New York Times, June 28, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/politics/ justice-department-protests-violence.html. Bernstein, Brittany, “Biden Says Antifa Is ‘an Idea, Not an Organization’ During Presidential Debate,” National Review, September 29, 2020, https://www.nation alreview.com/news/biden-says-antifa-is-an-idea-not-an-organization-during-presid ential-debate/. Bray, Mark. Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. (Brooklyn & London: Melville House, 2017). Burns, Katelyn, “The Violent End of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, Explained,” Vox, July 2, 2020, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/ 7/2/21310109/chop-chaz-cleared-violence-explained. Concha, Joe, “Fox News Twitter Account Dark for Days Due to Tucker Carlson Home Threats,” The Hill, November 12, 2018, https://thehill.com/homenews/ media/416184-fox-news-twitter-account-dark-for-days-due-to-tucker-carlsonhome-threats/. Donaghue, Erin, “Two Autopsies Both Find George Floyd Died by Homicide, but Differ on Some Key Details,” CBS News, June 4, 2020, https://www.cbsnews.com/ news/george-floyd-death-autopsies-homicide-axphyxiation-details/. D’Souza, Dinesh, United States of Socialism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020). Ferguson, Todd, “Youth Against Hate: Anti-Racist Action as a New Citizens’ Movement,” Unpublished paper, December 2000a. Ferguson, Todd, “A Case Study of Racist Extremism and Disintegrative Social Sanctioning,” Unpublished paper, December 2000b. Fukuyama, Francis, “Liberalism and Its Discontents,” American Purpose, October 5, 2020, https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/liberalism-and-its-discontent/. Goff, Kerby and John D. McCarthy, “No, Antifa Didn’t ‘Infiltrate’ Black Lives Matter During the 2020 Protests. But Did It Increase Violence?,” The Washington Post, February 8, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/08/ antifa-blm-extremism-violence/. Gottfried, Paul, Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2021). Griffin, Roger, The Nature of Fascism (New York: Routledge, 1993). Gupta, Aiun, “Seattle’s CHOP Went Out with Both a Bang and a Whimper,” The Intercept, July 2, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/seattle-chop-zonepolice/. Herndon, Astead W., “George Soros’s Foundation Pours $220 Million into Racial Equality Push,” The New York Times, July 13, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/ 2020/07/13/us/politics/george-soros-racial-justice-organizations.html.

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Higgins, Tucker, “3 More Cops Charged in George Floyd Death, Other Officer’s Murder Charge Upgraded,” CNBC, June 3, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/ 06/03/3-more-cops-charged-in-george-floyd-death-other-officers-murder-chargeupgraded.html. Horowitz, David. I Can’t Breathe: How a Racial Hoax Is Killing America (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 2021, p. 22. Johnson, Jason, “Why Violent Crime Surged After Police Across America Retreated,” USA Today, April 9, 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/ 2021/04/09/violent-crime-surged-across-america-after-police-retreated-column/ 7137565002/. Kaufmann, Eric, Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities (New York: Abrams Press, 2019). Kenney, Michael and Colin Clarke, “What Antifa Is, What It Isn’t, and Why It Matters,” War on the Rocks, June 23, 2020, https://warontherocks.com/2020/ 06/what-antifa-is-what-it-isnt-and-why-it-matters/. Kingson, Jennifer A., “Exclusive: $1 Billion-Plus Riot Damage Is Most Expensive in Insurance History,” Axios, September 16, 2020, https://www.axios.com/riots-costproperty-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html. Koffler, Renekah, Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 2021). Lind, Dara, “The ‘Ferguson Effect,’ a Theory That’s Warping the American Crime Debate, Explained,” Vox, May 18, 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/5/18/116 83594/ferguson-effect-crime-police. MacFarquhar, Neil, “Many Claim Extremists are Sparking Protest Violence. But Which Extremists?,” The New York Times, June 22, 2020, https://www.nytimes. com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-protests-white-supremacists-antifa.html/. Martyniuk, Jaroslaw, “What Do Russia, Antifa and Black Lives Matter Have in Common?,” Ukrainian Weekly, June 26, 2020, https://www.ukrweekly.com/ uwwp/what-do-russia-antifa-and-black-lives-matter-have-in-common/. Michael, George, Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012). Nadales, Gabriel. Behind the Mask: My Time as an Antifa Activist (New York and Nashville: Bombardier Books, 2020a). Nadales, Gabriel, “Not an Organization, but a Movement,” in Kyle Shideler (ed.). Unmasking Antifa: Five Perspectives on a Growing Threat (Washington, DC: The Center for Security Policy, 2020b), p. 33. Ngo, Andy, Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy (New York: Center Street, 2021). Perira, Ivan, “Independent Autopsy Finds George Floyd Died of Homicide by Asphyxia,” ABC News, June 1, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/US/independentautopsy-george-floyd-findings-announced/story?id=70994827. Polumbo, Brad, “George Floyd Riots Caused Record-Setting $2 Billion in Damage, New Report Says. Here’s Why the True Cost Is Even Higher,” Foundation for Economic Education, September 16, 2020, https://fee.org/articles/george-floydriots-caused-record-setting-2-billion-in-damage-new-report-says-here-s-why-thetrue-cost-is-even-higher/.

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Reno, R. R., Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 2019). Ross, Alexander Reid. Against the Fascist Creep (Chico, CA and Edinburgh, Scotland: AK Press, 2017). Ries, Lora and Mike Gonzales, “Is Beijing Funding Riots in America? It’s Time to Investigate,” The Heritage Foundation, September 17, 2020, https://www.heritage. org/asia/commentary/beijing-funding-riots-america-its-time-investigate. Roston, Aram, “American Antifa. A Woman’s Journey from Girl Scout to Anarchist Street Warrior,” Reuters, August 25, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/ special-report/usa-antifa-profile/. Sassoon, Alessandro Marazzi and Rick Rojas, “Protester Killed in Firefight at Site of New Atlanta Police Center,” The New York Times, January 18, 2023, https://www. nytimes.com/2023/01/18/us/atlanta-police-center-protester-killed.html. Shideler, Kyle, “Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Judiciary CommitteeSubcommittee on the Constitution,” in Kyle Shideler (ed.). Unmasking Antifa: Five Perspectives on a Growing Threat (Washington, DC: The Center for Security Policy, 2020). Smith, Erin, “The Tactics of Antifa,” in Kyle Shideler (ed.). Unmasking Antifa: Five Perspectives on a Growing Threat (Washington, DC: The Center for Security Policy, 2020), pp. 56–59. Stack, Liam, “Attack on Alt-Right Leader Has Internet Asking: Is It O.K. to Punch a Nazi?” The New York Times, January 21, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/ 01/21/us/politics/richard-spencer-punched-attack.html. Tamkin, Emily, “The Right Is Trying to Link George Soros and George Floyd Protests. Don’t Let It,” Think, June 5, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/think/ opinion/right-trying-link-george-soros-george-floyd-protests-don-t-ncna1225446. Turley, Jonathan, “Why Trump’s Tweet About Labeling ‘Antifa’ a Terrorist Group Is So Dangerous,” Los Angeles Times, June 1, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/opi nion/story/2020-06-01/antifa-protests-donald-trump-terrorist-group. Vaidhyannathan, Siva, Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Vysotsky, Stanislav, American Antifa: The Tactics, Culture, and Practice of Militant Antifascism (New York: Routledge, 2021). Weeks, Albert, “The Long Shadow of Lenin’s ‘Worse Is Better’,” The Christian Science Monitor, April 23, 1980, https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0423/042334.html. Wheaton, Elizabeth, Code Name Greenkil: The 1979 Greensboro Killings (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1987).

CHAPTER 3

Are Right-Wing Americans Really More Tolerant of Political Violence? George Hawley

Introduction For the last several years, scholars, think tanks, journalists, and politicians have expressed alarm about apparent increases in right-wing political violence in the U.S. and other countries. The so-called Alt-Right, a white nationalist movement in the U.S., achieved international attention after its 2017 rally in Charlottesville, VA turned deadly. Groups like the Proud Boys have sought to intimidate left-wing protesters and activists (Reid and Valasik 2020). The apparent popularity of the QAnon movement, which puts forth preposterous conspiracy theories about left-wing elites, seems to indicate that a good portion of right-leaning Americans have become completely unhinged from reality (Rothschild 2021). The Capitol riots of January 6 raised concerns that a growing percentage of former President Trump’s base had come to reject democracy entirely. Based on events in the news, paranoia about right-wing violence seems justified. In an age of strong affective polarization, certain questions are very difficult to consider dispassionately. For an emotionally charged issue like political violence, analysis that will satisfy readers across the ideological spectrum may be impossible. The specific question of which side of the ideological spectrum is more inclined toward extremism and violence is particularly tricky to answer, as the issue is inherently subjective. What one person considers “extreme” might be described as “common sense” by someone else. The G. Hawley (B) University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_3

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difference between a “peaceful protesting” and “rioting and looting” often seems to be determined by the partisan allegiances of the observer. This chapter considers only a small element of extremism, which itself is a term often used without being defined (Backes 2007; Lowe 2017; Bötticher 2017). This chapter does not consider the substantive content of different ideologies or party identifications (left or right), and instead looks only at one particularly concerning aspect of political extremism: the willingness to use or excuse violence as a political tool. Extremism and violence are not necessarily connected, as one might hold very extreme views and remain committed to non-violent political tactics; similarly, one might theoretically endorse violent tactics in support of a moderate policy agenda and democratic values. That said, political extremism and political violence are correlated, to the point that some scholars challenge the notion that we can disaggregate violent from nonviolent political extremism (Schmid 2014).

The Question When it comes to academic discourse, the left has a decided advantage. Progressives have many trenchant critiques of how contemporary universities operate, but there is no question that conservatives are massively underrepresented in the social sciences and humanities. This is not a recent development. One result of this imbalance is that there is a massive discrepancy, in terms of research, when it comes to ideological extremism. There is an impressive quantity of research, some very good, on the subject of right-wing extremism. Left-wing extremism, however, tends to be treated as a non-issue or as an easily managed problem, especially after the Cold War’s conclusion and the collapse of most communist movements. It is not necessarily unreasonable for scholars to focus especially on rightwing extremism and violence. Although this will vary according to measures used, groups that study political violence, such as the Anti-Defamation League in the U.S., typically find that right-wing violence is more pervasive than leftwing violence (Pitcavage 2021). We may want to look at reports from these kinds of groups with at least some skepticism, however. Anti-extremism groups often have an ideological agenda of their own, and the choices they make regarding how violent actions are classified may exaggerate the threat of rightwing or racist extremists while downplaying or excusing comparable actions by actors on the left (Zenn 2023; Bale and Bar-On 2022). This asymmetry leads to certain blind spots in academic discourse. Not only has right-wing extremism been studied extensively, its definition seems to be persistently expanding. Conservatives who fail to keep up with the Zeitgeist can find themselves labeled “extremists” simply for holding the same positions they have always held. Conservatives’ willingness to reject progressive scholars as ideologues who should be ignored is bolstered by the history of social scientists pathologizing conservative thought, treating it as a problem to be explained and then solved. At least since Adorno and colleagues wrote The

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Authoritarian Personality (1950), many social scientists have treated rightwing or conservative thinking as inherently problematic, treating it as a kind of personality disorder, or mental illness, rather than a legitimate approach to politics and society. To further complicate matters, many progressives have apparently expanded the definition of violence to include things that are obviously not violent. The words on many placards observers witnessed in recent protests about racial justice, “white silence is violence,” indicate that merely doing nothing in response to injustice should be classified as a violent act. This understandably frustrates many conservatives and centrists, as it suggests anyone not in full and active agreement with a progressive agenda is aligned with violent right-wing extremists (Turley 2020). This expanding definition of right-wing violence and extremism also raises concerns about threat inflation, which we learned during the Global War on Terror can result in fruitless, wasteful, and even counter-productive policies that trample on the civil rights of innocent people (Zenn 2023). Over the course of the years 2020 and 2021, the ideological and partisan gap in views on political violence arguably reached a recent historical peak. Throughout the summer of 2020, following the death of George Floyd, protesters took to the streets across the nation, calling for racial justice. Many of these protests included acts of violence, including arson and murder— though the overwhelming majority of protesters did not engage in these acts. Although not every act of vandalism or assault was associated with a particular group, conservatives zeroed in on “Antifa”—short for anti-fascist—activists as the source of riots and violence. Antifa famously does not disavow violent actions as part of their political toolkit, though they insist that they are only seeking to protect vulnerable populations (Bray 2017). To the frustration of many conservatives, much of the media’s coverage of these events seemed to downplay the violence, focusing instead on the protesters’ grievances. In contrast, conservative media personalities during this period gave the impression that protesters and rioters had transformed many large American cities into violent, dystopian wastelands. Conservatives expressed great frustration that left-wing violence and disorder was not receiving the attention it warranted. From their perspective, the media and progressive politicians were downplaying the chaos left-winger had unleashed on the streets of America, hiding the truth from the public for ideological reasons. According to conservative commentator Sean Hannity, “They know about Antifa. They know about these anarchists. They know the risks they pose. They have let this build and build and build and do nothing to stop the violence” (Creitz 2020). The question of partisan and ideological asymmetry of reactions when it comes to political violence was again raised after the Capitol riots that occurred on January 6, 2021. Right-wing insurgents, some influenced by QAnon conspiracy theories, some open white nationalists, and some who were apparently just ordinary Trump supporters, stormed the Capitol Building, in

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an attempt to keep Joe Biden’s victory from being certified. Whereas much of the left talked about the event in almost apocalyptic terms, much of the right treated it as no big deal, as little more than a case of loitering or trespassing. Many Americans expressed concern that one poll indicated that as many as one third of Americans believe violence against the government is acceptable (Balz et al. 2022). Other research also suggests that public acceptance of political violence is increasing (Diamond et al. 2020), and violent hostility toward political out-group is becoming a problem in both the Republican and Democratic parties (Kalmoe and Mason 2022). Predicting political violence is usually a task outside the realm of political science, and it is outside the scope of this study, as well. My question, instead, is whether people on the left or the right side of the U.S. political divide are more prone to justify political violence. It is not immediately obvious that there should be a tremendous gap between conservatives and liberals in the U.S. on the subject of political violence. Based on the rhetoric of political and ideological elites, prominent voices on both sides are sincerely convinced that their opponents are the source of most significant political violence in the country and can make compelling arguments for their positions. There seems to be a strong case to the idea that people on the left would be willing to at least endorse the possibility of violence. People on the far left are presumably the primary constituencies for revolutionary politics; a tradition associated with violence—though the two are not always connected. Furthermore, as the ideology committed to equality (Bobbio 1994), the left can reasonably claim that, because the groups they support are structurally and systematically disadvantaged in the political realm, certain tactics, including civil disobedience and sometimes violence or the threat of violence, may be necessary to have their grievances acknowledged and remedied (Nimtz 2016). Conservatives, almost by definition, are wary of social disorder, and the fact that they identify as conservative implies that they do not find the status quo completely intolerable. The American conservative movement has also taken pride in its history of purging elements from its ranks that it finds too radical, strange, or intolerant (Hawley 2016, 2022). The modern American conservative movement has also furiously denounced left-wing social disorder from its inception, and mostly endorsed a Burkean approach to social change, emphasizing incremental improvements and respect for tradition (Nash 1979). On the other hand, it is very difficult for the American conservative political tradition to disavow violence entirely. After all, the American Revolution, which most conservatives celebrate, was a violent overthrow of the existing political structure. American conservatism has furthermore always had an element of prickly libertarianism, along with an implied threat to overthrow the government yet again if it oversteps its constitutional bounds. We see the most extreme manifestation of this in the U.S. militia movement and patriot groups such as the Oath Keepers (Jackson 2020). Other scholars and journalists have recently raised alarms about the dangers of “Christian nationalism”

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(Whitehead and Perry 2020), which some scholars suggest is strongly associated with support for political violence (Armaly et al. 2022). White identity and racial resentment are also apparently associated with tolerance for political violence (Armaly and Enders forthcoming), and both of these traits tend to be positively correlated with conservatism. Any analysis of this kind must be mindful of the broader context. We can reasonably expect that Republicans and Democrats will differ in their tolerance for political violence depending on the nation’s political and social circumstances. That is, at a time when left-wing violence is salient, we can expect more conservative Americans to express particular disgust toward political violence. We should expect the opposite in periods when right-wing violence is in the news. More broadly, we should keep in mind that other social and economic trends, such as growing inequality, can result in greater support for violence (Sigelman and Simpson 1977). There is also evidence that elite political rhetoric can increase or decrease the public’s tolerance for political violence. Kalmoe (2014) found in a survey experiment that violent political rhetoric, even very mild violent metaphors, was associated with more support for political violence—though the effect was primarily found among people with aggressive personality traits. Piazza (2020) found that “hate speech” from political leaders is associated with increased domestic terrorism, which is congruent with other research indicating that exposure to uncivil speech from political elites can trigger anger and incivility among the broader public (Gervais 2017). Piazza (2022) additionally found that politicians that refuse to concede defeat in fair democratic elections are also likely to inspire political violence.

Methods and Findings I consider this question using the 2020 American National Election Survey (ANES). Specifically, the survey asked the helpful question, “How much do you feel it is justified for people to use violence to pursue their political goals in this country?” For responses, subjects could choose, “not at all,” “a little,” “a moderate amount,” “a lot,” and “a great deal.” The distribution of these attitudes can be seen in Fig. 3.1. Examining the data, we may take some comfort in knowing that the overwhelming majority of Americans (more than four-fifths) say that political violence is “not at all” justified. All other options are in the single digits when it comes to support. This is encouraging, as it suggests political violence is extremely unpopular in the U.S. Furthermore, given the paltry numbers that favor, or will at list excuse, political violence, we can be confident that no major political faction in the U.S. is going to endorse a campaign of mass political violence in the near future. We may, nonetheless, find that one side of the political divide is more willing to support violent actions in support of a political or social cause.

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90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Not at all

A little

A moderate amount

A lot

A great deal

Fig. 3.1 How justified is violence in support of political goals?

Figure 3.2 helps us discern whether these trends differ by ideology. The ANES helpfully provides a seven-point ideology scale (ranging from “extremely liberal” to “extremely conservative”). Rather than create a mean score based on the five categories, I instead show the percentage of subjects in each ideological category that says that violence is “not at all” justified. Once again, we see that opposition to all violence is the norm across the political spectrum. However, opposition to violence, at least among these respondents at one point in time, was particularly strong among conservatives. More than 90% of all conservatives, whether strong or weak conservatives, argued that violence is not at all justified. Among liberals, consistent non-violence was also the approach of every category, but that norm was much weaker among those describing themselves as “extremely liberal.” Among these subjects, only about 68% stated that violence was never an acceptable means to achieving political goals.

Fig. 3.2 % opposed to all violence by ideology

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To gain further understanding of which variables predict support for political violence, it is necessary to conduct a regression analysis. This will allow us to determine if the apparent ideological gap on this question is spurious. For a variable like this, there are various possible modeling strategies. One option would be to simply treat the political violence variable as continuous and examine the question using an OLS model. This is likely inappropriate given the categorical nature of these data. We should also keep in mind that each of the pro-violence positions was found appealing by a very small percentage of the sample. Furthermore, the wording of the question makes it somewhat difficult to distinguish between different possible answers; how does one distinguish between saying violence is justified “a lot” or “a great deal”? For this reason, I chose to collapse all of the pro-violence positions into a single category, aware of the fact that this requires losing some information.1 This allowed for the creation of a logit model in which the dependent variable has two possibilities: political violence is never justified or it is sometimes justified. We are particularly interested in the relationship ideology and partisanship have with beliefs about political violence. The model’s measure of ideology is based on a self-reported seven-point scale ranging from “extremely liberal” to “extremely conservative.” Higher values indicate greater conservatism. Partisanship is in the model as a series of dummy variables, with independents serving as the base category. So-called independent leaners—those independents that, when pushed, admit to preferring one party over the other—are included in the model as partisans, as this group has historically acted more like partisans than like true independents (Keith et al. 1992). The model also controlled for standard demographic characteristics that may influence views on political violence. Education is in the model as a dichotomous variable indicating whether the survey respondent had completed a college degree. The model also includes controls for gender, as well as racial/ethnic classification (with non-Hispanic whites serving as the base category). Age and income are also in the model, and both are broken up into a series of categorical variables. The model can be found in Table 3.1. According to the model (which presents coefficients as odds ratios), compared to independents, and controlling for all other variables, Republicans are only 0.6 times as likely to believe political violence is ever justified. It is notable that there was not statistically significant difference between Democrats and independents on this question. The results for ideology clearly show that higher levels of conservatism, on average, are associated with lower tolerance for political violence. Figure 3.3 demonstrates this relationship. Figure 3.3 demonstrates the meaningful ideological divide on the question of political violence. Even after controlling for a myriad of relevant variables, we continue to see that the most left-wing Americans were the most willing to accept violence as a legitimate political tool. However, these results also indicate that overwhelming majorities of Americans of all major ideological groups—including the far left—oppose political violence completely.

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Table 3.1 Logit model for supporting political violence Republican Democrat Conservatism (seven-point scale) College degree Female Black Hispanic Asian American Age 30–44 Age 45–64 Age 65+ Age unknown Income quartile 2 Income quartile 3 Income quartile 4 Income unknown Constant Observations Log pseudolikelihood *p < 0.05 Source 2020 ANES

Fig. 3.3 Probability of supporting political violence

Odds ratio

Robust Std. Err.

0.60 0.94 0.82

(0.11)* (0.15) (0.04)*

1.59 0.88 1.62 2.23 2.28 0.61 0.32 0.22 0.46 0.59 0.51 0.45 0.42 1.08 7013 −2512.9562

(0.20)* (0.09)* (0.29)* (0.32)* (0.53)* (0.08)* (0.05)* (0.04)* (0.16)* (0.08)* (0.08)* (0.07)* (0.11)* (0.27)*

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Although not the primary focus of this article, the model shows other interesting results. For example, although the odds ratio indicates that women are less tolerant of political violence than men, the effect was outside the bounds of statistical significance, thus we cannot rule out the possibility that men and women do not actually differ on this issue. The results for race and ethnicity are also intriguing. They show that blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans are, on average and controlling for all other variables, more tolerant of political violence than non-Hispanic whites. These results also indicate that, of minority racial groups, Asian Americans are the most likely to support political violence compared to the base category—the odds ratio indicates Asian Americans are 2.28 times as likely to believe political violence is at least sometimes justified. Future research should follow up on this finding, as the explanation for this result is not immediately obvious. Although income and education are correlated with each other, they have opposite effects on beliefs about political violence. Compared to Americans without a college degree, those with a college degree are 1.5 times as likely to believe political violence can be justified. On the other hand, compared to the base quartile, people with higher incomes are much less likely to support political violence. Older people are also much less likely to support political violence than people under the age of 30—people older than 65 were only 0.22 times as likely to support any kind of political violence as people in their late teens and 20s. The relationship between education and support for violence is a curious finding, but not entirely unsurprising, as studies of political violence have historically found that education sometimes has a pacifying effect, and in other instances it is associated with a greater likelihood to engage in terrorism (Østby et al. 2019).

Discussion and Conclusion Before considering which individual traits predict support for violence, we should again note just how little support political violence in the U.S. has among the general public. It is notable that this finding comes from a year (2020) in which political violence across the political spectrum seemed to be surging. These findings are congruent other recent research indicating that political scientists, journalists, and pundits have drastically overstated public support for political violence (Westwood et al. 2022). This is important and should be noted with greater frequency. Perhaps ironically, constantly promoting inaccurate narratives about growing support for political violence itself promotes support for political violence, and correcting misperceptions about this can decrease that support (Mernyk et al. 2022). When reading or conducting analysis such as this, it is always important to keep in mind the specific context in which the survey took place. In this paper, the data I examined can only provide a snapshot from one brief period of American history. The specific circumstances of 2020 may have influenced these results. The combination of an election in which many on

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the left believed the president was a literal fascist, along with a summer in which protests for racial justice dominated the news cycle, may have created an environment in which progressives were especially likely to view violence as an acceptable political tool. In other years, with different issues salient to the public, we may see different results. Ideally, we should use longitudinal data, in which a representative sample of the U.S. public is asked the same or very similar questions many times over multiple years. I hope that the ANES continues to ask questions about political violence long into the future. In spite of these caveats, these data indicate that partisan Republicans and ideological conservatives are not more willing to excuse violence than their counterparts on the left. In fact, all evidence indicates that the left is more supportive of political violence than the right—though even on the far left, support for political violence of any kind remains a minority position. We should also note that supporting political violence as an abstract concept is very different from engaging in violence in the real world. This study does not shed light on this question. Support for violence is only one facet of extremism, and we should not exaggerate the significance of these findings. Although too many scholars and pundits overstate the right’s predilection toward violence, the solution is not to exaggerate the left’s violent proclivities. Nonetheless, if we are going to have a discussion of political violence in the U.S., we should not limit our concern and analysis to the right.

Note 1. I compared various models when analyzing these data, creating an OLS model, an ordered logit model, a multinomial logit model, and a logit model (presented in this paper). The results from each model were substantively similar.

References Adorno, Theodor, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950). Armaly, Miles T., and Adam Enders, “Who Supports Political Violence?,” forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics. Armaly, Miles T., David T. Buckley, and Adam M. Enders, “Christian Nationalism and Political Violence: Victimhood, Racial Identity, Conspiracy, and Support for the Capitol Attacks,” Political Behavior, 44(2022): 937–960. Backes, Uwe, “Meaning and Forms of Political Extremism in Past and Present,” Central European Political Studies Review, 4(2007): 242–262. Bale, Jeffrey M., and Tamir Bar-On, Fighting the Last War: Confusion, Partisanship, and Alarmism in the Literature on the Radical Right (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2022). Balz, Dan, Scott Clement, and Emily Guskin, “Republicans and Democrats Divided Over Jan. 6 Insurrection and Trump’s Culpability, Post-UMD Poll Finds,” The

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Washington Post, January 1, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ 2022/01/01/post-poll-january-6/. Bobbio, Norberto, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Bötticher, Astrid, “Towards Academic Consensus Definitions of Radicalism and Extremism,” Perspectives on Extremism, 11(2017): 73–77. Bray, Mark, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2017). Creitz, Charles, “Sean Hannity Calls Out Dem Leaders of Cities Ravaged by Riots: ‘Spectacular Failure on Every Level’,” Fox News, June 1, 2020, https://www.fox news.com/media/sean-hannity-george-floyd-cities-ravaged-riots. Diamond, Larry, Lee Drutman, Tod Lindberg, Nathan P. Kalmoe, and Lilliana Mason, “Americans Increasingly Believe Violence Is Justified if the Other Side Wins,” Politico, October 9, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/ 01/political-violence-424157. Gervais, Bryan T., “More Than Mimicry? The Role of Anger in Uncivil Reactions to Elite Political Incivility,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 29(2017): 384–405. Hawley, George, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2016). ———, Conservatism in a Divided America: The Right and Identity Politics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022). Jackson, Sam, Oath Keepers: Patriotism and the Edge of Violence in a Rightwing Antigovernment Group (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020). Kalmoe, Nathan, “Fueling the Fire: Violent Metaphors, Trait Aggression, and Support for Political Violence,” Political Communication, 31(2014): 545–563. Kalmoe, Nathan, and Lilliana Mason, Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2022). Keith, Bruce E., David B. Magleby, Candice J. Nelson, Elizabeth A. Orr, Mark C. Westlye, Raymond E. Wolfinger, The Myth of the Independent Voter (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992). Lowe, David, “Prevent Strategies: The Problems Associated in Defining Extremism: The Case of the United Kingdom,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 40(2017): 917–933. Mernyk, Joseph S., Sophia L. Pink, James N. Druckman, and Robb Willer, “Correcting Inaccurate Metaperceptions Reduces Americans’ Support for Partisan Violence,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(2022): e2116851119. Nash, George, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1979). Nimtz, August H., “Violence and/or Nonviolence in the Success of the Civil Rights Movement: The Malcolm X–Martin Luther King, Jr. Nexus,” New Political Science, 1(2016): 1–22. Østby, Gudrun, Henrik Urdal, and Kendra Dupuy, “Does Education Lead to Pacification? A Systematic Review of Statistical Studies on Education and Political Violence,” Review of Educational Research, 89(2019): 46–92. Piazza, James A., “Political Hate Speech and Domestic Terrorism,” International Interactions, 46(2020): 431–453.

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———, “Sore Losers: Does Terrorism and Approval of Terrorism Increase in Democracies When Election Losers Refuse to Accept Election Results?,” Political Research Quarterly, 75(2022): 1201–1215. Pitcavage, Mark, Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2020 (New York City: Anti-Defamation League, 2021). Reid, Shannon E., and Matthew Valasik, Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2020). Rothschild, Mike, The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything (New York: Mellville House, 2021). Schmid, Alex P., “Violent and Non-Violent Extremism: Two Sides of the Same Coin?,” ICCT Research Paper, 1(2014): 1–29. Sigelman, Lee, and Miles Simpson, “A Cross-National Test of the Linkage Between Economic Inequality and Political Violence,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 21(1977): 105–128. Turley, Jonathan, “How ‘Silence Is Violence’ Threatens True Tree Speech and Public Civility,” The Hill, August 29, 2020, https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/514 251-how-silence-is-violence-threatens-true-free-speech-and-public-civility/. Westwood, Sean J., Justin Grimmer, and Clayton Nall, “Current Research Overstates American Support for Political Violence,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(2022): e2116870119. Whitehead, Andrew L., and Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). Zenn, Jacob, “War on Terror 2.0: Threat Inflation and Conflation of Far-Right and White Supremacist Terrorism After the Capitol ‘Insurrection’,” Critical Studies on Terrorism, 16(2023): 62–97.

CHAPTER 4

Examining Equity, Extremism, and Left–Right Reciprocal Radicalization Jacob Zenn

Introduction In the study of the contemporary U.S. “far-right,” the August 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right (UtR) rally is a seminal turning point. It brought together an ostensibly reclusive, dormant, or obscure U.S. white supremacist movement into the open for the first time in decades through the inspiration of President Donald Trump and networking effects of social media platforms that the “alt-right”1 utilized until its followers were widely banned after UtR. Further, Trump’s response to UtR was perceived as “morally bankrupt” after counter-protestor Heather Heyer was killed by UtR rally-goer James Fields (Barry 2017). Fields rammed his vehicle into Heyer after he drove passed raucous Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) counter-protestors, including Antifa-aligned Redneck Revolt founder and University of North Carolina (UNC) professor Dwayne Dixon, who later claimed to have waved a gun at Fields before the vehicle-ramming (Redpilled Hugh Neutron 2021). Although Fields acted alone, without warning of his action, and spontaneously, this incident fed suspicions that Trump or other UtR rally organizers approved of, or were responsible for, Fields’ actions. Trump subsequently condemned specifically “white nationalists and neoNazis” at a post-UtR press conference. Yet, he also “blamed” for the violence “troublemakers” among Antifa counter-protesters who wore “black outfits with helmets and baseball bats” and threw feces at, and used brass knuckles J. Zenn (B) Terrorism Monitor Editor, The Jamestown Foundation, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_4

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and sticks to hit, UtR rally-goers and journalists who were perceived to be siding with, or were simply physically near to the rally-goers, including Katie Couric and future anti-racist and anti-misogynist Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz, despite Lorenz supporting Antifa’s actions (Politico 2017). Left-leaning media—as a CNN whistleblower has since detailed—subsequently spinned the press conference to propagate that Trump actually “praised” white nationalists and neo-Nazis (Hecker 2023). Ubiquitously cited was Trump’s assertion that “fine people” were on both the Antifa and BLM counterprotesters’ and UtR rally-goers’ sides. This actually meant Trump viewed as “fine” the UtR rally-goers who desired to preserve Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee monument because “cancelling” Lee, who was historically a revered American, would logically lead to the same occurring with other “racists” like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Christopher Columbus, if not also all “dead white men” and the underpinnings of pre-“1619 Project” Euro-American history (the Lee and dozens of other monuments of historical white men besides politicians, including those ranging from David Hume to William Marsh Rice to Edward Colston to Meriwether Lewis, were eventually vandalized or dismantled over the next five years in the U.S. and Britain). In the three years after UtR, nothing motivated Antifa and BLM, whose adherents comprise perhaps the two most significant components of the U.S. Marxist-leaning left or “far-left,” more than their conviction that Trump, whose son-in-law Jared Kushner and grandchildren are Jewish, was a white nationalist and neo-Nazi sympathizer. This narrative had been accelerating, however, as early as the commencement of Trump’s presidential campaign and through his January 2017 inauguration when an Antifa adherent punched then Trump-supporting alt-right leader, Richard Spencer, in the head near the White House. This occurred while Spencer was explaining to a journalist why the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis did not like him (ABC News 2017). Although Spencer later supported Joe Biden and identified with several left-wing causes, such as allowing “drag queen story hours” for children, in 2016–2017, like most of the “alt-right,” Spencer lauded Trump’s plans to reduce or halt immigration. Most notable was the Trump campaign proposal for a “complete shutdown” of Muslim immigration until “our [Congressional] representatives can figure out what is going on” with ISIS, whose vehicleramming, bombing, and shooting attacks had killed hundreds of civilians in the West prior to Trump’s 2016 election victory as well as tens of thousands of Syrians, Iraqi, and other nationals (Wang 2017). Spencer and the then-burgeoning alt-right believed the U.S. had a “white,” or European, heritage that needed to be preserved through, among other policies, restricting immigration from non-Western countries because if this were not done, then the U.S. would become minority white in coming decades. The alt-right, including Spencer, considered whites becoming a minority negative for safeguarding the destiny and prosperity of white European-descended peoples, if not all the U.S. more generally. In contrast, Joe Biden, leftleaning media (and even some right-leaning media, such as Fox News’ Tucker

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Carlson), and much of the Democratic “liberal establishment” have argued whites becoming a U.S. minority will inevitably occur and is “not a bad thing.” The alt-right, however, also believed that growing diversity coupled with wars abroad would eventually cause the U.S. to weaken and fracture on an ethno-racial basis (Kessler 2023; Reuters 2021; Bitchute 2018; CSPAN 2015). Further, much like the inverse of left-wing Palestinian-origin MuslimAmerican, Linda Sarsour, who won a “Champions for Change” award from Barack Obama’s White House and later called for a “jihad” against Trump one month before UtR, Spencer had also declared “Heil Trump” at an alt-right conference in November 2016. This generally means “Long Live Trump,” but like Sarsour’s “jihad’s” subtle association to Hamas’s or ISIS’s “holy war,” despite “jihad” also meaning non-violent “struggle,” Spencer’s words also had the association with Nazi Germany’s National Socialism—and, indeed, some of Spencer’s National Policy Institute (NPI) colleagues, such as Greg Conte (2023), were ardent nationalist socialism advocates (Abrams 2017). Spencer and the alt-right’s admiration of Trump and Trump’s proposed immigration restrictions were indications to the left-wing that the U.S. was marching down the road to fascism. Likewise, the right-wing viewed Sarsour and her Muslim cohorts’ proximity to the Obama administration and her colleague’s prior advocacy for a “long-range process of making all of America Muslim…and to be very calculated about it” as evidence of the left-wing’s sympathy toward the anti-West “radical Islam” movement, which is a term that Trump had used to lambast Hilary Clinton for not saying during the 2016 election campaign (CSPAN 1989). This only heightened tensions between the two U.S. political spectra. Alt-right support for Trump during his successful 2016 election bid emboldened adherents of predominantly white and often affluent Antifa and the predominantly Black BLM as well as related Marxist, socialist, and leftwing movements in the U.S. to mutually oppose the Trump presidency. On top of this, one month after Trump’s election win, Democratic Party leaders, such as Elizabeth Warren, announced that “Vladimir Putin is clearly messing around the rest of the world to try to advance Russia’s interest,” including possibly ordering Russians to hack the U.S. election and help Trump win (wwlp.com 2016). That the U.S. was at risk of fascism from Trump, who became president by “colluding” with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election and was called an “illegitimate” president by Democrats like the late John Lewis, compelled the left-wing, and especially Antifa and BLM, to take action to “confront” this perceived threat (Schleifer 2017). Thus, the Antifa “Spencer punch,” which like similar non-lethal Antifa violence against other alt-right adherents or audiences of conservative speakers at university campuses went largely without condemnation, became a harbinger for the subsequent Charlottesville UtR rally turning into a flashpoint for the first large-scale confrontation between “racist” Trump-supporting alt-right

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adherents, including Spencer himself, and the “anti-racist” Antifa and BLM supporters, who opposed Trump. In the previous decade, such as during the 2008 financial crisis Occupy protests, left-wing extremists and activists had focused on “economic justice.” Now, however, after the 2016 Trump election and UtR, as a result of the media and other institutions exponentially shifting their narratives from economic issues to white supremacy over Black people and People of Color (PoCs), white police violence against Black people, and white “systemic racism” against Black people and PoCs, the left-wing placed “racial justice” at the forefront of their activism (Rozado et al. 2023). UtR was only finally superseded in motivating Antifa and BLM by the May 2020 death in Minneapolis of the Black father, security guard and adult video entertainer, George Floyd. He resisted arrest from a diverse white, Black, and Hmong four-man police contingent, who were called by a Black employee of a brown Arab-Americanowned shop to the shop, where Floyd had attempted twice to pay for cigarettes illegally with counterfeit currency. The four police officers then detained Floyd in a police car after pulling Floyd out of the vehicle of his drug dealer, where Floyd was ingesting narcotics, such as fentanyl. At the request of Floyd, who like during his previous 2019 arrest for driving an unregistered vehicle claimed he could not breathe in the police car even while he was untouched, the four police officers pinned Floyd to the ground outside the police car (Kare 11 2020). However, a white officer, Derek Chauvin, who was married to an Asian American Pacific Islander Cambodian woman, employed the same controversial knee-on-neck restraint that white police officers had previously employed on white men Tony Timpa and Edward Bronstein in Texas and California in 2016 and March 2020, respectively. Like Floyd, Timpa and Broinstein had also both been inebriated or high and died during the restraint—although in Timpa’s case the officers went so far as to mock Timpa’s grunts and his “falling asleep” in the minutes before his death and ignored his pleas to them of “you’re gunna kill me” (The Dallas Morning News 2019). While commentaries suggested that Floyd’s “lynching” would not have occurred if he were white, the same—or even more egregious—police treatment did occur to whites, including for lesser offenses than counterfeiting or no offenses at all (Lewis 2020). Floyd’s death, like Timpa’s and Bronstein’s, was also video-recorded, but even though the video of Floyd’s death was not necessarily more disturbing than Timpa’s or Bronstein’s or other police killing videos, such as the 2016 shooting of the unarmed innocent white man Daniel Shaver in a hotel hallway by a police officer who gave Shaver incoherent orders, Floyd’s death became the top U.S. and even global media story. Floyd’s case comported with the “systemic racism” narrative that the media had been advancing since Trayvon Martin’s death in a fight with a half Afro-Peruvian, half-white neighborhood watchman in 2012, which scholars and the media attributed to “racial profiling,” despite little to no evidence— and, in fact, evidence to the contrary based on the neighborhood watchman’s 911 call—that any racial profiling occurred (The Young Turks 2012). Further,

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Floyd’s death occurred during 2020 presidential election campaign season in which Biden’s campaign focus was to emphasize Trump’s “racism.” For example, Biden placed Trump’s “racist” press conference statements after the Charlottesville UtR rally from three years earlier and the zeitgeist of “ending systemic racism and white supremacy” after Floyd’s death at the forefront of his eventually winning campaign (Shivaram 2019). This chapter evaluates the fallout from the decade-plus period from Trayvon Martin’s 2012 death, which sparked the BLM movement, through the 2017 Charlottesville UtR clashes between Trump’s alt-right supporters and Antifa and BLM, and through George Floyd’s 2020 death and the subsequent violence by Antifa and BLM (ACLED 2020). While this mostly non-lethal Antifa and BLM violence, which included 500 attacks in the three months after Floyd’s death, occurred “on the streets,” another more lasting phenomenon, which is the focus of this chapter, occurred in office buildings throughout the country. This phenomenon has been the promulgation and implementation of equity programs throughout U.S. government, academic, business, and other professional institutions in the aftermath of, and explicitly as a response to, the “systematic racism” that allegedly caused George Floyd’s death as well as preceding events, such as UtR and Trayvon Martin’s death (Briggs 2022). Equity is among the main policies that generates “white grievance” and leads to “pro-white” political organization or white identity creation and, therefore, the corresponding violent backlash by Antifa and BLM, which perceive that development as “racist” and in need of countering through physical confrontation or public counter-demonstrations. The chapter first defines equity in theory and provides several examples of how it is implemented in practice in the contemporary U.S. and explains why some “normie”2 white people increasingly may view themselves as getting the short shrift of equity and are beginning to push back against such programs that they perceive as unfairly working against them. However, because opposing equity programs is racist and white supremacist— as, for example, leading anti-racist activist and professor Ibram Kendi (2023) asserts—Antifa has a self-given mandate to physically “confront” or demonstrate against such white people (or “white-adjacent” PoCs, such as the Black Latinx Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio and other Proud Boys, such as Samoan member “Tiny” Toese, who was shot by an Antifa adherent at an anti-COVID-19 lockdown protest, or Black member Philip Anderson, whose teeth were punched out by an Antifa adherent at a “free speech” event) (Bailey 2017). This leads to the potential of “reciprocal radicalization,” or “cumulative extremism,” whereby “pro-whites” become more vocal as equity programs continue to be promulgated, including at the highest levels of the U.S. government, and then affect perceived “white collective interests,” while Antifa and BLM respond to their own perception of growing racism by pursuing confrontations, some of which are violent, against the “pro-whites” (Larsen 2020).

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Second, the chapter tackles another issue concerning equity—the inclusion of PoCs, and not only American Descendants of Slavery (ADoS), as beneficiaries of equity. The expansion of equity programs beyond the limited population of ADoS and to all PoCs, including demographic groups that outperform whites and that predominantly arrived in the U.S. after the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, is contributing to not only “normies” believing whites are getting the short shrift of equityrelated policies, but also the forming of “pro-white” organizations, which still exist far outside of the mainstream, to advocate on behalf of whites in the same way other ethno-racial demographic groups do on their own behalf. The institutionalization and expansion of equity beneficiaries from ADoS to all non-white people—namely PoCs—could also lead to more “extreme” forms of equity implementation in the U.S. if historical examples from elsewhere in the world where versions of equity have been implemented are revived. At the same time, these programs provide ammunition to “grievance narratives” that will bolster recruitment to “pro-white” groups that are considered “extremist” and view themselves as victims of “systemic (or institutional) racism,” and not the privileged or oppressor group, which Antifa and BLM believe they are. Whereas the chapter’s first two sections focus on equity, the latter two sections focus more on extremism. The third section argues that the prevailing definition of “extremism” within terrorism studies, as articulated by Berger, requires that “pro-white” groups or individuals be de-facto labeled as “extremist” because their main goal—remaining the demographic majority in “their” homelands—is “hostile” toward an “out-group,” namely PoCs, who cannot be the majority if “pro-whites’” goals are realized. Nevertheless, even the vast majority of such groups and individuals labeled as “extreme,” such as the Proud Boys, do not actually have an “unwavering commitment to hostile actions” against Blacks or PoCs unless that element of Berger’s “extremism” definition is widely construed (Berger 2018). In contrast, although left-wing Antifa has an explicit “unwavering commitment to hostile actions against” its nemeses in perceived “pro-white” organizations, Antifa and BLM’s commitment to “inclusion”—even if to “extreme” levels from a political and societal perspective—cannot be defined as “extreme” and subject to government or other institutions’ “counter-extremism” measures. Given this dynamic, it is likely that “white advocacy” and “white civil rights organizations” will continue to be labeled as “extreme” and not Antifa, despite the latter conducting frequent, albeit mostly non-lethal, violence. Fourth, and lastly, the chapter critiques the seemingly related and often conflated, but technically significantly different, terms of “terrorism and “violent extremism” and points to double-standards in the declaring of right-wing groups as “violent” or “extremist,” but not doing so for left-wing groups. The section argues that whereas “terrorism” at least implies lethal or serious violence, the term “violence” alone could be as simple as pushing, which is undesirable, but need not be elevated to the “national security” policy level that includes “countering terrorism.” Moreover, the tendency of politicians

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and media to deny or downplay the impact of “violence” by left-wing groups to, for example, shut down “right-wing” speeches at university campuses, but to quickly attribute “violence” to right-wing groups, including when they retaliate against Antifa’s physical “confrontations,” means that right-wing and “pro-white” groups are likely to continue to be disproportionately subjected to various “counter-violent extremism” measures and pressures. Despite taking a critical view of equity, in the conclusion the chapter argues Antifa, BLM, and left-wing activists have perfected a “goldilocks” level of violence, where they commit “just enough” of it to intimidate their ideological adversaries and prevent them from sharing their views publicly, such as on university campuses. However, they also do not conduct sufficient violence to clearly be “terrorism” because their violence is largely non-lethal and loneactor shooters rarely emerge from their group-oriented ranks compared to the four (Dylann Roof, Patrick Crusius, Robert Bowers, and Peyton Gendron in 2015, 2018, 2019, and 2022) main shooters who have emerged from the U.S. “pro-white” camp in the past two and a half decades and who have committed roughly 50% of “right-wing” terrorist killings alone since 1995. In contrast, “pro-white” or right-wing groups rarely challenge their Antifa, BLM, or other left-wing adversaries to prevent them from spreading their ideas at demonstrations, universities, or elsewhere. In the longer term, however, the chapter suggests the ground will still be fertile for the growth of left-wing extremism given the corresponding resonance of “pro-white” messaging and the impunity often given to, and lack of stigmatization of, Antifa and related left-wing groups that engage in physical “confrontation” with “racists.”

The Left-Wing and Equity Defining a “Woke” Term In general, the left-wing is associated with egalitarianism, while the rightwing is more willing to tolerate hierarchies. In the contemporary U.S., the left-wing—and, in particular, egalitarianism—manifests itself in terms of “wokeism,” whose main components including desiring “equity” (Rozado 2023). This term is one that politicians, including on the “far-left” like Bernie Sanders, and media figures are hard-pressed to define, but they usually identify that, in contrast to equality, which involves equality of opportunity, equity involves equality of outcome between races in the U.S. (Fox Business 2023). The other two pillars of wokeism are diversity and inclusion. They largely relate to increasing the number of PoCs, or anyone who is not Christian and white, in professions and institutions and promoting minority or previously marginalized or stigmatized identities, such as Muslims or transgender people, into mainstream and important positions, such as through “drag queen story hours” in libraries or the army leadership in the case of transgender people like Admiral Rachel Levine or Major Rachel Jones.

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As far as equity is concerned, “the woke” believe “all groups have the same distribution of potential, and any disparities are the result of discrimination by whites or men” (Cofnas 2022). This is why “abolishing whiteness” or even the “white race” and ending “white supremacy” are key woke tenets and when whites or men are over-represented in a field or institution, it can be attributed to white or male privilege, which need to be combatted (Singley 2022). Thus, white men can only be eligible to be beneficiaries of equity if they become transgender women or, in some cases, are LGBT+ or they convert from, for example, Christianity to Islam. The “incentivization” of whites to become LGBT+ community members as well as the banning on white identity groups in government caucuses or universities, among other institutions, nevertheless, feeds the “White Genocide” theory insofar as the former would make white people “non-sexually reproductive” and the latter accords with the Lemkin Institute’s (2022) “genocide” definition of “seeking the complete eradication of [white] identity from the world.” However, the Institute intended the definition in this case for the transgender community or PoCs. One example of equity in corporate governance comes from the National Hockey League (NHL), which found there was slight white overrepresentation among its employees in the U.S. and Canada, who were 83% white. Therefore, the NHL’s Black executive vice-president of social impact, growth and legislative affairs sought “to make sure that folks that look like [half-Filipino, half-German Canadian player, Matt Dumba] and me feel comfortable and welcomed in the sport” (Whyno 2022). As a result, the NHL commissioner acknowledged that “the re-ignited movements for social justice over the past few years, particularly following the murder of George Floyd” caused the NHL to “listen and learn” and engage in “new ways of thinking” and, ultimately, to “unite to strengthen diversity and inclusion (D&I) with new urgency.” The NHL’s “next steps” involved five different D&I “educational experiences” and trainings for employees, several programs to recruit more “diverse talent” focused on “Black, Latinx, and Native American professionals,” and at least five other initiatives to appeal to non-white “diverse,” “BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color],” and “LGBTQ+” youths (NHL 2022). If these programs bring the NHL’s white employee ratio from 83% to closer to the U.S. and Canadian white adult population of approximately 70%, they would be “successful.” However, it is unlikely that such programs would then be halted. Rather, they would persist through “bureaucratic inertia” while other goals besides demographic composition would be emphasized, such as ensuring PoC players, including “half-white, half-Asian PoC” ones like Dumba, are “comfortable” through the holding of continuous “D&I trainings.” Moreover, if the NHL’s goal is to increase diversity, then achieving 40% white employees, as opposed to 70% white employees, would still be preferable because it would indicate the league has become “more diverse.” Thus, it is unclear when, if ever, the NHL or any other institution in the U.S. would curtail an equity or D&I initiative because an institution can never have

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“enough” or “too much” diversity (Independent Man 2018). In contrast, it is generally acceptable to criticize there being “too many” white people in, for example, senior government positions even in countries that are nearly 100% white, such as Scotland, or that award ceremonies, such as the Oscars, are “too white” (Malik 2023). Since George Floyd’s death, these NHL policies and objectives have been commonly implemented by U.S. corporations, universities, and other institutions, including the U.S. government itself, to combat “systemic racism” (Rufo et al. 2023). For example, two Thailand—and Japan-born U.S. senators, Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono, who are members of the 75-country origin AAPI community, which formed after Floyd’s death to unite U.S. citizens from Turkmenistani, to Bangladeshi, to Mongolian, and to Melanesian origins under one “racial group,” announced they would reject Colin Kahl’s appointment to Biden’s Cabinet in 2020. This is because Kahl was white and straight and they would only accept an AAPI appointee unless a white appointee were LGBT+ (Newell 2021). Although Duckworth and Hirono intended to rectify AAPI underrepresentation in Biden’s Cabinet, the Cabinet, in fact, already had Taiwanorigin and an Indian-origin members, Katherine Tai and Kamala Harris, which would mean AAPI’s were fairly represented at 8.3% (two of 24 cabinet members) of the Cabinet. Duckworth and Hirono eventually relented on Kahl’s appointment so long as they received a guarantee that Biden’s next Cabinet appointee would be AAPI (or LGBT+ if still white). This occurred when India-born Arati Prabhakar was appointed to the Cabinet and made AAPIs now over-represented at 12% of Biden’s Cabinet. This was despite that the vast majority of AAPI U.S. citizens’ descendants arrived in the U.S. after the Chinese Exclusion Act and World War II Japanese-American interment and came on their volition, and despite that AAPI women’s economic and academic performance has tended to exceed that of white men since at least 2018 (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018). Notably, non-PoCs, or specifically white Christians, were under-represented in Biden’s Cabinet at only 24% (Denis McDonough, Jennifer Granholm, Marty Walsh, Tom Vilsack, Gina Raimondo, and the LGBT+ Pete Buttigieg, although Buttigieg once noted his Maltese father faced discrimination because he was “brown” and spoke with an accent). The Biden White House subsequently, on February 16, 2023, like the NHL and consistent with Kahl’s Cabinet appointment scenario, issued an “Executive Order to Strengthen Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities.” The Order requires U.S. government departments to establish an “Equity Action Plan” and “Agency Equity Teams” to ensure there is “equity,” or no over-representation of whites, in their departments (White House 2023). The policy’s purposes were expounded by the White House spokesperson, who was the first ever LGBT+, Black, and (Haitian) immigrant woman to hold that position. She praised that the Cabinet was “majority people of color for the first time in history” and that the White House senior

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staff was 40% “racially diverse.” This meant “non-diverse” people, or specifically whites, were under-represented in the Cabinet, which was praiseworthy (Price 2023). While these equity policies represent a core focus of the U.S. left-wing, in contrast, right-wing, but not necessarily “pro-white,” organizations have begun to “notice” that such programs lead to white under-representation. For example, the National Review observed that Stanford’s class of 2026 being only 22% white does not actually “look like America,” but that, from the perspective of equity, the over-represented 78% PoC class body will, in fact, be lauded (Hochman 2023). The perception that whites are being “denied” the same opportunities afforded to Black people, and especially PoCs, or that systems exist to prevent white people from over-achieving even while they allegedly have “privilege” in U.S. society has the potential to unite more “mainstream” right-wing or libertarian individuals, including those who have voted for Democrats, with the more overtly “pro-white” right-wing that is labeled “extreme,” such as UtR rally-goers. This was perhaps best exemplified by the explicitly “pro-white” webzine countercurrents.com, which nonetheless publishes Black authors, such as the Jamaican Lipton Matthews, “inviting” the “normie” former banker and Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams to “white nationalism” after Adams, who claimed to have been denied banking promotions two times in his life because he was white, was “cancelled” (Quinn 2023). Adams had criticized equity and argued the inverse of anti-racist theorist Robin DiAngelo, who suggests PoCs “need to get away from white people,” as well as university multi-cultural centers or municipal park events that are designated for only PoCs to have “safe spaces” away from white people (National Conservative 2023). Rather, Adams stated that whites themselves should leave Black areas because polls indicate there is a high rate of Black people, who believe that it is not “okay to be white,” which Adams deemed as racist. However, the “cancellation” of Adams also stemmed from his suggestion that whites should stop trying to “help” Blacks through equity programs, which were neither working nor ingratiating Blacks toward whites, as evidenced by polling (Adams 2023). Despite his criticism of equity, Adams supported BLM and football player Colin Kaepernick’s protest against police killings after Black man Philando Castile was killed by police in 2016, which itself resembled white man Ryan Whitaker’s killing by police in 2020. In both cases police wrongly shot Castile and Whitaker while they were possessing guns in unthreatening ways (ABC 15 Arizona 2020). Adams accordingly did not heed countercurrents.com’s “invitation,” but the case still reflected how “pro-white” groups found that they could align with “normie” whites on racial issues, such as opposition to equity as practiced in the contemporary U.S.

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Equity and Its (Lack of?) Limits A key question relates not necessarily to the ethical and policy question of whether equity is desirable, as opposed to pursuing a racially blind meritocracy, which has been advocated by, among others, elder Black Stanford economist Thomas Sowell and AAPI University of Pittsburgh cardiologist Norman Wang. The latter, however, was fired for writing a Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) article critiquing equity and arguing it should be phased out over time, which led to his article subsequently being retracted for its “incompatibility” with JAHA’s “core values and historic commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion in medicine and science” (Retraction Watch 2020). Rather, given the deep-rootedness of equity policies in the U.S. already, the key question is how far the left-wing will go in implementing equity policies, if not also who should be beneficiaries of equity policies. Historically, left-wing regimes established “re-education camps,” such as in Khmer Rouge-ruled Cambodia, to enforce the ideological adoption by the educated and wealthy class of principles of “social justice,” as former Khmer Rouge head of state, Khieu Samphan, claimed when he was tried for Crimes Against Humanity in 2016 (Cheang 2021). Likewise, in Maoist China, wealthy landowners were forced to publicly denounce themselves and had land expropriated from them to reduce rich-poor gaps. Similar policies can be found among leftist regimes elsewhere in the world, such as in Latin America or the former Soviet Union, and have often resulted in enforcement through physically inflicting harm on the educated, wealthy, or landowning class. Emerging U.S. equity programs do not resemble the violence of those regimes and are primarily voluntary or may “only” result in one being shunned or fired if they do not participate or if they criticize the program, as has occurred with Norman Wang at University of Pittsburgh or with James Damore and Taras Kobernyk at Google. However, there is historical precedent for policies to promote equity going “too far” in terms of implementation. While in the U.S. equity programs are far from where they went in Khmer Rouge-era Cambodia or Maoist China, a more pressing risk is that they become overly expansive, which would “radicalize” the “normie” white population to align with the now fringe “pro-white” or white nationalist movements, just as countercurrents.com sought to achieve with Scott Adams and his followers. This, in turn, would “reciprocally radicalize” the left-wing movements like Antifa and BLM which, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), had committed more 500 attacks in only the three-month period after George Floyd’s death, including often shooting, looting, beating, arson, vandalism, throwing explosives, aggressing police, and attempting to seize government buildings, such as the Portland federal courthouse and even the White House perimeter, although the latter attack was rebuffed and ended up seeing clashes with security officers and the

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burning of the downstairs of a church (Zenn 2023; ACLED 2020). Although Antifa’s most well-known killing was Antifa adherent Michael Reinoehl’s August 2020 shooting to death of a Trump supporter in an ambush in Seattle, another Antifa-supporting “bodyguard” also shot to death Trump supporter Lee Keltner two months later in Denver after a joint Antifa and BLM adherent, Jeremiah Wright, physically “confronted” Keltner and then cheered Keltner’s death because there was now “one less white supremacist” (Zenn 2020). In the U.S. and other Western countries, equity programs are not necessarily focused on “wealth inequality” like in the primarily ethno-racially monochromatic Cambodia or China. Rather, they are usually intended to benefit the professional—and, therefore, at least indirectly the economic— development of not just ADoS, but also PoCs generally. This includes AAPIs, BIPOCs, and “visibly Muslim” white-passing people like, for example, hijabwearing Linda Sarsour. An argument could be made, however, that U.S. equity programs should support exclusively and specifically ADoS, including for Biden’s Cabinet. Such an equity policy would exclude from beneficiaries, for example, a politician like Duckworth. This is because she is AAPI but was born after the 1965 Civil Rights Act and is descended on her white father’s side from American Revolutionary War veterans and on her mother’s side from Chinese immigrants to Thailand, who became the “privileged” class economically and politically in that country throughout the twentieth century. Also in Biden’s Cabinet, vice-president Kamala Harris is slightly less than half Black and is half-AAPI, as she had a highly educated Brahmin mother, which is the “privileged” class in India, and a Jamaican “mixed-race (African and Irish)” father, who was known as a prominent Marxist economist and professor at Stanford in the 1970s (The Stanford Daily 1976). This nonADoS ancestry—perhaps in addition to Harris’ being raised in Canada and not only the child of well-to-do parents but also the granddaughter of prominent British imperial and later Indian diplomat P. V. Gopalan—could suggest that Harris would not be the ideal target of equity programs, including the University of California-Hastings School of Law Legal Education Opportunity Program (LEPO), which selected her. For decades, LEPO has been intended for “disadvantaged students” and “students from adverse backgrounds” but only if they are “diverse,” such as PoCs, including AAPIs, but not non-PoCs, such as white people (UC SF Law 2018). Given that Harris’ family, like Duckworth’s, did not suffer the generational trauma of ADoS and that both of their ethno-racial categories are not struggling in the post-Civil Rights Act U.S, equity programs in which they would be beneficiaries could be too expansive. Nevertheless, as members of “communities of color (mentioned twice)” and “brown” people (mentioned three times), Duckworth and Harris and other U.S. citizens with similar profiles would still be beneficiaries of the White House executive order’s equity initiative, among other similar initiatives in corporations or at universities, such as LEPO. Thus, when Biden announced his vice-president would be a Black woman, it might have represented “more equity” if, for example, he chose

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Georgia ADoS congressperson Stacey Abrams, whose ancestors suffered generational trauma from slavery and who did not grow up in privilege, rather than hiring based on Black phenotype. A further distinction could be made between ADoS and post-Civil Rights Act Black people in the U.S. As but one example, Minneapolis resident George Floyd’s ancestors were slaves and, therefore, he was ADoS. Floyd’s ancestors’ generational trauma, such as reportedly being stripped of land in the south after emancipation, contributed to his family’s multi-generational economic struggles as well as Floyd’s own being born into poverty. To some extent, this all contributed to Floyd’s own decisions to commit robbery at gunpoint of a pregnant woman and subsequent imprisonment and his committing other lesser crimes, including on the final day of his life when he attempted to pay for cigarettes with counterfeit currency and purchased and ingested fentanyl (Simpson 2022). Floyd would have been a more reasonable candidate to benefit from equity policies in his life. In contrast, in Floyd’s same city, suburban Minneapolis congressperson Ilhan Omar is also Black, but not ADoS, and came from a prominent Somali family that arrived to the U.S. well after the Civil Rights Act’s promulgation. Omar’s father, for example, served in Somali dictator Siad Barre’s “scientific socialist” regime, including overseeing lighthouses as the transportation minister, and received a university education in Italy and a military education in the Soviet Union to serve the Soviet-backed Barre regime, which perpetrated the Isaaq genocide in Somaliland and waged war unsuccessfully with Ethiopia from 1987 to 1990 during which time Omar’s father was an army colonel (Hirsi 2020). After the Barre regime was overthrown and militia groups attacked the Omar family’s home in Mogadishu during the popular uprising against Barre, Omar’s parents and her siblings fled their “affluent” life in Mogadishu by plane to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi (military officers from the Omar family’s Majerteen clan also attempted a coup against Barre in 1978, which led to a massive backlash against the clan by Barre). This contrasted with most Somali refugees, who traveled to Kenya under hardship by foot or other informal means of transport and remained for years in arid border region refugee camps. Once in Nairobi, the Omar family had “contacts” to help them settle until they eventually were accepted as refugees into the U.S. and Omar, following in her father’s footsteps, became a politician herself (Forliti 2020; Somali Tribune 2022). While Omar’s family suffered trauma in the period surrounding Barre’s ouster—as did the victims of the Barre regime—this trauma differed from the generational trauma of ADoS. As a result, it may not be necessary for U.S equity programs to benefit families like Omar’s even though they are Black and immigrant when families like Abrams’ and Floyd’s seemingly should be “more eligible” for equity benefits. The issue of whose historical and generational trauma equity is intended to address is an important issue because if all PoCs, including not only ADoS but also BIPOCs and AAPIs and “brown” people (usually referring specifically to Arab or Indian subcontinent descendants), benefit from equity

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policies, then these policies will expand their intended beneficiaries incessantly, as opposed to being limited to only the ADoS population’s growth rate. As more immigrants to the U.S. arrive and white people increasingly become the U.S. minority, the PoC majority will eventually receive the benefits of equity and the ability to over-achieve while the decreasing white minority will not. This would ironically run antithetical to one of equity’s purposes to support minorities, who would then be white, albeit equity’s purpose may then be revised to support “historically marginalized groups,” whether or not they are currently “marginalized,” such as AAPIs, PoCs, brown people, or African immigrants. There is a “risk” of equity policies going “too far” and causing resentment—whether justified or not—from whites who will be ineligible for certain professional positions, like in the Biden Cabinet, including the vice-presidency, or the Supreme Court or university scholarships, like LEPO, because of their white race. In contrast, if equity policies are tailored specifically to ADoS, they are not only more likely to redress U.S. historical grievances and mistreatment, but also less likely to expand out of proportion. With non-PoCs, or whites, becoming the U.S. minority as a result of immigration and lower birth rates— as opposed to through intentional policies, such as the now retracted United Nations (2022) “Replacement Migration” policy, which is the main claim of the “Great Replacement” theory—whites could further become “radicalized” toward aligning with “pro-white” movements as whites defer professional positions to PoCs, who are the future U.S. majority, despite that AAPI women, among other PoC demographics, already enjoy greater salaries than white men (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018). In such a case, whites would often be deprioritized from access to opportunities, including not only to ADoS, but also to, for example, AAPIs or post-Civil Rights Act Black people similar to Omar or a Nigerian emir’s immigrant children. Indeed, the left-wing tends to argue credibly that whites had laws and policies that favored them primarily vis-à-vis ADoS historically, especially in the U.S. south, where extrajudicially Black people, among other inequalities, struggled with slavery, Jim Crow laws and segregation, and disproportionate lynching (3,446 Blacks were lynched compared to 1,297 whites from 1882 to 1968 in the U.S. and mostly in the south) (University of Missouri 2023). However, the left-wing concludes that therefore today U.S. institutions still favor whites even though those laws and policies have been abolished, especially since the Civil Rights Act. This has gone so far that even though Black people are over-represented in police forces across the U.S. and in one case five Memphis Black officers beat up Tyre Nichols in February 2023 after he resisted arrested and tried to escape, left-wing commentators blamed Williams’ death several days later on white “systemic racism” against Black people (Cobb 2023). In contrast, the alt-right and related movements tend to argue that civil rights and equal protections of laws now do not apply to non-PoCs, or specifically whites. Further compounding this alt-right concern is that “righting

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historical wrongs” applies not only to ADoS, but also AAPIs and Black and brown people who arrived in the post-Civil Rights Act U.S. and who voluntarily chose to come to the U.S. by virtue of immigration (Sailer 2022). In the alt-right view, non-ADoS PoCs have essentially “coopted” Black people’s generational trauma for their own benefit vis-à-vis whites. The direct result of this has been the claim that there is a need for whites to “advocate” for their own interests or “white civil rights” against the “coalition of the fringes,” including PoCs and sexual minorities, who otherwise have little in common, as well as liberal white coastal elites embodied by the contemporary Democratic Party. This need to “advocate” for “white interests,” such as preventing “hate speech” against white people by Charlottesville municipal leaders and to “preserve white history” largely motivated the UtR rally organizer Jason Kessler (2021) as well as the left-wing violent engagement with the rightwing at UtR. Similar coalition dynamics were then at play again at the Antifa and BLM riots after George Floyd’s death and during the 2020 presidential election and the January 6, 2021, (J6) “insurrection.”

From Equity to Extremism The Problematic “Extremism” Definition The issue of equity relates to “extremism” insofar as Berger’s seminal book on the subject in the context of terrorism studies argues that there are “ingroups” and “out-groups,” which each represent identities distinct from other groups (Berger 2018). A key element of “extremism” is when a member of an in-group engages in zero-sum competition with an out-group and believes the in-group’s success depends on the downfall of the out-group, including through “hostile action” against it. This can be “physical” action, which obviously includes killing or assaulting a member of the out-group, or simply legal enforcement actions. Thus, Berger would point to Nazi Germany’s Nuremburg Laws or the U.S. south’s segregation policies as two cases where Germans and U.S. southern whites believed their security and prosperity depended on their separation and exclusion from Jews and Blacks, respectively, and used the law to enforce these policies. However, even if the enforcement was not always physically violent, the policies were still “hostile” because the threat of physical legal enforcement remained. In the case of ISIS-ruled parts Syria and Iraq, physically hostile action, in contrast, was frequently employed by ISIS “extremists” against, for example, Yazidis, Christians, and non-Sunni Muslims, who had to be “enslaved,” killed, or restricted from praying publicly to allow for the establish of a “pure” Islamic state for the in-group Sunni Muslims. Berger’s “extremism” definition de-facto marks white nationalists or “white advocates” as “extremists” because their main goal, whether in Scandinavian countries, Hungary, the UK, the U.S., Australia or elsewhere in the West, is

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to remain the demographic majority in “their” homelands. That issue is zerosum—whites remaining the majorities in their national homelands means PoCs cannot become the majorities. It is likewise zero-sum when there are limited positions in an institution, such as the White House Cabinet or Supreme Court or a bank or tech company, and the hiring of one individual as a requirement based on his or her ethno-racial identity, such as a PoC, means another individual from another ethno-racial identity group, such as whites, cannot be hired. Whether or not one agrees with equity policies to, for example, rectify historical misdeeds or promote minorities, trends with the Biden administration’s and broader left-wing and Democratic Party equity policies create a situation where PoCs, including not only ADoS but also BIPOCs and AAPIs, achieving equity means whites cannot over-achieve. This is because if white people over-achieve and are over-represented in a university, sports league, corporation, or government department, then equity policies could require that certain white people would need to be fired or there would be a pause from hiring them or future hiring would need to prioritize PoCs. If a university dean, league commissioner, CEO, or government department hired more than 70% white people in the U.S., then the force of law or policy could lead to their dismissal, which could be “hostile” and be “extremist,” depending on how one interprets Berger’s definition. Over ensuing decades, as white people become 50%, and then 40%, and then less of the U.S. population, current indications suggest there were will be no limiting of equity so that it would not be “extremist” (or racist) to hire more than white people’s percentage of the country’s population. In contrast, if PoCs over-achieve and are over-represented in such institutions, it is praiseworthy under equity programs for being “diverse,” albeit with one controversial exception of AAPI over-representation in elite schools and universities. This had led to certain schools dropping long-standing aptitude tests for admissions because AAPIs’ higher scores would suggest that different demographic groups, such as AAPIs, have greater aptitudes than other groups, as Norman Wang also had suggested (Pottiger 2022). However, this contravenes the core anti-racist assertion that all groups have equal aptitude and any differences are a reflection of racism embedded into the particular system, which, in this case, would be aptitude tests. Thus, removing the tests removes a racist system. Contrarily, the “far-right” claim by young activists like AAPI Vietnamese-American Vince Dao, who was mocked by PoC leftwing youth activists on a Vice YouTube program, is that AAPIs’ standardized testing success is attributable to, among other factors, AAPIs following the path to success that he claims any group can, including having a culture of prioritizing schooling, “staying out of trouble,” and “families sticking together…and not having kids out of wedlock” (Vice 2022). This was CNN anchor Don Lemon’s suggestion to Black people as early as 2013 before the news organization adopted “wokeness” and racism as the explanation for Black

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under-representation on matters, such as standardized testing success (End Wokeness 2023). Berger’s examination of “extremism” also tends to almost exclusively focus on right-wing or Islamic extremism, which suggests a bias in the term’s use against the right-wing in U.S. context or its comporting with the prevailing “anti-Islamic” War on Terror 1.0 paradigm and then the post-UtR and post-J6 War on Terror 2.0 paradigm (Zenn 2023). For example, the Western-centric historic cases of “extremism” in the book include Rome’s “war on Carthage,” French medieval wars, and Spanish conquistadors, who “perpetrated the most horrific genocide in human history, resulting in the extermination” of indigenous people. Further, the book notes “that white nationalism has a far longer and more deadly history” than jihadism, despite that no citation is provided for that assertion, “jihadist” killings technically began around a millennia before “white nationalism,” and colonial-era killings presumably considered as “white nationalist” killings were not often carried out in places such as Africa or India because the victims were Black or brown, as evidenced the British imperial army’s similarly brutal treatment of the white Irish and white Boers, if not also of the white French during the British-French wars in the Americas. Rather, the key determinant about who the empire fought and killed was whether a group’s members stood in empire’s way economically. Likewise, if Nazi Germany’s killings were considered “white nationalist,” then that, too, would be incorrect since Hitler rarely, if ever, justified killing enemies based on their not being white, but rather it was their not being “German” or “Aryan,” and Hitler himself allied with and befriended, for example, Palestinians, Yugoslavian Muslims, and the Japanese, while killing Poles, among other “undesirable” white people. While ISIS and the eighth century Arabian kharijites are also mentioned as “extremist” examples from Islamic history in Berger’s book, there are no Asian “extremism” examples, such as, for example, Genghis Khan or his heirs in Central Asia or South Asia, Japanese shoguns, or Chinese dynastic emperors, let alone African examples, such as Shaka Zulu, or indigenous American examples, such as Montezuma or his Aztec heirs. Thus, the conceptualization of “extremism” tends to be Western-centric and biased toward targeting “opponents” of the mainstream Western establishment, such as Islamic or right-wing “extremists.” Further, the term overlooks “extremism” in antiquity by cultures that lacked written histories and, more broadly, lacks historicity. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Hilary Clinton, for example, had all opposed LGBT+ marriage just in the 2000s, which was then not “extreme,” but now it would be “extreme.” Likewise, any government that today disallows LGBT+ marriage would be “extreme” even if 99% of the population—namely, the “mainstream”—supports that policy. Thus, “extremism” has little to do with actually being “extreme” compared to the “mainstream,” but rather is about supporting one’s own in-group (heterosexuals in Uganda or Ghana currently or in the U.S. in the 2000s, e.g.) over out-groups (LGBT+ in Uganda or Ghana currently or in the

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U.S. in the 2000s, e.g.) and in a zero-sum situation requiring the outgroup to falter so that one’s in-group succeeds by, for example, prohibiting LGBT+ marriages. In the case of Berger’s definition, “extremism” does not mean “extreme,” but is more synonymous with labeling one as a “racist, Islamophobe, homophobe, misogynist, anti-Semite, xenophobe,” against the “sacred groups” of PoCs, who are “protected from group-wide criticism” (Ford 2023). Such labels would generally encompass conservatives, “white nationalists,” and the roughly 30% of U.S. citizens who are “MAGA Republicans,” but not liberals. Arguably, “extremism” is, therefore, not particularly useful academically because its definition is unrelated to its commonly understood meaning—being “extreme.” Rather “extremism” is a term commonly deployed to stigmatize or ostracize—perhaps rightly in certain cases—an “undesirable” group such that non-members of that group will stay away from the group to avoid being labeled “extreme” and then be “disciplined” by the state’s or other institutions’ counter-terrorism or related counter-extremism measures (Mohammed 2022). Double-Standards in Extremism Designations The use of “extremism” as a “weapon” against political opposition has also been accompanied by a shift in academic terrorism studies or post-9/11 counter-terrorism policy from focusing on “terrorism,” which at its most basic level refers to the use of lethal force (or threats of lethal force) to achieve a political goal, to focusing also on terms such as “hate” and “violence,” which are more subjective and less serious than “terrorism” but are still conflated with “terrorism” and often combated alongside terrorism (Byman 2020). University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), for example, has “The Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States (TEVUS) Database,” while the United Nations Human Rights Council (OHCHR) likewise reports on “terrorism and violent extremism” together. It may seem that “terrorism” and “violent extremism” are both major concerns that society would seek to stamp out through special or extraordinary measures. However, “terrorism” requires killing, maiming, taking hostage, hijacking, and other significant threats to human life, the economy, and government policy. In contrast, “violent extremism” can simply refer to, for example, anti-COVID-19 lockdown protestors or anti-mandatory COVID-19 vaccination protestors, who were labeled “anti-government extremists,” or being “violent” by throwing a chair at counter-protesters or pushing a security officer like on January 6 (Khalil and Roose 2023). While this is undesirable behavior, it is much different than typical “terrorism” cases where, for example, Robert Bowers killed 11 people in a Jewish synagogue in 2018 to “avenge” Jewish organizations’ support of large-scale migration through the U.S. southern border or Black nationalist Micah Johnson’s shooting and killing of five Dallas police officers in 2016 at the end of a BLM protest over the deaths of Philando Castile and registered

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sex offender Alton Sterling, who resisted arrest and was shot and killed by police who saw him “going for the gun” in his pocket (Agorist 2016). Extraordinary measures that are often intrusive on civil liberties may be required to prevent terrorist ideologies and plots, but not necessarily “violent extremism,” especially if the two words in the latter term are interpreted broadly (Jackson et al. 2007). The left-wing could argue that Berger’s “extremism” definition’s bias towards encompassing conservative, “pro-white,” or “right-wing,” but not “left-wing,” ideologies is acceptable because those ideologies like reducing immigration, desiring to live in “white” communities, or disfavoring Islamic traditions and cultural practices, especially regarding women, are deemed harmful. However, the term still risks being used disproportionately or excessively against the right-wing. In many cases, there is also no left-wing “extremism” analogue to right-wing “extremism” given that, for example, similar to there never being “too much diversity,” there can never be “too much immigration,” “too much LGBT+ pride,” or “too much Islam.” This is to say—and not necessarily wrongly ethically—that it is considered virtuous to promote “open borders” or unlimited immigration at the U.S. southern border, hold “drag queen story hours” and allow transgender women with male genitalia to use women’s locker rooms and play in women’s sports at schools, and observe Islamic holidays in U.S. municipalities. Therefore, there can be no “extremism” in the opposite direction of “right-wing” extremism essentially because the left-wing by nature tends to be progressive and “inclusive.” Likewise, Antifa may be “violent,” albeit mostly through non-lethal means, but it is unclear if it can ever be “extremist” for excessive “anti-capitalism,” “anti-white identitarianism,” or “anti-fascism” and “anti-racism.” Even if Antifa’s promotion of Communism is more politically “extreme” than its rival Proud Boys who, in contrast to Antifa, have never killed anyone, Antifa may not fit Berger’s “extremism” definition because the organization’s ideology is generally inclusive of PoCs, white supporters of equity, BLM, and formerly peripheral or marginalized identities, such as LGBT+. As an example, when a registered sex offender who was a transgender woman with male genitalia entered into an AAPI-owned spa without clothing in California, several Black women and girls complained about that individual’s presence among them to the spa owner (Ngo 2021). Later, Antifa protested by throwing bottles and smoke bombs near the spa in favor of the transgender woman and the AAPI spa owners who by law had to allow the transgender woman into the spa. In this case, Antifa was “inclusive” of the “out-group” transgender woman, while the Black spa patrons and later Proud Boys who also protested against the transgender woman’s presence in the spa were excluding the “outgroup” transgender woman and being “hostile” toward that “out-group” individual. Even though Antifa was possibly from a political science perspective “extreme” insofar as most Americans may have agreed with the Black spa patrons and Proud Boys, under Berger’s “extremism” definition, the latter and other “far-right” activists would have been “extreme” by disallowing the

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“out-group” transgender woman from the spa and utilizing “hostile action” to request the individual’s removal. Another way “extremism” may be disproportionately or excessively applied to the right-wing is through vaguely defined new sub-categories of “extremism” being appended to right-wing beliefs to de-facto make them impermissible or to legitimize the resources of the state being used to combat them. One such category is “anti-immigration extremism,” which is mostly a right-wing issue, despite that left-wing adherents, including Senator Bernie Sanders and commentator Mickey Kaus, among others, have also been antiimmigration to protect U.S. labor as opposed to preserving the “legacy” U.S. white demographic majority (Human Rights First 2023). “Anti-immigration extremism” involves “spreading negative stereotypes” that “dehumanize and criminalize” immigrants and could possibly include publicizing the killings by Mexican “illegal immigrants” of Katie Steinle and Mollie Tibbetts in 2015 and 2018. Such publicity could lead to public demands for, among others, greater border restrictions or vetting of people coming into the U.S. from the southern border or that Mexico “only bring their best,” as Trump had controversially once suggested. Perhaps the least “democratic sounding” sub-category of “extremism,” however, is “anti-government extremism,” which is a suitable term for an authoritarian country like Aleksandr Lukashenka-ruled Belarus in the sense that being “anti-government” is a democratic right. However, in Western countries it has referred to individuals who believed there was “blatant selective enforcement of … [COVID-19] restrictions on the basis of political alignment.” This would mark as “extremists” people who found that BLM supporters were encouraged to protest outside after George Floyd’s death while a “war against the middle class” was being waged through shutting down their shops and compelling their patrons to stay inside (Khalil and Roose 2023). As with other forms of “right-wing extremism,” there is also no inverse to this category of extremism, such that one could not have been “too extreme” by, for example, supporting indefinite lockdowns. Another related sub-category of “extremism” was called “COVID-19related Extremism,” where the “in-group is ‘the people’ and the out-group is the political and economic elite that is using…the pandemic as an excuse to introduce measures to subjugate the people” (van Dongen 2021). According to this view, people who opposed COVID-19 bureaucrats and public health officials who deliberately exaggerated threats to add restrictions on people’s movement even while they themselves ignored those restrictions, such as Matt Hancock in the UK, were “extremists” (Cowper 2023). From a critical terrorism studies perspective, this also could mean anyone who believes government officials exaggerate the terrorism threat or make false claims about threats, such as weapons of mass destructions (WMD) in Iraq, to enhance government surveillance powers, could also be labeled an “extremist” subject to “disciplinary” counter-extremism measures (Mohammed 2022). Moreover, while this “extremist” narrative allegedly had the “potential for violence,”

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so did the inverse, including one pro-vaccination Canadian who vehiclerammed and nearly killed “anti-COVID-19 lockdown” demonstrators—albeit there was no such thing as “pro-COVID-19 lockdown extremism” or “proCOVID-19 vaccination extremism” (Winnipeg Police Service 2022). Besides the “extremism” definition being tailored toward right-wing ideologies, the term “violence” is often emphasized more for the right-wing than for the left-wing. One example of this occurred when several dozen Antifa adherents overran the perimeter fencing of an Altanta police training facility that was under construction and shot a police officer in February 2023 (Marazzi 2023). However, a CNN interviewee indicated there was no “act of violence” by Antifa but rather by the police, who tried to prevent Antifa from entering the facility and shot and killed the Antifa shooter (CNN 2023). While technically correct that the police used “violence,” the term needs to be qualified because, in this case, the police shooting was in self-defense and after Antifa employed lethal violence, which is consistent with Antifa committing terrorism. Likewise, during the 2020 presidential debates Joe Biden claimed Antifa does not exist and was “just an idea,” despite the organization showing up at numerous events from UtR to the riots after George Floyd’s death and, in some cases, shooting and killing people. In contrast, Trump was condemned at that debate for telling the Proud Boys, which has never killed anyone, to “stand back and stand by” (CNBC 2020). If Antifa can be disassociated from “terrorism,” let alone “violence” or even “existing,” and if “mostly peaceful” can describe the activities that saw more than 500 attacks by Antifa, BLM, and their supporters in a three-month period, then it is hard to see how any current left-wing organization could be called “extremist.” Similarly, when discussing “violence,” it is also necessary to consider which side starts the confrontation. For example, although the Charlottesville UtR rally-goers prepared for a “martial event,” Antifa, BLM, and other left-wing groups like Redneck Revolt intruded on their legally protected event after which clashes ensued (Blout and Burkart 2021). While the police were also at fault for not separating the two sides, many acts of “violence” by the rallygoers were in response to violence against them and clashes likely would not have occurred if Antifa and BLM were understandably offended but remained committed to counter-demonstrating in a part of the city outside of where the rally-goers had permission to conduct their own march and speeches. Moreover, just as BLM organizers cannot be blamed for Micah Johnson’s “terrorist” killing of five police officers, the UtR rally organizers cannot be blamed for Fields’ “terrorist” killing of one person at that event, which is why blanket claims of either BLM or the rally-goers of being “terrorists” warrant caution. UtR nevertheless further served as a harbinger for future Antifa intrusions into Proud Boys or other conservative events where violence ensued, including when Antifa stalked the Proud Boys outside of the New York Metropolitan Club in 2018, where its founder Gavin McInness was giving

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a speech. When two Proud Boys fought with several Antifa adherents outside the club and police intervened, the Antifa adherents escaped, while two Proud Boys, including John Kinsman, who is married with two children to an ADoS woman, were arrested and later sentenced to four-year prison terms for “gang violence” (the Antifa adherents were never found) (Sheets 2018). Like this incident, which was the first “violence” involving Proud Boys and Antifa after UtR, almost all subsequent “violence” by the Proud Boys occurred at its own or other conservative events, where Antifa intruded upon them and clashes ensued, especially at university campuses, where Proud Boys initially served as “bodyguards” for conservative and “alt-light” speakers like Ann Coulter or Milo Yiannopolous. In contrast to Antifa, the Proud Boys, Patriot Front, or other white nationalist groups exceedingly rarely attend left-wing rallies, such as for gun control after the Parkland, Florida school shooting, the #MeToo movement after the Bret Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination, or at BLM events, let alone to use lethal or non-lethal violence against them. Even at “drag queen story hours” for children at libraries or local bookstores, Proud Boys and their allies often protest, but do not physically “confront” the attendee parents or their children or the drag queen. Thus, while it may be appropriate to call the Proud Boys right-wing “violent extremists” for their chauvinistically glorifying Western civilization, promoting “men’s rights,” opposing youth transgender surgeries to add or remove genitalia, or supporting Trump as well as for their engaging in brawls with Antifa primarily at events that Antifa “crashes,” it would be more accurate to qualify that the group’s “violence,” unlike Antifa’s, has been exclusively non-lethal, including at the J6 insurrection, where Proud Boys entered the Capitol alongside some of the more than 40 undercover agents at the Capitol, who goaded them into the premises (Kelly 2023). Further, the Proud Boys ideology is possibly “extreme” per Berger’s definition, but not necessarily in terms of its relation to the “mainstream” on political spectrum. Nevertheless, the conflation of the Proud Boys’ potential “violent extremism” with the ostensibly related concept of “terrorism” has led a U.S. senator to allege that Proud Boys are “white nationalists” and “terrorism risks” and, therefore, to oppose their holding assemblies, despite the group never conducting lethal attacks and having racial diversity in his ranks, including among the victims of Antifa violence, such as AAPI “Tiny” Toese and ADoS Philip Anderson. This reflects how “counter-terrorism” is associated with extraordinary measures that involve restrictions on civil liberties. When such terms are excessively widely interpreted or conflated with “violent extremism,” they can become a tool for “securitization” and unduly restricting civil liberties, which, in this case, is of right-wing adherents (Merkley 2021).

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Conclusion This chapter has discussed a core component of contemporary left-wing “wokeism” in the U.S.—equity. It argues that achieving equity requires equal or over-representation of PoCs in professional, government, and other institutions. Although it is intended to rectify the legacy of slavery and its after-effects, it is being applied to all PoCs or, in other words, every demographic group in the U.S. except for white people, unless, for example, a white person is LGBT+ or converts to Islam. “Normie” white people are beginning to “notice”—rightly or wrongly—that as a collective they are unable to over-achieve and, as a result, the “alt-right” from the 2016 Trump election campaign era is attempting to become more mainstream by appealing to the “Scott Adamses” in the U.S. The Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin (2023), for example, wrote, “Whites should organize to defend the collective interests of whites and to protect one another against people who want to harm whites.” Further, as white people become the U.S. minority and PoCs become the majority in the U.S., white people will increasingly play marginal roles in U.S. business, government, academic, and other institutions—as epitomized by the Stanford 2026 class—even if they work harder than other demographic groups so long as equity programs are implemented. Beyond the issue of equity and demographic decline, that “white history”—whether rightly or wrongly—will be eroded and “cancelled” will only further demoralize, if not also radicalize, some young white people to prevent “White Genocide” by, among other actions, trying to “Make America Great Again” and supporting Trump or other future Trump-like politicians. The sense of demoralization among a small proportion of white people, combined with the fact that most white nationalist ideologues condemn violence, including the writers of countercurrents.com, but are censored on social media, could lead to more lone-actor shooters like Roof, Bowers, Crusius, and Gendron believing lethal violence is their only option to “save their race.” If a growing sense of “white identity” emerges accompanied by renewed political support for Trump, then left-wing groups, such as Antifa and BLM, will view these developments as emblematic of growing racism and “crash” right-wing events and engage in physical confrontation to prevent their “fascist” ideas from spreading. Thus far, such clashes have usually been non-lethal and Antifa has usually maintained the “Goldilocks” level of violence, where its adherents engage in punching, shoving, ear-deafening whistle-blowing into their opponent’s ears, brick-throwing, and similar injurious, albeit non-lethal attacks. This level of violence is just “low enough” to avoid clearly being “terrorism” and resulting in more serious crackdowns and condemnation, but also just “high enough” to deter some of the left-wing’s ideological foes from organizing. The clashes during Antifa “confrontations” with the right-wing in public places are also often sufficient for institutions, such as universities, to cancel events where right-wing speakers are being hosted. For example,

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when female swimmer Riley Gaines (2023) was invited to San Francisco State University in April 2023 to criticize still “fully intact” transgender female swimmers, including Lia Thomas (formerly William Thomas), participating in college athletics, Antifa-like left-wing students attempted to physically assault her while yelling “transwomen are women you fuc*ing transphobic bitc*.” This was enough to prevent her speech and suppress her views, which has occurred dozens, if not hundreds of times, at universities and public venues when right-wing “extremists” have sought to share their views (Gaines 2023). The regularity by which Antifa and allied left-wing groups “crash” rightwing events and the lack of stigmatization or condemnation of this, at least from the left-wing, has led to this becoming the “new normal.” However, if not controlled, Antifa adherents and their allies may engage in more severe levels of violence, such as occurred with the shooting at the Altanta police facility under construction in February 2023, if not also with the prior several killings by Antifa or BLM supporters. With Donald Trump likely to run for president again in 2024, Antifa and BLM will have the self-given mandate to prevent “fascist” rallies for Trump, but it remains to be seen if their violence will escalate from the current “Goldilocks” level of violence, which has been effective, toward more lethal actions, which could end up backfiring and forcing a crackdown on these left-wing organizations.

Looking Ahead---What to Do Possible measures to reduce left-wing tensions in the future could involve— as difficult as it may seem—showing some “empathy” for white nationalists. In previous eras, they were allowed on mainstream television like CSPAN. As long as they explicitly disavow violence, then the left-wing could engage, and even prove wrong, their views. In contrast, after a female-born transgender young man conducted a school shooting in Tennessee in April 2023, the White House spokesperson offered support to the transgender community and praised how they “fight back” and encouraged them to keep advocating for, among others, the right for youths to receive transgender surgeries on their genitalia (Washington Free Beacon 2023). This demonstrates how even after a transgender person committed a killing, the White House still sought to empathize with the shooter’s community. Likewise, in certain cases, empathizing with a community, including, for example, white nationalists, can also help to better understand the roots of the violence from even a small number of that community’s violence to help prevent the violence, as opposed to stigmatizing the community. Moreover, Antifa and BLM and the media could focus more on actual cases of racism to ground the argument for equity more deeply in reality, rather than labeling a wide array of incidents with tenuous connections to racism as “system racism.” For example, in January 2023, five Black police officers pulled over Black man Tyree Nichols for a driving infraction and then Nichols resisted arrest and escaped until the officers captured him and beat him, which

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led to his death three days later. Despite no white people being involved and Black people being over-represented in police department leadership in the U.S., including in Memphis where the incident occurred, Nichols’ death was blamed on “white supremacy” (Chasmar 2023). Likewise, when an elderly Thai immigrant, Vichar Ratanapakdee, was killed by a Black man in January 2021, AAPI organizations led a march in New York to “unite against white nationalism” (Ke 2021). Other prominent cases of police killings that sparked the BLM movement, such as those of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd, also did not evidence any white police officers being racist, while other analogues and even more egregious cases of whites being killed by police “for picking up a brother at school” or “for eating McDonalds in a car,” as occurred with white men Richard Ward and Chase Allen in February and March 2023, go under-reported in the media (Hauck 2023; McShane 2023). This leads to the perception that only Black people are killed by police. A more grounded and evidence-based conversation about racism and “systemic racism” could enable policies to be more balanced, possibly including regarding equity, and to, therefore, avoid backlash. Lastly, Antifa, BLM, and their left-wing supporters, particularly in the government, might also consider the “Animal Farm” scenario. For example, while their goals are, among others, to “combat fascism,” the suppression of lawful speech through the “Goldilocks” level of violence is a tactic that itself resembles fascism. Likewise, when the Antifa and BLM ally, Not Fucking Around Coalition, shows up with weapons to protest outside courtrooms, the group’s actions may be legal, but also carry a sense of intimidation that is reminiscent of U.S. history. Ironically, this is also how the Ku Klux Klan is depicted historically. In sum, self-awareness about the way these organizations might actually become that which they condemn could be taken heed by Antifa, BLM, and their allies, lest their own violence become that which they ostensibly intend to deter or prevent.

Notes 1. One of the initial coiners of the term “alt-right,” Richard Spencer, defined the term as a white “identitarian alternative” to the U.S. right-wing that had by the mid-2010s embraced diversity, multiculturalism, LGBT+ pride and other “progressive” ideologies that the right-wing had once pushed back against. 2. “Normie” is a term that “alt-right” heirs use to describe Americans, and especially conservatives, who hold conventional views that are consistent with information on mainstream news channels, as opposed information discussed on “alt-platforms” on social media like Gab, Odyssey, and Rumble.

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Cheang, S. (2021). “Khmer Rouge Official on Appeal Denies Complicity in Genocide,” AP, August 19. https://apnews.com/article/war-crimes-cambodia-phnompenh-khieu-samphan-a5ceac37b5bccba422e05db5d19dedd2. CNBC. (2020). “President Donald Trump: White Supremacist Group Proud Boys Should ‘Stand Back and Stand By’,” September 30. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=JZk6VzSLe4Y&t=14s. CNN. (2023). “Atlanta Mayor, Police Chief, Condemn Violent Protests Downtown,” January 24. https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/161698667908393 3697/pu/vid/1280x720/KZp8JIAJ_CEqTtUs.mp4 Cobb, J. (2023). “The Killing of Tyre Nichols and the Issue of Race,” The New Yorker, January 31. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/thekilling-of-tyre-nichols-and-the-issue-of-race. Cofnas, N. (2022). “Four Reasons Why Heterodox Academy Failed,” Academic Questions. https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/35/4/four-reasons-why-het erodox-academy-failed. Conte, G. (2023). “Prussian Socialism Episode 26: Mein Kampf on Winning the Broad Masses,” Prussian Socialism Podcast, March 1. https://odysee.com/@gre goryconte:2/Prussian-Socialism-Episode-26-Mein-Kampf-Winning-the-Broad-Mas ses:4. Cowper, A. (2023). “What We Learnt from the Matt Hancock WhatsApp Revelations,” BMJ , 2023:380, 583. CSPAN. (1989). “Sharifa Alkhateeb Talks About Using Public Schools to Convert America to Islam,” August 7. https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4732679/user-clipsharifa-alkhateeb-talks-public-schools-convert-america-islam. CSPAN. (2015). “White Minority Status Not a Bad Thing,” February 17. https:// www.c-span.org/video/?c4978285/user-clip-white-minority-status-bad-thing End Wokeness. (2023). @EndWokeness, Twitter, February 19. https://twitter.com/ EndWokeness/status/1627365704830705664. Forliti, A. (2020). “Omar Describes Life as a Fearless Fighter in New Memoir,” ABC News, May 24. https://archive.md/OGEys#selection-2011.0-2014.0. Ford, L. (2023). “Why the Trans Massacre in Nashville of Christian Children?,” Odyssey, March 28. https://odysee.com/@LukeFordLive:7/transkilling:b. Fox Business. (2023). “Bernie Sanders Struggles to Tell the Difference Between Equity, Equality,” Youtube, March 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pslull fpQnQ. Gaines, R. (2023). @Riley_Gaines_, Twitter, April 7. https://twitter.com/Riley_Gai nes_/status/1644206766165737472. Hauck, Grace. 2023. “He Was Picking Up His Brother at School. Now His Family Is Suing in a Fatal Police Encounter,” February 22. https://eu.usatoday.com/ story/news/nation/2023/02/22/colorado-police-shooting-richard-ward-familysues/11313013002/. Hecker, I. (2023). “CNN Insider: How Intelligence Agencies Infiltrated News, How CNN Crafted Lies,” Youtube, February 20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 46Hj8E4vkRM. Hirsi, I. (2020). “‘He Was Loved by Everyone’: Somali Community Remembers Nur Omar Mohamed, Who Died of COVID-19,” Sahan Journal, June 20. https:/ /sahanjournal.com/remembering-minnesotans-lost-to-covid-19/he-was-loved-byeveryone-the-somali-community-remembers-nur-omar-mohamed-who-died-of-cov id-19/.

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Hochman, N. (2023). “Stanford’s Class of 2026 Doesn’t ‘Look Like America’,” National Review, February 25. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/stanfordsclass-of-2026-doesnt-look-like-america/. Human Rights First. (2023). “Xenophobia & Anti-immigrant Extremism: From Fringe to Mainstream,” March 31. https://humanrightsfirst.org/library/xenoph obia-fact-sheet/. Independent Man. (2018). “Douglas Murray: Have We Had Enough Diversity?,” Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ox-9OyvtJs. Jackson, R. et al. (2007). “The Case for a Critical Terrorism Studies,” Prepared for delivery at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 30. Kare 11. (2020). “Video of 2019 Floyd Arrest Released to the Public,” October 16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwwCn_VKqP4&t=137s. Ke, B. (2021). “Asian American, Black, Latinx Activists to Hold Emergency Rally Against Racism on Saturday,” Yahoo News, February 17. https://news.yahoo.com/ asian-american-black-latinx-activists-180016672.html. Kelly, J. (2023). @julie_kelly2, Twitter, April 6. https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/sta tus/1643941971298271232. Kendi, I. (2023). @DrIbram, Twitter, March 18. https://twitter.com/DrIbram/sta tus/1637186863826976769. Kessler, J. (2021). “What Happened in Charlottesville,” Odyssey, July 22. https:// www.bitchute.com/video/cHLp1y2Oltvp/. Kessler, J. (2023). @TheMadDimension, Twitter, April 3. https://twitter.com/The MadDimension/status/1643061096226357250 Khalil, L. and Roose, J. (2023). “Anti-government Extremism in Australia: Understanding the Australian Anti-lockdown Freedom Movement as a Complex Antigovernment Social Movement,” Perspectives on Terrorism, XVII:I, March, 144–170. Larsen, C. (2020). “Partners in Crime? A Historical Perspective on Cumulative Extremism in Denmark,” C-REX, April 14. Lemkin Institute. (2022). “Statement on the Genocidal Nature of the Gender Critical Movement’s Ideology and Practice,” Lemkin Institute, November 29. https://www.lemkininstitute.com/statements-new-page/statement-on-the-gen ocidal-nature-of-the-gender-critical-movement%E2%80%99s-ideology-and-practice. Lewis, C. (2020). “George Floyd Was Lynched,” openDemocracy, June 6. http:// opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/george-floyd-was-lynched/. Malik, A. (2023). @DocAhmadMalik, Twitter, March 23. https://twitter.com/Doc AhmadMalik/status/1640805643526483968. Marazzi, A. (2023). “Protester Killed in Firefight at Site of New Atlanta Police Center,” New York Times, January 18. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/ us/atlanta-police-center-protester-killed.html. McShane, Julianne. 2023. “Bodycam Video Shows 5 Utah Police Officers Fatally Shooting Man Who Initially Refused to Show ID at Traffic Stop,” March 9. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bodycam-footage-shows-5-utah-pol ice-officers-fatally-shooting-25-year-rcna74129. Merkley, J. (2021). “White Nationalism in Portland,” Medium, August 23. https:// medium.com/@SenJeffMerkley/white-nationalism-in-portland-8b214e3ff0e5. Mohammed, I. (2022). “Decolonialisation and the Terrorism Industry,” Critical Studies on Terrorism, 15:2, 2.

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National Conservative. (2023). @NatCon2022, Twitter, March 22, 2023. https://twi tter.com/NatCon2022/status/1638569252679499776 Newell, J. (2021). “Asian American Democratic Senators Say They’ll Block Biden Nominees,” Slate, March 23. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/03/sen ators-duckworth-and-hirono-say-theyll-block-biden-nominees.html. Ngo, A. (2021). “Sex Offending Suspect Claims Transgender Harassment in Wi Spa Case,” New York Post, September 2. https://nypost.com/2021/09/02/chargesfiled-against-sex-offender-in-wi-spa-casecharges-filed-against-sex-offender-in-notori ous-wi-spa-incident/. NHL. (2022). “NHL Report on Strategies, Initiatives, and Progress,” July 26. https:/ /www.nhl.com/community/diversity-and-inclusion. Politico. (2017). “Full Text: Trump’s Comments on White Supremacists, ‘Alt-Left’ in Charlottesville,” August 15. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/fulltext-trump-comments-white-supremacists-alt-left-transcript-241662. Pottiger, M. (2022). “Colleges Are Ditching the SAT, but Should Black Students Still Take It?,” Word in Black, April 7. https://wordinblack.com/2022/04/collegesare-ditching-the-sat-but-should-black-students-still-take-it/. Price, G. (2023). @greg_price11, Twitter, February 23. https://twitter.com/greg_p rice11/status/1628836326081499139. Redpilled Hugh Neutron. (2021). @RedPilledHugh, Twitter, June 28. https://twi tter.com/RedpilledHugh/status/1409709224578322432. Retraction Watch. (2020). “A Retraction and a Retraction Request as Twitter Users Call Out Sexism, Fat-Shaming, and Racism,” August 6. https://retractionwatch. com/2020/08/06/a-retraction-and-a-retraction-request-as-twitter-users-call-outsexism-fat-shaming-and-racism/. Reuters. (2021). “Fact Check: Biden’s Comments About ‘Doomed’ United States Taken Out of Context,” January 22. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factch eck-biden-comment-doomed-us/fact-check-bidens-comments-about-doomed-uni ted-states-taken-out-of-context-idUSKBN29R2BO Rozado, D. (2023). “Define Wokeness! Or How You Shall Know a Word by the Company It Keeps,” Substack, March 24. https://davidrozado.substack.com/p/ wo. Rozado, D., Al-Gharbi, M., and Halberstadt, J. (2023). “Prevalence of PrejudiceDenoting Words in News Media Discourse: A Chronological Analysis,” Social Science Computer Review, 41:1, 99–122. Rufo, C. et al. (2023). “Abolish DEI Bureaucracies and Restore Colorblind Equality in Public Universities,” Manhattan Institute, January 18. https://www.manhattaninstitute.org/model-dei-legislation. Sailer, S. (2022). “Stephen Miller Fights Anti-White Bigotry, Washington Post Is Disgusted,” UNZ Review, December 15. https://www.unz.com/isteve/stephenmiller-fights-anti-white-bigotry-washington-post-is-disgusted/. Schleifer, T. (2017). “John Lewis: Trump Is Not a ‘Legitimate’ President,” January 14. https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/13/politics/john-lewis-don ald-trump-legitimate/index.html. Sheets, M. (2018). “Dramatic Makeover of a ‘Proud Boy’: Defendant Who Is Charged in Violent Clash with Antifa Protesters Appears in Court Looking VERY Different Than He Did During His First Hearing Just a Week Ago,” Daily Mail, October 25. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6317683/Proud-Boy-cha rged-violent-clash-Antifa-protesters-appears-court-looking-different.html.

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Shivaram, D. (2019). “Biden Brings Up Charlottesville on the Campaign Trail, but Has Been a Stranger to the City,” NBC News, November 5. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-brings-charlottesvillecampaign-trail-has-been-stranger-city-n1076236. Simpson, A. (2022). “George Floyd’s Life, Shaped by Racism, Tells an American Story,” Public Integrity, May 17. https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opp ortunity/george-floyd-book-racism-american-story/. Singley, B. (2022). “Abolish the White Race,” Harvard Magazine, September. https:/ /www.harvardmagazine.com/2002/09/abolish-the-white-race.html. Somalia Tribune. (2022). “Was Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Father Active in Somalia’s Brutal Marxist Dictatorship?,” March 18. https://web.archive.org/web/202204 10083927/; https://www.somtribune.com/2022/03/18/was-rep-ilhan-omars-fat her-active-in-somalias-brutal-marxist-dictatorshiip/. Spencer Quinn. (2023). “An Open Letter to Scott Adams,” Counter Currents, February 24. https://counter-currents.com/2023/02/an-open-letter-to-scottadams/. The Dallas Morning News. (2019). “Dallas Police Body Cameras Show Moment Tony Timpa Stopped Breathing,” Youtube, July. https://youtube.com/watch?v=_c-E_i 8Q5G0. The Stanford Daily. (1976). “Bad Teaching,” November 3. https://archives.stanfordd aily.com/1976/11/03?page=4§ion=MODSMD_ARTICLE11. The Young Turks. (2012). “Trayvon Martin 911 Call,” Youtube. https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=mOpGAOXL5Uk. UC SF Law. (2018). “LEPO: Opening Doors for Students of Promise,” August 14. https://www.uchastings.edu/2018/08/14/uc-hastings-2018-magazine-previewopening-doors-for-students-of-promise/. United Nations. (2022). “Replacement Migration.” https://www.un.org/en/develo pment/desa/population/publications/pdf/ageing/replacement-es.pdf. University of Missouri—Kansas City. (2023). “Lynchings: By State and Race, 1882– 1968.” http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingsstate.html. van Dongen, T. (2021). “Assessing the Threat of Covid 19-Related Extremism in the West,” ICCT, August 5. http://icct.nl/publication/assessing-threat-covid-19related-extremism-west. Vice. (2022). “Asian Americans Debate Model Minority & Asian Hate,” December 14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FUue58GH8c. Wang, C. (2017). “Trump Website Takes Down Muslim Ban Statement After Reporter Grills Spicer in Briefing,” CNBC, May 8. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/ 05/08/trump-website-takes-down-muslim-ban-statement-after-reporter-grills-spi cer-in-briefing.html. Washington Free Beacon. (2023). Twitter, @FreeBeacon, April 6. https://twitter. com/FreeBeacon/status/1644032624304746511. White House. (2023). “President Biden Signs Executive Order to Strengthen Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Across the Federal Government,” February 16. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-rel eases/2023/02/16/fact-sheet-president-biden-signs-executive-order-to-strengthenracial-equity-and-support-for-underserved-communities-across-the-federal-govern ment/.

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CHAPTER 5

The Revolutionary Left in Central America

Alberto Martín Álvarez

Origins: Central American Communism The introduction of socialist, anarchist and communist ideas within the Central American labour movement dates back to the first two decades of the twentieth century (Ching et al. 2007; Melgar Bao 2007; Pèrez Bermúdez and Guevara 1985; Taracena Arriola 1989). Of the various tendencies of the radical left, it was Soviet-inspired communism that took root in the region after the triumph of the Russian Revolution. In this paper, the radical left is understood as organisations and movements that defended an alternative economic, social and political order of an anti-capitalist character. An alternative order that, at times, certain political and social actors sought to establish by adopting extreme positions, including the use of violence. In Central America, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the communist parties1 were the most important expression of left radicalism and were also the organisations that held a virtual monopoly over MarxismLeninism. The aim of these organisations was, at least from a theoretical point of view, the seizure of power by revolution and the construction of new socialist states led by an organised proletariat. In pursuit of this goal, revolutionary violence was seen as inevitable in order to break down the resistance of the ruling classes faced with the prospect of losing power. The founding of most of the Central American CPs took place, moreover, in a period when the Comintern was advocating a radical “class against class” strategy, A. Martín Álvarez (B) Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_5

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i.e. non-collaboration with non-revolutionary political forces. The Communist International was convinced that the world proletariat was being rapidly radicalised and that revolution was on the horizon. However, one must bear in mind that conditions in Central American countries were different. Their economies were based on agricultural production for export and, therefore, their labour force was mainly made up of peasants, coffee or banana plantation workers and artisans, and only very marginally of industrial workers. Moreover, these countries were marked by the social and political domination of oligarchic groups who based their social power on land ownership and coercive control of rural labour, which led communists to believe that capitalist relations were not fully developed in the region, but rather there was a predominance of quasi-feudal social relations. Under these circumstances, the prevailing interpretation among local communists was that the conditions for proletarian revolution did not exist and that their main tasks were to strengthen working-class organisation and consciousness. Even so, some factions within the communist parties in the region pushed for a more aggressive strategy, amidst the wave of workers’ mobilisations resulting from the effects of the 1929 economic crisis. This was the case with both the Communist Party of Honduras and the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS). The latter decided to support and provide organisation for an imminent indigenous and peasant uprising in western El Salvador in March 1932 (Ching 2017; Gould and Lauria Santiago 2008), which resulted in the defeat of the insurrection and the execution of thousands of indigenous people and several key PCS leaders. The adoption of the strategy of the Anti-Fascist United Front at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935 inaugurated a period of collaboration of the communists with socialist and non-socialist democratic parties. In the case of the Central American communists, however, this shift occurred at a time of extreme organisational weakness after the wave of repression suffered by the Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran parties, which had been practically dismantled since 1932.2 But the united front strategy did have some success in Costa Rica. In this country, the communists, now organised under the banner of the People’s Vanguard Party (PVP),3 supported the formation of a coalition of reformist forces, which won the 1944 presidential elections (Rodríguez Sáenz 2014: 51).

Post-World War II Societal Changes and the Emergence of New Political Cultures of Opposition Central American communists rebuilt their existing organisations or built new ones throughout the 1940s and 1950s under highly clandestine conditions.4 However, the efforts at organisational reconstruction took place in societies that were undergoing profound transformations in those years. New social

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groups and new political cultures of opposition, embodied in new radical left organisations, emerged as part of the processes of authoritarian modernisation that the countries of the region were undergoing. These emerged in open defiance of both authoritarian regimes and the political culture of Soviet-inspired communism, which lost its central role as a counter-hegemonic force in this new context. In the political sphere, this period was marked by the takeover of power by the armed forces as an institution, leaving behind the military caudillismo of previous decades. The military resorted—even in the case of the Somoza patrimonialist dictatorship in Nicaragua—to the creation of progovernment parties and the holding of non-competitive elections to legitimise its control of the state apparatus. These regimes were developmentalist and modernising in economic terms, but strongly repressive and exclusionary politically. The banning of communist parties, selective co-optation and repression were profusely used by the military to deal with the radical opposition. Political exclusion and repression, in turn, facilitated the politicisation of social conflicts that had intensified as a result of the increased polarisation and social inequalities associated with capitalist modernisation. Only Costa Rica was spared from this dynamic. After the brief civil war of 1948, its armed forces were abolished and a representative democracy5 was established in the country, with proper channels for conflict resolution. From the 1940s to the 1970s, developmentalist policies encouraged industrial development, intra-regional trade and the diversification of export crops. To create the favourable conditions for this modernisation process, state apparatuses grew significantly (Bataillon 2008: 58) and took on new functions in the creation of physical infrastructure and the training of the workforce. Public secondary and higher education experienced unprecedented growth, which led to massive access to university for the middle sectors and the emergence of students as highly relevant social and political actors. Social structures in the countries of the region changed markedly, with a significant increase in white-collar workers in both the public and private sectors and a relative expansion of industrial workers. As a result, all countries in the region experienced high population growth and a remarkable process of urbanisation, particularly of their capital cities. However, this urbanisation had a strong polarising character throughout the region, visible in the rise of huge marginalised communities on the periphery of the capital cities. In rural areas, the massive introduction of crops such as cotton and the expansion of livestock farming led to significant changes in social stratification. The need for land for these crops resulted in the massive expulsion of non-landowner peasants in the affected areas and their transformation into informal urban workers or semi-proletarian peasants6 on low-productivity land (Paige 1997: 30–31). Both social groups, excluded from the benefits of the authoritarian modernisation process, would form the social bases of the new radical left organisations that emerged from the 1960s onwards (Pierce 1986; Vilas 1984).

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These economic, social and political changes also brought about important cultural changes. The 1960s witnessed the emergence of new “aesthetic communities” (Roque Baldovinos 2020), of avant-garde artistic groups that challenged the social and cultural conservatism of the authoritarian regimes. Also, and more importantly from the point of view of this paper, new “oppositional political cultures” (Reed and Foran 2002) emerged that formed the ideological foundation of the new organisations of the revolutionary left. These organisations emerged as a response to what their militants perceived as a loss of the counter-hegemonic alternative character of the communist parties. This perception was fuelled by the insistence of the Central American communists on the validity of a strategy of slow accumulation of forces and collaboration with the national bourgeoisies, which was increasingly perceived by the youth sectors of the communist parties themselves as renouncing the aspiration to seize power. The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959 did much to reinforce these perceptions and precipitated the rise of these new oppositional political cultures in Central America. As Wickham-Crowley (1992: 32) argued, Cuba produced a fundamental change in the cultural repertoire of revolutionary collective action throughout Latin America. Its success showed that revolution was the result of rural armed struggle and that this revolution could be of a socialist character. Both principles were in open opposition to those defended by the communist parties, which maintained that, in Latin America, the revolution would first have an anti-imperialist and democratic character and only later would it move towards socialism. Such a democratic revolution would be the product of tactical collaboration with the national bourgeoisies and would be achieved primarily through political struggle. Moreover, as opposed to the supremacy of the revolutionary party as the vanguard of the proletariat defended by the communists, the Guevarist conception, disseminated by Cuba and popularised by Régis Debray (1967), considered that this supremacy rested with guerrilla warfare or “foco”. In doing so, Cuba sent a powerful message to those who dreamed of revolutionary change: that the vanguard of the revolution was not necessarily the Marxist-Leninist Party and that those who wanted to make the revolution had the right and the duty to establish themselves as a vanguard, independently of the parties (Debray 1967: 98). Guevarism spread rapidly among young dissidents in the left-wing parties in Central America, especially among younger communists, but also among Christian-socialists and revolutionary nationalists. Its influence was important among the new contingents of students entering the universities in the early 1960s, where the new currents of critical thought in vogue were easily disseminated. Its autonomous character, far removed from government control, turned Central American universities into “free spaces” (Poletta 1999), where new counter-hegemonic ideas could be constructed and disseminated, and where the new leftist organisations could even build their first organisational infrastructures from the early 1960s onwards. This is reflected in the fact that

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many of the founders and leaders of the armed leftist organisations in Central America that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s were university students (Kruijt 2008; Martín Álvarez and Cortina Orero 2014). In addition, other Third World liberation struggles, such as in Algeria and Vietnam, helped to reaffirm the validity of the ideas of revolution, socialism and armed struggle as the preferred means of social and political change in the eyes of the more radicalised left groups. Liberation Theology, although emerging later, constituted the other main pillar of the new oppositional cultures that emerged in Central America. The ideas of renewal emanating first from the Second Vatican Council (1962– 1965) and, above all, from the Latin American Bishops’ Conference (CELAM) in Medellín in August 1968, had an enormous impact on the pastoral practice of the most progressive sectors of the Catholic Church. The conference denounced institutionalised violence and called on Catholics to commit themselves to a profound transformation of their societies in favour of the impoverished majorities (Berryman 1987). One of the tangible results of this change of orientation in the Central American church was the emergence of a real social movement driven by priests, nuns and lay people committed to this new pastoral work. These pastoral agents worked in some of the poorest villages and neighbourhoods in the region, where they built a dense organisational infrastructure—grassroots communities, cooperatives, trade unions, study circles, celebrants of the Word—in order to fight for the basic rights of the villagers. Imbued with an ideology that combined Catholic faith with Marxist-based social analysis, these organisations were heavily suppressed when they mobilised for the rights of poor peasants and urban workers. This enabled the organisational infrastructure of the people’s church to come together with that of the first armed left-wing groups, founded mainly by students and dissidents from the communist parties. In addition to Guevarism and Liberation Theology, these oppositional political cultures had specific components from each country’s own traditions of popular struggle: Sandino in Nicaragua, Farabundo Martí in El Salvador or the “Cinchonero” Serapio Romero in Honduras. In addition, the vast majority of the cadres of the organisations of this new revolutionary left defined themselves as Marxist-Leninist and anti-imperialist. The result of this amalgamation was the construction of ideological frameworks that placed responsibility for the grievances experienced by a majority of the population on specific social groups or external agents—the landed oligarchies, the military, and imperialism. They offered a course of action to radically eliminate exploitation and oppression—direct action and armed struggle—and outlined a future model of social organisation that would nip social evils in the bud—revolution and socialism. During this period, armed struggle as a strategy for seizing power constituted a kind of dividing line within the Central American lefts. The new groups of the revolutionary left took extreme positions, adopting the use of armed

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struggle as the only possible way to seize power and denigrating the organisations of the radical (communist) left that did not support this strategy. On the other hand, it must also be said that the positions of communists in the region on this issue varied over time and that some parties opted for armed struggle in response to changes in the political context or increased repression.

The Long Wave of the New Revolutionary Left The crystallisation of these new political cultures of opposition into concrete revolutionary movements took place in each case in a considerably different way. In all cases, key political events (coups d’état, electoral frauds) played a fundamental role. They helped to change the strategy of opposition groups, to catalyse the feelings of outrage and grievance of certain segments of the population against authoritarian regimes and to justify the use of violence against their representatives. Guatemala In Guatemala, the emergence of a new revolutionary left was closely associated with three key political events. First, the 1954 coup d’etat which put an end to the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz and led the communist Guatemalan Labour Party (PGT) to accept armed struggle (Figueroa Ibarra et al. 2013: 30). This strategic shift was manifested in the founding of the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR). Second, the military uprising in 1960 against the dictatorial government of General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes. This movement (Revolutionary Movement 13 November (MR-13)) was a protest against government corruption and against the training of an anti-Castro contingent on Guatemalan soil. These forces contacted the PGT in early 1962, with the aim of provoking an insurrection against the Ydígoras government. Thirdly, there were student protests in March and April 1962 against the electoral fraud orchestrated by Ydígoras in December 1961. The suppression of these protests led a group of university students to join the MR-13 and the PGT to find the FAR in December 1962. Driven by a “foquista” vision, the FAR’s leadership received training in Cuba and the organisation deployed its activities in the north-east of the country, without previous support bases on the ground (Monsanto 2013: 82). With little social support in the areas where it operated, the armed left had been practically wiped out by the police and armed forces by 1968. After this setback, veteran militants from that first period rebuilt the revolutionary movement between 1970 and 1971 by founding two new organisations: the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) and the Revolutionary Organisation of the People in Arms (ORPA). For its part, the FAR regrouped from a small nucleus of militants and achieved significant penetration among student teachers and trade unions. Also, some sectors of the PGT (the

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National Directive Nucleus) took up the armed struggle again a few years later. Both the EGP and the ORPA began their activities as guerrilla groups in remote rural areas, with little prior connection to the populations in which they operated (Payeras 1998). In both cases, however, they introduced a fundamental innovation: the insurgents prioritised the incorporation of the indigenous population, concentrating their activities in the western half of the country, in the north and in the capital. These strategic innovations were as much a result of the lessons learned by veteran militants as of the possibilities opened up by the incorporation of new militants—or the rise to leadership positions of others who had previously been incorporated—with connections in the grassroots communities of the Catholic Church or in urban trade union or popular organisations. In addition, and in the case of the EGP (and less significantly also ORPA), the incorporation of a small group of middle- and upper-middle-class Christian-social activists from Catholic schools, who had participated in the Cursillos de Cristiandad movement in the mid-1960s, was of notable importance. Some members of this group worked with progressive priests of the Maryknoll order, who were developing agricultural cooperatives with indigenous people in the department of Huehuetenango. This work was continued from the early 1970s by various Catholic Church organisations influenced by the ideas of the 1968 Bishops’ Conference in Medellín (Porras Castejón 2011: 47). From the middle of that same decade, the indigenous peasantry, previously organised by these church structures, began to join the guerrillas, particularly the EGP, through a variety of different mechanisms. The second half of the 1970s saw an unprecedented wave of grassroots mobilisation, led by different urban and rural social groups (Figueroa Ibarra 2010: 30–37). Faced with intense repression under the governments of Generals Kjell Laugerud (1974–1978) and, above all, Romeo Lucas García (1978–1982), this mobilisation became progressively more radical and led to social movement organisations joining forces with armed left-wing groups. For their part, the latter had been coordinating their efforts within the popular movement since 1979 by creating a mass front, the Democratic Front against Repression (FDCR), which also included two small social-democratic parties. Despite this rapprochement, and the formation of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) in 1982, the levels of cooperation on the ground between the different armed organisations remained low throughout the 1980s. It should also be mentioned that, compared to the aid received from Cuba by the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran insurgents, in the 1980s the Guatemalan guerrillas received only discreet support from Cuban sources. On the other hand, the triumph of the FSLN in Nicaragua in July 1979 raised the expectations of the Guatemalan revolutionaries, who from then on intensified their actions. Faced with this offensive by the revolutionary left, the military responded with a scorched-earth strategy between 1980 and 1982, which greatly undermined the guerrillas’ indigenous support bases. The guerrillas did not have the capacity to build a people’s army from their extensive

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support bases in the indigenous highlands and were unable to protect the latter from the military offensive. At the same time, the infrastructure of the insurgent organisations in Guatemala City was practically wiped out, undermining their logistical networks and the coordination of the urban popular movement’s struggles, also subjected to extreme repression. As a result, the revolutionary left suffered a strategic defeat. From 1982 onwards, the guerrillas no longer posed a serious challenge to the Guatemalan state. In the early 1990s, a few hundred guerrilla fighters continued to operate in the mountains, against a background of increasing difficulties to recruit new militants (Santa Cruz Mendoza 2004: 255). Finally, after lengthy negotiations, the army and the guerrillas reached an agreement in 1996 for the demobilisation of the URNG and its conversion into a political party. Nicaragua The coming to power in 1957 of Luis Somoza Debayle and the prospect of the continuation of dynastic authoritarianism that had already lasted two decades led the opposition to resort to arms to overthrow the family dictatorship. In the first months of 1959, with the support of the Cuban revolutionary government, various representatives of the opposition linked to the traditional parties organised an armed operation against Somoza (Borge 1989: 111). The wiping out of this guerrilla column provoked an important student mobilisation in July 1959 in the city of León, which was strongly repressed by the National Guard. This repression in turn led to further radicalisation of a sector of the student movement, particularly the university students of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN) in the city of León. From this movement, whose ideology combined local influences (Sandino’s anti-imperialism) with admiration for the Cuban Revolution and a democratic programme, the New Nicaragua Movement (MNN) emerged in early 1961 (Borge 1989: 119). The movement, founded by former militants of the Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN)7 and the Conservative Party, was renamed the National Liberation Front (FLN)—to which the term “Sandinista” was later added in 1963. Using a foquista strategy, from 1964 to 1967, the FSLN introduced various groups of fighters in remote mountainous or jungle areas, who were quickly exterminated by the armed forces. From then on, between 1968 and 1969, the surviving FSLN leaders raised the need to implement a protracted war strategy. The need for such a strategic shift became even more evident in 1970, with the collapse of the Front’s main urban networks. For the next four years, the organisation did not carry out any armed activities, but created clandestine structures among different social sectors: Christians, women, slum dwellers or primary school teachers. The success of this work was due to the convergence of several national and international events, which increased the attractiveness of the FSLN’s stand for socialism, anti-imperialism and armed struggle, as

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opposed to others who were still committed to a peaceful transition of the political regime. On the one hand, a rapid process of radicalisation was taking place within the university student movement, which was strongly influenced by worldwide opposition to the Vietnam War and the student protests of May 1968. Students recruited by the FSLN helped to organise neighbourhoods in urban areas by engaging in community dynamics in the search for solutions to the most immediate needs of their neighbours, such as health care. On the other hand, from 1970 to 1973, the FSLN managed to attract young militants from Christian groups. In Nicaragua, the impact of the Episcopal Conference of Medellín led to the construction, from 1970 onwards, of social action programmes, networks of basic ecclesial communities and celebrants of the Word, which together constituted an important movement of progressive Christians critical of the Somoza regime (Randall 1983). This movement came to see the guerrilla as the manifestation of a “just war” against tyranny, which made it easier for it to join forces with Sandinismo. It was in the course of this process that a qualitatively important group of upper-middleclass young people from private Catholic schools joined the FSLN between 1972 and 1973. This group created the Revolutionary Christian Movement (MCR), which concentrated its organisational work mainly in the popular neighbourhoods of León and Managua where grassroots communities had previously been established, helping to radicalise them and thus incorporate hundreds of neighbourhood leaders into the FSLN in the late 1970s.8 The growth of the organisation was also accompanied by rising tensions within the organisation around 1975–1976, which led to the FSLN being split into three main tendencies.9 Although the Front lacked internal cohesion, the Somoza regime’s own mistakes made the guerrillas the pole of attraction for growing public discontent. The government’s misappropriation of international aid after the Managua earthquake of December 1972 exposed the enormous corruption of the ruling dynasty. This, together with the fraud committed by Somoza in the 1974 elections and the increasing levels of repression deployed by the National Guard between 1975 and 1977, led the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy and a large part of the economic elite into open confrontation with the regime. The assassination of journalist Pedro Joaquín Chamorro in January 1978, attributed to the government, helped to bring together all sectors of the opposition, including the Sandinistas, whose ranks began to grow in an unprecedented way from that moment onwards and who would eventually become the main political and military actor as the regime’s crisis deepened. Finally, the Somoza regime, isolated and abandoned by the United States, collapsed in July 1979 in the face of a massive insurrectional movement led by the FSLN. After the triumph of the revolution, the FSLN remained in power until the revolution, under US government pressure, was defeated at the ballot box in 1990. This defeat significantly reduced the support available to other revolutionary movements in the region, but above all and more importantly, it dealt

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a heavy moral blow to those Latin American revolutionaries who still believed in armed struggle. El Salvador Against the background of a military regime established in 1932, the triumph of the Cuban Revolution stimulated a heated debate within the Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS) on the revolutionary strategy to be followed. A debate which, in fact, did not lead the party to opt for armed struggle. However, contradictions within the party intensified in the second half of the 1960s. The new cohorts of young PCS militants, influenced by the struggle of the Vietnamese FLN and the activities of the Guatemalan and Venezuelan guerrillas, strongly criticised the party’s support for the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and the government-backed position it adopted at the time of the Honduras-El Salvador war in July 1969. This group of young militants was joined by the organisation’s Secretary General, Salvador Cayetano Carpio, in his attempt to change the PCS’s strategy. Until then, this strategy had been centred on collaboration with the parties of the bourgeoisie with the aim of carrying out a bourgeois-democratic revolution, using the channels of participation offered by the authoritarian regime. Unable to change the line of action, this small group left the party in April 1970 to find the Farabundo Martí Popular Liberation Forces (FPL) and begin the armed struggle. Similar ruptures were also taking place in the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and in the university social Christian movement. The fracture lines in this case were also related to the arrival of young militants influenced by the progressive tendencies of Catholicism, especially by the Chilean Christian Left and MAPU and by the figure of Camilo Torres Restrepo. Many of these young people were active in the Salvadoran Catholic University Action (ACUS) and the Social Christian Student Movement (MESC) (Rico Mira 2004; Martín Álvarez and Cortina Orero 2014). In March 1972, the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP)10 emerged from this milieu, initially carrying out urban guerrilla actions. In the case of both the PCS and PDC dissidents, the fundamental disagreement with their parties of origin was over the strategy that needed to be developed to bring the authoritarian regime to an end. The seizure of power through electoral means and the gradual implementation of reforms appeared in the eyes of these young militants as a futile strategy that in reality merely served to play into the hands of the ruling classes, as confirmed by the electoral frauds perpetrated by the regime in 1972 and 1977. The members of this first cohort of militant founders of the armed groups rapidly recruited other young university and high school students who were leaders of the university student movement, who were also active in ACUS, in grassroots communities or in other structures of the Catholic Church, and who had actively participated in

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the important workers’, students’ and teachers’ mobilisations of 1968, 1969 and 1970. From their links with the student movement and the grassroots work of the Catholic Church, these militants contributed decisively to the construction of a political and military strategy. Although this strategy was expressed in a particular way in each armed group, its essential characteristic was the development by the guerrillas of a strong organisational infrastructure for the social movement, which was to serve as the basis for the revolutionary war against the state (Martín Álvarez 2022). With the help of the social networks of students recruited in the early 1970s, and the mediation of progressive priests, left-wing armed groups managed to penetrate the peasantry in the central and northern parts of the country. This, together with the work of the insurgency among the trade unions and urban grassroots movements, gave the revolutionaries strong social support in the late 1970s. On the other hand, the unprecedented increase in state repression from 1976 to 1977 contributed even more to the swelling of the ranks of the left at the end of the decade. The triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in 1979 and the mediation by Cuba made it possible for the Salvadoran armed groups to come together and build a coordination platform: the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in October 1980.11 Cuba also offered training and served as a mediator in the provision of arms to the Salvadoran insurgency prior to its launch of a nationwide offensive in January 1981. Following the failure of the latter, the confrontation between the FMLN and the state took the form of a guerrilla war that was waged mainly in rural areas. Faced with the prolongation of the conflict without a clear prospect of victory for the revolutionaries and in the context of a political regime in the process of liberalisation, Cuba and the FMLN’s moderate allies supported a negotiated end to the war from the early 1980s onwards. However, it was after the failure of the strong offensive launched by the insurgency in November 1989 that all parties to the conflict considered dialogue and negotiation as the only possible way to end the confrontation. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua reinforced the conviction on the Salvadoran left that revolution through armed struggle was an unattainable goal. Costa Rica and Honduras In Costa Rica, the new left-wing organisations legalised after the 1948 war— the Socialist Workers’ Organisation (Trotskyist), the Costa Rican Socialist Party (Marxist-Leninist), the Revolutionary Movement of the People (MRP) (Marxist-Leninist) and the Popular Front (FPC) (Maoist)—became involved in institutional politics and participated in elections with little success. Alongside them were small left-wing groups that did not renounce armed struggle as a means of seizing power, but the institutionalised channels of participation

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relegated them to the margins without them ever achieving significant social support on a national scale. In the case of Honduras, the armed left maintained a discreet but perceptible presence from the 1960s onwards, although it never achieved mass popular support. There are several reasons for this. From the 1940s to the 1970s, the military was the key political actor in the country, but there were also brief periods of opening led by civilian governments. In addition, the military practised a combination of repression of the left-wing opposition along with major reforms, including land reform, which had been initiated in 1962 during the presidency of civilian Ramón Villeda Morales. The various reform processes partly solved the problem of the landless peasantry (Ruhl 1984: 58) and legitimised military control of politics in the process. It was precisely the overthrow of Villeda Morales in a military coup that signalled the structuring in 1964 of a first armed group, partly trained in Cuba, which failed to gain significant popular support. From then on, and particularly from the late 1970s and 1980s as a consequence of the Nicaraguan Revolution, several armed left-wing organisations emerged: the Popular Liberation Movement “Cinchoneros”, the Lorenzo Zelaya Popular Revolutionary Forces (FPRLZ) formed by communist dissidents, the Morazanista Front for the Liberation of Honduras or the Honduran section of the Central American Workers’ Revolutionary Party (PRTC). None of these groups succeeded in building a mass peasant base, as was the case in El Salvador and partly in Guatemala. On the other hand, in the 1980s, Honduras became a strategic base for US counter-insurgency in Central America. With the support of US military and intelligence forces, the Honduran armed forces almost completely wiped out the leftist armed organisations before they could continue to expand.

Recent Developments and Future Research The Central American revolutionary left ceased to be a counter-hegemonic alternative in the early 1990s. The communist parties were dissolved, and their members joined the parties that had emerged from the guerrillas or the newly created parties of the moderate left. On the other hand, the departure of the FSLN from power and the transformation of the FMLN and the URNG into political parties in El Salvador and Guatemala, respectively, led to the acceptance of representative democracy and the market economy. The FSLN went from being a state party to becoming the main opposition party in Nicaragua and contested elections throughout the 1990s, returning to power in a greatly changed form in 2007. Since then, the party has been de-institutionalised into an organisation built around a charismatic and authoritarian leadership—that of Daniel Ortega, former commander of the revolution. Its governments have continued to use revolutionary rhetoric, although in reality they have resorted to developing targeted social policies, sustained until 2018 by an alliance with economic and religious elites (Martí I Puig and Jarquín 2021).

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The Salvadoran FMLN demobilised and also became a successful opposition party, successfully reaching government between 2009 and 2019. Following the political crisis experienced by the country in the last year, the party has now been relegated to a marginal position within a political regime that is experiencing severe authoritarian regression. In Guatemala, the URNG demobilised in a much weaker situation than its Salvadoran counterpart and has competed in elections since then with the support of just under 3% of the electorate. Small radical left—anti-capitalist—collectives and organisations continue to exist in the region. However, they are not active in institutional politics, but within social movements or small political sects, and their social influence is currently marginal. Future research on the radical left and left-wing extremism in Central America still has important challenges on the horizon. Significant gaps in knowledge exist regarding the various left-wing armed organisations, about which in most cases no monographs have been written, and this also applies to the communist parties in the region. These shortcomings are much more marked in the cases of the Honduran and Costa Rican revolutionary organisations, for which the available information is so far almost non-existent. We also lack research on the relations of support and solidarity between the different left-wing organisations in the decades after the Second World War or on the support provided by Cuba to each of them. These and other issues form the research agenda for the coming years.

Notes 1. Founded in Central America between 1923 and 1931, their leaders maintained significant links with the Comintern, the Profintern (Red International of Labour Unions) and the International Red Aid, particularly in the cases of the Salvadoran Communist Party (PCS), the Communist Party of Honduras (PCH) and the Communist Party of Guatemala (PCG). 2. From 1927 to 1934 in Nicaragua, the situation was marked by the struggle of the nationalist and anti-imperialist guerrilla movement led by General Augusto César Sandino against the US occupation forces. There was no MarxistLeninist party in the country during this period, and left-wing radicalism was united under the Nicaraguan Workers’ Party (PTN), a revolutionary nationalist organisation founded in 1931. 3. Until then, communists in Costa Rica were united under the Workers’ and Peasants’ Bloc (BOC), an organisation which in 1932 had replaced the Communist Party of Costa Rica (PCCR), founded a year earlier. The BOC in turn dissolved to create the PVP in 1943. 4. In 1944, the Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN) was founded, in 1949, the Guatemalan Labour Party (PGT), in 1954, the Honduran Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRDH), while the PCS was slowly rebuilt throughout the 1940s. 5. It should be noted, however, that the political constitution enacted by the new regime in 1949 left the communists of the PVP without a legal status until 1975.

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6. Peasants owning small plots of land, insufficient in size to guarantee their own survival and forced to work several months a year on export crop plantations, such as coffee. 7. In the mid-1960s, the PSN was the local communist party, which was committed to a strategy of participating in elections in coalition with sectors of the progressive bourgeoisie as a way of ousting the Somoza dynasty from power. 8. In Managua alone, the MCR organised eight neighbourhoods that became FSLN strongholds. The movement also extended its work to secondary schools. 9. Hence, the Protracted People’s War, the Proletarian and the Insurrectionary or “Tercerista” (Third Way) tendencies were born. 10. Later, the Armed Forces of National Resistance (FARN) and the Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers (PRTC) were formed as offshoots of the ERP. 11. This platform was also joined by the PCS, which had been reconsidering the possibility of building its own armed wing since 1977–1978. In 1980, the party founded the Armed Forces for Liberation (FAL).

References Bataillon, Gilles. 2008. Génesis de las guerras intestinas en América Central (1960– 1983). Mexico: Fondo De Cultura Económica. Berryman, Phillip. 1987. The Religious Roots of Rebellion. London: SCM Press. Borge, Tomás. 1989. La Paciente Impaciencia. La Habana: Casa de las Américas. Ching, Erik. 2017. El Salvador y la Revolución Rusa (1917–1932). Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos, 43: 287–312. Ching, Erik; López Bernal, Carlos Gregorio; Tilley, Virginia. 2007. Las masas, la matanza y el martinato en El Salvador. San Salvador: UCA. Debray, Régis. 1967. Revolution in the Revolution? New York: Grove Press. Figueroa Ibarra, Carlos. 2010. Partido, poder, masas y revolución: la izquierda en Guatemala, 1954–1996. En Alberto Martín Álvarez, coord., La izquierda revolucionaria latinoamericana. México: Universidad de Colima. Figueroa Ibarra, C.; Paz Cárcamo, G.; Taracena Arriola, A. 2013. El Primer ciclo de la insurgencia revolucionaria en Guatemala (1954–1972). En Virgilio Álvarez Aragón, Carlos Figueroa Ibarra, Arturo Taracena Arriola, Sergio Tischler Visquerra y Edmundo Urrutia García, Guatemala: Historia Reciente (1954–1996). Tomo II La dimensión revolucionaria. Guatemala: FLACSO. Gould, Jeffrey L.; Lauria Santiago, Aldo. 2008. To Rise in Darkness. Revolution, Repression and Memory in El Salvador, 1920–1932. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Kruijt, Dirk. 2008. Guerrillas. War and Peace in Central America. London: Zed. Martí I Puig, Salvador; Jarquín, Mateo. 2021. El precio de la perpetuación de Daniel Ortega. Nueva Sociedad. https://nuso.org/articulo/el-precio-para-nicaragua-de-laperpetuacion-de-daniel-ortega/. Accessed 28-09-2022. Martín Álvarez, Alberto. 2022. Guerrillas and Social Movements. The Supportive Environment of the Salvadoran Armed Left During the Seventies. Partecipazione e Conflitto, 15(1): 175–192.

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Martín Álvarez, Alberto; Cortina Orero, Eudald. 2014. The Generis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador’s People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP), 1970–1976. Journal of Latin American Studies, 46(4): 663–689. Melgar Bao, Ricardo. 2007. Una cultura política en formación: Los cominternistas centroamericanos. En Elvira Concheiro, Massimo Modenesi y Horacio Crespo, eds., El comunismo. Otras miradas desde América Latina. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Monsanto, Pablo. 2013. Somos los jóvenes rebeldes. Guatemala Insurgente. Guatemala: FyG. Paige, Jeffery M. 1997. Coffee and Power. Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Payeras, Mario. 1998. Los Días de la Selva. Guatemala: Piedra Santa. Pèrez Bermúdez, Carlos; Guevara, Onofre. 1985. El movimiento obrero en Nicaragua. Apuntes para el conocimiento de su historia. Managua: El Amanecer. Pierce, Jenny. 1986. Promised Land: Peasant Rebellion in Chalatenango, El Salvador. London: Latin American Bureau. Poletta, Francesca. 1999. “Free spaces” in Collective Action. Theory and Society, 28: 1–38. Porras Castejón, Gustavo. 2011. Las huellas de Guatemala. Guatemala: FyG. Randall, Margaret. 1983. Cristianos en la Revolución. Managua: Nueva Nicaragua. Reed, Jean-Pierre; Foran, John. 2002. Political Cultures of Opposition. Exploring Idioms, Ideologies, and Revolutionary Agency in the Case of Nicaragua. Critical Sociology, 28(3): 335–370. Rico Mira, Carlos Eduardo. 2004. En silencio tenía que ser. Testimonio del conflicto armado en El Salvador (1967–2000). San Salvador: UFG. Rodríguez Sáenz, Eugenia. 2014. Madres, reformas sociales y sufragismo: el Partido Comunista de Costa Rica y sus discursos de movilización política de las mujeres (1931–1948). Cuadernos Intercambio sobre Centroamérica y el Caribe, 11(1): 45– 77. Roque Baldovinos, Ricardo. 2020. La rebelión de los sentidos. Arte y revolución durante la modernización autoritaria en El Salvador. San Salvador: UCA. Ruhl, J. Mark. 1984. Agrarian Structure and Political Stability in Honduras. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 26(1): 33–68. Santa Cruz Mendoza, Santiago. 2004. Insurgentes. Guatemala, la paz arrancada. México: ERA. Taracena Arriola, Arturo. 1989. El primer partido comunista de Guatemala (1922– 1923). Diez años de una historia olvidada. Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos, 15(1): 49–63. Vilas, Carlos. 1984. Perfiles de la Revolución Sandinista. Buenos Aires: Legasa. Wickham-Crowley, Timothy. 1992. Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America Since 1956. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 6

The Little Red Book and the Case of Left-Wing Political Extremism in Colombia Juan Federico Pino Uribe

and Andrea Marcela Cely

Introduction Colombia in the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first century has been characterized by the presence of armed groups with different Marxist, Maoist and anarchist ideological tendencies, among others, that have resorted to violence as a way to position their demands before the Colombian political system or even to try to transform it completely. Despite the systematic use of violence, the concept of left-wing political extremism has been almost entirely absent from the theoretical debate in research on the Colombian case and even on other experiences of the armed and unarmed left in Latin America. Thus, most articles and books that deal with Latin American cases, especially the guerrillas, use them as examples of the phenomenon of left-wing extremism without conducting in-depth research on this concept (Seger 2001; Singh 2001). In contrast, the case studies focus mainly on the emergence of anarchist and radical Marxist groups in Europe and especially on Maoist groups in India (Koehler 2021; De Lange and Mudde 2005). Despite the lack of analysis on left-wing extremism in the region, the study of extremism is still relevant. Extremist positions of individuals or groups have been the antipode of coexistence between different social and political sectors, so extremist positions have been a continuous challenge for the survival of J. F. P. Uribe (B) Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, Quito, Ecuador e-mail: [email protected] A. M. Cely National Pedagogic University, Bogotá, Colombia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_6

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societies and even more so for democracies. It explains why the development of representative democracies has been based on the need to articulate a pluralistic framework of competition and coexistence between different political projects that does not degenerate into a sectarian and factional struggle (Sartori 1980). Therefore, extremism and antagonism are the main dangers of pluralism, a fundamental condition of modern democracies (Lipset 1959). The phenomenon of increased polarization (Lombana-Bermúdez et al. 2022) and the emergence of new organizational dynamics by left-wing extremist groups (Zúquete 2014) make the research agenda on the meaning of the concept of extremism and its application in Latin American contexts, especially in Colombia, of particular social importance and academic relevance. Based on the above, this chapter seeks to answer two questions. First, whether the concept of extremism can be used in Colombia to describe and classify the behavior, beliefs and ways of seeing the world of certain leftist groups through case studies such as the analysis of the extreme left organizational experiences of maoist groups in India, especially in the provinces of Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra (Ramana 2011). Through a case study, the second question will show how the concept of left-wing extremism can be helpful in the Colombian case to describe the actions and development of certain left-wing maoist groups that structured totalizing visions of Colombian society and the State. In this sense, we describe and analyze how the extremism of these groups configures a series of behaviors and attitudes toward their political opponents and how their extremist positions can limit and restrict their capacity for territorial and political expansion. To answer these questions, in the first part, after the introduction, a review of the literature on left-wing extremism is presented, showing that this concept has been little used in the study of armed and unarmed left-wing groups in Latin America and Colombia. Secondly, it discusses and specifies what is understood by extremism and based on this definition, it presents what characterizes left-wing extremism and the feasibility of using it to understand some left-wing expressions in Colombia. Thirdly, the process of selecting a case study that responds to the characteristics delimited by the concept of left-wing extremism is presented. Fourth, it will show the analytical possibilities of the concept of left-wing extremism and the limits presented by this term to conceptualize and understand the behavior and actions of these groups. In the final part, the conceptual discussion is taken up again and based on the conclusions, we reflect on the potentiality and limits of the concept of left-wing extremism in Colombia.

How Has It Been Studied? Much of the research on political extremism originated in Western Europe, where the majority presence of far-right parties and the historical legacy of right-wing authoritarian regimes in Germany, Italy and Spain shifted the focus toward an emphasis on the study of the right and its extremism in the

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twentieth century (Jungkunz 2019). Thus, while the origins of right-wing extremism were covered in almost every conceivable form, extreme left-wing attitudes were either kept on the sidelines or not handled with adequate analytical care (Visser et al. 2014). In the academic literature, it is difficult to find explicit, exclusive and substantiated definitions or characteristics of extremist groups, even more so in the study of left-wing groups. Despite the existence of exhaustive literature that uses the label of political extremism or left-wing extremism, most articles or books use it without going through a rigorous conceptualization stage. Scholars have been engaged in an ongoing debate about the usefulness of alternatives such as “radicalism” and “extremism” in analyzing the poles of the political spectrum. And although they are often used interchangeably, and it is easy to find conceptual confusion between radicalism, terrorism and leftwing extremism, they are distinct terms. As Uba and Bosi (2022) state, it is pertinent to recall that the term “radical” began to be used increasingly to distinguish people based on their repertoires of violent action rather than their attitudes. In political violence and terrorism, radicalization came to be understood predominantly as the gradual adoption of extremist ideas that promote and eventually lead to acts of terrorism (Malthaner 2017). This conceptual confusion is prevalent in the literature studying left-wing extremism in India, where different groups are labeled as radicals, terrorists and extremists as synonyms. In the European literature, most of the research on the subject refers to a radical left almost always associated with populist practices or national security issues. In comparison, the use of the concept of extremism in Colombia and Latin America is extremely limited in the literature. This may be because it does not seem to be a popular concept in the region’s literature to describe left-wing extremist groups. The possible reasons behind this are beyond the scope of this chapter. However, one hypothesis questions the usefulness or necessity of using the concept as we have not found many cases demonstrating left-wing extremist groups in the region. In the Colombian case, it is likely that political language has played a relevant role in the absence of this concept in the academy since it has been more frequent to describe left-wing armed groups as terrorists rather than extremists and that the phenomenon of extremism, despite the presence of violence, has been the exception rather than the rule, as will be discussed below.

What Is Extremism? What Is Left-Wing Extremism? The idea of the extreme and, therefore, political extremism has its roots in the ancient Greek ethics of moderation, where it was affirmed that in every situation of action, there is a middle ground (mesotes ) between the too big (hyperbole) and the too small (ellipsis ), a distinction between the excessive and the moderate (Backes 2007). Thus, the concepts of “extreme” and “extremism” whether of the left or the right, imply the spatial location at one of the

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farthest points from the center of the ideological continuum, that is, from the normative center of power, from the Aristotelian ideal in this perspective. In other words, extremism is a phenomenon that is not primarily characterized by its substantive ideological content in terms of political positions. Instead, the central characteristic is its structure based on ideological distances where a plane is created. The positions furthest away from the moderate center are the extremist ones. The contents linked to the image of the middle ground and extremism have often been subject to historical and contextual changes and can therefore encompass contradictory ideas and worldviews. The classification of extremism has not been free of criticism, especially those that focus on the fact that ideological spectrums and extremism vary depending on the context. In this regard, Backes (2007), to free the concept from its changing historical contents, carries out a genealogy and suggests that the antithesis of extremism is the constitutional State, the differentiating axis being the division and control of power that occurs in democratic states. However, this proposition has the danger of placing democracy as the only framework where extremism can develop. It is problematic since extremist practices have also occurred in authoritarian or semi-democratic regimes. We agree with Loewenstein (1969) that extremism aspires, voluntarily and involuntarily, to autocracy, even a temporary one, that is to say, to a concentration of power and absence of institutional control that allows limiting other political options. Therefore, one of the main characteristics of extremism, beyond anti-constitutionalism, is anti-legalism, which would be expressed as the non-acceptance of the formal rules of a political system in order to reform or maintain it and, therefore, a greater propensity to use violence or illegal actions by extremist groups in authoritarian, semi-democratic or democratic regimes. Expressly, in the case of the latter, we agree with Backes (2007) that the constitutional State and extremism cannot be determined solely based on the institutional structure of the State since it also depends on the structure and organization of the power process. From this author’s perspective, political extremism is anti-democratic, i.e., it tends to treat divisions, a standard in democratic regimes, within society and politics as illegitimate (Lipset and Raab 1971; Backes 1989). Additionally, extremist groups are anti-pluralist by rejecting the legitimacy of the political opposition while claiming absolute truth and, consequently, promoting the construction of images of friends and enemies between them and the rest of society. In this process, extremist groups, being anti-pluralist, build their dogmatism around a holistic, monistic and deterministic conception of history as well as an identitarian construction of society (March and Mudde 2005; Pfahl-Traughber 2014), where there is no political space for dissident visions of this vision of society and State. In this order of ideas, it is necessary to make two conceptual precisions. First, the Aristotelian idea of the distance between the extreme and the center

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(mesotes ) can lead to the intuition that extremists are identified by their positioning in an ideological spectrum, whatever the values among which it is constructed (right, left, conservative, liberal, protectionist or free market). It can lead to a deontological simile in which extremists acquire these characteristics since they move away from a virtuous center that embodies moderation and conciliation of the political ideas that are in a confrontation in society so that to avoid extremism, per se, moderate positions close to the center should be assumed. However, following Jabardo (1998), it is proposed that the extremist position is not given by the ideological distance in substantive issues but by the ontological distance concerning other ideological positions that may legitimately exist in a political community. In this order of ideas, the distance referred to is given on a dichotomous scale, where groups that accept the existence of other positions and their legitimate right to exist are not extremists. In contrast, those who argue that other groups different from them have no reason to exist and should be excluded from the political system are extremists. In the case of non-extremist groups, the political contest is articulated around ideological distances concerning specific issues that may vary. However, for an extremist group, the political confrontation implies the elimination or co-optation of others, so the idea of ideological distance or closeness is not very useful as an analytical distinction between extremist groups and others that are not. In this sense, there is a certain tendency to equate extremist groups with radical attitudes within the ideological spectrum, violence and fanatical attitudes. It is highly probable that an extremist group possesses radical positions within an ideological continuum and is likelier to use violence to achieve its ends. What identifies an extremist group from a non-extremist group are their behaviors and attitudes, not their ideological stance on specific issues. These attitudes and behaviors are structured, following Belligni, in a model of political action that rejects norms, customs and values of a political system in order to reform it, based on a monist vision that prioritizes the construction of a single political project that normatively values the exclusion and destruction of alternative projects (Kornhauser) and is, therefore, anti-pluralist (Jungkunz 2022). The arguments above lead to the second point. Extremist groups do not necessarily ally themselves with groups with similar political or economic conceptions of society and the State. On the contrary, by promoting a monist and maximalist project, differences with other groups may be interpreted as deviations from the original project, and other groups may be considered more as traitors than friends, so that hostility with groups close in ideological agenda may be greater than groups more ideologically distant. These two clarifications show that extremism is not distinguished by its ideological orientation, the radical nature of its positions or the goals it seeks. The concept refers to behaviors and attitudes that are structured around the maintenance or transformation of the political system and that share two main characteristics. First is the rejection of legal mechanisms and the tendency to commit

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actions violating the rules to realize their political project. Extremists consider that the political system and the legal order are not legitimate, so several of these groups may be prone to the use of violence if, by doing so, they can contribute to the realization of their political project. Secondly, the political project is monist and maximalist. The first characteristic comprises the impossibility of recognizing other projects as legitimate, and the second includes the impossibility of making transactions with other projects that do not share this vision to gain political power. The corollary that emerges from the above approaches is that extremism can arise on the right, left, or even center since its conceptual core is found in the exclusive and discriminating way of conceiving in an integral and monistic way its political project, rejecting the pluralism of legitimate options of society and using mainly illegal repertoires (without discarding the strategic use of legal activities) to generate the changes society and the State must have. This concept of extremism derived mainly from Jabardo (1998) and Jungkunz (2022), still does not define what makes left-wing extremism and can differentiate it from right-wing extremism. Left-wing extremism is the political behavior of a collectivity or individuals who share attitudes and behaviors that are general to all extremism. In this sense, these groups have anti-pluralistic beliefs and a vision of their actions and objectives as absolute truths. From this, they construct an identity-based view of society, in which they are likely to produce images of friends and enemies and potentially impose their views on other social groups (Jungkunz 2019). While right-wing extremism aims to preserve a political, social and economic order or return to an idealized former order, left-wing extremism’s goal is to completely replace the current socio-political order or parts of it. For example, some authors, such as Pfahl-Traughber (2014), with a communist or anarchist system, while for others, the aims of social transformation may be linked to contextual and historical issues. Among these, the rejection of capitalism, globalization, militarism, opposition to repressive law enforcement agencies and practices and even specific issues, as in the case of the anti-nuclear movement and resistance to gentrification, have been noted (Hlouek and Kopeek 2010; Pfahl-Traughber 2014). However, several authors recognize that opposition to capitalism is neither sufficient nor necessary for left-wing extremism. The previous characteristics, combined with their dogmatism, the conviction of the superiority of their intuition and the pretension of reestablishing order and/or creating a new world, lead from intellectual empowerment to action, justifying, in many cases, the use of violence (Backes 2007). In other words, leftist extremism refers not only to a maximalist ideal of its anti-pluralist and anti-legalist objectives but also to extremism in its procedures or concrete practices, such as the armed struggle to change the world based on Marxist or anarchist ideals, among other tendencies of this ideological spectrum. For this reason, it is usually associated with concepts such as radicals, revolutionaries or terrorists (Jabardo 1998). It is pertinent to note that although violent manifestations are the most visible form of political extremism, violent behavior

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is not a necessary and sufficient condition to classify a group as a left-wing extremist, which is why it would be inappropriate to see the use of violence as a defining characteristic of political extremism. In other words, violence is one of the repertoires of action that extremist groups may use, but it is not the only one, nor is it exclusive to these groups.

How Can Left-Wing Extremism in Colombia Be Studied? The concept of left-wing extremism provides elements to distinguish extremist armed and unarmed left-wing groups that have operated in the Colombian case in the last decade of the twentieth century. This concept also allows us to analyze when a leftist group approaches extremist behavior at specific historical moments and adopts strategic and organizational decisions that allow them to be qualified as such. Thus, the above definition makes it possible to exclude violence as a necessary and sufficient criterion for classifying a group as an extremist. Generally, the studies that use examples of Colombian armed groups privilege this characteristic over the others, using the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) as the main referents. These investigations categorize these groups as extremist to the extent that they have used considerable levels of violence and practices such as drug trafficking to position their demands vis-à-vis the Colombian State. However, as discussed above, the two characteristics of extremist groups are the illegality of their actions and the anti-pluralism of their behavior. Although the ELN and the FARC have used legal and, above all, illegal practices such as kidnappings, selective assassinations, massacres and drug trafficking, among others, to try to reform the political system, their behavior and attitudes have not necessarily been structured based on a monist and maximalist project of political change. Therefore, if this division is expressed in ideal types, it can be affirmed that although these leftist guerrillas comply with the first conceptual characteristic, they do not have a monist project, which leads to anti-pluralist behavior and actions that radically exclude alliances or yield some programmatic positions in order to reach agreements with other leftist organizations or those of other ideological tendencies. In 2012, the Colombian State began a negotiation process with the FARC that culminated with the signing of the peace agreement in 2016. Although a large part of this guerrilla demobilized, two residual groups remain in arms after the negotiation till today. The First Front, which maintains the name FARC, never demobilized in the peace negotiations and abandoned the process at the Tenth Conference held by the FARC-EP to ratify the peace agreements in September 2016. The other is the Second Marquetalia. This group was formed by former combatants, who rearmed accusing the Colombian State of not complying with the content of the agreements (Ríos 2022).

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The U.S. State Department has designated both groups as foreign terrorist organizations. Different organizations have shown that they resort to diverse violent strategies to position their strategic interests in the disputed territories. In this sense, there is a dilemma regarding how the State should articulate a political and military line against them. On the one hand, there is the position that by not accepting or not complying with the agreement, they lost their political status and should be classified as eminently criminal and terrorist groups. Consequently, it would not be possible to negotiate with them, and only their submission to justice would be accepted, a position that the government of President Iván Duque maintained throughout its period. Currently, with the arrival of the government of Gustavo Petro, a clearly left-leaning president, the peace commissioner has opened the possibility of considering these groups as political actors with whom new negotiation agendas are being explored in the framework of the peace agreement signed in 2016 (Trejos and Badillo 2022). The main reasons why these groups kept their weapons were not centered on the substantive points of the agreement or ideological differences but mainly had two motivations. Firstly, the lack of guarantees offered by the Colombian state in the post-agreement scenario. Secondly, in the interest of maintaining control of businesses and networks of illegal economies, mainly international and national cocaine trafficking, focusing on their production and commercialization circuits. These groups have exercised high levels of violence with other armed actors and against civil society in their territories. The fact that their claims are based on their demands for security in the process of disarmament and reintegration into civilian life and that their primary motivations are illegal rents differentiates them from extremist organizations. Insofar as their political and armed strategies are not structured on the basis of a monist ideological project but rather on the basis of circumstantial antagonisms derived from the fluid military positioning of these groups among themselves and vis-à-vis the State. In this sense, these organizations can hardly be considered left-wing extremists (Table 6.1). In this sense, despite the continued presence of leftist groups that employ political violence, the presence of monist and anti-pluralist projects has not been as recurrent in the Colombian conflict. In contrast, the perception that Table 6.1 Typology of the dimensions of left-wing extremism

Dimensions

Shares Legal

Behavior

Pluralist Antipluralism

Source Own elaboration

Maoists

Illegal FARC, ELN Maoists (EPL)

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the political system is illegitimate and, therefore, it is necessary to employ legal and illegal activities to change it has been much more frequent, leading to this confusion. In this order of ideas, it is proposed that the concept of left-wing extremism, rather than being beneficial to classify a group as an essentialist characteristic, similar to the intentionality with which some security agencies and countries use the term terrorist, can allow understanding in depth the characteristics and behavior of certain groups that have a deep monist and anti-legalist conception of their political project. These groups need to have these characteristics configured as necessary conditions but insufficient by themselves to classify a leftist group as extremist, so the same group must have both conditions to be classified as such. Based on the above, although Colombia has one of the most prolonged conflicts of the twentieth century and a high number of armed leftist groups, not all of them have these two characteristics. In this case, two Maoist experiences were reviewed: the so-called Juntas Patrióticas (Patriotic Boards) led by the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (PC-ML) and its armed wing, the Popular Liberation Army (EPL) and the Descalzos (Barefoot) of the Workers Party of Colombia-Revolutionary Independent Workers Movement (PTCMoir) and it was assessed that only in one of the cases these two conditions are met, allowing the analysis of how an experience of left-wing extremism developed in Colombia. Based on this, the case study, rather than consisting of a taxidermic exercise of classification, has as its primary objective to understand how these groups structured their actions and behaviors based on the propensity to illegalism in their actions and the monist and maximalist vision of social and political change that they championed. Likewise, this perspective allows us to understand specific actions that, in military and political terms, do not seem to have brought advantages or advances but that, from an ideological point of view, are congruent with their role as an extremist group.

Characterization of Extremism in Colombia: The Case of Maoism In Colombia’s long history of social and armed conflict, it is impossible to generalize or homogenize the experiences of leftist political groups. For this reason, and based on a review of behaviors and attitudes, it was considered that the Maoist experience would be the case to analyze in light of what is internationally known as left-wing extremism. Remarkably, two experiences had a defined territorial scope and a relatively important permanence in time. Thus, the focus was not on the ideological positions of the leftist groups or the use of armed violence. In analyzing these two experiences, emphasis was not placed on ideological positions or the use of armed violence, but rather on the analysis of the political positions they adopted at a given historical moment, the type of relationship they established with civil society and with the State,

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in order to determine whether their behavior could be called illegal, monist or anti-pluralist. Maoism arrived in Colombia in the 1960s and became associated as a political and ideological force independent of the Soviet Union and close to the Chinese Communist Party. It marked a firm distance from other leftist projects aligned with the Cuban project. Its antecedents are in the formation of the Student and Peasant Workers Movement (Moec) and the divisions within the Communist Party (CP). From this process derived the two great Maoist projects in Colombia: the Partido del Trabajo de Colombia-Movimiento Obrero Independiente Revolucionario (PTC-Moir) and the Partido Comunista-Marxista Leninista (PC-ML). According to researcher Miguel Angel Urrego (2017), six characteristics differentiate Maoism from other Marxist currents: (1) the solid mass work in the countryside, (2) the search for a political front that includes the national bourgeoisie, (3) the model of prolonged people’s war, (4) the reading of the Soviet Union as an imperialist project and the communist parties as revisionist, (5) the claim of an intermediate stage without collectivization, nor statization and (6) the moral principle of its militants to be at the service of the people (p. 114). At that time, Chairman Mao was considered to be a successful realizer of historical materialism, that the countryside was the stage of the revolution and that in this way, a process of human redemption could be led that did not have in its foundations the bourgeois values of the West (Archila 2019). Of these characteristics, two particularly relevant ones provoked illegalist and monist behaviors and practices. The first characteristic is that any political movement related to the Soviet Union was seen as part of an imperialist and revisionist project by the Maoists. This interpretation resulted in the Maoist left projects distancing themselves from any possibility of political articulation or reconciliation with other left organizations. The second characteristic that allows for this characterization is the moral principle of its militants being at the service of the people, which,combined with a dogmatic interpretation of reality and the historical moment, led to the imposition of methods and ways of life on those who approached these political processes, social organizations, and territorial base communities in which they settled. This reading resulted in the Maoist left projects distancing themselves from any possibility of political articulation or rapprochement with other left organizations. And on the other hand, the moral principle of its militants at the service of the people which, added to a dogmatic reading of reality and of the historical moment, brought as a consequence the imposition of methods and ways of life to those who approached these political processes, social organizations and territorial base communities in which they settled. Nevertheless, the two Maoist projects in Colombia also had fundamental differences from the moment of their formation. For those who opted for the creation of the PC-ML, the defense of the armed struggle became an imperative that was roundly rejected by the PTC-Moir and the agreements with the

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national bourgeoisie at different stages of history mark the distances between these political groups to this day. In this sense, the analysis presented below concentrated on the assessment of two cases of actions led by Maoist groups in the country, in which only one of them could be called left-wing extremist: the Juntas Patrióticas led by the EPL guerrillas and the Pies Descalzos as an organizational bet of the Moir, which in some cases provoked illegalist actions. However, its project was not characterized as monist and anti-pluralist. The Patriotic Boards The internal division of the Communist Party in Colombia was replicated in other parts of Latin America, as well as the emergence of new Maoist groups in universities and other cultural and artistic spaces. However, the creation of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (PC-ML) in Colombia also brought with it the conformation of the Popular Liberation Army (EPL) guerrilla as its armed wing, which, according to Urrego (2017), is a unique case in Latin America, since the other Maoist organizations that derived from the communist parties maintained the political struggle within legality and formed mass fronts, among which the Democratic Popular Movement of Ecuador stands out (p. 116). The fracture experienced by the CP in Colombia led to the convening of meetings of the Command for the Integration of Colombian Revolutionary Movements (Cimrec), which was made up of some members expelled from the CP, the Communist Youth (Juco), the Moec, militants of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (PRS) and the Youth of the Liberal Revolutionary Movement (MRL). Part of the convening principles was already marked by the influence of the theses of Marxism-Leninism: anti-imperialist, antielectoral, anti-employer, anti-oligarchic and anti-revisionist. This way, the new Communist Party-Marxist Leninist (PC-ML) was formed. One of the main complaints against the Communist Party was its position on armed self-defense actions in the country. At that time, the new MarxistLeninist Communist Party made statements such as: “Parties to wait for the revolution are not revolutionary but evolutionist, that is to say, bourgeois. And the popular struggles, even armed, to conserve the existing situation, such as the one you put forward by erecting self-defense as a superior form of struggle, are not revolutionary but conservative” (Calvo 1996, p. 31). In this way, this Maoist tendency read the other communist organizations as an enemy position by pointing them out as bourgeois and conservative when they did not share the same reading of the political moment and the project they hoped to lead. The PC-ML did seek the rupture with the existing constitutional order. For this reason, they made a direct call to the insurgent struggle through the EPL as the highest instance of action. However, paradoxically, this position also led them to the clandestinity of their militants to become a feature of their own identity (Archila 2019).

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Among some of their assertions was that the communist movements and parties in Colombia recognized only in theory the need to employ all forms of struggle and that they did so in order to disguise their actual counterrevolutionary position. For this political group, the armed struggle was understood as “a touchstone to differentiate the true revolutionaries from the false ones” (Villarraga and Plazas 1995, p. 113). And concerning other leftist political projects at the international level, for these Maoists, “Parties like those of China, Albania, Vietnam and Colombia are built in the heat of war and not through a long accumulation, basically peaceful, as occurs with the parties committed to urban insurrectional life” (Villarraga and Plazas 1995, p. 97), while Cuba was seen as “the pawn of Soviet social-imperialism in Latin America” (Villarraga and Plazas 1995, p. 299). For this reason, its international relations were never pervasive, and its leaders recognized that they came to them late. For this new party, the main scenario of action was the countryside. The fundamental form was the clandestine and illegal armed struggle, the party carried out the leadership, and the friendly forces had to be articulated around a Popular Front. With this, a political force was formed whose bases were fundamentally ideological. In their words: “we are not united by politics but by the ideology that precedes it, the principles, the thinking, because behind each policy is the ideology that sustains it, and in the world, there are only two ideologies, the bourgeois and the proletarian” (Villarraga and Plazas 1995, p. 24). In this way, the PC-ML called itself the vanguard of the left in Colombia and denied any possibility of dialogue with other projects that they pointed out as reformist, pacifist and revisionist. Moreover, they refrained from seeking any form of agreement or reconciliation with any faction of the Colombian bourgeoisie or engaging in electoral competitions for public positions in the executive or legislative branches. The act of forging alliances with other parties or groups that did not align with their ideology held no significance and was deemed irrelevant to them, as their perspective acknowledged solely the ideologies of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Within this framework of stark contrasts, there was no room for political nuances, but rather a rigid identification of the completely dichotomous ideological distinction between “them” and “us” (Villarraga and Plazas 1995, p. 30). The above demonstrates the monist character of this party, which we will analyze in greater detail with one of its organizational devices and territorial actions: the creation of the so-called Juntas Patrióticas . They were consolidated as political bodies that regulated local power over communities living in areas controlled or “liberated” by the EPL. The case of the colonization zone in Alto Sinú and San Jorge in the department of Córdoba is particularly noteworthy.1 To reach this level of organization, the EPL built schools, gave away medicines and did continuous political work under the principle of prolonged widespread warfare (Uribe 1994, p. 14). The Juntas Patrióticas were created from the formation of guerrilla nuclei and the consolidation of peasant bases

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to geographically delimit “liberated zones of popular power in the countryside that served for the development of the revolution”2 (Uribe 1994, p. 15) and even within which they fixed food prices and legalized peasant marriages, divorces and baptisms (Uribe 1994, p. 21). Toward the end of the 1960s, the EPL imposed control in the liberated zones to regulate all types of relationships and consolidate daily patterns over its inhabitants. Among the behaviors and attitudes, most representative of an anti-pluralist posture and the imposition of a monist project in the territory, the work of Villarraga and Plazas (1995, p. 50) points out the following actions to transform local social orders through the establishment of new norms: 1. They imposed execution penalties against those who fell in love with their close relatives. 2. They executed several priests because they considered them infiltrators of the Army and tried to prevent the establishment of any religion because the Patriotic Junta did not promote any. For this reason, “when the EPL arrived, people hid their religiosity for fear of being executed” (95). 3. The Junta Patriótica regulated boundaries, sales and other civil obligations. 4. Crop production and profits were also centralized. The Board made the first quotation, and the families had to pay in collective crops or with the delivery of a certain percentage of the harvest. People especially questioned this measure because they were forced to let their best products go to waste while they endured hunger. 5. They forced political training sessions to sanction repetitive readings and public recitals to demonstrate rote learning of Mao Tse Tung’s “Five Philosophical Theses”. Of these practices, some can confirm that the type of relationship that this Maoist group established with the communities in these territories was characterized by being anti-legalist, denying the normative framework of the Colombian State from the outset and going so far as to impose its norms in aspects of a civil nature such as baptisms, ownership of boundaries and payment for harvests. It could even be said that a parallel institutionality was created that never considered the Colombian legal framework or the customs or forms of relationships of the families that inhabited these territories. On the other hand, the context-free reading of Mao Tse Tung, the imposition of a way of life radically distanced from bourgeois ways and the exaggerated moralism of its militants demonstrate that it was a monist organization. While the Juntas Patrióticas lasted, the zone commanders preferred to let the good food harvests go to waste to impose a daily life of sacrifice. This fact later provoked the communities to question their position and even

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denounced them to the Army, which was close to carrying out robust military intervention in the territory. And finally, their anti-pluralist practices were reflected in the attacks against Catholic priests whom they accused of being infiltrators of the Army and the manifest difficulties in forming political or mass projects with other leftist political organizations at the national level. In some exceptional moments, the EPL guerrillas acted in concert with other insurgencies, such as the ELN, from whom they received military training, and with the M-19 when they opted to lay down their arms several decades later. However, this behavior was the exception rather than the rule concerning other armed leftist projects. Territorial control was quickly lost when the Army, with the support of some families in the area, landed in helicopters in the center of the Juntas Patrióticas and forced its inhabitants and the EPL to flee to the peripheries. From this experience, it could be established that, on the one hand, they imposed socialization norms that questioned the constitutional order of the Colombian State and the normative framework of the communities that inhabited these regions of the country. In this way, it was not only the imposition of a way of life through arms but also the conception of daily relations based on external moral principles. On the other hand, they denied any possibility of dialogue or coexistence with other political, social or religious projects that the EPL disapproved. The history of this experience began to change in the eighties when within the PC-ML, there were very strong debates that led to an official break with Maoism, to which was added the decision of the EPL in 1984 to break with clandestine life and initiate a process of negotiation with the Colombian government. The differences were, fundamentally, in that some militants defended the Leninist principles of democratic centralism, denied any possibility of dialogue with the bourgeoisie (represented in the government) and considered it necessary to maintain the conspiratorial character. At the same time, another group insisted on recognizing that they had severe difficulties in gaining political breadth by maintaining a clandestine party at war and under dogmatic political principles that had lost political incidence (Villaraga and Plazas 1995, p. 205). As a consequence of these differences, they decided to let the EPL act as an independent organization and the party remain as a political force at the national level (Villarraga and Plazas 1995, p. 289). Around the same time, the Colombian Army indiscriminately attacked political leaders of the PC-ML, raided their homes and assassinated the spokesperson of the EPL negotiation process. At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, paramilitarism concentrated in the areas historically controlled by the EPL and, at the same time, negotiations with several guerrillas advanced, which ended with the creation of the National Constituent Assembly and the political party Esperanza, Paz y Libertad (EPL) from where some Maoist leaders, in articulation with the Alianza Democrática AD-M-19 (Archila 2008, p. 185), actively participated in the constituent process. However, one of the tendencies within the PC-ML disagreed with the negotiation process nor with the constituent assembly and affirmed that it was

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a “recomposition of the bourgeois pact with which the people would legitimize the State, and the dagger of exploitation and oppression would sink in its new version” (Villarraga and Plazas 1995, p. 338). From that moment on, a reduced group of militants maintained the armed structure of the EPL in the Catatumbo region (border with Venezuela), and some leaders of the PC-ML continued their life in clandestinity. Descalzos This Maoist experience also had its origins in the 1960s when a political tendency split from the Student and Peasant Workers Movement (Moec) led by its general secretary Francisco Mosquera and youth secretary Marcelo Torres, who created the PTC-Moir as a political project that began as a trade union process and is now recognized as a political party in Colombia under the new name Dignidad. The decision to include this experience in the Colombian case is based on the need to mark an essential difference between two radically different Maoist projects. In this case, the PTC-Moir rejected the armed struggle as a method of action from its foundation and contemplated the articulation with the national bourgeoisie with the objective of consolidating a political project that would follow in the footsteps of the experience in China. It is a political organization that, although it claims to be Maoist, cannot be inscribed as an experience of left-wing extremism. Among other reasons, because they were never outside or against legality, their disposition and defense of the national bourgeoisie also separate them from anti-pluralist practices (although, at various moments in history, they were the ones who provoked irreconcilable differences among leftist organizations). They do not impose a monist way of life. However, in the seventies, they implemented the policy of the Descalzos, which will be the experience to deepen and compare with the Juntas Patrióticas . The principle that guided this project was “to get rid of all ties, take off your shoes and get into the mud”; it was active between 1974 and 1987 and consisted of the transfer of militants to remote areas of the country to promote the organization of different sectors of society and thus broaden the bases of their political party. The characteristic of this experience was the material conditions in which these militants lived. And it is, perhaps, the most extreme experience of one of the principles of Maoism concerning the morality of its militants to be at the service of the people (Urrego 2017, p. 114). Each person who decided to take off their shoes traveled with only a briefcase, two pieces of clothing, some hygiene utensils, a flashlight, a book, a notebook and a pencil (Herrera, Alberto n.d.). It did not matter whether one was a professional, a worker or a university student. The purpose was to live in the same conditions as the peasants or workers and to be willing to learn, respect and assimilate the customs of the communities in these territories in order to collectively promote the creation of unions, trade associations, cooperatives,

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schools, hospitals or any project that arose from this experience (Urrego 2017, p. 128). Unlike the practices and behaviors of the Maoist group noted in the Juntas Patrióticas , the Descalzos avoided touching on issues they considered secondary to the objective of their political work. Among them were discussions about religion in the peasant milieu, customs related to marriages or baptisms, and their position regarding the production and commercialization of crops (Morales 2014, pp. 49–50). For the Descalzos, it was decisive to achieve commercial networks for peasant products. For this reason, they made alliances with small regional entrepreneurs or promoted the constitution of trade associations that later became their broader mobilization bases. Perhaps, these are some of the most explicit differences between the two Maoist experiences in Colombia concerning extremist behavior and attitudes: on the one hand, Juntas Patrióticas with militants who coerced and imposed their norms through arms and executions and, on the other hand, Descalzos people who decided to leave their comforts and individual projects to promote social organization recognizing the ways of life of families living in remote rural areas. It was a slow process that developed in stages in different regions of the country. The Descalzos first gained the trust of the families that received them and, subsequently, influenced them politically. The prioritized areas3 were characterized by high levels of concentration of land ownership and by the material needs of the communities because they were so far from urban centers. Among the main activities developed were the formation of peasant leagues to recover unusable lands that were still in the hands of large landowners, medical brigades, promotion of reading and the creation of schools and artistic and cultural groups, among others (Herrera, n.d.). However, their political and organizational scope ended as a result of constant threats, assassinations and harassment by landowners, the armed forces of the State, and particularly by the attacks from the FARC guerrillas. It was a period called “The Tunnel” and was experienced between 1982 and 1991 due to a constant threat from the forces considered by this Maoist group as pro-Soviet. It was a direct attack by the FARC based on this party and its militancy with the objective of not losing territorial and armed control. For this reason, the Moir leaders defined four fundamental actions: to withdraw their militancy from areas where they were at risk, to build a broader and more democratic union process, to consolidate alliances with state and elite forces that would provide them with protection and the defense of national production (Urrego 2016, p. 40). These decisions allowed them to save several of their militants, reorganize their political project and subsequently consolidate a movement whose bases are mainly trading associations in different areas of the country. Subsequently, the Moir became part of the Polo Democrático Alternativo (PDA), where it remained for several years defending its founding principles until it decided to leave the party due to differences with other left-wing sectors to form its

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political party, which is recognized as being closer to the ideological center and which has been named Dignidad (Dignity).

Prospects The victory of President Gustavo Petro represents the first time that the left reached the presidency of the Republic of Colombia. In addition to being a historical milestone, it demonstrated that this political sector could gain access to power through free and competitive elections. This event may show that weapons and extremist leftist positions, rather than facilitating social changes, may hinder them by increasing violence in society. This fact also confirms that the Colombian State can offer, within the legal sphere, the possibility of structuring and implementing progressive leftist agendas, which in turn require dialogue and, necessarily, a pluralistic perspective with other political actors (Duque-Daza 2019). In this context, the two dimensions of extremism discussed in this article, namely the utilization of illegal strategies to advance political objectives and the construction of a monist project that excludes the possibility of forming and consolidating coalitions with diverse actors in society, may become redundant and strategically unfeasible in the current landscape. Left-wing extremism can be discouraged if the State can foster the development of redistributive and identity recognition policies targeting historically marginalized populations. Simultaneously, the armed groups that persist increasingly prioritize their economic interests in controlling illicit economies rather than their commitment to constructing political demands or adhering to a monist ideological project to guide their strategic actions. Although this scenario may discourage the emergence or transformation of leftist armed groups into extremists, Colombia’s political history has been characterized by the fact that moments of political and social change are preceded by violent responses from actors interested in limiting this type of reform (Pino Uribe 2017). To the extent that the State does not have the strength to settle these social conflicts and allows violence to prevent a common life, this may change the current incentive structure and influence the emergence or transformation of some armed groups into leftist extremists. This prospective scenario is not very likely, in the first place because, as demonstrated in the case studies, extremism limits the strategic framework of action of armed actors to a conflict characterized by a continuous game of alliances to maintain their military power and control of territory. Secondly, because throughout the continent, the leftist projects that have been able to become a viable government alternative have been able to do so through the construction of very diverse coalitions in their political and identity orientations, so that the political and electoral viability of monist projects may be increasingly reduced in scenarios of greater pluralism.

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Final Thoughts The concept of left-wing extremism is theoretically and empirically useful in identifying and understanding the behavior and actions of some leftist organizations in Colombia, as demonstrated in this chapter. Specifically, the concept of left-wing extremism contributes to understanding how the maximalist and anti-pluralist beliefs and ways of perceiving the world of the analyzed groups allow us to comprehend the sets of norms they try to impose in the areas where they achieve some political control, their strategic interaction with other armed groups and the limits of their political and military expansion. These aspects are very similar to those identified in other case studies in certain regions of India. In turn, the case study affirms that extremist positions, behaviors and modes of political action in Colombia were not helpful for the leftist groups to expand territorially and position themselves politically,mainly because these attitudes and behaviors made it impossible to establish synergies with other organizations or parties in order to gain strength. In the case of the experience of Juntas Patrióticas , it was also evident that the extremist leftist political projects ended up losing the villagers’ trust due to the imposition of monist and anti-pluralist principles on them. In this case, the behavior and practices they imposed concerning family customs, religion, food production and the reading of decontextualized theories resulted in the communities yielding to the Army’s pressures and eventually denouncing them. Regarding territorial control, the anti-pluralist actions limited any possibility of territorial expansion, leaving these extremist groups at a constant military and political disadvantage that made it easier for them to be attacked and annulled. Based on the above, and as a hypothesis, it can be suggested that the use of the concept of left-wing extremism in Colombia has not been recurrent precisely because the groups that have remained faithful to their extremist character have focused on exercising control in small regions of the country and have limited political and military power. As the case studies show, it can have two main results. First is the extremist group’s military weakening until it is co-opted by other groups or forced to negotiate with the State. Secondly, to change the character of their monist and anti-pluralist project so that they can establish alliances with other actors and negotiate practical aspects of daily life that will allow them to coexist with the communities in the territories over which they exercise control. While this may allow these groups to survive, it also implies that they leave behind their extremist character, so the concept of extremism would no longer be helpful to describe and understand these organizations beyond their founding moment and their first organizational stages. Finally, for the analysis of the Colombian case, the concept of left-wing extremism becomes limited in that it closes the possibilities of characterizing the diversity of positions, behaviors and stances of the armed and unarmed left-wing political groups that have been created in the recent history of the

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country. However, it is pertinent to note that the concept also allows us to recognize that the reproduction of anti-legalist positions and behaviors and the imposition of monist political projects by certain groups may have contributed to hindering the negotiation processes and thus hindering the democratization process in Colombia. So far, the negotiation processes with the insurgencies could enable better possibilities for constructing an incipient pluralism that guarantees the coexistence of political projects with different ideological positions, attitudes and behaviors in a society. In other words, the Colombian case could demonstrate that the distance with an experience of democratic pluralism lies in extremist behaviors and attitudes and not in the insistence on seeing the rifles of the people shining on the mountain ranges.

Notes 1. The departments are intermediate government units in Colombia and would have the same role as the federal states in the United States and the provinces in the case of Argentina. Currently, Colombia has 32 departments. This department is characterized by a strong presence of guerrilla groups in the eighties and nineties and, later, paramilitary groups and by its economy based mainly on cattle. 2. The EPL had a fairly limited control geographically. Its guerrilla pockets were concentrated in the so-called: Zone X: which included the region of Magdalena Medio/Santander and Sur de Bolívar; Zone H: in the departments of Valle del Cauca, Chocó and Risaralda; and Zone Flor: Alto Sinú, San Jorge and Córdoba (Villarraga, 1995, p.31). 3. The Descalzos arrived on the Caribbean coast, where their most decisive point of influence was the region of southern Bolivar. They also influenced the bananagrowing zone of Urabá and the Pacific coast, particularly in the sugar production zone and the commercial ports, as well as in the Colombian massif. And in the coffee region, they created a solid independent organization with small coffee growers (Herrera, n.d.).

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CHAPTER 7

Left-Wing Extremism in Peru: Structural Conditions, Leadership, and Political Will Martín Tanaka

Summary In the context of oligarchic or exclusionary political regimes, leftists face the dilemma of, on the one hand, choosing to be part of a broader and moderate coalition that tries to democratize and open the political space, or, on the other, opting for vanguardist insurrectional strategies. That is, between a safer, accumulative but rather innocuous strategy in the short run, or a voluntaristic path that may lead to profound structural change, but under the risk of a sound strategic defeat. In Peru, there is a rich intellectual tradition that has emphasized the need for radical political action, given the depth of injustices and their different dimensions, mainly around class, ethnicity, and region, and the exclusionary nature of social and political elites and State institutions. In the twentieth century, in the 1930s, the APRA was involved in insurrectional strategies and was defeated (what led to a more conservative path afterward) while the Communist Party opted for “accumulation of forces” strategies. In the 1960s, under the influence of the Cuban revolution, dissidents from the APRA and a new generation of leftists opted for a foquista strategy, that ended in a political defeat, but obtained some social legitimacy, and the populist reformist military dictatorship under General Velasco in the 1970s, expressed the recognition of the need of profound social and economic change. The 1980s, that established a full inclusionary democratic regime for the first time in Peruvian history, posed a very complex situation: M. Tanaka (B) Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Lima, Peru e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_7

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for most leftist groups, the idea was to take advantage of the new democratic regime to force revolutionary change. At the same time, another group, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) launched an insurgent strategy loosely in the line of the guerrillas of El Salvador and Guatemala in the same years; and another group, the Maoist Shining Path, initiated a war against the State, but from an extremely dogmatic, violent, totalitarian, and personalistic strategy. The Peruvian case illustrates how left-wing extremism is better understood considering political discourse, leadership, and political will, not only the structural conditions that face revolutionary forces.

Introduction How to understand left-wing extremism? Why does it develop in some contexts and not in others? One possible response is to appeal to structural conditions: where acute inequalities and exclusionary social and political elites and State institutions prevail, left-wing groups may develop extremism as a political strategy. On the contrary, a more inclusive social and political environment, a fully participatory and democratic regime, may in principle reduce the legitimacy of extremist discourse and practice, and its political possibilities. In the Peruvian social sciences, there is a strong intellectual tradition that establishes a causal relationship between extremist left-wing political options and exclusionary structural conditions (see Rénique 2022). However, in this chapter I argue that what is decisive to understand the dynamics of extremism has been how political leadership has diagnosed the political situation and the subsequent courses of political action. Modern left-wing organizations history in Peru begins in the 1920s, with the projects of what later would be the APRA and the Communist parties. In the context of the Anti-Fascists Popular Fronts promoted by the USSR in the 1930s, Peruvian communists opted to support or avoid confrontation with oligarchic governments aligned with the United States. On the contrary, facing political exclusion and limited democratic regimes, the APRA was involved in popular insurrections and attempts to divide the Armed Forces. The consequence of these strategies were the relative continuity of the Communists and its expansion around the union movement, but at the same time its relative political isolation; the APRA was defeated and banned from political participation, but forged the representation of social forces that promoted social and political change. In the 1950s, Haya forced a turn in APRA’s strategies, negotiated with oligarchic forces in exchange for legal recognition, precisely when a new wave of radicalism was underway following the Cuban revolution. In the 1960s, dissidents from the APRA and a new generation of leftists launched a foquista strategy, alongside other Latin American countries, considering the “objective conditions” were settled for a successful revolution, with wide peasant and popular support. What actually happened is that the guerrillas were not able to obtain that support and were defeated by the military, but obtained certain sympathy from middle classes and sectors promoting

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the need for social change. In the 1970s, it was the populist reformist military dictatorship under General Velasco that finally channelized the aspirations of profound social and economic change. It could be argued that Haya’s strategies put himself against the current in both the 1930s and 1950s. In the 1980s, Peru initiated a full inclusionary democratic regime for the first time in its history, following the third way of democratization (Huntington 1993). Facing that scenario, Peruvian leftist groups took extremely diverse options. The majority considered that the new democratic regime opened opportunities to accumulate force, and to prepare for an eventual revolutionary juncture. Within the legal left, with time a profound division emerged between radical and institutionalist sectors. At the same time, another group, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) launched an insurgent strategy, loosely in the line of the guerrillas of El Salvador and Guatemala in the same years. MRTA considered that it was time for revolutionary direct action, that popular support was going to be obtained, and that some kind of coordination with the legal and electoral left was necessary. And another group, the Maoist Shining Path, also launched a war against the State, but from an extremely dogmatic, violent, totalitarian, and personalistic strategy, where other leftist sectors were considered “revisionists”, traitors, and part of the counterrevolution. These extremely diverse options illustrate that, to understand the dynamics of extremism is crucial to attend how political leadership diagnoses the political situation and the subsequent courses of political action, the importance of political discourse, leadership, and political will. In Peru, most analysis tend to relate political extremism to the depth of injustices and their different dimensions, and to the exclusionary nature of State institutions. But we cannot deduce the irruption of left-wing extremism, or its specific modalities, solely based on Peruvian structural conditions. In current Peru, after the internal armed conflict of the period 1980– 2000, there was a legacy of conservatism or rejection to extremist left-wing discourse, specifically after the Alberto Fujimori authoritarian government (1990–2001), under which the leaders of the terrorist organizations were imprisoned. However, this does not imply that State and democratic institutions do not continue to suffer from very low levels of legitimacy (even for Latin American standards) and that Peruvian citizens continue to perceive the endurance of acute class, ethnic, and regional disparities. The democratic period 2001–2016 was characterized by some stability and the continuity of a conservative neoliberal order, but since then the irruption of populist and extremist antisystem political discourse has become quite common among the left and the right. Within these new political environment, left-wing extremism may have a chance to reappear.

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The APRA, the Communist Party, and the Oligarchic Challenge Throughout the twentieth century, Peru’s experience with democracy had been very sporadic and limited under the long hegemony of a very excluding oligarchy and military regimes. That brings Peru’s history closer to the Central American reality and lesser to the South American, where national-populist governments activated the popular sectors and incorporated them into the political arena (Tanaka 2022). The modern left in Peru, as in most Latin American countries, was born in the 1920s. The Peruvian Socialist Party was founded in 1928, and changed its name for Peruvian Communist Party in 1930. At the same time, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre formed in 1924 the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, APRA, in an attempt to “adapt” Marxist ideas to Latin American reality, which stressed the need to create a popular front of workers, integrating low and middle classes, and to raise nationalist ideas, against imperialist impositions. The APRA project somehow anticipated the national-popular populist initiatives that developed in Latin America since the 1930s and 1940s. Until the end of the 1920s, socialists and Apristas were relatively close, converging in popular education activities and the promotion of unions among workers in the nascent modern capitalist economic activities. In 1930 President Augusto Leguía, in power since 1919, and who headed an authoritarian regime, was overthrown by a military coup headed by General Luis Sánchez Cerro. General elections were called, and while the socialists considered that the revolutionary cause should concentrate on popular education, worker’s organization, and party building, Haya decided to register APRA as a political party and participate in the 1931 elections. Decisive political action was key for Haya, while for José Carlos Mariátegui, the founder of the socialist party, Haya’s behavior was opportunistic and succumbed to the illusions or bourgeois democracy. Haya lost the 1931 election, the APRA questioned the official results, and a harsh confrontation between the APRA and the Sánchez Cerro government ensued, which led to an authoritarian response, the imprisonment of Haya and violent incidents such as the 1932 Trujillo insurrection and its repression, that ended with thousands of deaths, and the assassination of Sánchez Cerro in 1933. The confrontation between an exclusionary oligarchy, that controlled the country, the armed forces and the APRA, that was able to forge the representation of popular classes, lasted until 1956, and explains the difficulties to consolidate a democratic regime, limited and interrupted. By the mid-1950s, Haya reached the conclusion that the oligarchy would not accept democracy as a means to resolve political conflicts. In fact, Haya was not allowed to participate in elections until 1962, and APRA was banned and excluded from political participation. Facing that reality, after more than twenty years of political confrontation and persecution, Haya considered that instead of a strategy of pure opposition, it was time to look for some kind of compromise

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with oligarchic forces. In order to obtain legal recognition and to stop political persecution, Haya supported Manuel Prado, the conservative candidate, for the 1956 elections. In exchange, Haya obtained from Prado the legalization of the APRA, which allowed Haya to be presidential candidate in the 1962 and 1963 elections. By that time, Haya was seen a conservative candidate, APRA was seen as a party that long ago left its revolutionary original identity, and was rejected by social forces and sectors that were looking for modernizing and progressive alternatives. In 1959, after the Cuban revolution, radical social change was strongly again in the political agenda, and the APRA found itself navigating against the current (see Manrique 2009; Contreras and Cueto 2018; Klarén 2005). My point here is that, despite the fact that the APRA is a populist reformist party, and not properly part of left-wing “family”, that derives from the Communist Party, constitutes a useful example that illustrates the importance of political leadership and its diagnosis of the political situation regarding political strategies and the use of extremist violent action. It could be said that Haya and the APRA opted for an extremist strategy in the 1930s and 1940s when the political conditions favored oligarchic forces, while the Communist Party opted for a popular front conciliatory path. The communists consolidated its representation in union organizations, but failed to obtain wide popular and electoral support, what was achieved by the APRA, but at the cost of being excluded from political participation and persecuted by oligarchic forces. Haya imposed a strategy of negotiation and compromise with the oligarchy precisely when the winds began to change in favor of social change, and the new left that emerged after the Cuban revolution rejected not only the conciliatory strategies followed by the traditional communist party, also the conservative turn imposed by Haya. In other words, the divergence of political strategies and the use or not of extremist courses of action depend to a great extent to political calculations and considerations from the party’s leadership. In particular, Haya’s political decisions made the APRA navigate recurrently against the current, what helps to explain part of the party’s misfortunes.

The 1960 Guerrillas, the Velasco Military Experiment and Its Aftermath After the 1959 Cuban revolution, a revolutionary wave crossed practically all Latin American countries, and Peru was no exception. Even more, it could be said that many revolutionaries considered that the next steps for extending the revolutionary wave could be placed in the mountains and tropical forest of Bolivia and Peru. There certainly were structural conditions that favored that prognosis: Peruvian politics was seen as an extremely exclusionary oligarchic rule, where reformist and leftist parties like APRA and the Communists suffered persecution and bans that excluded them from political participation. This oligarchic rule prevented the implementation of populist and reformist policies that were

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implemented in other countries in the region. Thus, social disparities and extreme and generalized poverty, especially in rural areas, was part of landscape. And in rural areas, the power of local bosses and land owners made working conditions especially harsh. However, the ideological influence and support from the Cuban government was key in the explanation of the development of numerous revolutionary movements that tried to replicate the Cuban example. In this context, two groups, one originated in dissidents from the APRA, and a new generation of leftists formed guerrilla groups: the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), and the National Liberation Army (ELN) initiated an armed insurgency in 1965. They were not able to receive the peasant support they expected, were perceived as foreigners, did not empathize with peasants, and were defeated by the army relatively quickly. It could be said that the interpretation of “structural conditions” did not adequately consider the actual demands and expectations of the peasant population, and constitutes an example of a voluntaristic political initiative. However, at the same time, the guerillas certainly expressed the demands for social change that middle classes and new political groups were promoting in Peru and most Latin America. These aspirations were not addressed by the political system, which ended in the Armed Forces coup d’état in 1968, that unexpectedly established the Armed Forces Revolutionary Government under general Juan Velasco, between 1968 and 1975 (about the guerillas see Lust 2022; Béjar 1973). By the end of the 1960s, and in the 1970s, most Latin American countries were ruled by military governments inspired by the Doctrine of National Security, of a conservative and repressive nature. On the contrary, the military dictatorship of Velasco (1968–1975) constituted the comparatively late “national-popular” moment for the Peruvian case, expressing the autonomy of a State corporation like the military, and its distance from the economic and social powers (Tanaka 2022). Velasco nationalized foreign companies in the oil and mining sector, promoted industrialization policies, implemented an ambitious Agrarian Reform, and promoted the organization of popular sectors under corporative structures. Peru belatedly came in reach of experiences that countries of the Southern Cone, Mexico, and Costa Rica, went through in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and moved away from the Central American countries which still not had undertook a populist transformation (About Velasco see (Lowenthal and McClintock 1976; Cotler 1991). This is important to understand the legacy of the Peruvian military government over the democratic period that started in 1980. In the 1960s and 1970s, the levels of repression and harshness of the dictatorships in the Southern Cone and the defeat of revolutionary insurrectionary projects produced among the left a movement toward the appreciation of democracy as a form of political regime and to abandon armed strategies to seize political power. On the contrary, the dictatorship of General Velasco (1968–1975) dissolved the traditional oligarchy as a social class by implementing its Agrarian Reform, and

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promoted the political activation of the hitherto excluded popular sectors, albeit through corporate schemes, through the creation of peasant, union, and urban popular sectors organizations. The depth of Velasco reforms originated a conservative reaction within the armed forces, that ended in the Morales Bermúdez coup in 1975, establishing the so-called “second phase” of the military government (1975–1980). This phase was marked by an adverse international and domestic economic context, the need of macroeconomic adjustment policies, that initiated a long cycle of decline that continued throughout the decade of the 1980s. The popular organization and mobilization unleashed by the Velasco years created networks and an infrastructure that allowed massive and widespread protests, that were responded with repressive measures, that created favorable conditions for the expansion of leftist parties and the articulation between those parties and the unions and popular organizations. By the end of the 1970s, the revolutionary left gained to an important extent the representation of popular sectors, and the context of mobilization and protests against the military dictatorship made those parties to consider that Peru was facing a “prerevolutionary situation”. The limits of the “populist bourgeois reformism” opened the ways to some form of revolutionary insurrection. Thus, the transition to democracy in Peru was marked by a high level of mobilization and social protest, led by unions and associations controlled by different groups of Left, that considered that the democratic regime should be used as a space of accumulation of forces and preparation for a major confrontation that could lead to a revolutionary process. During the 1980s, the Peruvian Left that participated in the democratic process, went through a complex set of ambiguities and tensions regarding the legitimacy of the use of violence as a tool for social change and about its position vis-à-vis armed leftist insurgents (the Shining Path and the MRTA), a theme that never completely was resolved. In this section, we have seen that the international influences are key to explain extremist political options, like the 1960s guerrilla initiative, not only historical structural social conditions. Those influences reached middle sectors, as in all Latin America, but not particularly the popular peasant sectors that the guerrilla aimed to represent. The aspirations for structural reforms were however taken by the military, in an unprecedented expression of autonomy. The military reforms under Velasco created a favorable environment for the organization of peasant, unions, and popular organizations, that help to explain why in the 1980s most parties in the left considered extremist political strategies a legitimate course of action, a relatively peculiar experience in the South American context.

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The 1980s: Extreme Diversity and the Centrality of Political Decisions In the 1980s, Peru established a full inclusionary democratic regime for the first time in its history, alongside the international “third wave” of democratization. However, what could have been an opportunity to build a stable political system, open and pluralistic institutions as a means to peacefully resolve political disputes, turned into a dynamic of confrontation, polarization, where the armed actions launched by two insurgent groups turned out to be a major challenge for the survival of Peruvian democracy. Paradoxically, it is when the political space opened and become fully democratic, that extremist strategies appeared as legitimate ways to seek power for the left. And, as we shall see, these strategies assumed a wide range of political options, confirming that these practices are better explained by analyzing how political leadership defines the conjuncture of its political will, discourse, and projects, and not only by the structural conditions that face revolutionary forces. During the democratic transition from military rule at the end of the 1970s (see Cotler 1994), and in the elections for the Constituent Assembly of 1978, the different leftist groups that participated obtained 29.4% of the vote. The need to participate in the 1980 general election in a united front appeared in the agenda, the failure to succeed in that purpose expressed in the 14.4% of the vote obtained by five different presidential candidates. The lesson was somehow learned and for the municipal election in that same year, now under the United Left (Izquierda Unida), IU candidates obtained 23.3% of the vote. In the 1983 municipal election, IU became the second most important political party during the 1980s after the APRA, and IU won the mayorship of Lima with Alfonso Barrantes. In the presidential and congressional elections of 1985, IU was again second to APRA, and a reasonable expectation was IU to win the 1990 national election. For most parties within IU, electoral success and the expectation of winning the presidency generated doubts and the Salvador Allende experience in 1970s Chile was taken into consideration. That is, reactionary forces may conspire against a democratically elected popular government, so there was a need to be prepared for a major political confrontation. On the other hand, leaders such as Barrantes considered that the electoral and institutional card should be played without ambiguity, and that the left should condemn the actions of terrorist groups, and publicly renounce to armed struggle as a political strategy. As long as terrorist actions from insurgent groups increased, the need for clear definitions in the electoral left become more acute. One of the insurgent groups, the MRTA, initiated its armed actions in 1984, with a strategy loosely in the line of the guerrillas of El Salvador and Guatemala in the same years, that also operated within an electoral democracy. The MRTA considered itself an armed vanguard that operated aiming to strengthen popular movements and progressive political options, that at some moments could operate in coordination with the legal left and civil

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society and people’s organizations. The Shining Path was an entirely different political project. Abimael Guzmán, its leader, proclaimed himself the “Fourth Sword of Marxism” (after Marx, Lenin, and Mao), “the greatest Marxist alive” and its insurgency the “Beacon of the World Revolution”. Sendero Luminoso declared all groups from the left traitors and “revisionists”, autonomous popular organizations reactionary forces, “mesnadas” (retinue) that were also part of the enemy that should be eliminated. Guzmán thought was a certainly unique, and macabre, interpretation of the revolutionary literature applied to Peru. The genealogy of SL dates back to the Maoist fraction of the PCP which emerged in 1964 as the Partido Comunista Peruano—Bandera Roja (Peruvian Communist Party—Red Flag, BR). In 1969, a majority split-off of BR founded the Partido Comunista del Perú—Patria Roja (Communist Party of Peru-Red Fatherland, PR). In 1970, another faction of BR separated as the Partido Comunista del Perú—Sendero Luminoso (Communist Party of PeruShining Path (PCP-SL)), headed by Abimael Guzmán and established in one of the regional branches of BR in the region of Ayachucho in the southern Peruvian highlands. By the end of the 1970s, most leftist organizations opted for participation in the democratic transition process and presented candidates for the Constituent Assembly in 1978 and the general election of 1980. On the contrary, SL took distance with the other groups and decided to initiate the armed struggle in 1980.1 In contrast, the origins of the MRTA can be traced to the 1960s guerrillas, to the emergence of the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Movement of the Left, MIR) in 1962, itself a rupture of the APRA party, and strongly influenced by the Cuban revolution. The MIR initiated its armed uprising in 1965, and were rapidly defeated, as we have seen. In the subsequent years, the MIR was divided into several factions, one of them the MIR El Militante (MIR The Militant, MIR-EM). A radical fraction of the Partido Socialista Revolucionario (Revolutionary Socialist Party, PSR), founded in 1976 by cadres identified with the reforms of the military government of General Velasco, also aligned to this political tradition. In 1978, when the PSR decided to participate in the elections of the Constituent Assembly, the new PSR Marxista-Leninista (PSR—Marxist-Leninist, PSR-ML) was founded, which advocated an insurrectional line. In the next years, a convergence between the MIR-EM and the PSR-ML took place, also about the issue of armed rebellion. This process produced the founding of the MRTA in 1982; its first action was to raid a bank in Lima in order to finance its “revolutionary actions”.2 From the very beginning, the profiles of SL and the MRTA were quite different. While the MRTA looks like many other leftist Latin American guerrilla experiences, SL presented a totally particular profile, in which “the thoughts of Gonzalo” [Guzmán’s nom de guerre] took the place of sacred and prophetic scriptures; the MRTA was inspired by other Latin American guerrilla experiences in the 1960s and was attuned to the Sandinista Revolution

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and the guerrilla warfare in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia. With its actions it sought legitimacy among the population, especially popular sectors in strategic areas, and its leadership was relatively perceptive to changes in the political situation, and willing to establish alliances in the meantime. Quite the opposite, Shining Path considered the entire Peruvian Left as “revisionists”. “President Gonzalo” (Abimael Guzmán) publicly disqualified the entire Left, presenting the movement as “Beacon of the World revolution” and himself as the “Fourth Sword of Marxism” (after Marx, Lenin, and Mao). Its action was imposed by the use of intimidation and terror, resorting to high levels of violence and with total disrespect for political legitimacy. As for its dynamics, the MRTA was a smaller and less important organization compared to SL. Part of their actions were situated in urban areas, particularly in Lima: bank robberies and kidnapping prominent figures in search of war funds; and attacks against targets of high symbolic value (like the residence of the ambassador of the United States in 1986). The MRTA chose as theater of more proper guerrilla operations the northern jungle in the San Martín region, following the foco logic. However, by 1989 the MRTA appeared quite weakened. In 1992, most of its leaders had been imprisoned. The last armed action of the MRTA was the assault of the residence of the ambassador of Japan on 17 December 1996, which was recovered in a rescue operation on 22 April 1997. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR 2003), MRTA was responsible for 1.8% of Human Rights violations in the period 1980–2000. Shining Path constituted a much more important challenge for the Peruvian State. Between 1980 and 1982, SP extended its armed actions mainly in the mountainous region of Ayacucho, following an insurrectional Maoist logic “from the countryside to the city”. Simultaneously, it carried out terrorist actions in Lima and other cities (blasting electric towers, detonating car bombs, killing selected targets, among others). During this first stage and despite its exclusionary ideology, Shining Path sparked certain sympathies among the peasant population, by attacking symbols of power identified with situations of injustice. However, also from the beginning, its logic of territorial control imposed restrictions on the population, which rapidly led to clashes, murders, and massacres of peasant communities. By the early 1990s, Shining Path announced the achievement of a “strategic equilibrium” in the war against the Peruvian state, in fact concealing a situation of weakness. In those years, nevertheless, it applied terrorist actions of great impact in Metropolitan Lima. But that ended abruptly on 12 September 1992, when police special forces caught Abimael Guzmán and much of the party leadership in Lima—an achievement that practically marked the end of SL armed actions. Since then, dissident SL factions sustain armed actions in the central jungle, and groups associated to this movement try to reintegrate this organization into national political life, looking for an amnesty law. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Shining Path was responsible for 46% of the total number of deaths and disappearances occurring during the decades

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of the internal armed conflict (1980–2000), that is more than 30,000, of an estimated total of roughly 69,000 victims (CVR 2003). By the beginning of the 1990s, the Peruvian Left, in all its manifestations, suffered a sound strategic defeat. The legal left, organized in IU, preparing for the 1990 general election, and in order to resolve the internal conflicts within the Front, called for its first national Congress, held in January 1989. But instead for strengthening the Front, IU divided by the end of the Congress, and participated in 1990 with two presidential candidates, that obtained together 13% of the vote. The internal contradictions led to a split between a moderate and reformist wing, that proposed the promotion of an antiterrorist front, and to appeal to the median voter, and a radical wing that considered it was necessary to promote an “armed arm” to defend themselves from a reactionary offensive against people’s and revolutionary left organizations. At the end, neither the voters followed the left, nor the popular classes and organizations. The 1990 elections, held in the middle of a hyperinflationary crisis, the terrorist actions from the Shining Path and the repression of the military, involving practices that violated human rights, especially regarding peasant population, led to the emergence of an outsider, Alberto Fujimori, who won the elections. In power, he was able to cut the hyperinflation through drastic adjustment policies, what legitimated his leadership. What also happened is that Fujimori staged a self-coup in April 1992, and initiated an authoritarian period until 2001, that also benefited from the capture of the most important terrorist leaders in the 1990s.3 In the 1990s not only the IU disappeared, also the political presence of the left during that decade. The economic, political, and military stabilization led by Fujimori imposed a neoliberal, personalistic, conservative, and authoritarian regime, where not only extremist ideas lost appeal, but leftist proposals in general (see Soifer and Vergara 2019). The Peruvian case illustrates how left-wing extremism is better understood taking into consideration political discourse, leadership, and political will, and not only the structural conditions faced by revolutionary forces. Under the same democratic context, the legal left developed two political factions, one democratic and reformist, that proposed a strategy of a counterterrorist front, and another that considered necessary to be prepared for an armed insurrection, somehow following the example of the guerrillas in El Salvador and Guatemala; additionally we also had Abimael Guzmán and the Shining Path, that followed a unique and totalitarian strategy, absolutely disconnected from the Peruvian left, the international left, and from people’s organizations. This wide array of manifestations stress the importance of political leaders to define the specific strategies their revolutionary movements should follow.

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Future Research After the internal armed conflict of the period 1980–2000, there was a legacy of conservatism and relative rejection to extremist left-wing discourse, specifically after the Alberto Fujimori authoritarian government (1990–2001), under which the leaders of the terrorist organizations were imprisoned. In 2001 the Fujimori government also fell in the middle of corruption scandals that led to his resignation and his scape to Japan, where he found political asylum. Between 2001 and 2016 Peruvian democracy had a period of extraordinary (by its historical standards) continuity and stability, despite the weakness of its political system, the very low levels of legitimacy of State and democratic institutions (even for Latin American standards). In that period Peru had an unprecedented economic growth, alongside market-oriented economic policies, although Peruvian citizens continue to perceive the endurance of acute class, ethnic, and regional disparities. In this period, all Latin America went through a “pink tide”, signed by leftist governments, and Peru was no exception, having a leftist government with president Ollanta Humala between 2006 and 2011. However, the traditional left never fully recovered from its crisis at the end of the 1980s, and the citizenry maintained a preference for moderate discourses and rejected violent discourses and extremist political actions, associated with the remains of the Shining Path in isolated spaces in the Peruvian amazon.4 However, since 2016, Peru has begun to follow a trend where polarizing discourses have gained an audience, and confrontational, extremist and populist antisystem political discourse has become quite common among the left and the right. In fact, in the 2021 general election, the two more polarizing candidates went to the second-round election, and Pedro Castillo, a radical teacher’s union leader, become president. His government was weak and unstable; finally, in December 2022 Castillo attempted a “self-coup” that failed, and he was impeached by the Congress. These events have deepened the polarizing dynamic that now characterizes Peruvian politics. Within this new political environment, left-wing extremism may have a new chance to reappear; again, it depends on the choices that the political elites make, and the issues around which they decide to create policy.

Notes 1. About the PCP—SP see (Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación 2003), Volume II, section Two, ‘Los actores del conflicto’, Chapter 1, ‘Los actores armados, annex 1, ‘El Partido Comunista del Perú—Sendero Luminoso’’, pp. 23–98. See also Tanaka, 2020. 2. About the MRTA see CVR 2003, Volume II, section Two, ‘Los actores del conflicto’, Chapter 1, ‘Los actores armados, annex 4, ‘The Revolutionary Movement Túpac Amaru’’, pp. 254–288. And Tanaka, 2020. 3. About Guzmán see Degregori, 2011; and Portocarrero, 2015. About MRTA leaders, Víctor Polay and others, see their testimonies at the CVR session held

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in June 10, 2023. Available at https://www.cverdad.org.pe/apublicas/sesiones/ sesion10a.php 4. About the Peruvian party system in the 1980s and the left, see Tanaka, 1998 and 2008. 5. A recent analysis of the Peruvian left in Pásara, 2022.

References Béjar, Héctor. 1973. Las Guerrillas de 1965: Balance y Perspectiva. Lima: Peisa. Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. 2003. Informe final. Lima: Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. Contreras, Carlos, and Marcos Cueto. 2018. Historia del Perú contemporáneo: desde las luchas por la independencia hasta el presente. Sexta edición (primera ed., 1999). Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP). Cotler, Julio. 1991. «Perú: Estado oligárquico y reformismo militar». In America Latina. 1: América del Sur, editado por Pablo González Casanova, 8. ed (1. ed 1985). Mexico, DF: Siglo Veintiuno. ———. 1994. «Intervenciones militares y transferencias del poder a la civilidad en el Perú (1986)». In Política y sociedad en el Perú: cambios y continuidades. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Degregori, Carlos Iván. 2011. Qué difícil es ser Dios. El Partido Comunista del Perú Sendero Luminoso y el conflicto armado interno en el Perú: 1980–1999. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman, OK and London: University of Oklahoma press. Klarén, Peter. 2005. Nación y sociedad en la historia del Perú. 1. ed. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Lowenthal, Abraham, and Cynthia McClintock, eds. 1976. The Peruvian Experiment Reconsidered. Princeton University Press. Lust, Jan. 2022. Lucha revolucionaria: Perú, 1958–1967 . 1a. ed. Lima, Peru: Ediciones Achawata. Manrique, Nelson. 2009. ¡Usted fue aprista! Bases para una historia crítica del APRA. 1. ed. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial. Pásara, Luis. 2022. La «nueva izquierda» peruana en su década perdida: de la ilusión a la agonía. Lima, Perú: Fondo Editorial PUCP. Portocarrero, Gonzalo. 2015. Profetas del odio: raíces culturales y líderes de Sendero Luminoso. Lima: Fondo Editorial PUCP. Rénique, José Luis. 2022. La nación radical: de la utopía indigenista a la tragedia senderista. Primera edición. Lima, Perú: La siniestra ensayos. Soifer, Hillel, and Alberto Vergara, eds. 2019. Politics After Violence: Legacies of the Shining Path Conflict in Peru. Austin: University of Texas Press. Tanaka, Martín. 1998. Los espejismos de la democracia: el colapso del sistema de partidos en el Perú, 1980–1995, en perspectiva comparada. 1. ed. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. ———. 2008. «The Left in Peru: Plenty of Wagons and no Locomotion». In Leftovers: Tales of the Latin American Left, editado por Jorge G. Castañeda and Marco A. Morales. New York: Routledge.

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———. 2020. «Sendero Luminoso, the MRTA, and the Peruvian Paradoxes». In Latin American Guerrilla Movements: Origins, Evolution, Outcomes, editado por Dirk Kruijt, Eduardo Rey Tristán, and Alberto Martín Álvarez. New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group. ______. 2022. «América Latina en el siglo XXI: ¿hacia una nueva matriz sociopolítica? El caso peruano». In La matriz sociopolítica en América Latina. Análisis comparativo de Argentina, Brasil, Chile, México y Perú, coords. Marcelo Cavarozzi et al. Santiago, LOM.

CHAPTER 8

Left-Wing Extremism in Venezuela: From Armed Struggle to the United Socialist Party of Venezuela Margarita Lopez Maya

and Neller Ochoa Hernandez

Introduction The configuration of a left-wing extremism in Venezuela begins with what Venezuelan historiography knows as the armed struggle period which began from 1961. This extremism was based on a Marxist-Leninist ideology, distant from center and political moderation and attached to the guidelines emanating from the Soviet Union and Cuba. That year the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and the Revolutionary Left Movement party (MIR) declared themselves in favor of a violent way to access power to produce a revolution in the country. Extremism implied a policy without understanding, alliances or negotiations with other parties and social actors that dissented from this path, and molded with some particularities over time the characteristics of all extremism of the Venezuelan left. Actors who did not share these postulates were labeled as reformist and/or aligned with the interests of the bourgeoisie and capitalism. The Venezuelan armed struggle also identified itself as anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and nationalist.

M. Lopez Maya (B) Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo, Central University of Venezuela (CENDES-UCV), Caracas, Venezuela e-mail: [email protected] N. Ochoa Hernandez Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Sociales-Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (ILSIS-FES), Caracas, Venezuela e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_8

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The guerrilla warfare against democratic governments had failed by 1964 in its objective of coming to power and the Venezuelan democratic regime under President Rómulo Betancourt of the Democratic Action party (AD) moved toward consolidation. The government of Raúl Leoni that succeeded him (1964–1969), offered the defeated a policy of pacification and many guerrilla cadres accepted this offer and negotiated their reincorporation into the institutional framework. However, dissident groups and other new actors continued guerrilla warfare in the seventies, eighties and even nineties, with sometimes more violent characteristics than before. However, they no longer posed a significant threat to the political regime. With the triumph in the 1998 presidential elections of left-wing populist leader Hugo Chávez and his Bolivarian movement, this extremism took on a new air. Parties, groups and leaders of this tendency entered as allies in the political coalition of the governments of Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. They contribute to the radicalization and autocratization that these governments have developed over more than twenty years in power. The current government of Maduro (2013–), authoritarian and with totalitarian and sultanic features, has repeatedly referred to the governments of Cuba and Venezuela as brothers and as just “one government”, revealing the great influence that this country exerts over today’s Venezuelan political order. Chávez had very close contacts with Venezuelan far-left organizations and Maduro was politically trained in that world, in addition to some formative permanence in Cuba. In many respects the current official discourse of Venezuela exhibits concepts and slogans originated in the sixties. Next, we divide the text into four parts to make a succinct characterization of left-wing extremism that begins in 1961 and continues without interruption to this day. The parts follow a chronological criterion, pointing out in each part the protagonists, their objectives, characteristics, strategies and tactics.

The PCV and the MIR of the Sixties On January 23, 1958, the last Venezuelan dictator of the twentieth century fled the country: General Marcos Pérez Jiménez. With his overthrow, a conjuncture opened that allowed the construction of a democracy in Venezuela. In the days following his flight, the young leaders of the clandestine cells of the PCV and AD parties, who had fought shoulder to shoulder against the dictatorship, came out of hide. They, having led the resistance in Venezuela, had woven bonds of trust between themselves and convergence of ideas. In contrast, the top leaders of both parties, returning from a ten-year exile, maintained their differences. A year later, Fulgencio Batista, the dictator of Cuba, also fell. Like Perez Jimenez, he fled from the island, and Fidel Castro, the leader of the armed resistance there, took Havana acclaimed by the crowds. Three weeks later, in commemoration of the first anniversary of Venezuela’s January 23, Castro visited Caracas. He was given a triumphant welcome at the airport, the

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streets, the university and the congress. The imaginary of the revolution and the Cuban government that derived from it became the romantic ideals of young Latin Americans, particularly Venezuelans. The Cuban revolution came to embody the ideas of freedom, social justice and independence from US-imperialism of the time. The growing idealized perception of the Cuban revolution produced the disagreement of the two leftist political generations of the country, that of exile and the youngest. The former is in favor of moderate and consensual policies, whereas the latter is intransigent and radical. The disagreement tended to deepen in an atmosphere of popular euphoria provoked by the overthrow of the dictator and by a Cold War context that favored Manichean visions. On the other hand, Castro’s Cuba, as a strategy of political survival, undertook a policy of exporting the revolution to all the countries of the region. Such a line of action was assumed in Venezuela by the detachment of the AD party, which was the MIR, as well as by the entire PCV, aligned with the Soviet Union and Cuba, which was the operational arm of the USSR in the Caribbean. In the case of the PCV, the communists of the older generations were carried away by the younger ones, but not very enthusiastically, since this policy did not enjoy strong support from the USSR. Thus, in the framework of the Cold War, the MIR and the PCV began violent actions against the Betancourt government. The armed struggle had two distinct phases: a first, characterized by uprisings carried out by civic-military alliances and urban guerrillas, and a second phase, which began after the 1963 presidential elections, won by Leoni, the AD candidate. This second phase was influenced by the theory of foquismo as a strategy of struggle, advocated by the Argentine Ernesto “Che” Guevara and the French intellectual Regis Debray, which advocated the armed peasant struggle in rural areas. By 1967 both parties recognized that they had failed to achieve their objectives and leaders began to withdraw from the struggle and negotiate their incorporation into the democratic arena. The Cold War, the Policy of “Peaceful Coexistence” and Revolutionary Cuba The evolution of left-wing extremism was conditioned by the Cold War where Cuba, shortly after Castro’s triumph over Batista, aligned that country with the USSR. The Venezuelan government, for its part, squared with the United States and already in the same year of 1959, Betancourt spoke of “isolating and segregating the communists” (Petkoff in Blanco Muñoz, 1980). This position of the Betancourt government contributed in 1960 to a division where most of AD´s youth cadres left first to found the Democratic Action of the Left party (ADI), then changing its name to the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). According to one of its leaders, the division was given by “a dilemma between Marxism and social Catholicism … Between Fidel and Puntofijo there was no possible understanding” (Martín, 2013).1 At the meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in August of that year, held in Costa Rica, Venezuela

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voted in favor of sanctions on Cuba and its isolation. In November the Betancourt government broke relations with that country and in that same month more than eighty communist parties from around the world met in Moscow, including that of Venezuela. There Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and chairman of the council of ministers, announced the policy of peaceful coexistence between the two hegemonic powers of the planet (Mondolfi, 2018). With this, what was called the entente between Moscow and Washington began. Parallel to this policy, the USSR gave lukewarm support to anti-imperialist wars and national liberation struggles in peripheral countries. Cuba, on the other hand, while operating as Moscow’s operational arm in the Caribbean, was more vehement with these actions and, unlike Vietnam or Algeria, henceforth assumed the ecumenism of Marxism and the USSR, which had prevailed in the initial years of the Bolshevik revolution. This internationalism was being abandoned by the Soviets, now focused on their national interests. For Cubans, Venezuela became a focus of special attention due to its oil wealth that, if successful in bringing the country to the communist world, would make it easier for them to become independent from Moscow’s guidelines (Mondolfi, 2018). With this scenario in the background, at the Third Congress of the PCV in April 1961 it was declared for the first time that “the path of the Venezuelan revolution is not peaceful” (Petkoff in Blanco Muñoz, 1980: 201). According to what was published in the communist newspaper Tribuna Popular “… Venezuelan reformist social democracy is only a pawn of Creole and international capital […] The Third Congress will establish the fundamental lines for the insurrectional struggle, ratified and developed in the II and III Plenum of the Central Committee”.2 Around the same time the MIR was also incorporating into the armed struggle, first creating defensive brigades, which were soon transformed into armed military apparatuses. At the end of 1961, the first commando operation took place with the hijacking of a plane of the Venezuelan commercial airline Avensa and from which they launched pamphlets over Caracas. In 1962, the brigades were officially constituted under the name of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN). In 1963, there was a Second Declaration of Havana in February, where the armed struggle was strongly assumed, rejecting any participation of the national bourgeoisies. It was emphasized that the struggle was for now, and that it should begin in small foci, explicitly condemning the electoral methods, “for delusional, vain and accommodating” (Martín, 2013: 112). That year, some 1,200 students appeared in Havana to receive indoctrination and also to exercise in guerrilla attacks. Venezuela was one of the countries where more young people left for Cuba. In a 1964 MIR document, it was stated that anyone who did not recognize the role of violence in the revolution could not be considered a Marxist. A peaceful exit in Venezuela was considered absurd.

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Revolutionary Cuba would continue in the following years to boost leftwing extremism on the continent, thinking of it as a resource that, by opening several violent fronts in the region, would disperse attention on Cuba, allowing the regime to survive a few kilometers from the United States. After the missile crisis of October 1962, where the governments of John Kennedy and Khrushchev confronted each other over the installation of missiles on the island by the Soviets, Castro would give two radical speeches in which he aggressively and openly called for violent struggle on the continent. In the second speech of January 1963, he said: “Only by throwing the masses into combat can the true revolutionary leaders achieve national aspirations” (in Mondolfi, 2018: 4). Another milestone was the Solidarity Meeting of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and America, known as the Tricontinental, which wanted to emulate the 3rd International. It was held in 1966 in Havana, with Cubans consolidating themselves as leaders of the revolutionary movements of the Third World. The Cuban government extended the invitation to the participation of revolutionary movements other than communist parties, which had not happened before. Here emerges with more body and coherence the Cuban policy of exporting the revolution producing frictions with the policy of peaceful coexistence sustained by Moscow. The Two Phases of Guerrilla Warfare The first stage of the armed struggle lasted between 1961 and 1963. In it, the uprisings that prevailed were results of the alliances between dissident sectors of the Armed Forces and actions of civilian armed brigades. These brigades were organized with about a hundred men, divided in turn into platoons of five or six people called Tactical Combat Units, the UTC. In total there were just over 500 men divided into five brigades—three controlled by the PCV and two by the MIR—each of which had a logistical support organization of between 300 and 400 people (Petkoff in Gall, 2021). These urban guerrillas were mostly made up of young university students. Between January and July 1962, the main revolutionary insurgencies took place. One occurred on May 4 in the east of the country, and it is known as El Carupanazo, when the naval base located in the city of Carupano mobilized against the government. The insurgents occupied the streets and buildings of the city, the airport and the Radio Carúpano station. About 400 men were subdued by the government using air forces and naval units. The number of casualties is uncertain. A month later happened the uprising in Puerto Cabello, known as the Porteñazo. In this coup attempt sources indicate that some 400 people died in fighting between the rebel military and government troops. At that time, there was also a prolonged hunger strike in the Prison of El Junquito. According to Teodoro Petkoff, then one of the guerrilla commanders of the PCV, any of the events they organized had propaganda purposes; they

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sought to make visible the revolutionary struggle (Petkoff in Gall, 2021). In this sense they did not seek to kill people and many of the actions were quite original and captured international attention. Among the actions of the UTC are, the kidnapping of the merchant steamer Anzoátegui, the burning of the Sears department store, also that of Cauchos Royal, and that of Good Year on San Martín Avenue and the kidnapping operation of the Argentine footballer Alfredo Di Stefano. According to Petkoff, the activities had important popular support (ibid.). In the second half of 1963, the situation tended to get tougher when these organizations decided to advance a policy of militant abstention before the presidential elections of late December (Martín, 2013). The most emblematic and tragic event in this regard was the assault on the El Encanto train, a section of the Gran Ferrocarril Venezuela that ran down the city of Los Teques with tourist purposes. The guerrillas sought to seize the weapons of the national guardsmen who secured the train. The assault led to a shootout and five civil servants, eight women and two children were killed. They also launched a general strike a few days before the elections and, according to Petkoff, managed to paralyze the productive activities of Caracas “through sheer shooting” [a plomo limpio] (Petkoff in Gall, 2021). In November, a military attaché from the U.S. Embassy was kidnapped. Also, shortly before the elections, the government aborted “Operation Caracas”, discovering a large batch of weapons sent by Cuba and buried in the sands of the coasts of Falcón state on the Paraguaná Peninsula. None of this stopped the elections, citizens went out en masse to vote in repudiation of violence, giving one of the highest averages of electoral participation in the political history of the country: 96.2% (Mondolfi, 2018). Urban guerrilla strategy was defeated militarily and politically. This motivated extremist organizations to focus on the Cuban model and on the foquista strategies outlined in the books of Che Guevara and Regis Debray. They also looked for inspiration into the conception of the prolonged war practiced in China´s revolution and in the war of the Vietnamese against the US. From 1964 on, the MIR went to the mountains; that is, it moved the armed struggle to rural areas. In April of that year, the Plenum of the PCV made an absurd diagnosis, according to Petkoff, and decided to immerse itself in a rural guerrilla movement. Some Cubans came to Venezuela to collaborate and even Che Guevara evaluated the possibility of landing on Venezuelan shores and joining the guerrillas (Martín, 2013; Mondolfi, 2018). In the west of the country, the guerrilla foci were led by cadres of the PCV party and in the east by those of the MIR. The strongest of these guerrilla groups were located in the western states of Falcón and Trujillo. They were composed mainly of very young peasants, but more than followers of Marxism or socialism, the population of these areas had an important tradition of indigenous and caudillesque rebellion, which served as a floor to these rural guerrillas (Petkoff in Gall, 2021). Douglas Bravo in the Sierra de Falcón and Argimiro Gabaldón in Lara were the emblematic commanders. Venezuela, a country in an accelerated process

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of modernization and urbanization, had little to look for in a Cuban-style peasant struggle. Petkoff and Martin acknowledge today that it was a wrong and costly strategy. By 1965 the debate within the PCV was high due to the scarce fruits of the armed struggle strategy. Petkoff proposed a gradual withdrawal and Guillermo García Ponce, an immediate withdrawal. Although Petkoff’s strategy prevailed Bravo refused to abandon the armed struggle and left the party taking the entire guerrilla front of Falcón—about 200 men—and almost the entire urban guerrilla apparatus of Caracas. The Cuban PC broke with the PCV and from then on, they advocated the exaltation and cult of Bravo, giving him all kinds of support. That year, among other actions, the blowing up of pipelines in places such as Barcelona, Anaco and Cantaura are remembered. This period closes in 1967 with a relevant event: the landing of a Venezuelan and Cuban armed contingent near Machurucuto beach in order to join the El Bachiller Front, in Miranda state, in a mountainous area near Caracas. The Venezuelan guerrillas coming from Cuba belonged to the MIR party and they had trained for this operation for a year in the island. The Cubans were expert guerrilleros coming to help Venezuelans. They sailed on a Cuban warship camouflaged as a fishing boat and when they left Cuba, Fidel Castro himself said them good bye (Pérez Marcano, 2019). They brought money and equipment for the guerrilla front. The operation had mishaps before arriving, some of the guerrillas were captured and gave the details of the expedition. Others managed to reach the front after months of hiding and calamities. It had little success in revitalizing the armed struggle but severely deteriorated the relations of both governments. This episode is known as the Landing of Machurucuto and took place in May 1967.

Between 1966 and 1999: PRV, BR and OR-Socialist League From the mid-sixties until the end of the century, organizations and movements of the country’s left weakened and fragmented. This was a result of a combination of external and internal factors where the polarized relations between the US and the USSR during the Cold War, the Cuban foreign policy, and the limited success of their previous military actions are some of the factors that would divide left-wing extremists in numerous small groups that could not agree among each other. Senior cadres of both the PCV and the MIR tended to move away from extremism, but others refused to put down the armed struggle. Depending on the diagnoses made and the strategies that correspond, we see parties such as the PCV, the MIR and some of its derivatives such as the Movement to Socialism (MAS) and La Causa R, seeking to insert themselves into the institutional system of democracy. Others, however, maintain violence as a strategy. The main ones of this last group were: the Party of the Venezuelan Revolution (PRV), Red Flag (BR) and Organization of Revolutionaries (OR)-Socialist League.

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El PRV In a document dated 1967, Douglas Bravo, the undisputed leader of the party that was created as a dismemberment of the PCV in 1966, argued that the absence of a revolutionary army was the main obstacle that prevented January 23, 1958 from leading to an authentic revolutionary process. According to Bravo, unlike the Cuban experience led by Castro, what happened in Venezuela was a civil uprising that could not prevail (Bravo, 1967). In addition, he justified the continuity of the armed struggle not only by this need for a people’s army, but also by the severe repression that the bourgeois capitalist system represented by representative democracy was exerting against the popular classes. He pointed to continuous deaths and arrests as a result of the use of violence by the security forces against street protests, or when popular sectors expressed their support for the Cuban revolution or the actions of left-wing parties and unions. For Bravo, the origin of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) in 1962 was to defend the popular classes from these aggressions of the domination bloc. The Partido de la Revolución Venezolana maintained that the FALN were the continuation of the army of Simón Bolívar that fought the battles of independence in the first half of the nineteenth century. PRV assured that they were fighting for peace, but a peace that needed war to be achieved. In this view, the FALN were part of the struggles throughout the subcontinent, and Bolívar’s anti-imperialist wars were an example to follow in confronting US imperialism in the present day. Cuba, on the other hand, represented the advance of revolutionary governments in the world (Bravo, 1967). They also created an unarmed allied organization called National Liberation Front (FLN) with prominent civilian and military figures (Rodríguez, 2022). As the north of its political project, the PRV was guided, according to Bravo, by a “heretic utopia for the creation of a new civilization” (PRV, 2015). They were “heretics” because they opposed the Soviet model, which they considered to be a state capitalism, another face of capitalism itself. As a historical slogan, the PRV maintained that of the FALN of “national liberation and socialism” (PRV, 2015). The armed forces that followed Bravo were made up of members of the José Leonardo Chirinos Guerrilla Front, which operated under his orders in the state of Falcón and the Simón Bolívar Guerrilla Front of Lara state, led by Argimiro Gabaldón, who had directed an extensive and fruitful unarmed organizational work in the clandestine PCV of that Lara region in the fifties. In 1962, on that basis, Gabaldón founded this armed front, which continued to operate after his death in 1964. The PRV was the clandestine political apparatus of the FALN. They held their first congress in April 1966. Among its most outstanding cadres were: Douglas Bravo, Ángel J. Márquez, Alí Rodríguez, Julio Chirino, Kleber Ramírez, Argelia Melet, Leonardo González, Fabricio Ojeda, Armando Chino Daza, Elegido Sibada Magoya, Andrés Pasquier, Juan Carlos Parisca, Felipe Malaver, Luben Petkoff, Doris Francia

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and Baltazar Ojeda Negretti (Zabala, 2021). According to one of its members, the PRV represented a fracture between two ideological left-wing camps: “Bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology, as opposed to proletarian, MarxistLeninist ideology” (Zabala, 2021). A few years later Ruptura was also created, as a legal façade of the PRV-FALN, led by Bravo’s wife, Argelia Melet. Ruptura published a newspaper that disseminated the doctrinal part of the movement, lambasted capitalism and sought the Venezuelan revolution (Melet, 2004). In the late sixties, Bravo and his party broke with Castro, after going through frequent tensions caused by considering that Cuba wanted to indoctrinate and direct actions in Venezuela.3 The definitive distancing occurred with the invasion of the USSR to Czechoslovakia in 1968, which the PRV repudiated and Cuba supported (Rodríguez, 2022). In the seventies, military activity slowed down, with only small armed foci enduring in the West as a symbol that it remained the strategic path (Rodríguez, 2022). Bravo traveled to Colombia and came into contact with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as the political project contemplated uniting the Colombian and Venezuelan guerrillas. By 1979 another phase of this group was opened when Bravo considered that the armed struggle had failed. Shortly after, he joined public life, calling for a large demonstration in the capital of his home state, the city of Coro (López, 2021). Among the best-known military actions of the FALN is, in 1967, the kidnapping and murder of Julio Iribarren Borges, brother of the chancellor of the republic and president of the Social Security Institute, whose body appeared in the vicinity of the Pan-American Highway of the road to Pipe, Miranda state.4 Other actions sought propaganda and material survival purposes. Among them is the kidnapping of industrialist Carlos Domínguez Chávez, known as the King of Tinplate for his metal packaging factories. The event took place in June 1972, demanding for the release of the industrialist US$1,162,720. After fifteen days in captivity and having paid the ransom, Dominguez was released. The police forces managed to capture all the kidnappers and were placed under the order of military justice. The kidnapping operation was coordinated by the Revolutionary Integration Committee (CIR), an acronym that identified the articulation of the PRV-FALN with another far-left party, Red Flag [Bandera Roja] (Segured, 2013). As for the results of these actions, among the casualties indicated by the PRV, in combat or by state repression, Felix Faría, Luis Vera Betancourt, Eleazar Fabricio Aristigueta, Fabricio Ojeda and Nicolás Hurtado (Zabala, 2021) stand out. Already retired from the insurrectionary strategy, Bravo formed the organization Tercer Camino – Tercer Ejército [Third Path-Third Army] in July 1985. Under this new organization he did political work in universities, barracks and with neighborhood and peasant social sectors, either conspiring to reverse the constituted order or developing community proposals. At this time, he came into contact with Adam and Hugo Chavez before the failed coup d’état of 1992. There is an undeniable influence of Bravo and the PRV in the discourse and some definitions of Chavismo (López, 2021).

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Red Flag (BR) After the 1963 elections in the MIR, tensions also began. “Hard or radical” sectors considered it necessary to continue the armed confrontation with the government, while others, like what happened in the PCV, were in favor of laying down their arms. Taking advantage of the pacification policy, a group accepted this government offer and inserted themselves into institutional life, retaining the acronym of the MIR. Other groups maintained the insurrectionary path for several decades. The most important were Red Flag (BR), and Organization of Revolutionaries (OR)-Socialist League. BR was nourished by the Guerrilla Front of the East part of Venezuela called Antonio José de Sucre (Guanique, 2022), also incorporating union and student cadres. At the head of Bandera Roja were Gabriel Puerta Aponte and Carlos Betancourt. The front continued to operate also in the mountains of Monagas and Anzoátegui states, commanded by Américo Silva, who met his death in combat in 1972. Since its foundation, BR, like the PRV, defined itself as a Marxist-Leninist party. In a founding document of 1971, it was established as a starting point or diagnosis that in Venezuela there was a highly militarized bourgeois dictatorship with a growing tendency to repression and violence (Bandera Roja, 1971: 33). It was pointed out that history has shown that the way to defeat the bourgeoisie is that the working class: “must renounce parliamentary cretinism, the old trade union policy and decide to take up arms once and for all” (ibid.: 34). The document elaborates on the repression of the State, arguing that the Venezuelan army represented the interests of a class “hypocritical, ruinous, like the bourgeoisie” (ibid.: 35). The document harshly criticizes the PCV and the MAS, for having abjured the fundamental theses of Marxism-Leninism. According to this political piece, these parties took the path “of capitulation and shamelessness”. It points out that the tendencies that are currently perceived as pacifism, electoralism and reformism, have become serious deviations from the popular movement that BR must face. It gives as an example of such deviations the admiration shown in such groups for the “Chilean case”, which “makes them delusional” (ibid.: 37). The trade unionists who have joined the democratic game are called gangsters of syndicalism and argue that their struggle is also against them for being at the service of imperialism and the bourgeoisie. They call for a break with the trade union confederations that operate in the democratic system, and maintain that BR in its vanguard condition is incompatible with policies of “negotiations” (ibid.: 41). The work of the working class is to “stimulate… class hatred between the rich and poor and not class collaboration as has happened until today” (ibid.: 43). BR was in favor of using all forms of struggle to raise political consciousness among peasants and workers. They argued that in order to “develop agitation and political work, the party and the guerrilla commanders approved the line

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of beating the rich in the countryside and in each concrete case, applying on them anything from taxes to the kidnappings of certain capitalists, the slaughter of cattle and their distribution among the hungry population …” (Ibid.: 49). In the conclusions they say that the forms of struggle of peasants and students will be mainly clandestine. Among the party’s slogans: “against the violence of the rich… violence of the poor” (ibid.: 51). In the seventies and eighties BR carried out several takeovers of villages, assaults on checkpoints and kidnappings of businessmen. The best known are, the already mentioned of Domínguez, that of banker Enrique Dao, and that of the Molina Palacios brothers, landowners in the Monagas state. They also carried out bank robberies, but in these cases, they were covert actions, to confuse them with the common underworld. Puerta Aponte was arrested in 1973 by the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP) and confined to the San Carlos Barracks. There, BR and PRV leaders organized an escape through a 70-meter-long tunnel in 1975. Among the twenty-three escapees were Carlos Betancourt, Puerta Aponte and Francisco Parada. In 1976, BR was split. Carlos Betancourt constituted Bandera Roja Marxista Leninista (BRML), which took with it the armed front. His military actions continued until 1978. Among these were the assault on the Alcabala at Km 52 of Anzoátegui state, where two combatants died, and the capture of the town of Urica, in the state of Monagas. Defeated by the government, the group disintegrates and Betancourt joins institutional politics (Guanique, 2022). The group that remained with the original acronym (BR), was led by Gabriel Puerta, Tito González and Celestino Veliz, who focused on the training of urban and rural cadres, seeking to penetrate student, union and peasant organizations, with the ultimate goal of producing a popular movement. They created in 1977 a new armed front called the Américo Silva Front. They continued with the seizure of towns and alcabalas, or spectacular actions such as the escape of political prisoners from the Pica Prison in 1977 (Guanique, 2022). In 1982, at the height of successful military actions, the government managed to capture almost the entire national political committee of BR in Caracas, and shortly after another important part of party militants in the interior, interning them in the Cárcel de Tocuyito [Tocuyito Prison].5 However, BR continued to operate and in September retook a camp near the village of Cantaura in Monagas state, which had served as a refuge for prisoners escaped from La Pica Prison. While there, between October 4 and 5, the government carried out a military action by land and air of relevant magnitude, killing twenty-three guerrilleros, while twenty managed to escape. Survivors would narrate that some of those captured were killed by burning them, women had their breasts mutilated and others were dismembered. The party retreated and in 1988 created the Movimiento por la Democracia Popular MDP, to give a legal front to BR, deepen the policy toward the masses and participate in the national elections of 1988, nominating imprisoned leaders as candidates. The

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leader of OR-Socialist League, David Nieves, in alliance with BR, won enough votes to reach Congress and was released from prison. In 1992, BR participated in the two failed coup attempts, the first, on February 4 led by the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement-200 (MBR200) of Hugo Chávez. That year BR officially withdrew from the armed struggle, maintaining its political work in universities, unions, neighborhood and peasant organizations. They legalized the party in 1994. This organization will not enter the government alliances of Chavismo, on the contrary, it decided early its incorporation into opposition platforms. Organization of Revolutionaries-Socialist League (OR-Liga Socialista) The Antonio José de Sucre Guerrilla Front, as well as guerrillas belonging to the Cerro el Bachiller front in Miranda state, are the origin of the Organización de Revolucionarios (OR) that in 1969 had among its founders Julio Escalona, Jorge Rodríguez, Marcos Gómez, Fernando Soto Rojas and Carmelo Laborit. The goal was to build a true revolutionary organization that, according to their criteria, did not exist in the country. According to Escalona, in that search they became convinced of the need to move from clandestinity to legal struggle and for that reason, a few years later they created the Socialist League party.6 Between 1971 and 1973, when several of them were in prison, texts written by Escalona—who was free and still commanded guerrillas—began to circulate. In these pieces the need to break with foquismo was raised to demarcate themselves from the reformist deviation, which afflicted other leftist organizations in arms. What was urgent, according to Escalona, was a genuine party of the proletariat. For Escalona there was a major contradiction in the revolutionary movement between theory and practice, repeating Lenin’s phrase “without revolutionary theory there is no revolutionary movement”. Another of his ideas was to combine the forms of struggle—armed and peaceful—given the political conditions, which favored legal actions. Escalona argued that this is how the revolution could be achieved (Nieves in Alcaldía de Caracas, 2013). The year 1973 was one of elections (presidential and parliamentary) and the abstentionist tactics practiced in the past had been quite disastrous for these organizations. From these texts of Escalona, within OR came the idea of rehearsing the tactic of null vote. It was called a revolutionary tactic, because, they argued, it channeled anti-system sentiments, unmasked and questioned the existing order and convinced the masses that there was no possibility of resolving the situation of misery they suffered by institutional mechanisms. It was also argued that with the null vote the reformist ideas of foquismo were overcome and that mobilization and agitation could spring up again (Rodríguez in Alcaldía de Caracas, 2013). Upon leaving prison in July 1973, Jorge Rodríguez gave himself to spreading this tactic and promoted the foundation of the Socialist League [Liga Socialista] as the organization capable of giving a political unity to the movement of the null vote and with the

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expectation that the organization would continue beyond the elections of that December (Nieves in Alcaldía de Caracas, 2013). LS was formally born in November 1973—a month before the elections— through a constituent assembly. According to Escalona, it was not a “legal screen or vent, but a serious project of revolutionary work” (Escalona in Alcaldía de Caracas, 2013: 38). The party would be a key part of a strategy centered on the working class, proposing to organize resistance, raise socialism as an alternative to the crisis, win victories in popular struggles and defeat electoral illusions (Rodriguez in Alcaldía de Caracas, 2013). While maintaining the warlike rhetoric, the armed actions of the LS were scarce. Like the PRV and BR, the LS declared itself Marxist-Leninist. In the founding writings, the contempt for bourgeois institutions is clearly expressed. One should not have illusions about them, but use them to destroy their hegemony (Rodríguez in Alcaldía de Caracas, 2013). Liberal democracy is described as hypocrite, its legality serves to mistreat and repress them (Idem). LS assumed in this official document that repression is part of the consequences of their revolutionary struggle so it should not be feared. Nor should they refuse to use those instruments within the law, which can help them achieve their revolutionary goals (Idem). The regimes of Betancourt, Leoni and Caldera are considered equal to the dictatorships of Pinochet and Videla. According to these leaders, it murders and tortures just like them, only it is done in the name of “democracy and ideological pluralism, and of a false third-world politics” (Nieves in Alcaldía de Caracas, 2013: 19). LS was one of the organizations that participated in the February 1976 kidnapping of American businessman William Frank Niehous, vice president of Owens-Illinois in Venezuela, accused by these organizations of being a CIA agent. The kidnapping was the longest in the history of the country, as he was held for more than three years (forty months), and at the time of his release, which occurred accidentally by an operation for other purposes of state security forces, some LS cadres were among his guards. As a result of this kidnapping, the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez arrested Jorge Rodríguez in July 1976, who two days later was found dead, as a result of torture by police officials.7 Rodríguez’s murder led to the resignation of the director of the Intelligence and Forecasting Services Division (DISIP), responsible for his custody and a trial of four police officers. The party considered Rodriguez a martyr of the revolution. In the years after 1976, LS focused on mass political activities, diminishing until its clandestine activities disappeared. It developed political work among university students, where it came to accumulate some strength. There LS acted through a façade known as MEUP—Student Movement of Popular Unity. In the mid-eighties, a group of cadres broke away from the LS due to disagreements with the continuation of the Marxist-Leninist hard line. They proposed a more pragmatic approach, with political work in neighborhoods

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and factories that would allow for new theoretical ideas of how to build socialism in Venezuela. The most extremists were left with the acronyms, among which was Nicolás Maduro, future successor of Chávez in the Presidency of Venezuela. In 1998, the LS supported Chávez’s candidacy and in 2007, following his mandate, they dissolved the organization to join the Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The last secretary general of the Socialist League was Fernando Soto Rojas, who was president of the National Assembly between 2011 and 2012.8

Left-Wing Extremism in the Chavista Era: The MBR-200, the PSUV and Parties of the Great Patriotic Pole 2007–2013 During this period, we observe a left-wing extremism that, although it does not present itself in the form of armed struggle, keeps much of its practical and ideological virulence. This is evident in the creation of the MBR-200 in 1982, a left-wing military organization that organized the two coups d’état of 1992 and afterward, under the name of Movimiento Quinta República (MVR), came at the hands of its populist leader, Hugo Chávez into power in 1999. In his first government (1999–2006), Chávez dismantled much of Venezuela’s already weak democratic institutions, through a political strategy of extreme polarization, which was challenged by his political opponents with the same coin. In his second government (2007–2013), a Chavez re-elected by a wide popular vote practically buried the moribund bourgeois democracy, and began what he called a socialism of the twenty-first century, with its Communal State. This new conception of the Venezuelan regime, embodied in the failed constitutional reform of 2007, bears little relation, and even in several aspects is antagonistic to the participatory democracy approved in the 1999 constitution and exposes the authoritarian drift that Chavismo carries out since then. Although we could not affirm that the process occurred in a linear, ascending or planned way, in the mind of Chávez and the political organizations that remained with him in this new stage, the traces of the left-wing extremist ideas that preceded him and then followed can be clearly traced with Maduro. From the MBR-200 to the Seizure of Power (1982–1998) The MBR-200 was created in December 1982 by Army Captains Hugo Chávez Frías, Felipe Acosta Carles and Jesús Urdaneta Hernández. Its purpose was to infiltrate the Armed Forces to create conditions for an uprising that would put an end to a state of affairs that they considered unlivable. Although it cannot be said that all the founders and future members of the group were influenced by the extreme left, many of their ideas and actions were tributaries of this current, particularly Chávez (López Maya, 2009). By 1983, “through the mediation of university professors and old left-wing militants, there was

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a meeting between former guerrillas (…) such as Douglas Bravo, Francisco Prada and Kléber Ramírez with young army officers such as William Izarra, Hugo Chávez, Francisco Arias Cárdenas and Francisco Visconti”9 (López, 2022). Likewise, Bolivarianismo as an ideology that links the epic past of Venezuela with present struggles was taken from Bravo and his PRV, that, as already noted, tried to merge Marxism with Bolivarian ideas to make sense of a stagnating guerrilla struggle. Chávez confided in having received ideas from the PRV10 and the Causa R11 parties in his youth, something that he recognizes permeated his movement: “A stream of thought that carried a revolutionary vision supported by a Marxist interpretation of the seizure of power” (Izarra, 2004: 4). However, the heterogeneity of actors and thoughts within this political movement was a characteristic that earned him distrust with other leftist groups. Chávez’s idea was to create a civic-military alliance from within the Armed Forces and not the other way around, as the PRV’s theses exposed. For the leadership of the MBR-200, like previous left-wing extremisms, representative democracy was a façade. The Puntofijo Pact was considered a corrupt alliance of elites that had left out the majorities. The turbulent decade of 1980, which began with the presidency of Luis Herrera Campíns, who had to recognize the serious macroeconomic imbalances of the country, culminated with the social explosion of Dantesque proportions known as the Caracazo or Sacudón (López Maya, 2003a). The looting and riots that took place in Venezuela’s major cities between February 27 and March 4, 1989 were a point of no return for both Venezuela and the MBR-200 (López Maya, 2003b). It was the sign that the conspiratorial stage had to be transformed into an action one. In February 1992, the MBR-200 emerged from the anonymity of the barracks with an attempted coup d’état, something that would be repeated on November 27 of that same year. Both rebellions were put down, but they caused tremendous damage to the democratic institutions of the country, in addition to an important media positioning of the coup plotters. Once its members were imprisoned, the MBR-200 seemed to strengthen, as the prison served to continue conspiring, receive visits from far-left groups and establish new alliances, in addition to strengthening its role as heroes before public opinion. Between 1993 and 1994, most of the cases of the members of the MBR200 were dismissed, including that of Chávez, who in December 1994 was received with honors by Fidel Castro in Havana. Now free, the12 movimiento had to make the decision to continue on the insurrectional path or access power through democratic channels. This debate culminated in the creation of the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) in 1997, the electoral arm of the MBR-200 (López Maya, 2006). After a tough electoral campaign, where political polarization appeared as an electoral strategy and the crisis of the party system was revealed in all its

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harshness, the MVR and its candidate obtained 56.20% of the votes in the December 1998 elections. Chavez was the new president. Against Bourgeois Democracy (1999–2005) Chavez is going to find a fragmented society and an institutionally weakened country. However, the president and the parties that brought him to power, gathered in the platform known as the Patriotic Pole, did not seem to want to re-establish the rules of a democracy that they diagnosed as feeble and moribund. Already in the debates of the MBR-200, some spoke of democracy being only a pretext to access power. The great electoral offer of 1998 was to convene a Constituent Assembly to elaborate a new Magna Carta. It was approved in December 1999, but not before triggering episodes that casted doubts on the democratic spirit of the new government, such as the dissolution of the newly elected Congress and the formation of a National Legislative Commission, with a pro-government majority and supra-constitutional powers. Likewise,13 the purging of the Judicial System and the resignation of the president of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) also occurred, alleging the death of the Rule of Law. Under the premise of participatory democracy and constituent power, the new government was advancing its ideas, without regarding negotiation as a political instrument. The rule of the majority seemed enough. The weakness of traditional parties and the acceptance of this attitude and other authoritarian gestures by the status quo paved the way. The social gaps that deepened during the nineties14 were used by Chávez to continue cultivating political polarization—with a discourse of struggle of rich against poor—creating a friend-enemy cultural frame typical of populism, which became henceforth the axis of the official discourse. Some Bolivarian circles, the base organizations of the MBR-200, became shock groups that clashed in each demonstration with members of opposition political parties and civil society (Arenas and Gómez Calcaño, 2005). At the end of the year 2000, a series of fundamental laws (Lands, Hydrocarbons, Fisheries) were approved through the procedure of enabling laws, discarding deliberation at the National Assembly (AN). The discontent was immediate, and primarily catalyzed by the federation of entrepreneurs, Fedecámaras and that of the unions CTV, who in December 2001 called together for a 12-hour paro cívico [civil strike], marking the beginning of an escalation that would continue with the coup d’état of April 2002 and the oil stoppage of late 2002–2003. The confrontation15 reached its zenith with the convening of a revocatory referendum in August 2004, plagued by irregularities and threats, among which the Tascón List stood out, an instrument to discriminate and persecute people adverse to the government.16 Leveraged in oil revenue, the Bolivarian government started creating public structures parallel to the institutional ones. These institutions were no more universal in their nature and were and still are inauditable, under the excuse

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of urgency to overcome poverty. In 2003 the social missions were born and in 2005 the Law of the Central Bank of Venezuela was reformed, undermining its autonomy and allowing the creation of various funds that since then became an inexhaustible source of corruption. That year Chávez announced the concept of socialism of the twenty-first century at the World Social Forum (in Porto Alegre), and in December, thanks to the massive withdrawal of the opposition in the legislative elections, the ruling party obtained all the seats of the AN, deviating participatory democracy toward a socialist authoritarian political project. Although Chávez claimed to have his eyes on a new twentyfirst century kind of socialism, he ended up feeding on the worst experiences of the twentieth century, particularly the Cuban revolution. But by then, there were no parties or institutions strong enough to confront it. Chavista Hegemony (2006–2013) As part of the 2006 presidential campaign that would result in a landslide victory for Chávez and his coalition of parties, the president announced the idea of creating a new political party that would bring together all revolutionary forces, warning that those who did not conform to his wish would be expelled from the government. The proposal provoked numerous debates within the MVR and the Patriotic Pole. In many circles there was talk of the dangers of the single party. The formation of the PSUV [United Socialist Party of Venezuela] was modelled after the extinct Soviet Communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party and especially, the Cuban Communist Party. In January 2008, the Founding Congress of the PSUV was installed, a party that from its inception served to displace any dissent within Chavismo, hijack any independent popular initiative and consolidate its position as a hegemonic party-state (Straka, 2017). During this period, what was a vague idea became more precise. In mid-August 2007, the president presented the AN and the country with a far-reaching constitutional reform, where he proposed to establish socialism as a system of government for Venezuela. Articles referring to a new people’s power, confusing concepts about property, erosion of the rule of law and the president’s right to indefinite re-election were some novelties included in the reform. Despite the magnitude of the changes, the project was debated with haste and superficiality, handling a polarizing logic. The proposal was narrowly rejected in a mandatory referendum held in December 2007, a result that caused the president to declare it a shitty victory for the opposition. On February 15, 2009, he proposed a constitutional amendment to establish the indefinite re-election of the president, governors, mayors and other officials, even though this issue had already been rejected in the previous referendum, and according to the constitution could not be presented again in the same presidential term (López Maya, 2016). However, this amendment obtained the approval of the popular vote, which thwarted a new blow to the rule of

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law, weakening alternation and political pluralism, and opening the door for the continuity of Chávez and the gross advantage of the PSUV. Chávez, given the defeat of his reform at the polls, did not seek the legitimization of socialism again by electoral means.17 Relying in his charisma, in the abundant oil revenues that he distributed at discretion and that allowed him to skip the legal framework with impunity, and counting with the subordination of the other public powers that he had achieved previously, he looked to advance his project in great steps. Already in December 2006, the AN under his control had approved a Law on Communal Councils, and in 2009 it reformed and transformed it into an organic law, assigning to these communal councils (CC) the task of building socialism, and obliging any community organization that looked for official recognition to be linked to this new organizational form, and share its objectives.18 The CCs were conceived in the 2006 law to encourage the creation of community spaces that should strengthen democracy and participation. However, the conceptual change of the law in 2009 enhanced sectarianism, corruption, subordination to the central government and inefficiency in them. In Chávez’s socialist vision, the CCs were to be the basis from which to constitute communes, that is, territorial axes of his great project: the communal state. This proposal gained greater strength from 2010 on with the approval of a set of laws known as socialist laws. At that time the slogan: commune or nothing (comuna o nada) was profusely disseminated. Another discourse that distanced itself from that embodied in the constitution was that established for the Armed Forces. Chavez proposed during these years to conform the armed bodies of the State to his ideas. He changed the name of the institution to singular and added the concept of Bolivarian: Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana (FANB). Along with the new name it was also given new objectives: socialism and anti-imperialism were now assumed. The last years of this period are marked by Chávez’s illness, the exacerbation of his charismatic personality, and the beginning of a public cult of his figure. During the 2012 presidential campaign, the president’s and his party’s calls to maintain absolute loyalty to the supreme leader of the revolution became recurrent. This policy was expanded and deepened with the official death of the president in March 2013.

The Legacy: The Government of Nicolás Maduro (2013–Present) These years begin with the hard-fought electoral victory that Nicolás Maduro won on April 14, 2013 over the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. Maduro, former foreign minister of Chávez, a trade unionist, militant of the Socialist League party and the PSUV, trained in Cuba and loyal to that government, assumed the presidency in the middle of a difficult situation. Not only because of the death of Chavez but also because of the macroeconomic and social imbalances that have been developing since previous years.

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His government coined the phrase economic war to hold the empire (the US) responsible for the imbalances that soon led to an acute economic and financial crisis, triggered by the decline in oil prices in the world market. Venezuela fell in 2014 in a new boom-bust cycle typical of the Petrostates, which was now aggravated by a management that despised economic discipline and liberal democratic institutions. The indices of shortages of basic products skyrocketed, and in the face of acute social unrest, the government picked to deepen its authoritarian drift (López Maya, 2016). Two cycles of protests, in 2014 and 2017 were fundamental milestones in Maduro’s first period. Faced with all kinds of scarcities and the beginning of what became an unprecedented global crisis of Venezuelan society, the government ignored the complaints, the state became anarchic in its conduct and the repression was atrocious, creating pre-insurrectionary situations that were brutally suffocated. The government called the population to resist in the name of the homeland, of Chavez and of socialism. An overwhelming victory of the opposition in the 2015 parliamentary elections, far from providing incentives for a rectification, if anything accentuated the authoritarianism of the regime. The new AN was declared in contempt by the pro-government Supreme Court of Justice in January 2016, and that same month Maduro decreed an Economic Emergency Decree, establishing a permanent State of Exception. In order to what the government calls pacify the country, and after elections of dubious legality held on July 30, 2017, a National Constituent Assembly (ANC) was established. Its function to be a legislative body parallel to the AN, which would serve as a legal façade to the decisions of the Executive. This assault on the legislative took place along with persecutions of opponents, imprisonment of dissident voices and criminalization of any act, thought or opinion adverse to the government. The institutional breakdowns were generating a progressive rejection of the international democratic community, which reached its zenith with the early, and full of irregularities, presidential elections of May 2018, in which Maduro ended up re-elected (OEV, 2018). The establishment of sanctions by the US government, first on individuals in office, and then on companies and state institutions, gave arguments to Maduro to blame and reaffirm his extremist anti-imperialist discourse. Venezuela has been immersed since 2016 into what the UN conceptualizes as a Complex Humanitarian Emergency (EHC). By 2019, the government was in a disorderly and improvised way seeking some kind of economic liberalization. That year he revoked the Criminal Exchange Law, allowing the free flow of foreign currency to the economy; and without lifting the State of Exception, he enacted an Anti-Blockade Law in 2020, which gave more discretionary powers to Maduro to privatize companies and preserve the confidentiality of the businesses and operations he promotes. A new Alarm Decree, on the occasion of the pandemic in March 2020, came to further concentrate power in the hands of Maduro, as well as the government’s control over the population.

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In this way, and without abjuring the ideological discourse of Chavismo, now transformed into Chavismo-Madurismo, the Maduro regime has been erasing its left-wing extremism to align itself with the new autocratic model emerging in the world, represented by countries such as China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary or Belarus, where the right-left dilemma becomes incoherent, while the binomial democracy-autocracy has greater explanatory capacity. None of these countries develops anything other than a market economy. Venezuela, along with Cuba and Nicaragua, its two partners in the Americas, has isolated itself from Western states to align itself with China and Russia in the global context. In 2022 at the UN, Maduro’s government gave unrestricted support to Russia’s foreign policy justifications for invading Ukraine.

Notes 1. It is known as the Puntofijo Pact the agreement signed by the leaders of the three political parties AD, COPEI and URD, which gave the floor for the construction of a democratic regime in Venezuela. 2. In Tribuna Popular https://prensapcv.wordpress.com/2016/03/04/iii-con greso-del-pcv-la-chispa-que-incendio-la-pradera/, downloades on 5 March 5 2022. 3. Below, data taken from (López, 2021). 4. https://camaradecaracas.com/ocurrio-aqui/secuestro-y-asesinato-de-julio-iri barren-borges-parte-i/, downloaded on 17 January 2022. 5. The following has been taken from the Bandera Roja digital portal: https:// banderaroja.com.ve/historia/, downloaded on 5 February 2022. 6. https://armando.info/el-mentor-entre-sombras-de-nicolas-maduro/, downloaded on 10 January 2022. 7. https://elpais.com/diario/1976/07/29/internacional/207439201_850215. html downloaded on 23 February 2022. 8. https://armando.info/el-mentor-entre-sombras-de-nicolas-maduro/, downloaded on 1 January 2022. 9. William Izarra created between 1978 and 1979 the group R-83 (Revolution 83), and in 1980 ARMA (Revolutionary Alliance of Active Military). 10. “The PRV had a great intellectual influence on Venezuela’s left-wing circles at that time, didn’t it? [Question of Ignacio Ramonet] Yes [Hugo Chávez answers], a great influence; for the political, economic and social concepts they elaborated: on social exclusion, blackness...; or on oil; or about the necessary alliance between Latin America and the Arab-Muslim world... My brother Adán had been a member of the MIR [Revolutionary Left Movement], but he left and was recruited for the PRV, around 1973, by a professor of his, Juan Salazar, a physicist friend of Douglas Bravo.” (Ramonet 2013: 255). 11. See Harnecker (2002: 12). 12. “Speech of Hugo Chávez in Havana, December 14, 1993”, available at: https:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=TENE_UTyNvk, downloaded in 20 February 2022. 13. Legislative elections were held on 8 November 1998. 14. There is abundant bibliography on these first years of Chávez’s government, it can be seen, among others, López Maya (2006). In the next paragraphs we rely on information sustained in this book.

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15. A detailed description of these events in López Maya (2006). 16. The Tascón List is a list of millions of signatures of Venezuelans who asked in 2003 and 2004 for the recall of the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez. The list, published online by National Assembly member Luis Tascón, was used by the government to discriminate against those who have signed against Chávez (see https://www.google.com/search?q=Venezuela+what+is+the+Tas con+List%3F&rlz=1C1SQJL_enUS901US901&oq=Venezuela+what+is+the+ Tascon+List%3F&aqs=chrome.69i57j0i22i30.22564j0j15&sourceid=chrome& ie=UTF8), downloaded 20 Febraury 2022. 17. See details of this process in López Maya (2016). 18. An organic law is a higher-level law that regulates other laws.

References Alcaldía de Caracas (2013): El pensamiento de Jorge Rodríguez. Caracas, Fondo Editorial Fundarte. Arenas, Nelly & Gómez Calcaño, Luis (2005): “Los círculos bolivarianos. El mito de la unidad del pueblo”, in América Latina hoy: Revista de Ciencias Sociales, Vol. 39, in https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=1222899. Bandera, Roja (1971): “Conclusiones del Pleno Nacional de Bandera Roja”, América Rebelde. Caracas, septiembre. Blanco Muñoz, Agustín (1980): La lucha armada. Hablan 5 jefes [Teodoro Petkoff]. Caracas, UCV-File. Bravo, Douglas (1967): “La Revolución venezolana y la revolución latinoamericana”, in Punto Final. Documents No. 33, July in https://punto-final.org/PDFs/1967/ PF_033_doc.pdf, downloaded on 18 January 2022. Gall, Norman (2021): Teodoro Petkoff. La crisis de un revolucionario profesional (primera parte “Los años de la lucha armada”). Spanish translation and published by Trópico Absoluto on January 1, 2021. Digital version sent to my email by Manuel Ferrer on September 15, 2021. Guanique, Dick (2022): Member and Part of the Board of Directors of Bandera Roja. Consultations between 19 and 24 January. Harnecker, Marta (2002): Hugo Chávez Frías. Un hombre, un pueblo. Available in: entrevise.pdf (clacso.edu.ar). Izarra, William (2004): “Del MBR 200 al MVR” Available at: https://docplayer.es/ 97393289-William-e-Izarra-del-mbr200-al-mvr.html. Liga Socialista (2012): In https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liga_Socialista_(Venezu ela)), downloaded on 10 January 2022. López Maya (2009): “El movimiento bolivariano: ascenso al poder y gobierno hasta 2008 (Margarita López Maya) en Mario Ayala y Pablo Quintero,eds. Diez años de revolución en Venezuela. Historia. Balance y perspectivas (1999–2009), Buenos Aires, Editorial Maipue, 2009. López, Isaac (2021): “Douglas Bravo: el último caudillo guerrillero”, Papel Literario de El Nacional, May, in https://www.elnacional.com/papel-literario/douglasbravo-el-ultimo-caudillo-guerrillero/, downloaded on 17 January 2022. López, Isaac (2022): ““Notas sobre la izquierda venezolana. Jefe de la Disip cuenta el largo camino al poder de la izquierda en Venezuela (IV)”. Available at: #NotasSobreLaIzquierdaVenezolana | Jefe de la DISIP cuenta el largo camino al poder de la

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izquierda en Venezuela (IV), por Isaac López* - Runrun (runrunes.org), consulted on 5 February 2022. López Maya, Margarita (2002): “Venezuela: entre protestas y contraprotestas el gobierno de Chávez se endurece y debilita”, Observatorio Social de América Latina (Clacso), No. 4, January, pp. 97–103. López Maya, Margarita (2003a): “The Venezuelan Caracazo of 1989: Popular Protest and Institutional Weakness”, Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 35: part one, February, pp. 117–138. López Maya, Margarita (2003b): “Hugo Chávez: su movimiento y su presidencia”, in Steve Ellner and Daniel Hellinger, La política venezolana en la época de Chávez. Clases, polarización y conflicto. Caracas, Nueva Sociedad, pp. 97–119. López Maya, Margarita (2006): Del viernes negro al referéndum revocatorio. Caracas, editorial Alfadil, colección Hogueras: Venezuela Profunda. López Maya, Margarita (2016): El ocaso del Chavismo. Venezuela, 2005–2015. Caracas, Grupo Alfa. Martín, Américo (2013): La terrible década de los sesenta. Caracas, Libros Marcados. Melet, Argelia (2004): Interview with Argelia Melet ex-wife of Douglas Bravo (by Raúl Ochoa), in https://americanuestra.com/entrevista-a-argelia-melet-ex-rupturaprv-ex-esposa-de-douglas-bravo-pero-venezolana-del-presente/, downloaded on 29 January 2022. Mondolfi, Edgardo (2018): La insurrección anhelada: Guerrilla y violencia en la Venezuela de los sesenta. Caracas, Grupo Alfa. OEV (2018): “Presidenciales 2018”. Observatorio Electoral Venezolano (2018). https://oevenezolano.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Informe-Presidenciales2018-Parte-I-2018.pdf, https://oevenezolano.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/ 05/Informe-Presidenciales-2018-Parte-II-2018.pdf, downloaded on 29 July 2023. Pérez Marcano, Héctor (2019): “Como fue el desembarco en Machurucuto”, en https://tiempodigital.mx/como-fue-el-desembarco-de-machurucuto-el-intentode-intervencion-militar-en-venezuela-ideado-en-cuba-por-fidel-castro/, downloaded on 10 May 2022. PRV (2015): Partido de la Revolución Venezolana, in https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Partido_de_la_Revoluci%C3%B3n_Venezolana#:~:text=Partido%20de%20la%20Revo luci%C3%B3n%20Venezolana%20(PRV)%20fue%20un%20partido%20pol%C3%ADt ico,de%20los%20sesenta%20en%20Venezuela, downloaded on 17 January 2022. Ramonet, Ignacio (2013): Hugo Chávez. Mi primera vida. Madrid, Debate. Rodríguez, Edgar (2022): Member of the FALN. Consultation made on February 10 via Messenger. Segured (2013): La historia contemporánea del secuestro. 2ª etapa: la pacificación, in https://segured.com/2013/02/05/la-historia-contemporanea-del-secuestro-seg unda-etapa-la-pacificacion/, downloaded on 18 January 2022. Straka, Tomás (2017): “Leer el chavismo. Continuidades y rupturas con la Historia Contemporánea de Venezuela”, in Revista Nueva Sociedad, N° 268, March–April 2017. Available in: https://nuso.org/articulo/leer-el-chavismo/. Zabala, Douglas (2021): Del Partido de la Revolución Venezolana. Taken from Douglas Zabala’s Facebook, downloaded on 24 April 2021.

CHAPTER 9

After the Sun: Slow Hope? Rethinking Continuous Crisis Through China’s Revolutions Barbara Mittler

Introduction 我在朦胧中, 眼前展开一片海边碧绿的沙地来, 上面深蓝的天空中挂着一轮金黄 的圆月 我想: 希望本是无所谓有, 无所谓无的 这正如地上的路; 其实地上本没有路, 走 的人多了, 也便成了路 As I dozed, a stretch of jade-green seashore spread itself before my eyes, and above a round golden moon hung from a deep blue sky I thought: hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a road is made. (魯迅 Lu Xun 故鄉 My Old Home)1 … we also need stories that provide us with alternatives to narrowly defined pathways: with ideas that seemed unimaginable before they were voiced and with paths that seemed unwalkable before they were walked. We need stories that empower us to become thinkers, actors, and activists capable of imagining alternatives in a world dominated by technical and economic constraints. (Christof Mauch Slow Hope)2

B. Mittler (B) CATS, Center for Asian and Transcultural Studies, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_9

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At the beginning of the twentieth century, and faced with the country’s weakness—manifested in losses in the opium wars and even against its small neighbor, Japan—writers, poets, and artists alike were reflecting on the best way to save China. One character who—after many decades of danger and destruction—promised to bring back the light was none other than Mao Zedong 毛澤東 (1893–1976). During his lifetime, he was hailed as “The sun that never sets 永远不落的太阳.” And as such, as the bright morning sun, rising in the East, Mao would become the most important propageme of China’s successful and continuous revolution. Yet, at the same time, Mao Zedong is the figure whose politics, especially in the final years before his death in 1976, would come to be associated with a leftist extremism officially denigrated. In the words of the 1981 Party Resolution, passed a few years after his death, his politics had been punctuated by “(ultra-)left errors” and “deviations” (Party Resolution 1981:19, 20). The Resolution points to a number of serious setbacks since the founding of the People’s Republic of China caused by extremist policies: after the seven years of completing “Socialist Transformation” (ibid.: 15) between 1949 and 1956 and the “building of Socialism in all spheres” (ibid.: 17) between 1956 and 1966, a first set of “left errors” became evident, especially in the fields of economics: the period of the Great Leap Forward was, for example, “characterized by excessive targets, the issuing of arbitrary directions, boastfulness and the stirring up of a ‘communist wind’” (ibid.: 19). The Cultural Revolution is considered the final culmination of such ultra-leftist errors, now evident in the fields of politics, ideology, and culture (ibid.: 19), and Mao is immediately associated with this erroneous left-wing extremism as it is said that the Cultural Revolution was “initiated by a leader labouring under a misapprehension and capitalized on by counter-revolutionary cliques,” and that it “led to domestic turmoil and brought catastrophe to the Party, the state and the whole people” (ibid.:22). In spite of the fact that the 1981 Resolution has been binding for the interpretation of Chinese history ever since, and that it remains so even after the 2021 Resolution, were these same “left errors” are also evoked—if much less elaborately, as this new resolution is more concerned with the future “new age” of Xi Jinping 習近平 (1953–) rather than the past (II. 11–12)—the sun, not just the symbol of China’s successful (continuous) revolution, but even more so of Maoist left-wing extremism, remains an important propageme and keeps on getting evoked to this day. I show that throughout the long twentieth century, the sun has been mobilized as sign and symbol by different players as an important element in different strategies (e.g., popular and religious, as well as official and propagandistic) and narratives (e.g., artistic, musical, literary). I will illustrate how the sun as propageme has been used to put transformative visions into practice—both in the past and in the present—but how, at the same time, it has changed its meaning repeatedly and drastically. From being a respite from crisis (AFTER crisis), it becomes a sign of crisis itself (IN crisis). It personifies both (utopian, slow) hope and (realist, accelerated) despair, and

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sometimes both at the same time and is, therefore, invoked both as a sign of continuous revolution but also of continuous crisis pointing to the effects of leftist extremism that constitute a significant part of the Maoist heritage. In a 2017 documentary Chairman Buddha by Tang Louyi, a film that follows Mao worshippers around China and shows their reverential activities— from temple building to narrating the miracles he works (Tang 2017), we observe how to many of the people shown and interviewed in this film, Mao remains the savior sun that brings light and hope to China. This chapter will illustrate, therefore, how Mao, the bright and shining sun, becomes a trope that is in fact increasingly sedimented in cultural memory, as it is “heritagized” as part of both China’s continuous revolution and continuous crisis. Informally sacralized, it ironically becomes part of a religious populism, on the one hand, and an intellectual iconoclasm, on the other. As I consider the legacy of this propageme, in reviewing how it has been used by supporters as well as critics of the leftist extremism it came to stand for, I will consider the epistemic violence accompanying the religious extremism behind its propagation during the heydays of Maoism. The verve with which it was disseminated during the heydays of Maoism helps explain some of its beguiling as well as evidently traumatic effects. While focusing on the period after Mao’s death, one which did not do away with the sun in spite of its associations with leftist errors and deviations, I will be considering artistic discourses during the long Chinese twentieth century,3 in an attempt to understand the power of leftwing extremism, or, in other words, the Maoist specter in China. I will thus illustrate why the sun remains a “principal of hope”—in spite of its associations with left-wing extremism—arguing that Chinese intellectuals—in the following of Lu Xun cited in the first epithet above—continually created ever new and utopian dreams, i.e. narratives of what Christof Mauch has called “slow hope” (second epithet).

From Night to Light---The Making of a Trope or: How the Sun Rises The trope has its beginnings in the late nineteenth century, when many a journal called on the Chinese to wake up (Fig. 9.1 Shenzhou Ribao 1908, Ma 1908). The Shenzhou Ribao 神洲日報-China Daily shows a journalist, under a bright sun (which brings “civilized enlightenment” 文明 wenming ). He is calling out loudly 大聲疾呼者, to wake up the sleeping Chinese citizen, on his left, while on his right an old-style Chinese official stands by, half stooping in front of the foreigner on the far left of the image who is letting his greedy eyes wander over China. The idea of the need to search for an enlightening sun was part of the discourse propagated at the height of the New Culture Movement 新文化運動—also alternatively called the Chinese Renaissance/Enlightenment by contemporaries: one of its protagonists, Guo Moruo 郭沫若 (1892–1972) who, after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, would become a state-writer of Mao’s revolution, publishes a dramatic poem The Rebirth of the

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Goddesses 女神之再生 Nüshen zhi zaisheng (Guo 1921) which deals with the struggle between two legendary rulers whose wars have affected the world so terribly that even the sun has withdrawn in disgust. Three goddesses come down to save the world by creating a new sun. They are helped by the poet, who has already set out, in search of the sun, as the stage manager, who appears to address the audience in the play, relates. He ends with words of hope: “that they may all meet again, when the Sun rises again (我们待太阳出 现时再会)” (Guo 1921: 16). Guo’s dramatic poem manifests the typical role that the protagonists of the New Culture Movement had chosen for themselves: the intellectual, the poet becomes a savior figure, he shows the people the way to the light, enlightens them, all those who are groping blindly, in the dark of night in this long moment of crisis.4 The entire long twentieth century remains dominated by this rhetoric of waking up from the darkness and rising in the new light.

Fig. 9.1 Shenzhou Ribao 1908 in commemoration of the first anniversary of the Shenzhou Ribao 神州日報, 1908 (Holy Country—China—Daily) Ma (1908)

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Heritagized, it is part of a quasi-religious populism nurtured both from above and from below. Xi Jinping with his “China dream” 中国梦 Zhongguo meng picks up on this trope, as the Chinese Communist Party had become the selffashioned heir to the New Culture Movement. Quite accordingly, the response to the stage manager’s last words in Guo’s dramatic poem is the revolutionary song “The East is Red” which stems from the Communist base in Yan’an— the cradle of Chinese left-wing extremism in the 1940s. It begins, “The East is red, the sun is rising, China has produced a Mao Zedong, hurrah, he is the savior of the people.” Mao and the Communist Party, they are “like the sun,” it continues, “wherever it shines, there will be light.” The song made Mao both into a sacralized object and metaphorical idea and as such, sedimented in cultural memory, the sun would become an ever more powerful propageme (Mittler 2012).5 The song advanced to the status of a national anthem in the years of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (1966–1976), and sounded from many a public clock, it opened the loudspeaker news every morning and pompously accompanied the launching of the first Chinese satellite in 1970. All throughout the Maoist years, the song and with it the metaphor of “the sun that never sets 永远不落的太阳” prevailed. As such, Mao put China “after the crisis.” And even when he died, he remained, the “sun in everyone’s heart, which would never set,” forever 心中的太阳永不落.6 Everyone saw the Chairman live on, an absent presence forever: even after his death, China remained the country where the sun never sets—slow hope?! This is what is insinuated in the official memorial film (Chinese Central Studio of News Reel Production 1976). The obvious focus is on Mao continuing alive as the Heaven-sent saintly sun. Quite predictably, the film ends (ibid.: 1.50.00), with the sun rising above the sea, washed in the sounds of “The East is Red.” All throughout the 1980s and even more intensely since Mao’s centenary in 1993, the sun motif has been re-used and thus sacralized (Mittler 2012, chapter 2). Just before the centenary, Jia Lusheng and Su Ya publish The Sun that never sets 不落的太阳 (Su and Jia 1992). A collection of anecdotes, this book has Mao—the only sun they want 中国人只要一个 太阳 (see ibid. chs. 2 and 3)—speak to his people. The two authors suggest that China’s continued fascination with Mao reflects a nostalgic longing for the years under Mao and their views resonate in the Red Sun Fever 红太阳热 Hong Taiyang re which begins around the same time.7 The controversy around a 2016 cover version of “The East is Red,” in which Xi Jinping is shown as inheriting Mao, speaks to the idea that Mao remains the only sun on Chinese skies. A formula like “the king is dead, long live the king” (Kantorowicz 2016) cannot be applied to post-Maoist China—the cover was almost immediately withdrawn from public view when it appeared in 2016 (Wen 2018).

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The Sun That Never Sets---Resisting the Trope or: How the Sun Scorches and Blinds The sacralized aura of the sun remains, clearly, linked with Mao and Mao alone. In the meantime, however, the meaning of its shining light began to change: it had become clear—during Mao’s lifetime already—but then again with the suppression of the Democracy Wall in 1979, the demonstrations on Tiananmen in 1989 and in Hong Kong since 2019—that even in this country where the sun is always shining, oppressive darkness, or, put differently, the negative effects of leftist extremism, prevails. Already at the height of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, some had been revolted by the omnipresence of the sun—the sun which to some of them was no longer the solution, but indeed, the problem itself, putting China in a state not of AFTER crisis, but of IN crisis. Accordingly, iconoclasm of the sacralized object and metaphor can be found even then. Many a memoir reminds us how nerve-racking the constant use of “The East is Red” was (Yang 1997: 1157–1158). Cui Jian 崔健 (1961–), China’s first rock star in the1980s, makes frequent use of the sun as an established symbol. In one of his first songs, 艰难行 A difficult path, he ends a long list of calls not to give up even in spite of difficulties—slow hope—with the phrase “The radiance of the sun symbolizes our tomorrow!” 太阳的万丈光辉象征着明天. In 出走 Leaving, he begins: “The sun is rising, my eyes open again” 太阳爬升来我两眼又睁开. Yet, the refrain asks: “How often a day does the sun shine on my head, but in my heart I am still depressed?” 多少次太阳一日当头, 可多少次心中一样忧愁 (Steen 1996: 79).8 Over time, then, the old and well-established optimism, associated with the sun and its powerful radiance, is fragmented, even shattered. With Cui Jian’s 这儿的空间 This space, published in 1991, which describes a love relationship become stagnant, faith in the sun is turned malignant. The lyrics end: “only the fire in the breast and the sweat on the body, are the real sun and the real spring water” (这胸中的火, 这身上的汗; 才是真的太阳, 真的泉水). This hopeless vocabulary is expanded in a song never officially released but performed several times in the late 1980s—and, significantly, one of the hits of the demonstrators on Tiananmen Square in 1989—entitled A Piece of Red Cloth—块红布 (Cui 2010).9 That day you used a piece of red cloth To blindfold my eyes and cover up the sky You asked me what I had seen I said I saw happiness (辛副)

This feeling really made me comfortable (舒服 shufu) Made me forget I had no place to live

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You asked where I wanted to go I said I want to walk your road (要上你的路)

I couldn’t see you, and I couldn’t see the road You grabbed my hands and wouldn’t let go You asked what was I thinking I said I want to let you be my master (要你做主)

I had a feeling this wasn’t a wilderness Though I couldn’t see it was already dry and cracked I felt that I wanted to drink some water But you used a kiss to block off my mouth.

In this song, the sun is not visible, it is only implicitly there, with its withering and drying capacities, and the need, therefore, to blindfold the eyes. These elements do not occur, in the original song of praise for Mao. Yet, not unlike there, the sun remains the guide. It shows the road and leads the way, it promises happiness and appears as a savior, as one has no place to live—slow hope. While Cui Jian openly describes the pain, the suffering, the oppression from a drying and withering master, he admits to his own complicity in the process of subjugation: isn’t he happy and comfortable (舒服 shufu) in the blinding, forceful embrace of his “master,” does not he like to feel the warmth of his hands, his kiss? The song may be read, on the surface, as a love song, but it turns out to be a political song as well, speaking about a blind youthful love for Mao. In Cui’s case, the scorching sun turns out to be much less a savior bringing happiness than a dangerous master who inflicts wounds, thus putting his people not out of but into crisis. The ambiguities of the text are captured musically, as well. In order to illustrate the dangerous qualities of his embrace with the sun, Cui uses his voice in a manner constricted to the point that he is producing a kind of quavering rasp (Jones 1992: 140/141; Lee 1995: 97), in a mannerism he had already used in This space where the “real sun” 真 的太阳, too, is presented in coarse, chopped-off articulation. This performative style contrasted quite crassly with those pop and rock versions of the old revolutionary songs praising the sun which began flooding the Chinese music market just around the same time. Chinese writer Wang Shuo 王朔 (1958–) had once called the Cultural Revolution “a rock’n roll concert with Mao as top rocker and the rest of the Chinese as his fans” (Huot 2000: 59). A reconfiguration by painter Zhu Wei 朱伟 (1966–) of Mao as Cui Jian, complete with blindfold in red cloth, as no. 16 of his China Diary 中国日记十六号 (1995–2002), illustrates precisely this: the blazing sun makes its followers blind, but this includes Mao, himself, with whom everyone has completely identified! The piece is a thoughtful and thought-provoking “product of a distinct time and consciousness” (Jia 1996: 5), i.e., the turn to the twenty-first century when reflections of Mao also

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became ways of deliberating current concerns—of a China, again in crisis. Mao and his self-doubts are a projection of those of a younger generation reflecting life under Mao—the blinding sun. It is no coincidence that the 1994 film by Jiang Wen 姜文 (1963–), about his childhood under Mao, is entitled 阳光灿 烂的日子In the Heat of the Sun. These artists realize that under the scorching sun, they did not see anymore, that they became not unlike the blind followers of the sun which, throughout the 2000s reoccur, again and again, in paintings by Yue Minjun 岳敏君 (1962–).10 Similar collective self-reflections appear in a painting series by Wang Xingwei 王兴伟 (1969–), 东方之路 The Eastern Way.11 The young man who keeps recurring in these paintings is a self-portrait of the artist, but, at the same time, a stand-in for Mao. Wang paints a rather accurate parody of 毛 主席去安源 Chairman Mao going to Anyuan, that famous solemn depiction by Liu Chunhua 刘春华 (1944–).12 Wang thus cites a paradigmatic vision of Mao without showing Mao himself: the clouds above him and the majestic mountainscape at his feet are exactly the same as in the original.13 While the young man in Wang’s painting is cast in Mao’s position, he has turned away from Anyuan. In one image of the series, the young man is seen, at the peak of a mountain ridge, a dead end. The dog accompanying him has already turned back onto the one and only path. The young man, on the other hand, is marching on, walking straight into his death. He is blind, as the title of the piece suggests, and this fact, in combination with Maoist rhetoric where “going forward” 往前进 wang qian jin (part of the text of the Chinese national anthem!) is always considered the one and only direction one should take—toward continuous revolution, or, should we say, continuous crisis— makes for a very ambiguous message. What would be the purpose of this young man’s going forward into his death? Does this throw a light on some of the other deaths caused by forcefully going forward, blind under Mao and the extremists who followed him? Are these images a sign of (after/in) crisis? To what extent do they point to leftist extremism? What does it mean that in the parody Wang/Mao has taken the fatal decision to turn away from Anyuan—is this necessary in order to “go global” and move into another type of brighter future in the twentyfirst century, to give up the old and (slowly) hope for a new sun—to go back to the message of that dramatic poem by Guo Moruo that I evoked at the beginning? Most of the prints, paintings, and installations by artist Fang Lijun 方 力钧 (1963–) are deliberately unnamed (Moldan 2017; Chou 1998–1999). Quite prominently, his paintings contain the scorching, blinding sun. This sun is the attractive backdrop to many of his typical moving and frantically merry crowd scenes. The repetitive individual type who appears in a crowd appears a grotesque masque, virtually faceless and nameless and apparently thoughtless, too, simply following the crowd while the warm rays of the sun are shining on them, their arms raised in victory, their faces are glowing—not only with exuberance but also with scorching heat.14 As they gaze toward the

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sun in the sky—which is reflected in their illuminated faces—their somewhat forced, unnatural grins evoke a sense of collective anxiety. These paintings can be read as a metaphors for the disorientation of a whole population, they capture a world adrift, a people in crisis, lost in space and time, blinded—by the scorching sun that never sets in China and by their own faith and belief in this sun (Zhu 2010). They reflect the enormous proportions that the sacralization of the sun has taken—as powerful and religious symbol of China’s left-wing extremism, especially, if not only during the Cultural Revolution—and they criticize not just the sun itself but also those who continue to follow it unquestioningly: those who (still) believe in its transformative power—after crisis. The iconoclasm thus goes both ways, against the sun and its believers.15 Everyone is, potentially Mao, the sun, and the metaphorical sun not only appears to exert warmth and happiness, but, in the eerie colors that surround it, also unease and fear—of the arbitrariness, the excesses of Maoist policies! Fang explains: “My works do not come from nowhere. The changing social reality has exerted an impact on my worldview and my art” (Zhu 2010 cites from an interview with Fang). He encapsulates the disillusionment of a generation defined by the events leading up to Tiananmen Square which symbolizes the climax of the artistic aspirations that built up during the late 1970s (Democracy Wall) and the early 1980s (the Culture Fever mentioned above) all of which collapsed at once with the killing in 1989—not by the sun itself, but by his successor, Deng Xiaoping 鄧小平 (1904–1996)—himself engineer of the 1981 Resolution that had declared Mao—for his undemocratic and arbitrary acts—a left-wing extremist, as well as the reform and opening and four modernizations policies, all decidedly not left-wing or extremist—but excluding democracy. 1989 thus created a void that Fang Lijun and others filled with a message full of irony—as left-wing extremism appeared no deviation any longer. Fang’s work and that of many of his contemporaries, speaks of despair in times of ongoing (not just epistemic) violence, of continuous crisis, associated with the leftwing extremism associated with the sun of Communism which never sets, and which, on the other hand, and quite ironically but also logically, given the disenchantment with the discourse of “leftist errors,” is also the beginning of the new Mao/Sun Cult that accompanies the centenary of Mao’s birth and that manifests itself in the building of temples and worshipping activities described in Chairman Buddha—something which Fang Lijun attacks openly by defacing his subjects as they are running hysterically, frantically, blindly, toward or with the sun. Fang’s trademark use of gaudy colors successfully creates a tension between the rosy romantic cozy-ness (the “comfortable” 舒服 shufu feeling from Cui Jian!) of Revolutionary Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism—the Maoist answer to Soviet Socialist Realism—which turns out to be but fake. His idea is to show how behind all the seemingly beautiful things, a terrible world is hidden. The beautiful sun turns out to be—Mao.16 At the same time, everyone, that is, all the monstrous humans that have stood behind or for him are also contained in that sun, that is Mao and everyone at the same time:

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this is visualized in Fang’s Ink and Wash painting No. 25 (2004) where we see a man from behind, facing the sun and moving back in shock as the sun turns out to be filled by a whole crowd of gaffing faces.17 The same idea—the omnipresent contagion of left-wing extremism, so to speak—is expressed by Picun worker poet Xiao Hai 小海 (1987–)18 : Yellow River Yellow River before pushing the millstone We call that spirit/soul that persists in singing of the depths of bright light that we call sun and this sun—is primarily composed of you. (Picerni 2022)

Clearly, everyone—you and I—has been deluded, “singing to the depths of bright light” (thus following leftist extremism all the way to the present— when supposedly it is actually defeated). The open iconoclasm of this imagery is quite astonishing if not shocking. These artworks are testimony to an experience of revolutionary culture that is not a sign of a world AFTER crisis but one still deeply immersed IN crisis. A painting by Fang Lijun, from 2010/2011, with its internal title “我愛北京天安門 I love Beijing, Tiananmen,” another important song in praise of Mao, cannot but be read ironically. On the surface, the painting shows joyful crowds with balloons, butterflies, and colorful roses, on Tiananmen, facing the portrait of Mao, their sun, in their midst (Cohen 2012).19 It appears to illustrate slow hope—a future, a tomorrow (明天 the characters of which can be read to mean as much as the bright 明 Heavens 天, where the character for bright 明 is made up, again by sun 日 and moon 月. This character is part of the “civilized enlightenment” 文明 brought by and hidden in the sun in the 1908 caricature fig. 1 discussed earlier). Yet, for Fang, it appears baseless to be thinking about a beautiful bright future, to him, this hope has basically been turned ad absurdum by a sun that never sets (Cohen 2012: 6.05–7.05). His reading comes close to one proffered by Bei Dao 北岛 (1949–), one of the “obscure poets” of the early Democracy Wall period (1979–1983). In a poem titled Tomorrow, No 明天, 不 he argues that “He who cherishes hope (i.e. is expecting something good to happen), is a criminal” 谁期待, 谁就是罪人 (Bei 1991: 30). Paradoxically, it is the neverending brightness of the sun, which is here perceived as the problem, the real crisis. The scorching sun becomes synonymous with the crisis, the disaster, and the darkness that left-wing extremism has brought to China. Working on the ensuing despair as do these artists—thus keeping the wounds open that this sun is burning—can have a healing effect (and thus bring back slow hope): Gu Cheng 顧城 (1956–1993), in a short poem that has become famous, entitled A Generation (一代人, 1979), says: “The black night gave me these black eyes./But I use them to look for the light. 黑夜給了我黑色的眼睛 /‚我卻用 它尋找光明” (Gu 2005: IX). Not for long: Gu Cheng committed suicide in 1993—the centenary of Mao’s, the extremist sun’s, birth.

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The Light of the Night---Unthinking the Trope or: How the Moon (Re-)enters While more than one Chinese writer has written about the apocalyptic darkness that prevails in the land where the sun never sets, one of the most prolific writers working on this theme is Yan Lianke 阎连科 (1958–), a writer from Henan (the province hardest hit by the 1960 famine—when Yan is still a baby—caused by left-wing extremism, i.e., Maoist policies, in this case, the Great Leap Forward). The idea of keeping wounds open by showing evidence of the omnipresence of darkness, which prevails under the gaze of the sun that never sets, is a basso continuo in his stories, many of which include the sun in their titles: Riguang liunian 日光流年 The Sunny Years (1998) is the story of a village doomed by a cancerous disease during the Cultural Revolution: the villagers do everything they can to stop the disease, following the good advice of the Mao, their sun’s, Little Red Book, but all in vain. Xiariluo 夏日 落 Summer Sunset (2010) is the story of a young soldier, symbolically named Summer Sunset, who commits suicide—after seeing a sunset—the end of the world for him. The novel The Day the Sun Died 日熄 Rixi (2015) asks in turn what happens when the sun loses its power completely: here we are back to the scene we began with, the dramatic poem by Guo Moruo. In Yan’s writings, the scenario becomes ever more grim, the sun ever more powerless. Himself one of China’s most censored writers, Yan had noted, in 2008, that he was convinced that for “those whose writing has brought light to the literary firmament of the twentieth century,” (Yan 2008) their “ability to create masterpieces is due to their imagination overcoming the constraints, inhibitions, and wounds suffered during their lives. The energy they produced gave brilliance to works written in obscurity.” He continues: “Today, after three decades of reform, opening up and economic growth, the social consciousness has shed … darkness.” Yet, it turned out that continuous revolution—the Maoist form that leftist extremism had taken in China—was at the same time continuous crisis: the sun (Mao) and its brightness (leftist extremism) is as much a problem as it offers to be a solution. A few years later, in 2020, Yan speaks of his “despair of reality. Living in this society, anyone with any consciousness must be in a very desperate state…. not being allowed to express the world.”20 Yan here speaks of the anxiety of the intellectual who knows that he must lead the way out of darkness—who must kindle slow hope—a Herculean figure who never gives up, in spite of all the pains, Promethean in that he brings the light, but one who also knows that, paradoxically, this has become much more difficult than before, because he lives, still, in the country where the sun never sets. This is even more so since Xi Jinping—as a new incarnation of leftist extremism—came on the scene, in 2012, to inherit Mao. With his “China dream,” the paths to light and hope have been barred, or, put differently, monopolized. For the generation from the first Chinese Cultural Revolution, the New Culture Movement, intellectuals such as Ba Jin 巴金 (1904–2005), it may still

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have been easier to believe in Prometheus’ fire, and in literature as an effective means of fighting social inequality and calling the masses to struggle as the sun had not yet taken over and become all-encompassing: “我的文章是直 接诉于读者的, 我愿意它们广泛地被人阅读, 引起人对光明爱惜, 对黑暗憎恨 I want to address my readers directly, to make them love the light and hate the darkness,” writes Ba Jin in the early 1930s (Ba Jin 1932, 1989: 295; Mao 1978: 41). His words resonate with the stage manager, in The Rebirth of the Goddesses, who addresses the audience, saying: “Ladies and gentlemen, I am afraid you have had enough of … this dark, black and gloomy world 黑暗世界 hei’an shijie” (Guo 1921: 16). Yet, even these early intellectuals already had their doubts: Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881–1936), one of the most pessimistic among them, hesitates at first, in the scene he describes in the preface to his short story collection Cry to Arms 吶喊 Nahan: Imagine an iron house, windowless and indestructible. All the occupants are fast asleep and will soon suffocate. As they die in their sleep, their death will be painless. But if I now cry out to wake up at least some of the sleepers, so that these few people must then suffer the agonies of a death that is nonetheless irrevocable, will I be doing them a favor? (Lu 1973, vol. I: 274)

His friend replies that those who wake up may still manage to destroy the iron house and allow everyone to escape. Lu admits this possibility. He then writes a short story for the magazine La Jeunesse 新青年: thus is born the 狂人日記 The Diary of a Madman, one of his darkest stories about China, a land of cannibals. The story is told by a madman who experiences his brightest moments—a lunatic—at night: enlightened (like the Buddha) under the shining moon (Mittler 2007).21 In the early twentieth century, then, the prospect of bringing light appears as still a valid option, even if it is not at all easy (and one must have a certain hubris of blowing one’s own trumpet to believe so): one of the first works of Chinese science fiction, the New Stories of Mr. Braggadocio 新法螺先生譚 (1905) by Xu Nianci 徐念慈 (1875–1908), resonates with Lu’s Preface and with the contemporary cartoon seen at the beginning: Mr. Braggadocio flies over China at noon one day. He finds that the majority of Chinese people are still asleep, and that even the very few who are awake choose to stay in bed and smoke opium. Assuming that the sun is not bright enough to wake up his countrymen, Braggadocio tries (in vain, of course, showing his hubris !) to illuminate China with his own powers: yet in spite of his efforts to reach beyond crisis, the iron house—China—remains locked, the sleepers do not get up—no hope, not even slow hope, after all (Wang 2020: 137). Here, as in Yan’s The Day the Sun Died 日熄 Rixi, the question Lu Xun posed reappears: Is it at all possible or even sensible to wake the sleepers? In Yan’s work, the night is not really peaceful as during the night, the past (under the bright sun… illustrating continuous revolution—Mao’s left-wing extremism—as crisis) begins to haunt the people of Gaotian.22 The result is

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a parade of revenge, of looting and murder that begins at sunset one day in late June, and intensifies as the night progresses—in a manner reminiscent of some of the more frightening paintings by Fang Lijun. There appears to be no hope, the night brings no respite, and the long-awaited sunrise is but “a moment of eclipse” (Wang 2020: 135/136).23 As a result, Yan concludes (like the madman in Lu’s Diary of a Madman who realizes that he, too, must have eaten human flesh) in his speech for the 2014 Kafka Prize award: “but I do know that I am somehow fated to perceive darkness” (Yan 2014b). And he explains (in terms that resonate, again, with Lu’s madman): I developed a keen appreciation of the dark side of our existence. I came to understand that darkness is not the mere absence of light, but that it is life itself. Darkness is the fate of the Chinese people. The China of today is no longer the China of my childhood. It has become rich and powerful, … it looks like a ray of light illuminating the East. But underneath that light is a long shadow. When I look at contemporary China, I see a nation that is prosperous but deformed, developing but mutating. I see corruption, absurdity, disorder and chaos. Every day something happens that is beyond ordinary reason and logic. A system of morality and respect for humanity, developed over many millennia, is unravelling. Life is dark and depressing. Everyone is waiting for something dreadful to happen. This anxious and frightening expectation has produced a collective sense of anxiety… It is a writer’s job to find life in this darkness. (Yan 2014b)

In spite of everything, however, and not unlike the journalists and intellectuals of the early twentieth century, Yan remains convinced that he must pick up his brush—even if it turns out to be in vain: “From these shadows I lift my pen to write. … only the pursuit of true art, …can help us find the delicate light, beauty, warmth and love that lies hidden in the darkness” (Yan 2014b). As a result, he has “invented a new form of writing that rests on the belief that the darker it is, the brighter it becomes…” (Yan 2018), another type of slow hope. Yan concludes: “We hope that light will shine from the tip of our pen as we write in the haze of centralised power…. Each time I don’t know how much truth I can tell, but I must not tell flattery or lies; I cannot tell the truth that everyone agrees with, but I must tell the truth that I think I am telling” (Yan 2014a). Yan’s truth is to put light into the darkness of contemporary China, hidden from view by the dazzling sun that never sets. This, his philosophy of writing can be summed up by a story from his Kafka Prize acceptance speech. It is the story of an old blind man in his home village who, facing the rising sun every morning, said to himself, “It turns out that the sunlight is actually black—but that’s good!” (Wang 2020: 137/138; Rojas 2018). In a caricature from the Cultural Revolution—a time when darkening the sun was a crime— we can see how the painter, who tries to darken his sun a little, ends up having the bucket of black paint poured all over his head.24 Such ideas form the backdrop to Yan’s story, they illustrate its potential danger, as he concludes:

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“My writing, in other words, is like the blind man with the torch shining in the dark to help others see their purpose and destination” (Rojas 2018). The idea of finding more light and enlightenment itself more in the dark night than in sunny days—a clear sign of resilience against the master trope of left-wing extremism—is expressed in an enigmatic 2015 painting by Liu Wei 刘韡 (1972–), a Beijing-based artist who practices a style he calls “postsense sensibility.” For him, art should be free, disconnected from politics. His painting 夜之光 The Light of the Night 25 shows, on the one hand, a colorful cityscape illuminated by moon/sun/electric lights and gracefully framed by a generic blooming tree. Liu is highlighting the positive powers (pink coloring!) of night light as reflected in the skyscrapers of glitzy Chinese cities on the one hand and gracefully framed by resilient flowers (such as the plum blossom, symbol of the untiring intellectual), on the other. His painting echoes ideas we have already seen voiced in the early Republic—where sun and moon, too, as well as electric light, stood together to form the brightness of enlightenment. These ideas are also captured in some of the mini-poems 小诗 by Bing Xin 冰 心 (1900–1999), in the collection Fanxing 繁星 Stars, published in 1923: to her, only darkness can provide the space for true reflection: n° 105 Oh Light! Thanks to your sudden extinction: In all this thoughtless writing you have saved me the time to really think.

A decade later, in 1933, Lu Xun takes up the subject in Yesong 夜頌 Ode to the Night where he writes that indeed, he who loves the night is not idle and inactive, to the contrary (Wang 2020: 132): The words and actions of men are often different by day and by night, in the sun and before the lamp. The night is a mysterious celestial garment woven by creation, which covers all men, keeping them warm and comfortable, without knowing that they are gradually stripping themselves of their masks …. to wrap themselves naked in this infinite mass of black wool. Although it is night, there is also bright darkness … He who loves the night must have the ear to hear it and the eye to see it, to be in the darkness itself and to see all darkness. The gentleman moves from the electric light to the darkened room and extends his slouch; the lover moves from moonlight to the shade of trees and abruptly changes his gaze … He who loves the night then receives the light it gives … The bright heavens changed into day, with its hustle and bustle, is the decoration of this darkness… Only the night can still be considered honest. (Lu 2005a: 203)

For both Lu Xun and Bing Xin, it is the night, with its many shades of darkness, where one can find truth. This is the warming light of the night that

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Yan’s blind man also evokes. In contemporary China, this light of the night has disappeared almost completely under the stifling glare of the sun—and the novels by Yan Lianke show that even the night and one’s dreams have become a refuge manipulated by the powers of the sun. They are a clear sign of this epistemological violence and continuous crisis. As a “lover of the night 爱夜的人,” Lu finds himself not “the one who cannot fight, the one who fears the light 不能战斗者, 怕光明者,” (Lu 2005a: 203) but instead, as someone gifted with an extraordinary capacity for discernment. For this text, Lu Xun uses a pseudonym, Youguang 游光—literally meaning, a “wandering or passing light.” This pseudonym has the sinister connotation of an evil spirit in a cemetery (Wang 2020: 132). With this “posthuman” look at the human condition (and here we return, in a loop, to Guo’s Goddesses and the ominous paintings by Fang Lijun, Yue Mingjun, and Wang Xingwei, on the one hand, as well as Chairman Buddha, on the other), the questions of self-reflection, in telling the Truth about the sun, that we have seen develop in the pictorial, musical and poetic readings of the power of the sun, return. The night light/light of darkness (in blindness, for example) that Chinese intellectuals have found comforting and liberating—Yan Lianke, Bing Xin and Lu Xun, Liu Wei and Cui Jian among them—does not always come from moral certainty, but also from unknown terrain—it is but slow hope. By rethinking the blazing presence of the never-setting sun that we observed in China under Mao’s sacralized, and idealized, auratized—but at the same time violent, and poisonous—sunlight (which lasts to the present day, as the example of Picun worker poet Xiao Hai 小海 [1987–]) cited above illustrates: he speaks precisely of those poisonous rays of the sun (Picerni 2022: 292)26 and thus reconsidering Gu Cheng’s poem (“The dark night gave me black eyes / I use them nevertheless in seeking light”), we may now understand why “the dark night” and only “the dark night” can generate a “beam of darkness” for artists after Mao. But we also see the continuities and repercussions with thinking of a time before Mao. Echoing Lu Xun and Bing Xin, but also Guo Moruo, it seems clear in the artworks of Fang Lijun and Wang Xingwei, in the songs by Cui Jian, that the sun or at least its relentless rays have to be ignored if not destroyed. One has to search for total darkness, but this needs to be done precisely in order to be able to see the light again— thus iconoclastically dismantling the sun while exploring the night. Clearly, the Maoist specter, left-wing extremist symbolism, has had a powerful effect on redefining some of the metaphorical uses of light and night in the early twentieth century, while leading back, in the end—with the realization that darkness prevails even under the blazing sun—to some of the tropes of finding light in darkness, developed then. In 聽說夢 Hearing about Dreams (1933), Lu Xun offers the following thoughts: Dreaming is synonymous with freedom, Talking about a dream does not mean freedom.

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To dream is to have a real dream, To speak of a dream is inevitably to lie. (Lu 2005b)

Transposed to the present, Lu Xun who both foregrounds the night and the dream but warns of them at the same time, rings eerily true: dreaming of the light and sun means freedom, but those talking about that dream of light and sun (i.e., Xi Jinping with his “China Dream”) destroy that very freedom—tell all but lies. The feeling that, therefore, these kinds of dreams are impossible and ineffective, is probably the reason why prescient Han Song 韓松 (1965–) called his unpublished 2003 novel My Nation Doesn’t Dream 我的祖國不作 夢. Hong Kong dramatist Yan Pat To 甄拔濤 (*1975), in his “Concise History of Future (China) 未来简史,” written in 2015, echoes this thought. He has one of his characters, the “Sinister woman,” tell her recurring dream to “The Man who witnesses pain,” her lover, one who—hearing her out—must become blind (!), as her dream turns out to be the nightmare of contemporary China: sexual harassment, organ trafficking, constant supervision, in public and in private, day and night. While the Sinister woman keeps reminding her lover that what she is telling him is but a dream, “not real,” her story is an evident manifestation of the lies behind “the Dream” that everyone has to speak of today—Xi’s “China Dream.”27 Criticism abounds. Chinese lawyer, Xu Zhiyong 许志永 (*1973) in a 勸退書 (Letter of Remonstrance recommending Dismissal) published on 4 February 2020, makes the China Dream one of Xi’s major mistakes: he writes: “You have a ‚China Dream? Come on: That’s plagiarized from the Americans; … you still can’t really explain what it means. National revival? According to the standards of what particular dynasty? You have amassed dictatorial powers, and through your policies you have increasingly distorted the market. Now, the nation’s economy is trending downwards. You call this a revival/ renaissance? You also espoused building a ‚beautiful China.’ But that’s all just put out there for show; what about the deeply held aspirations people have, to enjoy true equality, justice, freedom, and happiness? … You’re no politician. …Yet you remain perversely unaware of your limitations; you actually think you are more formidable than Deng Xiaoping ever was and you have the hubris to presume that you are on par with Mao Zedong.” (Xu 2020) At a time when the specter of the sun is making its comeback, as in the midst of his “China Dream,” Xi is trying to take over the position of Mao— there is a lot of criticism by those who do not accept a second sun on their skies. This is why that recent cover of “The East is Red” mentioned earlier, in which Xi Jinping is shown as Mao’s heir—and thus appears as a second, a substitute sun—has become so controversial. It is testimony to the fact that, in the words of Lu Xun “to talk about a dream is inevitably to lie.” There is a widespread feeling that, indeed, Mao must remain the only sun in China’s skies—if any, and that Xi Jinping cannot inhabit the night skies either—not even as the star of happiness, as the last verse of his new version of “The East is Red” suggests.

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Xi’s competition for stellar status—preferably that of the sun—brings us back to the ancient myth of Hou Yi 后羿, a prodigee archer and Chinese Herculean figure,28 who allegedly lives in a palace in the sun whereas his wife, the goddess Chang’e 嫦娥, lives on the moon (in a palace constructed for her by Hou Yi, so legend has it—here we have that “bright” 明 pairing of sun 日and moon 月 again!). Hou’ s story stands for the ambiguous relationship to the sun and its illuminating powers which thus turns out to be a rather ancient motif: Hou Yi is said to have—after lengthy and fruitless negotiations with the ten suns that had originally peopled the skies above China—shot down, with his bow, nine out of the ten suns. He does so because while the ten suns had habitually appeared in the sky, in an order of one per day, one day they had all come out at the same time, thus scorching the earth completely.29 In this situation, Hou is asked to help and, after long deliberations—as he originally hopes to bring down all of the suns—he leaves one of them, to ensure prosperity and happiness for mankind (the identical line from “The East is Red” clearly resonates). Yi, as the Promethean savior-hero, capable of both destroying and saving the sun and thus, the light for his people, consequently becomes their king, in one version of the story.30 Stepping in for one of the incapable rulers of the declining Xia dynasty, in this version of the story, he eventually turns into a tyrant himself, however.31 Having more than one sun, Mao and Xi, therefore, is not something that Chinese cultural memory would allow for, but substituting the sun as Xi is hoping—to reign as yet another tyrant, after Mao—also has proven problematic. While its semantic charge—the ability to bring light, has come under criticism, even as sign of continuous crisis, the sun continues to be linked to Mao—not Xi—and this is especially true at a time when contemporary Chinese artists, writers, and intellectuals are being urged to develop, once again, a (leftwing extremist) narrative that exclusively reflects the bright side of the socialist past and present, the so-called “China story,” that everyone must “tell well” (讲好中国故事 jiang hao Zhongguo gushi), thus generating positive energy for the future (and this works, for some, e.g., those whom one can see in Chairman Buddha, but also the representatives of China’s New Left ). While emphasizing the presence of darkness under the blazing sun of socialism, the artworks covered here highlight the many horrific elements behind the realization of a socialist utopia.32 While developing new ways of reclaiming the light in the night, by turning away from the blinding light of the sun, they echo some of the thoughts developed in the early twentieth century: by becoming a wandering light, one is able to illuminate the darkness, for since one cannot destroy the sun, after all (remember Hou Yi!), one has only one way out: to dream a luminous night. This is what one can see in Chairman Buddha. Xi Jinping, too, has been trying to make use of this, while Chinese intellectuals have continued to highlight the importance of the dream and the night in resilience—in the spirit of Lu Xun—as the unspoken, and only thus “real” utopian dream—slow hope.

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Pat To Yan, in his libretto for the Opera The Damned and the Saved by Malin Bång (First Performance 2022) which tells the story of two freedom fighters, Dana and Sara, makes this unspoken dream—symbolized by the enigmatic butterfly that the two women think about while in their cells in solitary confinement and which thus first brings them together—an important motif of hope. The opera begins in an scene of torture that appears endless—the two girls in constant agony. At one point, we see Sara repeatedly reciting her identity number to herself, in a painful delirious loop, making sure that she does not forget herself while being tortured (Y 259123 (9)—I am Sara One). At the same time, we hear Dana in a brief moment of respite: “I see a butterfly, flying over the sky outside the window, I am lucky enough to have a high window in this room, The room of whose existence, nobody knows.” The butterfly she evokes stands for dreams—real dreams. It is an immediate link to the so-called “Butterfly Dream” by Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi who relates that he dreamt he was a butterfly and while in the dream he realized that he no longer knew whether he was Zhuangzi dreaming himself a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming itself to be Zhuangzi. In the opera, such butterfly dreams are collected by Dana, and they become the liberating escape valve, as the cancer that eventually destroys the dictatorship machine that rules their country. At the end of the story, under a new regime which, however, has not really turned out so much better (the Hou Yi or Mao Zedong/Deng Xiaoping/Xi Jinping problem—where the liberator turns into the oppressor), and with Dana dead for her heroism, the two fighters meet once more and part, finally, while Dana evokes the image of the butterfly: You know what I see the butterfly there again. Dana disappears Sara cries quietly. Bears the unbearable lightness and heaviness.

Conclusion: “What Lies Ahead?!”---Continuous Crisis in the Heat of the Sun and Resilient Dreams of Slow Hope As one of the important voices in Environmental Humanities, Christof Mauch, puts it: “Stories of accelerated catastrophe are multiplying. They have their legitimacy.” But he also warns us that they do “not lead us out of ecological crises. We are running out of time, but we cannot outrun the very catastrophe that our accelerated lifestyle and actions have caused. We will need to find ways that help us flatten the growth curves that reflect our ever-faster pace of ecological destruction and social acceleration” (Mauch 2019: 18). Against this background, I have set out, in this paper, to investigate the action potential released in moments of crisis and catastrophe—from κατα´ (katá, “down, against”) and στρšϕω (stréph¯o, “I turn”), a term for the abrupt and often

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shocking plot twist with which classical Greek tragedies are resolved (Mauch 2019: 5). While catastrophes—and left-wing extremism has been repeatedly called such a catastrophe for China, not least in two Party Resolutions —entail danger and destruction, they also provide opportunities for change. A line from The Damned and the Saved voiced by Sara runs: “Hope glittered when we were fighting.” Taking the case of the perpetual symbol both of catastrophe and of salvation, the rising sun, in China as an example, we can see how feelings and actions are determined, somehow, by the patterns inscribed, not only in our genes, as Christof Mauch argues, but also in cultural memory. He writes: “humanity has … been able to learn from past mistakes. Culture has shown itself to exert a strong influence over us” (Mauch 2019: 18). As the sun shifts back and forth from being a saving emblem of hope to being a scorching symbol of the end of our days (from mythical Hou Yi to the present), the question remains of how and where there still is hope, or put differently, why Chinese intellectuals find resilience to continue to build their dreams. In thinking about what lies ahead, I would like to end this paper by reconsidering the mottos to this essay, taken from a short story by Lu Xun My Old Home 故鄉 written in 1923, and Christof Mauch’s essay on Slow Hope written almost exactly a century later. Lu Xun speaks of hope as a road, in terms very similar to Christof Mauch. And Mauch echoes these thoughts (without knowing the Lu Xun text) by saying that we: “…need stories that provide us with alternatives to narrowly defined pathways.” In China and other parts of the world, I would add, it is political constraints, often due to (not just left-wing-) extremist policies that play a major role in these scenarios of “darkness.” The question is, whether the many contradictory options of thinking the sun and brightness and obscurity in China that I have introduced here are in fact viable roads to follow, signs of slow hope? As we see Chinese worshipping Mao with his sun-like halo, we also see other Chinese attacking the delusive powers of this same human turned sun-god-symbol, while we see them embrace dreams—we see them declare those dreams prescribed by their respective rulers as all but lies. How can this be? Is this not contradictory? If we think of Bulgarian-born writer Maria Popova whom Christof Mauch evokes in saying that “critical thinking without hope is cynicism” and “hope without critical thinking is naïveté,” (Popova 2015 in Mauch 2019: 39) we come to the heart of the matter: in China, intellectuals have an age-old model of ideal governance at hand that continues to provide the backdrop to their acts and that builds both on critical thinking and on hope: a good ruler distinguished himself by keeping the “road of speech” yanlu 言路 open. Thus, he was prepared to listen to criticism and remonstration. The Great Preface 大序 to the Book of Songs 詩經, a collection of ancient poetry—folksongs as well as songs in praise of rulers, dating from about the tenth–seventh centuries BC—argues that “Song/poetry is the product of one’s most heartfelt ideas/aims 詩者志之所之也 ….” That is why, according to the Great Preface, “Those above change/transform those below

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with songs, while those below criticise those above with songs” “上以風化下, 下以風刺上.” And “….whoever utters such (criticism) is free from guilt; and whoever hears such, will take it as an admonition 主文而譎諫, 言之者無罪, 聞 之者足以戒, 故曰風….” Keeping the road of speech open, therefore, does not only mean changing those below in line with one’s own ideas of power. An ideal ruler was (and is) also obliged to those who—within the system, the so-called pure officials qingguan 清官; or outside the system, the people—would point out critical alternatives. If a ruler did not do this, then it was “right to rebel” 造反有理 (a famous quote by Mao—who would thus allude to the importance of the open road of speech….but who also sparked, precisely with this quote, some of the worst and most violent leftist extremist horrors of the Cultural Revolution), because in such a case the ruler had probably forfeited his “Mandate from Heaven” tianming 天命. While many a Chinese intellectual has been censored, incarcerated, exiled, and killed for raising critical thoughts (this is why the pure official of old would habitually bring his own coffin to his remonstration and this does not end with the left-wing extremism that Chinese Communist policies entail), their confidence in the existence of these basic tenets continues—or so I would interpret their repeated courageous and ingenious (critical) reference back to the sun and the possibility for renewal, renaissance, and enlightenment. They keep envisaging new (unspoken) dreams and seeing light in the night, in spite of everything—slow hope! The contradictory but significantly critical answers to the sun as symbol in China’s long twentieth century suggest to me that there is hope in that Pandora’s box that the sun holds in stock for China: Hong Kong dramatist Yan Pat To, (whose name 甄拔濤 is very meaningful as it describes someone “drawing out” ba/Pat 拔 “big waves” tao/ To 濤), in one of his essays tells us that we need to “Keep Walking, as it is the greatest freedom we can experience” (Yan 2019). In his “Concise History of Future (China),” which is, so the author contends, not a piece about China alone, but one that—not unlike all his other plays—can be imagined to take place anywhere in the world (and indeed, Antigone appears as an important protagonist, while Aristotle and Beckett are cited, too), he introduces a figure, called “The Outsider,” who carries with him, and to the capital, a mysterious (Pandora’s) box! Such (Pandora’s) boxes keep re-appearing in his writings, most recently in his libretto for The Damned and the Saved. There, the “poetic utopia box” which captures everyone’s unspoken/unsung dreams as collected by freedom fighter Dana who first realizes their importance under torture, eventually becomes so powerful that it is able to destroy the dictatorship machine and thus to liberate everyone. As typical Pandora’s boxes, then, Pat To Yan’s boxes contain all the bad things in the world but also hope, while hope, too, in turn, may turn out to be one of the most dangerous of them all—for those who engage with it. This accords quite well with Christof Mauch’s call: “It is about time that we open Pandora’s box again. According to Hesiod, after Prometheus had stolen fire from heaven, Zeus took revenge and

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presented Pandora to Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus. In the presence of Epimetheus, Pandora opened a jar that released curses and evils. Once Pandora had closed the container, however, the one thing that was left inside was elpis (™λπ´ις), the spirit of hope. After the release of ecological curses, it is high time to get back to what is left at the bottom of Pandora’s jar” (Mauch 2019: 38). What I hope to have shown here, is how the Chinese Communist Party, Mao, and the sun as metaphor for his leftist extremism, are situated and performed as an object/idea/metaphor far beyond the ordinary—one that is and has been used as a transformative metaphor both after and in crisis at the same time throughout China’s long twentieth century. The continuous repetition and use of this object/idea in China’s intellectual discourse as well as in popular practice can be seen as a form of (violent) sacralization, by means of which this object/idea is made to symbolize something much bigger than itself, and potentially calling for action. It is my contention that as such it is one of the most important elements in the realm of revolutionary culture to be experienced throughout the long twentieth century. On the one hand, it was part of the mission of those who attempted to revolutionize culture, while at the same time, it gave intellectuals a voice throughout this period— both in reaffirming and in resisting the trope—and thus it shows how art and culture have transformed throughout the long twentieth century engaging different types of (cultural) revolutions, dreaming the night and thinking it bright, all conducted in the name of enlightenment. The sun as object/idea and metaphor continues to function as a resilient element of slow hope, in spite of in times of continuous crisis that are continually determined by new waves of (perhaps not just leftist) extremism in the future.

Notes The online resources (images and videos) have been archived in the (Digital Archive of Chinese Studies at CATS, Heidelberg), see the Citation Repository https://www. zo.uni-heidelberg.de/boa/digital_resources/dachs/citation_en.html. 1. The quote is taken from (Lu 1923: 110–111). For the English translation, see (Lu 1980: 101). 2. Mauch (2019: 37). 3. I have analyzed the earlier periods in detail elsewhere, e.g. in Mittler (2019 and 2023). 4. For an elaborate discussion of this Chinese “Renaissance self-fashioning” see (Thomas Maissen & Barbara Mittler 2018). 5. In Mittler (2012), two entire chapters are devoted to the many remediatizations of this song (chapter 2) and the sun motive (chapter 5) in music and the arts. 6. This occurs in a song written on the day of Mao’s death, 9.9.1976, Fu Lin 付 林 (1946–), entitled “The sun is the reddest, Mao is the dearest 太阳最红毛主 席最亲.” 7. For musical examples see, e.g., Mittler (2012)/Online Exhibit: https://pro jects.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/continuousrevolution/main.php?part=1&chapter= 2&media=7. For the effects of the Sun Fever, more generally, see Mittler

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8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

(2012)/Online Exhibit: https://projects.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/continuousre volution/main.php?part=3&chapter=5# (esp. ill. 5.77ff). Similarly, positive associations with the sun are to be found in the song “Sun” Taiyang 太阳 by the rock group Tang Dynasty Tangchao. Their song keeps asking “Sun, where are you?”—but it is asking for the sun, after all (Steen 1996: 169). A translation and interpretation of This Space is given in (Steen 1996: 119– 121). The negative imagery now associated with the sun is continued in Duishi 对视 Staring at each other from the same album. Here, it is not the morning sun which rises, but the evening sun which sets (Steen 1996: 121/122) which plays the decisive role. The song A Piece of Red Cloth has been released and published several times since the 1990s and can today be bought on CD without problems. See, e.g., a series of images all called Sun, e.g., from 2002 http://www. artnet.com/artists/yue-minjun/the-sun-NkjwJOtASuhIULrHTp0L8Q2 & 2001 http://www.artnet.com/artists/yue-minjun/sun-CqYJhbVawjNqX0axjb RK9g2. Some images from this series can be seen here: Mittler (2012)/ Online Exhibit: http://projects.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/continuousrevolution/ main.php?part=3&chapter=5&setname=5.27. For this painting, see Mittler (2012)/Online Exhibit: http://projects.zo.uniheidelberg.de/continuousrevolution/main.php?part=3&chapter=5&setnam e=5.1. Yue Minjun 岳敏君 (1962–) has an even more radical version of this, where Mao is left out altogether: http://www.artnet.com/artists/yue-minjun/cha irman-mao-going-to-an-yuan-maozhuxiquanyuan-i2dMuhDP6O4rwUJ7Pk OJXA2. See, e.g., Fang Lijun 2005.11.11, https://wikioo.org/paintings.php?refart icle=AQQ82J&titlepainting=2005.11.11&artistname=Fang%20Lijun; https:// en.zhongart.it/artisticontemporaneicinesi/FANGLIJUN?pgid=jwlxjtb8-2005. 11.11_8. Fang Lijun 2015春 (Spring) -2016秋 (Automne), Oil on Canvass, https://freewechat.com/a/MjM5NTU3MzQ0NA==/265266 250x360cm 3310/1. Fang Lijun 2005.06.23, http://www.culturaitalia.it/opencms/en/ contenuti/eventi/Fang_Lijun__life_and_death_intertwined.html?language= en&tematica=Tipologia&selected=3. Fang Lijun (Spring 2011), https://www. faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/biennale-chengdu-ausgebuext-aus-der-schule-deskommunismus-11516456/irrtum-und-dekadenz-sind-auch-11516498.html. Fang Lijun (2013–2015), http://www.artnet.de/k%C3%BCnstler/fang-lijun/ 2013-2015-KTWX5ZuFoZKnk00_8AXfNw2 or https://freewechat.com/ a/MjM5NTM4MzMyMQ==/2650244824/1. Fang Lijun方 力钧 (1963–) 8.2014 春夏Spring-Été, http://www.artnet.de/k%c3%bcnstler/fang-lijun/201 4chunxia-bumianyouhua-BOMJ_w-Cpfw7Q0d0hQ0NZA2. See, e.g., Fang Lijun (1997) no. 8, https://wikioo.org/paintings.php?refart icle=AQQ82L&titlepainting=1997++No++8++&artistname=Fang+Lijun. Fang Lijun (Spring 2009), https://www.zhongartinternational.com/work/Primav era2009_c77c225d-666c-4526-8c45-482d0d6978b3; Fang Lijun 2005.6.24 https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/41614/fang-lijun/.

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16. Fang Lijun (Spring 2008), http://www.artnet.com/artists/fang-lijun/2008spring-1kSRlgQabJRHxNVnASo-3w2; Yue Minjun has a similar motif, playing in the big brother grinning at us again with the identification with Mao and everyone’s self: Title: Untitled (Smile-ism No.8), 2006, http://www.artnet.com/artists/yue-minjun/untitled-smile-ismno8-2006-wO3zSybvJYZqEwDW9soEgw2. 17. Fang Lijun Ink and Wash Painting (2004) no. 25, 38.1 x 44.1 cm, https:// www.moma.org/collection/works/108390?artist_id=26839&page=1&sov_ref errer=artist. This develops from Fang Lijun Ink and Wash Painting (2004) no. 3, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/108387. 18. The poem appears in the collection (Xiao Hai 2017: 214). For a thorough discussion, see (Picerni 2022, 282–285). He juxtaposes the poem with its intertext, by Haizi which uses the moon instead of the sun as the important element of hope—we will come back to it. 19. These details are taken from a conversation by Andrew Cohen with Fang Lijun, see (Cohen 2012: 6.05–7.05). At 6:58 Fang says: “Even crying and laughing had to be done according to the rules.” 20. Yan Lianke’s quotes are taken from (Xie 2020). 21. For an interpretation that deliberates this motif of the lunatic enlightened visionary suffering cannibalism, see (Mittler 2007). 22. In My Reality, My-isms/convictions 我的现实,我的主义, Yan explains, “What you think about during the day gets etched into your bones, so that after you fall asleep at night, you continue to think about what you thought about when you were awake, and you try to execute those thoughts in your dreams” (Yan 2011: 16). 23. The following is very much indebted to David Wang’s amazing work. I have benefited enormously from his analysis and all I do here is add examples from other artistic fields to contextualize further his brilliant literary analysis. 24. See Mittler (2012)/Online Exhibit: https://projects.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/con tinuousrevolution/main.php?part=1&chapter=2&img=48. 25. Liu Wei 夜之光 The Light of the Night 2015, http://www.artnet.de/künstler/ liu-wei/yezhiguang-light-of-the-night-Lv8te848ri8ceNophUPDLA2. 26. Compare, for example, the phrase 太阳毒照 (the poisonous rays of the sun) in Xiao Hai’s poem entitled “This great Fatherland” 这很好祖国 (see Xiao Hai 2017: 158–162). For a thorough discussion, see (Picerni 2022, here 292). 27. The sinister girl’s dream is told in Scene 3, entitled “A Dream of China.” It ends with these words: “It’s not real. / I don’t believe it’s real. /It’s only a dream” (From the script: Yan 2015/2023). In writing these paragraphs, I have much profited from David Wang’s analysis (e.g., Wang 2020: 137). 28. Mao Dun, one of the protagonists in the New Culture Movement, makes Hou Yi into such a figure. See (Masako 1995: 241–242). 29. This is roughly the story, related in the Huainanzi, see (Masako 1995: 239). 30. This second version can be seen in the Chuci, cf. Masako (1995: 240 & 248). 31. For the historical backing of his activities, see (Masako 1995: 247), quoting, for example, from the Zuozhuan (Ibid. 248–249). 32. Wang (2020: 139–141) discusses All the Nights in the World 世界上所有的 夜晚 (2005) by Chi Zijian 子建 (b. 1964), but one could find myriads of other examples for this critical trope, notably in the work of controversial nobel laureate Mo Yan 莫言 (1955–), for example.

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Maissen, Thomas and Mittler, Barbara. 2018. Why China Did Not Have a Renaissance—and Why That Matters. An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, Berlin: de Gruyter. Mao, Nathan. K. 1978. Pa Chin, Boston: Twayne, 1978. Masako, Mori. 1995. “Restoring the ‘Epic of Hou Yi.’” Asian Folklore Studies, vol. 54, no. 2: 239–257. Mauch, Christof. 2019 “Slow Hope. Rethinking Ecologies of Crisis and Fear.” RCC Perspectives, vol. 1: 1–43. Mittler, Barbara. 2007. “‘My Brother Is a Man-Eater’: Cannibalism Before and After May Fourth,” in Zurück zur Freude. Studien zur chinesischen Literatur und Lebenswelt und ihrer Rezeption in Ost und West. Festschrift für Wolfgang Kubin. Hg. von Marc Hermann und Christian Schwermann unter Mitwirkung von Jari GrosseRuyken. Monumenta Serica Monograph Series 52. Sankt Augustin - Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 627–655. ———. 2012. A Continuous Revolution. Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Asia Center (including an Online Exhibition: http://projects.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/continuousrevolution/). ———. 2019 “ Dein Bild in meinem Auge oder: Die Genese des “chinesischen Traums”—China und Europa im langen 20. Jahrhundert” (Your Image in my Eye or: The Genesis of the „Chinese Dream“—China and Europe in the Long 20th century“), in Europa—Realität und Vision (Studium Generale 2016/17), Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 81–120. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup. studg.2019.0.24043 ———. 2020. “Taxonomien und epistemische Gewalt: Zur Gefahr von Eindeutigem und vom Reden und Schweigen in autoritären Systemen,” (Taxonomies and Epistemic Violence: On the danger of the unambiguous and sound and silence in authoritarian systems) in Herrschaft des Konkreten, Carl-Friedrich Gethmann, ed. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 161–191. ———. 2023 „Jamais la nuit ? Le soleil ne se couche pas en Chine” (Never Night ? The Sun Does Not Set in China) in La nuit à la croisée des arts et des cultures, in Art Asie Sorbonne 2023/1 (Marie Laureillard, ed.), Online Publication. Moldan, Tessa. 2017. „Fang Lijun” Ocula, 15 December 2017, https://ocula.com/ magazine/insights/fang-lijun/. Party Resolution. 1981. “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China,” edited by the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. Beijing Review, vol. 27: 10–39. Picerni, Federico. 2022. The Aesthetics of Labour. Social and Textual Practice of the Picun Literature Group, PhD dissertation, Venice/Heidelberg. Popova, Maria. 2015. “Hope, Cynicism, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves,” Brain Pickings, https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/02/09/hope-cynicism/. Rojas, Carlos. 2018. „Translator’s Note,“ in Yan, Lianke The Day the Sun Died, translated by Carlos Rojas, Melbourne: Text Publishing. Steen, Andreas. 1996. Der lange March des Rock’n Roll. Rock. Pop- und Rockmusik in der Volksrepublik China, Hamburg: LIT. Su, Ya 苏娅 and Jia, Lusheng 贾鲁生. 1992. Bu luo de taiyang 不落的太阳The Sun That Never Sets, Zhengzhou: Zhongyuan nongmin. Tang, Louyi. 2017. Chairman Buddha (Tiger Butterfly Films, http://chairmanbudd hathefilm.com/). The online resources (images and videos, have been archived in the Digital Archive of Chinese Studies at CATS, Heidelberg) the DOI is XXXX.

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Wang, David. 2020. Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary China, Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press. Wen, Yunchao. 2018. 新紅歌 “東方又紅”: 專制最後一定是被笑垮的 (New Red Song “The East Is Red Again”: Autocracy Will Be Ridiculed in the End) in Youtube 6 March 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_3fy8_0EM0&list= RDN_3fy8_0EM0#t=105 archived in DACHS (Digital Archive of Chinese Studies, CATS Heidelberg): http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/archive2/citrep/mittlersg 2018/yt180713/03/dfh.htm. Xiao Hai 小海 (Tu, Haiyan). 2017. Howl of the Factory: Poetry by Xiao Hai 工厂的嚎 叫—小海的诗, Beijing: Picun gongyou zhi jia (for internal distribution). Xie, Haiyan. 2020. “An Age without Classics and the Writer’s Anxiety: An Interview with Yan Lianke.” MCLC Resource Center (May 2020). https://u.osu.edu/mclc/ online-series/haiyan-xie/. Xu, Zhiyong. 2020. “Dear Chairman Xi, It’s Time for You to Go” An Essay, translated and annotated by Geremie R. Barmé. 26 February 2020 China File https://www. chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/dear-chairman-xi-its-time-you-go. Yan, Lianke (Tr. Roddy Flagg). 2008. “Darkness Visible.” Index on Censorship, vol. 37, No. 2: 40–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/03064220802095191, 40. ———. 2011. 我的现实,我的主义 (My Reality, My -isms/convictions), Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe. ———. 2014a. 沉默與喘息: 我所經歷的中國文學 (Silence and Rest: Chinese Literature in my Experience, Abstract). Taiwan Yinke Wenxue Shenghuo. https://reposi tory.ust.hk/ir/Record/1783.1-97258. ———.2014b. “Finding Light in China’s Darkness,” translated by Carlos Rojas in The New York Times, 22 October 2014; https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/23/ opinion/Yan-Lianke-finding-light-in-chinas-darkness.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0/. ———. 2018. The Day the Sun Died, translated by Carlos Rojas, Melbourne: Text Publishing. Yan, Pat To. 2015. A Concise History of Future China 2015 (to be published in Posthuman Journey, Trilogie. Berlin Suhrkamp 2023) Yan, Pat To. 2019. Keep Walking in Logbuch-Suhrkamp online, https://www.log buch-suhrkamp.de/pat-to-yan/keep-walking/ (originally Burgtheater #3 2019/20 https://www.burgtheater.at/keep-walking). Yang, Rae. 1997. Spider Eaters, Berkeley: University of California Press. Zhu, Linyong. 2010. „A bald truth” China Daily 31 August 2010, https://www.chi nadaily.com.cn/life/2010-08/31/content_11230993.html.

CHAPTER 10

Left-Wing Extremism in Southeast Asia Matthew Galway

Introduction At the 1920 Second World Congress of the Communist International (Comintern), leading figures in the world Communist movement debated over the “colonial question.” In Line with Lenin’s standpoint on the matter, the Comintern determined that Communist Parties in “backward countries” ought to support the bourgeois-democratic nationalist movement (Lenin 1965). The aim was for fledgling Communist Parties to obtain a “position of an independent revolutionary factor in the anti-imperialist front as a whole” (Munck 1986: 90). As Benedict Anderson (1983: 2) points out, “since WWII every successful revolution has defined itself in national terms—the People’s Republic of China, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and so forth—and, in so doing, has grounded itself firmly in a territorial and social space inherited from the pre-revolutionary past.” Eric Hobsbawm (1999: 124) adds that there “were initially socialist Parties that were, or became, the main vehicles of their people’s national movement, just as there were essentially socially minded peasant Parties [that]… naturally developed a nationalist dimension.” But how did Communist Parties in Southeast Asia position themselves simultaneously as nationalists? How did so many of them rise to political prominence? Recently, scholars have thrown overdue light on the cosmopolitan origins of Communism in Asia (Goebel 2015; Harper 2020; Sidel 2021; Galway M. Galway (B) School of Culture & History and Language, The Australian National University, Canberra, Canberra, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_10

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2022). Here, the focus is on how Communist Parties in Southeast Asia, specifically, rose to the forefront of nationalist struggles and, in some cases, worked with non-Communist Parties or opposed them actively in the postindependence era. I argue that the confluence of clear programs of action, inclusionary recruitment strategies, and opportunism allowed Southeast Asian Communist Parties to posit themselves as leading nationalist representatives. To create Popular Fronts, the Indochinese and Indonesian Communist Parties recruited peoples from various ideological, ethnic, and social backgrounds and worked with(in) competing factions. The rise of political nationalism during the Japanese occupation was also crucial for Communist Parties to exploit their rival nationalists’ weaknesses and overtake them as champions of the anti-imperialist cause. But as Communist Parties in Malaya, Burma, and the Philippines, for instance, emerged from the Second World War as national heroes, they also failed to devise clear programs of action that appealed to majority/minority ethnic and urban populations. The focus here is on Communist Parties that fought for independence and political power, but as these cases show, only one such party—the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK)—fits the description of left-wing extremism. Others certainly envisioned, devised, and even implemented radical programs and oversaw often violent political purges of enemies, whether real or imagined. But nowhere in the region do we witness as clear-cut a case of left-wing extremism as we do in Democratic Kampuchea, where the CPK implemented its Maoist vision to the tune of mass displacement, surreptitious detention, perpetual surveillance, torture, and genocide from 1975 to 1979 (Kiernan 2008; Galway 2022: 159– 199; Chandler 1991: 236–272). The primary goal here, then, is to examine the pre-and post-World War II processes whereby Southeast Asian Communist organizations either seized leadership of the nationalist struggle, or became a secondary movement with or against the post-independence regimes. The Rise of Communism in Indochina To overtake rival nationalist factions in the liberation movement and inspire widespread anti-colonialism, some Southeast Asian Communist Parties drew from pre-colonial wellsprings of patriotic resistance or fierce regional rivalry, and in the Vietnamese and Lao cases, employed similar methods of inclusive membership regardless of ethnic or class origin (Henley 1995: 311–312). Vietnamese Communism comprised two elements, the first of which was the pre-colonial Vietnamese experience of resistance against foreign aggression (Woodside 1976: 43–44, 241–246; Huynh 1986: 20–34). Intrinsic to this history of resistance is what Hu`ynh Kim Khánh (1986: 30–31) calls an “ethnic emphasis in the traditional Vietnamese social order,” which Vietnamese expressed in ancestor worship (loyalty to past and present blood ties) and the communal cult (gathering of notables). The borders of the precolonial Vietnamese state had also remained virtually intact as it fell under French colonial rule. The recentness of its bounds served, per David Henley

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(1995: 320), as “the most meaningful frame of reference for the inevitable nationalist reaction of the earliest twentieth century.” One challenge to Vietnamese unity, however, was the French colonial strategy of pitting highland minorities against the lowland majority to establish an imaginary fault line between northerners and southerners. ,, The Indochinese Communist Party (Ðang Cô.ng san Ðông Duong, ICP; ˜ ´ ` 1930–1945) established by Nguyên Ái Quôc (Hô Chí Minh) in Hong Kong and predecessor to the now-ruling Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), which he also founded (Goscha 2017: 150; Quinn-Judge 2002: 144, 156– 157), had devised a plan to undermine French efforts to sow disunity. A member of the Communist International (Comintern) within a year of its founding (Goscha 2017: 150), the ICP, Hu`ynh (1986: 278) notes, “advocated joint action by all ethnic groups with a view to national independence and self-determination.” The Party also devised a nationalities policy in which the Communists stressed equality and independence across all ethnic bounds, encouraged participation from Vietnamese women, and placed significant emphasis on mass literacy (Hu`ynh 1986: 277–278; Marr 1984: 390). The ICP’s devotion to proletarian internationalism formed the second strand of its guiding ideology. Party leaders emphasized Lenin’s combination of the proletarian struggle in advanced countries with liberation movements in oppressed ones, as for them, national liberation was a precondition to the emancipation of the oppressed classes. Vietnamese Communists showed their devotion to internationalism by sending Party intellectuals to work closely with peasants as propagandists, teachers, and military personnel (Marr 1984: 320, 414; Hu`ynh 1986: 100–102). Marxism-Leninism, David Marr (1984: 106) holds, gained traction among Vietnam’s poor because the ICP succeeded in “linking evil and suffering with the existence of an exploitative colonial landlord system.” Rather than gravitating toward Communism for its inherent universalism, or its utility as a critical interpretive paradigm for understanding rural plight, Hu`ynh (1986: 102) avers that Communism instead won people over because it “symbolized delivery from misery, oppression, and exploitation, which might or might not be related to conditions fostered by colonialism.” Under Communist leadership, Marr (1984: 402) elaborates, “[c]ontemporary politics were reinterpreted in terms of the vast majority who would surely uphold the just cause versus the handful of traitors who would stick with the foreign bandits.” Hô` Chí Minh even used Vietnamese feelings of patriotism to “set the tone of Viê.t Minh propaganda by giving resistance to foreign aggression a timeless quality above and beyond the historical dialectic. Traditional culture, particularly as represented in folk songs and folk poetry, was said to reflect a unique and essentially good Vietnamese national character” (Marr 1984: 402; see also Hu`ynh 1986: 282–283). Thus, the ICP’s appeals to Vietnamese patriotic resistance to foreign adventurism and its unbreakable pledge to proletarian internationalism positioned it as the dominant anti-colonial Party in Vietnam. ij

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Elsewhere in Indochina, the Lao and Cambodian Communists mirrored the ICP’s promotion of inclusive participation in anti-colonial resistance. For the Pathet Lao (Pa th¯et L¯ ao, Lao People’s Liberation Army), recruitment from the hill tribes was a prerequisite to establishing base areas in the mountainous north. Because of Laos’ predominantly Theravada Buddhist populace, though, a purportedly atheist Party that was intolerant of Buddhism could not garner support from the masses to stage a successful revolution. The anti-French, Lao nationalist Free Laos movement (Lao Issara) had squandered its opportunity in power in 1945, shortly and briefly after the Japanese defeat in World War II, and formally disbanded in 1949 (Evans 2002: 82–85). Its successor, the ruling Royal Lao Government, failed to foster any sort of Lao unity even with Laos’ independence from France in 1953. The Lao government in Vientiane, Martin Stuart-Fox (1997: 3) describes, placed primacy instead on “self-indulgence and self-interest” rather than devote its energies to national considerations. It also invested in an elite nationalism whose proponents grounded it in Lao norms that legitimated the royal family and patronized the aristocracy. The Pathet Lao, by contrast, based its nationalism on “an inclusive tradition of resistance to domination, whether of peasants to nobility, Lao to Thai, or minority groups to the imposition of French rule” (Stuart-Fox 1997: 2). This more inclusive nationalism won significant support in the highlands, but was slow to resonate with the Lao majority. The Pathet Lao then sent cadres to visit villages throughout the countryside to build infrastructure, instruct villagers on hygiene, and perform in festivals, thereby spreading the Party’s message of inclusiveness and harmony between the minority populations and the majority Lao (Stuart-Fox 1997: 80–81). Over the course of the movement, the Buddhist Sangha, community of monks, voiced its support for the Pathet Lao out of frustration with the current Lao government’s privatization of education. Lao Communists seized on this opportunity to politicize monks to use Buddhism to serve socialist ends (Stuart-Fox 1996: 90, 94; Stuart-Fox 1982: 60–80). Viê.t Minh support allowed the Lao Communists to consolidate their liberated zones from which to launch the anti-government revolution. After a brutal civil war that lasted from 1959 to 1975, the “Secret War,” the victorious Communists founded the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR), legitimated its Lao interpretation of Marxism-Leninism in a deeply Buddhist country, and drew upon Buddhist rhetoric and symbolism to garner support for the new regime (Stuart-Fox 1983: 428–454; Evans 1990). But as Stuart-Fox (1997: 4) concludes, although the Lao Communists united the country under one government, unity came “at the expense of subservience to Vietnam.” The Cambodian Communists combined the French construct of Khmer greatness, proletarian internationalism, and animosity toward the Vietnamese to wrest leadership of the nationalist struggle from rival factions. As Penny Edwards (2007: 7) states, the “elaboration of a national culture by French and Khmer literati eventually produced nationalists.” Indeed, the French interpretation figured prominently in Communist and nationalist imaginaires because

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it traced present-day Khmer subjects to French rule as direct descendants of the founders of the Khmer Empire (802–1431), which juxtaposed the country’s present nadir under colonial hegemony against its imagined zenith in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Chandler 1999: 12–13; Chandler 1997: 35– 49; Chandler 1991: 6–9). The French colonial administration in Phnom Penh also appointed Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese to civil administration positions in Cambodia, which frustrated Khmers, who began to “twice colonized” (Fall 1963: 33; Henley 1995: 296; Galway 2022: 64). French favoritism of its colony in Cochinchina—Cambodia, Laos, Tonkin (North Vietnam), Annam (Central Vietnam), and Laos were all protectorates—and its preference for outsiders in its administration set the stage for an emergent nationalism in Cambodia. Despite decades of French unwillingness to develop educational infrastructure in its protectorate, French initiatives to shape Cambodian Buddhism and mass literacy campaigns in the 1930s, most of all, paved the way for Cambodian nationalism to develop in the mainstream (Hansen 2007: 20; Gunn 2018: 30; Edwards 2007: 166–12; Galway 2022: 90–91). Communism soon followed, with the Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP) leadership of Khmer intellectuals, as David Chandler (1991: 73) notes, regarding Cambodian independence as “part of a larger process involving people throughout the world who were struggling against capitalism and imperialism.” But it was not until the Paris group of students joined the KPRP that Khmer ethnicity factored into the revolutionary equation. The young Paris-educated Saloth Sar (aka. Pol Pot), who before his 1953 return to Cambodia was a card-carrying French Communist Party member and even worked in a “labor battalion” on the Zagreb highway in Yugoslavia, espoused the concept of “Original Culture” from in Paris (Chandler 1999: 28–29; Galway 2022: 98). He grew to idealize the Khmer past as one of ethnic superiority, which featured prominently in much of his speeches and propaganda during the 1970s (Kiernan 2007: 28–29, 543–544; Galway 2022: 89–90, 176, 184; Galway 2017: 132–158; Locard 2004: 30–32, 73, 223). In Hanoi, the ICP with China’s urging pursued its own strategic interests in Cambodia by reversing its stance regarding Cambodia’s revolutionary movement against the Cambodian government of Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s first post-independence head of state. The Vietnamese Communists’ prior agreement with Sihanouk for the Viê.t Minh to use Cambodian land during the armed resistance, paired with the KPRP’s small membership, limited revolutionary base areas, and served as reasons for the reversal (Engelbert and Goscha 1995: xii–xiii, 48–53, 151). The decision clashed with the Cambodian revolutionaries’ desire to radicalize, which is why the “Vietnamese betrayal” at Geneva became a rallying point for Cambodian radicals. So too did Sihanouk’s anti-democratic overtures and heavy-handed policies, both of which sparked critical rebukes from Khmer intellectuals at home and abroad (Galway 2019: 126–161; Galway 2021: 285–286). By the 1960s, Pol Pot assumed leadership of the Worker’s Party of Kampuchea (WPK) and, upon the Viê.t Minh’s

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continued urging to postpone the armed struggle until it suited Hanoi, developed an even more brooding anti-Vietnamese position (Galway 2022: 65–66; Engelbert and Goscha 1995: 54–55, 121). The Party changed its name to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) after Pol Pot’s 1965–1966 visit to Maoist China and clashed with the Vietnamese Communists for years thereafter (Galway 2022: 62–70; Galway 2017: 143–147). Indonesian Communists, by contrast, pursued a “bloc within” strategy under the guidance of Indies Social Democratic Association (ISDV, est. 1914) founder, Hendricus Sneevliet (Sidel 2021: 79, 140). Not unlike other early Indies organizations, the ISDV sought to promote social, cultural, and economic interests to draw members into the Party. However, the labor cooperative Sarekat Islam (SI) first achieved significant prominence as the Dutch Ethical Policy (1901–1942) reversed the earlier Dutch position of indirect rule and began to interfere with agrarian workers’ affairs (McVey 1965: 8– 9; Sidel 2021: 69, 120–122). Although SI’s original mission was to safeguard Javanese batik (decorated cloth) merchant interests against competition from Indies Chinese traders, it won widespread popularity among villagers who were against the increase in colonial presence, especially in the countryside. ISDV leaders, many of whom also participated in the SI, paid close attention to SI’s expansion. As inflation and poor harvests caused further economic strain, the ISDV pushed SI toward pursuits that were more radical in nature and form (McVey 1965: 35–38; Sidel 2021: 120–145). By 1919, Ruth McVey (1965: 43–44) notes, ISDV and SI leaders “outlined a plan to unite the unions of the two Parties on a common front” in which they would form “Revolutionary Socialist Federations of Labor Unions.” The ISDV then sent Sneevliet, who adopted the name “Maring” soon thereafter, as its representative to the Comintern in 1920 where Communist Party of the Soviet Union representatives urged he and his ISDV comrades to work with bourgeois nationalists—a suggestion that troubled the ISDV (Sidel 2021: 79–80; McVey 1965: 48–61). The Party’s primary goal was to win support from Indonesians regardless of their political alignment or comprehension of Communist tenets, and it tailored the Party’s ideology on a hybridized blueprint tailor-made for the Indies and rooted in the Party’s own experiences and knowledge (McVey 1965: 36, 354). The newly named Communist Party of Indonesia (Partai Kommunis Indonesia, PKI, as of 1924) absorbed the influential SI, and in time, emerged as “the defender of the poor and the leader of the fight for independence from foreign capitalist rule” (McVey 1965: 155). From then until its failed revolt in 1926, the Party endorsed Marxist and Koranic teachings, viewing both as similar, and strove for freedom of religion by safeguarding the rights of Muslims to practice religion freely. The failed 1926 revolt, however, led the Dutch to outlaw the defeated PKI, and the Party did not attempt more than a few revolts in northern Java (not as a unified Party per se) until after the Second World War.

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Communism, Ethnicity, and Disunity The Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and Communist Party of Siam/ Thailand (CPT) enjoyed periods of popularity at different times, but were plagued by policy decisions that clashed with the majority ethnic populations. The MCP (1939) embraced proletarian internationalism and anti-colonialism, and during World War II, cooperated with the British to form the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) (Cheah 2003: 295; Short 1975: 21– 25). Despite the arrangement, the MCP remained anti-British and envisaged itself as part of the equation in an independent Malaya (Short 1975: 23). But the Party was an expat Chinese-run, Chinese-supported, and Chinesepreferred organization that was almost exclusively rural, which resulted in Chinese squatters forming its urban base and virtually no participation from the majority ethnic Malays. Further still, the MCP’s failure to devise a clear plan of action caused it to lose control over its MPAJA guerrillas, who valued exacting vengeance against Malays for Japanese favoritism over fostering friendlier ties with the majority ethnic group. The result was inter-ethnic violence that raised Malay opposition to Communism (Cheah 2003: xvi– xviii, 297). Despite MCP popularity after the war, which according to Leong Yee Fong (1999: 177) “rested on its role in championing the anti-Japanese cause” and its “ability to command the allegiance of labor,” the Communists failed to incorporate the majority Malay population and lost control of its vengeance-minded insurgents. The CPT faced a similar problem. Party membership comprised mostly Sino-Thai, though by the 1960s a significant number of ethnic Hmong joined the Party (Baird 2021; Baird and Urai 2022). The result of this uneven composition was that the Party, Thongchai Winichakul (1996: 85) observes, “were believed to have been deceived by outsiders.” Although Communism emerged in Thailand as early as the 1920s, it was not until 1941 that the CPT formed and only in 1961 that the Party launched its armed insurrection against the Royal Thai government. The CPT’s base was, by Anderson’s (1998: 288) description, “largely alien minorities” rather than “natives.” However, Ian Baird (2021: 168) contends by contrast that the CPT base areas’ location in mountainous and remote regions predominantly inhabited by Hmong led many to join the Party, and that membership for them “constituted transnational, transcultural, and gender-relations-transforming experiences.” A movement that was hitherto “urban rather than semi-urban/semi-rural, and oriented north towards China rather than west towards Europe and the Soviet Union” comprised over ten thousand armed insurgents by the 1970s. But as Jon Rigg (2003: 162) notes, the CPT was ultimately “never able to escape from the tyranny of ethnicity: most of those who joined up, though they may have been poor, did so because they were Lao, belonged to one of the hill ‘tribes’ of the North, or were Malay Muslims.” The Thai Communist movement ultimately crashed to a halt as internal divisions split the Party and the Chinese terminated the line of support in the years after Mao Zedong’s

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death in 1976, thus ending the CPT’s political relevancy (Anderson 1998: 288–290). Burma’s oldest political organization (1939), the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), formed an alliance against the Japanese with the Burma National Army (BNA) during World War II. Its aim was to establish an underground resistance, the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), under CPB founder Thakin Soe (Smith 1991: 232–239). Almost immediately, the union posed problems for the CPB as internal factionalism occurred over the increasing prominence of Browderism (peaceful evolution) among the younger Communists (Lintner 1990: 9–14). The AFPFL Congress’ decision to cooperate with the British led it to split into “Red” and “White” factions (Nakanishi 2013: 51; Smith 1991: 67–69). Former CPB member and Party founder, Aung San, consolidated his leadership atop the AFPFL, became chief of the Executive Council, and eventually negotiated Burma’s independence with the British in 1946. The CPB “Red Flags” condemned the sham independence and moved underground to begin their armed resistance (Nakanishi 2013: 51–52, 81; Thant 2006: 251–252; Smith 1991: 69; Lintner 1990: 13–14). Civil War broke out following independence as three factions—the CPB-People’s Volunteer Organizations (PVOs), AFPFL, and the ethnic nationalists—competed for control (Smith 1991: 122–136). The Burmese Communists determined that Burma was “semi-colonial and semi-feudal,” and began their guerrilla struggle in rural areas to surround the cities per Mao Zedong’s military strategy of protracted people’s war (Nakanishi 2013: 81; Lintner 1990: 14). To sustain the revolt, the CPB “played the ethnic minority card” to form a working partnership with the Karen National union (KNU), among others (Smith 1991: 136; Nakanishi 2013: 52–53). But as Martin Smith (1991: 136) states, there was “a considerable gap between CPB rhetoric on the nationalities question and actual practice.” The CPB eventually broke with ethnic minority cadres, and its overemphasis on rural bases of support without implementing its pledged land reform severely crippled the Communist movement (Lintner 1990: 41). In the Philippines, the ruling government of right-wing kleptocrat Ferdinand Marcos outlawed the Philippines Communist Party (Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas, PKP; est. 1930) on June 20, 1957, with the Anti-Subversion Law (Republic Act 1700). The law forced Communists underground and sought to curtail Marxist student activism at universities. The University of the Philippines Diliman was an especially important boiling pot of radical activism in which young leftists could explore interests in progressive materials (Saulo 1990: 54–55). The formation of the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism (MAN) united front in 1967 gained widespread support among students, labor and peasant leaders, and a host of other nationalistic urbanites (Fuller 2011: 31). However, MAN’s overly urban focus, lack of a clear plan of action, and Maoist Jose Maria Sison’s split with the PKP led to its collapse (Fuller 2011: 31–33, 62; Rocamora 1994: 11). The Philippine Communists had not held congress since 1946, had failed to cement a clear position on

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the use of violence in its struggle, and never formulated a strategy whereby its urban and rural movements combined together (Fuller 2011: 101). The PKP’s revolution became gradually less radical and more willing to accept peaceful resolutions to its disputes with Manila. The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), Sison’s breakaway faction, by contrast, engaged in long protracted struggle against the Nationalist Party(Partido Nacionalista)led Marcos regime (Abinales and Amoroso 2005: 174; Kintanar et al. 1999: 56; Rocamora 1994: 9–42). Japanese Adventurism and Communism in Southeast Asia Internal strategies and divisions aside, the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia exposed the weakness of the European colonists and aroused emergent nationalistic impulses across Southeast Asia. Some Communist Parties capitalized on the Japanese advent to emerge as the leaders of the national liberation movements, which positioned them favorably in the postwar years since people recognized in these organizations a clear commitment to fight against imperialism based on clear organizational lines and broad membership. Communist movements in Burma, Malaya, and the Philippines faced more on uphill climb. Postwar grants of independence from the returned colonial powers weakened their movements and forced them to wage war against the post-independence governments that espoused an actively anti-Communist theory and praxis. Splinter Communist groups from the CPB and PKP espoused Maoism, which by 1965 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had been exporting actively around the world (Galway 2022: 55–84), as their guiding revolutionary doctrine based on support from China. The CPB, MCP, and CPP relied almost exclusively on rural recruitment and staged their revolutions using Mao Zedong’s protracted style of warfare. In Indochina, the Japanese forces broke their surrender agreement with the Allies and launched a coup de force in 1945, which assisted nationalist groups throughout French Indochina to declare independence (Chandler 1991: 14). In Vietnam, the coup de force revitalized an ICP that for years carried the banners of patriotism and proletarian internationalism, but lapsed during the war as its hardliners took issue with its “legal and overt” approach (Hu`ynh 1986: 34, 231).The ICP’s August Revolution in 1945, Hu`ynh (1986: 335) intimates, “awakened patriotism and a sense of social concern among urban Vietnamese who were soon to swell the urban revolutionary ´ ranks.” By contrast, the rival Vietnamese Nationalist Party (Viê.t Nam Quôc ˜ Dân Ðang, VNQDÐ) of Nguyên Thái Ho.c, whose members, Christopher Goscha (2017: 141) notes, previously “had a penchant for brash and violent action” when resisting French rule, instead sought refuge in China rather than engaging the Japanese. In so doing, the Vietnamese Nationalists failed to initiate “autonomous initiatives” (Brocheux and Hemery 2011: 349–350). Its path marred by the increased repression that it faced after the assassination of plantation recruiter Bazin and the crushed 1930 Yen Bay uprising; ij

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the VNQDÐ failed to regain any momentum and ultimately acquiesced to ICP control when the Communists formed the Indochinese Democratic Front (Viê.t Minh) (Brocheux and Hemery 2011: 315–316, 333, 349–350; Hu`ynh 1986: 94–99). The VNQDÐ’s dramatic decline resulted in the ICP’s emergence as the only major political organization that offered a clear plan of action. Upon seizing power in 1945, the Vietnamese Communists dissolved the ICP and established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam rather than proclaiming a “Republic of Indochina,” which was a strategic move to avoid raising suspicion or frustration in neighboring countries (Engelbert and Gsocha 1995: 19; Goscha 1996: 128–130). The confluence of opportunity, revolutionary preparation, and execution allowed the ICP to capitalize on favorable circumstances despite its international isolation during the war. The ICP was also in a position to promote its program of liberation based on a proven record of accomplishment (Hu`ynh 1986: 335–338; Marr 1984: 371). Even though the French returned, the August Revolution represented the beginning rather than the end of the Vietnamese liberation struggle. The Japanese proclamation also emboldened nationalist sentiment among Lao and Cambodian elites that had been slow to develop due in large part to the short number of colonial-educated Lao and Khmers during French rule (Stuart-Fox 1996: 25, 52; Edwards 2007: 68). The nationalist Free Laos and Independent Khmer (Khmer Issarak) movements enjoyed varying degrees of success until their suppression by their respective Royal governments. The realization of French weakness, however, spirited cultural nationalisms in Laos that proponents associated with the National Renovation Movement of the 1930s, which under the Japanese shifted to political nationalism and paved the way for Prince Phetsarath and his stepbrothers Suvanaphuma and Suphanuvong to establish the Thai- and Vietnamese-backed Free Laos movement (Stuart-Fox 1997: 58–60). In fact, as Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hemery (2011: 354) note, Suphanuvong returned to Laos “with a Viê.t Minh escort, who provided him with his first advisors and cadres of the armed forces of Pathet Lao.” The Free Laos movement garnered enough support from Viê.t Minh and Chinese Nationalist (Guomindang ) troops stationed in the region to take power in 1946 (by Japanese fiat). But the French brokered the modus vivendi ceasefire agreement with Ho Chi Minh, whereby Vietnamese and Chinese forces who stationed in Laos withdrew (Stuart-Fox 1997: 65). The Free Laos movement also wasted its financial and political capital and eventually disbanded in 1949, thus providing little opposition to the Lao Communists. Not unlike their Vietnamese counterparts, the Pathet Lao based its struggle on a dual commitment to inclusive resistance and proletarian internationalism (Stuart-Fox 1997: 80). The Japanese ouster of the French ultimately highlighted colonial vulnerability and paved the way for the Lao Communists to move into a position to lead the nationalist struggle. Upon direct orders from the Japanese, Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia declared “Kampuchean” independence “with enthusiasm” and the returned

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French colonial administration was eager to let him head the postwar government under French supervision (Chandler 1991: 4, 14–16). The Independent Khmer movement, a nationalist Party led by Son Ngoc Minh and Tou Samouth, and “spearheaded by its Communist backbone,” the KPRP, sought to position itself as the opposition to the French presence even if somewhat diminished (Chandler 1991: 44–45; Chandler 1999: 23, 41; Kiernan 2008: 12–13). To counter its rise in influence, Prince Sihanouk bribed prominent members within the Free Khmer movement and another Party, the anti-Communist Free Khmer (Khmer Serei) Party with positions in his Royal government in exchange for their abandonment of anti-colonial or anti-Sihanouk activities. After the Independent Khmer movement’s collapse in 1949, only the Communist legal front organization, the People’s Group (Krom Pracheachon), the Free Khmer Party led by Son Ngoc Thanh, and the Viê.t Minh-supported KPRP remained (Kiernan 2008: 153–162; Heder and Ledgerwood 1996: 5). The People’s Group failed to take advantage of elite anti-monarchist sentiment in the 1950s and the arrest of antimonarchist leaders all but ended its movement (Chandler 1991: 131–133, 152; Kiernan 2008: 157–158). The KPRP—later the equally Hanoi-directed WPK—expanded its membership to over a thousand. Sihanouk’s violent repression of Communists led it to form an underground movement that was at the forefront of the anti-government movement. The WPK became the CPK in 1966 upon the return of Pol Pot from China and fought in a brutal civil war against the US-backed Lon Nol regime (Galway 2022: 69–70, 145– 146). After its April 17, 1975, seizure of power, the “Khmer Rouge” launched one of history’s most murderous regimes and oversaw the lone example in the region of left-wing extemism. The Japanese occupation of Indonesia “gave a great psychological shock to the Indonesian population,” Rex Mortimer (1974: 30, 32) notes, and shattered the “myth of Dutch superiority [that] rising nationalist consciousness had by no means dispelled.” By virtue of the Imperial Japanese Army’s “divide and conquer” strategy, no unified anti-Japanese effort materialized. The decision to mobilize young Indonesian men, however, had the unintended consequence of evoking the pemuda, or pledge of activism, for Indonesian men under thirty. In a few short years after independence, young men such as Aidit, Lukman, Njoto, and Sudisman, who were “all part of the pemuda efflorescence,” as Mortimer (1974: 33) terms it, engaged in nationalist activity. The PKI resurfaced after the war in a fledgling state and had a less than impressive membership. But upon Aidit’s assumption of PKI leadership in 1951 and after its Fifth Party Congress in 1954—during which the PKI composed its foundational document—Party membership rose rapidly to well over one million and the Party once again emerged as a major player in Indonesian politics (Lin and Galway 2022: 2, 8, 25–26). The rise of Aidit to PKI leadership ultimately represented the “capture of the organization by the pemuda generation” (Mortimer 1974: 40).

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The PKI’s success in the post-independence period was due to several factors, ranging from Javanese villager displeasure with the government to political fractures within the ruling Party. Internationally, the PKI cemented its position as an independent, non-aligned Communist Party that recognized no higher authority than itself, while domestically, it “Indonesianized” MarxismLeninism to bring the Party closer to the Indonesian peasantry (Mortimer 1974: 320; Lin and Galway: 1–29). At the same time, Mortimer (1974: 329) states, the PKI maintained that the Party was “an integral part of the Indonesian national movement and a detachment of the international Communist movement dedicated to the goals of overthrowing capitalism and imperialism and establishing socialism on a world scale.” In line with this dual commitment, Mortimer (1974: 24) continues, the PKI leadership “projected its appeals and action slogans in a nationalist and populist frame to cement its alliance with Sukarno and to maintain a tempo of growth and influence in the climate Sukarno sustained.” The Indonesian Communists ultimately worked closely with Sukarno’s Nationalist Party of Indonesia (PNI) until the purge of PKI members following the September 30 movement eliminated the Party (Lin and Galway 2022: 1–29; Mortimer 1974: 29–76). As the Burmese, Philippine, and Malaya Communist Parties fought against the Japanese throughout the war and vaulted themselves to the forefront of the anti-colonial liberation movement, certain policy decisions and internal divisions led to their marginalization in the greater nationalist movement thereafter. Japan granted Burma formal independence in 1943, but the hollowness of the “sham liberation” was visibly apparent and the CPB and the Allied Burma National Army (BNA) under Aung San’s provision joined forces to form the AFPFL (Smith 1991: 60; Thant 2006: 232, 238–239). Martin (1991: 61) credits the CPB’s proclamation for “outlin[ing] the main tactical and organizational principles of the anti-Japanese resistance” with “CPB commanders and commissars” occupying most of the important positions in CPB “resistance zones.” But the Burmese Communists could not build off of their wartime successes, and before Burma’s independence it fell out of the AFPFL and into guerrilla struggle. As for the anti-Japanese struggle in the Philippines, the country’s oldest nationalist political organization, the Nationalist Party, collaborated with the Japanese until the occupation ended. The PKP-affiliated People’s AntiJapanese Army (Hukbong Bayan laban sa Hapon, or Hukbalahap/Huks) formed what Patricio Abinales and Donna Amoroso (2005: 162) describe as the “only sustained armed resistance against the Japanese… the ‘people’s army’ of the PKP.” The Huks launched a series of attacks against the Japanese from their “liberated zones” north of Manila and encouraged peasants to appropriate land for themselves, but the PKP’s neglect of urban activity meant that the PKP became “overwhelmingly peasant in character” (Abinales and Amoroso 2005: 162; Fuller 2011: 3). As the Huks gained momentum in their quest for Philippine independence, the United States Army guerrillas and the Filipino elite combined their efforts to bring the Huk movement down.

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The PKP did not seize the opportunity to fill the vacuum that the heroic Huks occupied in the Philippine imaginary. Its failure to hold a congress until 1973, lack of a clear and organized program of action, and split with Jose Maria Sison’s Maoist faction pushed the PKP out of the nationalist movement spotlight and it surrendered to the Marcos regime in 1974 (Fuller 2011: 45–47, 101; Abinales and Amoroso 2005: 219). The CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (Bagong Hukbong Bayan, NPA), have waged the world’s longest Communist insurgency, a Maoist-inspired people’s war, which is ongoing in the Philippines today. The CPP remains in operation even with Sison’s 1977 arrest, imprisonment until 1986, fallout with the Party, and since 1992, life in de facto exile in the Netherlands. In Malaya, the MCP enjoyed a rise in popularity since the Japanese occupation of Malaya was, as Cheah Boon Kheng (2003: 294–295) notes, “responsible for the resurgence of Malay nationalism.” During the occupation, MCP/MPAJA forces succeeded in taking several villages from which it would set up its “liberated zones.” The MCP gained significant support following the war for spearheading the anti-Japanese struggle while the MPAJA guerrillas set up in villages throughout the countryside. Yet, the Party “lacked a comprehensive and far-sighted program suited to Malaya’s peculiar conditions” was hamstrung by its prior agreement with the British, lacked internal leadership with Lai Tek’s betrayal, and disregarded the issue of national independence (Cheah 2003: 297). Its urban base comprised almost exclusively Chinese squatters rather than influential Malay urbanites, which thereby cut off the MCP from developing mass appeal in either cities or Malay communities in the rural sector. As the MCP continued its wartime claim that it represented Malayan nationalism, the United Malays National Organization (UNMO) led by Onn bin Dato’ Jaafar supported British forces in suppressing the MCP during the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960). UMNO seized the opportunity to mobilize nationalist Malays and eventually brought the country independence in 1957 (Short 1975: 498, 505). The MCP engaged in protracted war throughout and after the Emergency, but the post-Mao decision in China to discontinue supporting the MCP materially and rhetorically spelled the end for the MCP in 1989. Concluding Remarks To sum up, the Southeast Asian Communist Parties devised an array of creative programs to overtake their rivals at the forefront of the nationalist/anti-colonial revolutions and in most instances succeeded. Although their situations and struggles took different forms and arose in different contexts, the Indochinese Communists—influenced and supported militarily by the Viê.t Minh—promoted inclusive participation in resistance and drew from extant forms wherever convenient. Communist governments remain in power in Vietnam and Laos today, though both ruling Parties have long

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since embraced measures of capitalism (Doi Moi in Vietnam and the New Economic Mechanism in Laos, both beginning in 1986, and Vietnam’s integration into the global capitalist market in 1988, for instance). The Indonesian Communists overcame harsh repression to emerge from World War II as Asia’s largest Communist Party, balanced a dual commitment to nationalism and internationalism, and participated in the postwar government until its brutal suppression by General Suharto. After decades of staunch antiCommunist rule in Indonesia, the PKI’s reemergence as a legal political party is beyond unlikely, and several ex-PKI members remain officially blacklisted from Indonesia despite some initial efforts, notably in 1999, to welcome some of them back to the country. Due to a confluence of unclear directives, exclusive membership, and the end of Chinese support, the Communist Parties in Malaya, Burma, and Thailand were less successful after enjoying postwar success. Much like the CPB, the PKP suffered a crippling split as Maoist Jose Maria Sison broke away, leaving the PKP politically impotent and without clear direction. The CPP and Sison, who lived in exile in the Netherlands until his 2023 passing, differed strongly on political line and direction for decades, and both the CPP and NPA remain classified by the Philippines’ Anti-Terrorism Council as terrorist organizations in an increasingly far right-wing country. To conclude, no single factor led to the Southeast Asian Communist Parties’ seizure of the leadership reins from rival nationalist organizations, for it was half opportunism and half strategy that made fecund grounds for their emergences as champions of their nations. Although left-wing extremism in the region ended with the Vietnamese toppling of the CPK and subsequent death-knell of Democratic Kampuchea, the enmeshment of Communism with nationalism undoubtedly spurred many fledgling anticolonial nationalist movements to unforeseen political heights and positioned them well to lead their countries into eras of independence.

References Abinales, Patricio, and Donna J. Amoroso. 2005. State and Society in the Philippines. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Anderson, Benedict. 1998. The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World. London: Verso. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Baird, Ian, and Urai Yangcheepsutjarit. 2022. “Hmong Women’s Rights and the Communist Party of Thailand,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, First View: 1–23 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-southeast-asian-studies/art icle/abs/hmong-womens-rights-and-the-communist-party-of-thailand/37C627EE8 6CCDF90FAC7C641452DCD4C. Baird, Ian. 2021. “The Hmong and the Communist Party of Thailand: A Transnational, Transcultural, and Gender-Relations-Transforming Experience,” TRaNS: Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia 9: 167–184.

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Brocheux, Pierre, and Daniel Hemery. 2011. Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954. Ly Lan Dill-Klein, trans. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chandler, David P. 1999. Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Chandler, David P. 1997. “From ‘Cambodge’ to ‘Kampuchea’: State and Revolution in Cambodia, 1863,” Thesis Eleven 50, No. 35: 35–49. Chandler, David P. 1991. The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution since 1945. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Cheah, Boon Kheng. 2003. Red Star over Malaya: Resistance and Social Conflict during and after the Japanese Occupation of Malaya, 1941-1946. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Edwards, Penny. 2007. Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860-1945. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Engelbert, Thomas, and Christopher Goscha. 1995. Falling out of Touch: A Study of the Vietnamese Communist Policy Towards an Emerging Cambodian Communist Movement, 1930-1975. Clayton, VIC: Center of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University Asia Institute. Evans. Grant. 2002. A Short History of Laos. Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Evans, Grant. 1990. Lao Peasants under Socialism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Fall, Bernard B. 1963. The Two Vietnams: A Political and Military Analysis. London: Pall Mall Press. Fuller, Kenneth. 2011. A Movement Divided: Philippine Communism, 1957-1986. Quezon City, Philippines: University of the Philippines Press. Galway, Matthew. 2022. The Emergence of Global Maoism: China’s Red Evangelism and the Cambodian Communist Movement, 1949-1979. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Galway, Matthew. 2021. “Red Service-Intellectual: Phouk Chhay, Maoist China, and the Cultural Revolution in Cambodia, 1964-1967,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 52, No. 2: 275–308. Galway, Matthew. 2019. “Specters of Dependency: Hou Yuon and the Origins of Cambodia’s Marxist Vision (1955-1975),” Cross Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 31: 126–161. Galway, Matthew. 2017. “From Revolutionary Culture to Original Culture and Back: ‘On New Democracy’ and the Kampucheanization of Marxism-Leninism, 19401965,” Cross Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 24: 132–158. Goebel, Michael. 2015. Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Goscha, Christopher. 2017. The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam. London: Penguin Books. Goscha, Christopher. 1996. “Annam and Vietnam in the New Indochinese Space,” in Asian Forms of the Nation. Stein Tonneson and Hans Antlov, eds., pp. 93–130. Richmond, Surrey, UK: Curzon. Gunn, Geoffrey. 2018. Monarchical Manipulation in Cambodia: France, Japan, and the Sihanouk Crusade for Independence. Copenhagen, Denmark: Nordic Institute for Asian Studies Press. Hansen, Anne R. 2007. How to Behave: Buddhism and Modernity in Colonial Cambodia, 1860-1930. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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Harper, Tim. 2020. Underground Asia: Global Revolutionaries and the Assault on Empire. London: Penguin Books. Heder, Steve, and Judy Ledgerwood. 1996. “Politics of Violence: An Introduction,” in Propaganda, Politics, and Violence in Cambodia: Democratic Transition under United Nations Peacekeeping. Steve Heder and Judy Ledgerwood, eds., pp. 3–49. New York: ME Sharpe. Henley, David. 1995. “Ethnogeographic Integration and Exclusion in Anticolonial Nationalism: Indonesia and Indochina,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, No. 2: 286–324. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1999. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hu`ynh, Kim Khánh. 1986. Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kiernan, Ben. 2008. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979. Third Edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kiernan, Ben. 2007. Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kiernan, Ben. 2004. How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975. Second Edition. New Haven, CT. Yale University Press. Kintanar, Galileo C., Pacifico V. Militante, and J. Augustus de la Paz. 1999. Lost In Time—From Birth to Obsolescence: The Communist Party of the Philippines, Book One, 1930-1972. Quezon City, Philippines: Truth and Justice Foundation Inc. Leong, Yee Fong. 1999. “The Emergence and Demise of the Chinese Labor Movement in Colonial Malaya, 1920–1960,”in The Chinese in Malaysia. Lee Kam Hing and Tan Chee-Beng, eds., pp. 169–193. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lenin, V.I. 1965. Collected Works, 4 th English Edition, Volume 31. Moscow: Progress Publishers. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/jul/x03.htm. Lin, Hongxuan, and Matthew Galway. 2022. “‘Heirs to What Had Been Accomplished’: D.N. Aidit, the PKI, and Maoism, 1942–1965,” Modern Intellectual History: 1–29. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-intellectual-his tory/article/heirs-to-what-had-been-accomplished-d-n-aidit-the-pki-and-maoism19501965/BE78BB30F384953AD5FFA3C55F31BA7F. Lintner, Bertil. 1990. The Rise and Fall of the Burmese Communist Party. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications. Locard, Henri. 2004. Pol Pot’s Little Red Book: The Sayings of Angkar. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. Marr, David. 1984. Vietnamese Tradition on Trial 1920-1945. Berkeley: University of California Press. McVey, Ruth. 1965. The Rise of Indonesian Communism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mortimer, Rex. 1974. Indonesian Communism under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics, 1959-1965. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Munck, Ronaldo. 1986. The Difficult Dialogue: Marxism and Nationalism. London: Zed Books. Nakanishi, Yoshihiro. 2013. Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution: The State and Military in Burma, 1962-1988. Kyoto and Singapore: Kyoto University Press; National University of Singapore Press.

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Quinn-Judge, Sophie. 2002. Ho Chi Minh: the Missing Years, 1919-1941. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rigg, Jon. 2003. Southeast Asia: The Human Landscape of Modernization and Development. London: Routledge. Rocamora, Joel. 1994. Breaking Through: The Struggle within the Communist Party of the Philippines. Manila: Anvil. Sidel, John T. 2021. Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Short, Anthony. 1975. The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, 1948-1960. London: Frederick Muller Ltd. Smith, Martin. 1991. Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. London, Zed Books. Stuart-Fox, Martin. 1997. A History of Laos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stuart-Fox, Martin. 1996. Buddhist Kingdom, Marxist State: The Making of Modern Laos. Bangkok: White Lotus. Stuart-Fox, Martin. 1983. “Marxism and Theravada Buddhism: The Legitimation of Political Authority in Laos,” Pacific Affairs 56, No. 3: 428–454. Stuart-Fox, Martin. 1982. “Politicization of the Buddhist Sangha in Laos,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 13, No. 1: 60-80. Saulo, Alfredo B. 1990. Communism in the Philippines: An Introduction. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Thant, Myint-U. 2006. The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Thongchai, Winichakul. 1996. “Maps and the Formation of the Geo-Body of Siam,” in Asian Forms of the Nation. Stein Tonneson and Hans Antlov, eds., pp. 67–92. Richmond, Surrey, UK: Curzon. Woodside, Alexander. 1976. Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

CHAPTER 11

Left-Wing Extremism in India Niranjan Sahoo

Introduction The Left-wing extremism (LWE) continues to pose a major security challenge for the Indian state even after more than five decades of its existence. What began as a small agrarian rebellion in India’s eastern region (state of West Bengal) in the 1960s could subsequently spread across nearly one-third of India’s territory by early 2000s. While the LWE movement has been considerably checked in the recent years, the insurgency at one point had presence over as many as 200 districts of 20 Indian states.1 This prompted the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 to call it as “gravest internal security challenge” facing the country.2 With their spatial spread, the LWE were able to enhance their firepower in terms of regular fighters, arms and ammunition, resources and insurgent expertise. Within a very short period, the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PGLA), the armed wing of LWE could maintain as many as 20,000 regular cadre of which nearly 10,000 were hardcore fighters (Sahoo 2019). These cadres were armed with automatic weapons, shoulder rocket launchers, mines and other explosive devices, light machine guns, mortars, self-loading guns, AK-47 s and grenades. By mid-2000s, the Maoists had managed to create fullfledged administrative and military infrastructure in states like Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal. Correspond to their bench strength and spatial spread, the LWE were able to launch hundreds of N. Sahoo (B) Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_11

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violent attacks on security forces and paralyses governance and development in large swathes of Indian territories (Sahoo 2019). After many ears of failures, finally a coordinated and well-calibrated counterinsurgency operation from the federal government and the Maoist-affected states have helped to bring down Maoist sponsored violence to an all-time low, reducing their dominance to few tri-junction districts in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha. The curtain seems to be down for the LWE.

Left-Wing Extremism---Brief History While there are debates as to when the first movement took place in India,3 many experts agree to 1967 Naxalbari peasant rebellion as the true starting point of the arrival of this virulent movement based on Mao’s idea of violent capture of political powers. The Naxal movement (named after village Naxalbari) first raised its head in 1967 in West Bengal’s Naxalbari village.4 The Naxalbari rebellion was conceived and executed by Charu Mazumdar, a communist ideologue who called for protracted armed struggle by peasants and an encirclement of cities, on the model of China’s Communist Revolution led by Mao Zedong.5 The Naxalbari uprising were suppressed within 72 days by heavy police actions. It looked as if the state of West Bengal had able to nip the bud of this infant Left-wing insurgency. However, new rebellion spread quickly into parts of Bihar, Srikakulam District of Andhra Pradesh, Koraput in Odisha and some other areas where guerilla squads of poor and landless peasants drove out landed class (Banerjee 1980). The Naxalbari uprising too brought thousands of young cadres from urban pockets such as Calcutta (present Kolkata) as many of them chose to live and work with rural poor to propagate Maoist ideology. However, growing state repression and series of splits within the Naxalite movement in the 1970s considerably weakened this radical movement. For instance, many of Mazumdar’s comrades and close followers became critical of his tactics of assassination of individual ‘class enemies’, his indifference to mass fronts like trade unions (that led to the isolation of the Naxalites from the industrial workers), and the growing bureaucratization of the party organization (Banerjee 2009). As a result, the CPI(M-L) split into several factions often fighting among themselves (Shah 2006). The fragmentation in the Naxalite ranks came as a boon for the state and its security forces to try and weaken the LWE for the time being (Banerjee 2009). With National Emergency6 imposed by the Indira Gandhi government on June 26, 1975, Maoist leaders and their supporters faced massive state repression as several thousands of them were arrested from all corners of the country. Yet like the proverbial Phoenix, they rose again from the ashes once Emergency was lifted up in 1977. After one more split7 and with a new makeover, various Naxalite groups such as CPI (M-L) Party Unity and CPI (M-L) People’s War Group8 went on to expand their areas of operations and domination to new guerilla zones

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in several states of India. In the 1980s, Kondapalli Seetharamaiah formed the powerful People’s War Group (PWG) in Andhra Pradesh. The Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) emerged in Bihar a few years later. By the end of the decade, the groups that followed militant course could go on to build strong bases in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha apart from their traditional presence in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh (Ramachandran 2010). In the early years, the PWG worked around building mass organizations among youth, peasants and women. Later, it, however, moved exclusively to armed struggle and expanded its area of operation beyond Andhra Pradesh to include parts eastern Maharashtra, northern Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh (now southern Chhattisgarh which remains the epicentre of LWE) and Odisha. The PWG formed many powerful peoples’ organizations namely the Dandakaranya Adivasi Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (DAKMS) and the Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sangathan (KAMS) in Dantewada in the early 1980s, which subsequently emerged as the key pillars for Maoist resurgence. For example, it was DAKMS that brought to the fore many of the issues involving adivasis over land and forests, fair wages tendu leaves and beedis (similar to cigarettes) and higher prices for non-timber forest produce (NTFP). These were the issues that easily struck a chord with adivasi population as they faced increasing exploitation from the local money lenders, officials and state neglect. The Naxalite movement in its second phase too had gone through its low and high and was subjected to heavy state repression especially in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. In the backdrop of unexpected Soviet collapse, spectacular rise of Nepali Maoists and being fed up by years of fragmentation and dissensions among various factions that often proved suicidal, the movement in its third phase came to form a single revolutionary party, the CPI (Maoist) in 2004. This strategic merger of nearly 40 Maoist factions brought about a significant regeneration of the Movement, having ‘given synergy to the new outfit in terms of strength, capability and resources—for launching attacks on the security forces’. This merger also provided a huge swathe of the territory within which the Maoists are able to move without the problems of coordination that afflict the state police forces (Harriss 2010). Post-merger the movement was able to spread across such a vast geography in a quick time. They could spread over more than 200 districts across the country. Their spatial spread led to significant enhancement in their firepower in terms of regular fighters, arms and ammunition, resources and insurgent expertise. Within a short span, the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PGLA), the armed wing of CPI (Maoist) nurtured 20,000 regular cadre of which nearly 10,000 are hardcore fighters.9 These cadre were armed with automatic weapons, shoulder rocket launchers, mines and other explosive devices, light machine guns, mortars, self-loading guns, AK-47 s and grenades. They also acquired know-how in making and deploying increasingly sophisticated bombs,10 and according to some reports, set up manufacturing centres for weapons including rocket launchers (Marwah 2009). By mid-2000, the

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Maoists had managed to create full-fledged administrative and military infrastructure in states like Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal. A key to the Maoist movement’s growth was the expansion of its financial base. By the late 2000s, coinciding with the spread of their geographical influence, the amount of financing in the hands of the Naxalites had reached some INR 1,500 crore (approximately US$ 350 million).11 , 12 This rise in financial resources dramatically improved their ability to buy weapons, attract recruits and modernize their communication warfare systems including the use of information and communication technology. Considered the high points of the Maoist insurgency were the Chintalnar massacre of 76 soldiers in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district in April 2010, and the killings of top leaders of the Congress Party in Chhattisgarh’s Jeeram Ghati area in Sukma district in May 2013. These two incidents, among many other daring attacks on security forces, sounded the alarm for the country’s policymakers that the rebels were a serious threat. These daring attacks and their spatial expansion alarmed the federal government and affected states to launch series of combat operations since mid-2010. This also led to major overhaul in the counterinsurgency strategy (unofficial launch of Operation Green Hunt by Ministry of Home Affairs in 201013 ); LWE-affected states responding with stronger security and development measures which ultimately led to substantial containment of one of the fastest growing Left-wing insurgencies in the world.

Factors that Shaped the Growth of LWE What triggered this revolutionary movement and aided its sustenance for all these decades? What made millions of people being swayed by this virulent ideology that has long been dismissed as ‘utopia’? Is LWE a result of years of deprivation, neglect, and exclusion of an impoverished adivasi population (tribals) located in large swathes of geography that has seen little state presence? Or is it because of governance failures (or absence of it) that has been breeding this menace? Or is it a movement that questions and thrives on the pitfalls of a neo-liberal economy? In the following pages, we illustrate some of the key factors that shaped the rise and growth of LWE in various cycles since 1960s. Land and Insurgency The first flicker of rebellion that raised its head in Naxalbari of Bengal in 1967 was on the issue of land. In other words, at the heart of insurgency movements in India; past and present, land remains the most significant contributing factor (Bandyopadhyay 2008). In fact, close links between land and insurgency movements is not unique to India. World over, similar rebellions have manifested on the issues of land inequity. A number of countries particularly

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Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Ghana, Rwanda and Nepal have witnessed bloody and extremely violent people’s movements on the questions of land redistribution and restoration of land rights. With regard to India, there is a rich body of literature that point to close linkages between landrelated issues with various cycles of popular movements, violent conflicts and extremisms. Many of the social movements including violent ones have occurred largely on the land question (land redistribution, tenancy rights and land acquisition). The post-independent government witnessed its first important rebellion Telangana peasants insurrection (1946–51) by left radicals on the issue of land distribution. The peasants of Telangana aided by the Communists launched their armed struggle in 1946 to forcibly occupy the excess lands from the Zamidars (landlords) apart from fighting forced labour, illegal eviction among others. The next major rebellion around land question began in 1967 known as Naxalbari. This peasant’s rebellion in village of Naxalbari in West Bengal was on the question of land inequity and had an imprint of Telangana peasant movement. Similarly, the famous Srikakulum uprisings in Andhra Pradesh in 1968 were stirred against oppressive landlords and land alienation of girijans (tribals). The Naxalite movements which subsequently took deep root in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh too were founded on issue of failed land reforms and against oppressive landlords. For instance, the famous Mushahari struggle of 1968 which had ripple effect in several states was largely against Zamidars and forcible grabbing of land to be distributed among landless peasants (Mohanty 1977; Bhatia 2005). In the 1980s, the Naxalite movement took more violent shape in the name of dreaded People’s War Group (PWG) in response to the growing economic exploitation of the tribals by the landlords/landed classes, traders, forest officials and land alienation in the Telangana region.14 One of the key demands of LWE movement in Andhra Pradesh was implementation of land reforms including land ceiling and redistribution of surplus land among landless tribals. In its current cycle, the Maoist uprising which has spread over far bigger geographies is again centred around land questions. The land linkages to current cycle of Left-wing extremism have in fact strengthened by manifold for various reasons but mainly through state policies that have actively dispossessed many adivasis (Guha 2007; Maharatna 2005). Since India embarked on economic liberalization in the 1990s, it was the same adivasis who continue to be displaced in millions losing their land and livelihoods. Apart from inmigration of non-tribals 15 which has led to systematic land alienation among tribals (40% in states like Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand), development-induced displacement largely because of rushing of foreign direct investments on areas like mining, Special Economic Zones (SEZs), infrastructure, power, etc., the land alienation among tribals has picked up a gargantuan pace (Fernandes 2008). The new hunger for natural resource is increasingly causing large scale displacement. The current mode of land acquisition for mega projects has turned predatory as the states and concerned enterprises (including PSUs)

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have thrown out all established laws of land by making a mockery of traditional rights of adivasis over land and forests. By one estimate, more than 20 million of tribals were displaced between 1947 and 2004 and of the total displaced populations for various development projects undertaken by the governments, 40% are of tribal origin (Fernades 2008, Planning Commission Report 2008). As one known expert of the sector put it “more tribals have lost their land since the commencement of economic liberalization than any time in the post-independent history” (Fernandes 2008). Thus, the discontentment over land alienation/dispossession in the previous decades created a fertile ground for penetration of Naxals. How Naxals penetrated in Dandakaranya region and other regions using adivasis grievances on land is fairly documented in recent times. The clearest proof of land linkages with Naxalism comes from the fact that the states with severe displacement and tribal land alienation is witnessing most serious Naxal problems in terms of spread and incidences of violence (Bandyopadhyay 2008; Jason Miklian 2010; MHA Report 2010–11). It is, therefore, no coincidence that one of the key manifestos of Maoist is forcible acquisition of excess land and their redistribution among landless tribals.16 To sum up the land question, failed land reforms and predatory land acquisition practices especially since the liberalization of Indian economy have accelerated land alienation among adivasis and other vulnerable groups thereby creating most fertile ground for consequent Maoist spread. Forest Rights and Insurgency Apart from land, forest-related issues have greatly contributed to the rapid growth of Left-wing extremism in the Central heartlands (often called RedCorridor17 ). As mentioned above, while Indian state’s numerous policies and specially created institutions have failed to prevent the loss of land among tribals to outsiders, at other times, they have worked to deprive them of their rights over forest land and its resources. Apart from large dams and industrial townships, since the independence, tribals in India have also been rendered homeless by series of policies and programmes. For instance, setting up of national parks and sanctuaries for conservation and bio-diversity in 1980s rendered millions of tribals homeless.18 A series of state policies regulating the management of forests by Indian state (including the colonial government) have left millions of tribals homeless and with very limited rights over forest resources especially the non-timber forest produces (NTFP).19 Issues of land and NTFPs which the state failed to attend in favour the adivasis proved to be godsend for Maoists to penetrate their influence in vast forested region of Central India. The insurgents took up the causes of dispossessed adivasis with slogans “land to the tillers” and organized hundreds of protest rallies and movements in number of states demanding restoration of tribal rights over forest land and better price for NTFPs.

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In the past decades, the Maoists have organized numerous strikes, rallies, raised awareness campaigns among adivasis on NTFPs in forested regions ranging from Bastar (Chhattisgarh), Telengana, Vidarbha (Maharashtra) and Odisha. In fact, because of Maoist efforts, tendu prices have gone up 50 times in the last two decades (Balagopal 2008). This aspect of NTFPs and growing ascendancy of Maoist support among adivasis has been acknowledged by the government’s own commission in recent times. The forest-insurgent linkages were succinctly captured by the Planning Commission appointed Expert Committee. The conflict pertaining to forest dwellers’ rights to land and forest produce is a major source of unrest in large parts of the country. The very notion of a symbiotic relation should have implied that no inherent conflict could be seen between such communities and their habitat, but no such understanding informs the law concerning forest conservation. Thus, large areas that were traditionally the habitat of forest dwelling communities, which means principally adivasis , were declared reserve forests without any recognition, let alone accommodation of the rights of those communities…forest conservation has found a strange companion in industrial forestry. While the rights of the forest-dwellers are severely restricted in the name of forest conservation, the forests are increasingly shaped to suit the needs of industry. This has resulted in the forest dwellers simultaneously losing access to land and to a variety of forest produce of day to day use and value (GOI 2008). A number of recent studies have empirically proven the links between forest-related issues particularly NTFPs and growing Maoist rise in adivasis areas.20 In short, state’s consistent failures to defend the interest of poor adivasis did create serious vacuum in wide geography for Maoists to fill them in the name of fighting for their rights and justice. Though belatedly, the centre and states have initiated a number of efforts to address the concerns of adivasis and other forest dwellers particularly through a slew of legislations (PESA 1996 and Forest Rights Act 2006); situation is yet to improve significantly.21 Development and Insurgency Linkages Other than critical land and forest issues, acute poverty and underdevelopment have played a significant role in spreading Maoist influence in this vast geography. India is not unique in this case. In fact, development and conflict correlation is well known in conflict literature. There is rich body of empirical literature that finds strong correlation between underdevelopment, income poverty and inequality with civil conflicts.22 The Indian case clearly supports the robustness of such linkages of extreme poverty and underdevelopment with growing insurgency. Behind this rapidly expanding Left-wing inferno in this vast geography is the persistent poverty, backwardness and long history of deprivation. Fact of the matter is the tribals and to some extent dalits who form the backbone of current phase of the insurgency incidentally are the ones who

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occupy the bottom of human development indicators and disproportionately overcrowd the poorest of the poor among the populations of this Naxalaffected region. For instance, Bihar, Odisha, MP, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and UP together have nearly 60% of the SC population, of which some 70% belonged to very poor category. These states while account for 49% of total tribal population; these are the population which are mostly stalked as poor (63% of them belonged to below the official poverty line). The percentage of dalits below poverty line was 36.8% (rural) and 40% (urban) and of tribals 47.3% (rural) and 33.3% (urban) compared to 28% (rural) and 25.77% (urban) for the nation (GOI 2008). To get little deeper into individual states in the Naxal-affected region, for instance, the incidence of poverty is higher than 50% among the tribals in Odisha (73%), Jharkhand and Bihar (59%) and MP (including Chhattisgarh 57%). In terms of other key human development indicators such as education, health, access to food are concerned, these regions again occupy the bottom of the pyramid. For instance, in Maoist pronged Central India, the literacy rate is 28% in Bihar, 41% in Jharkhand, 41% in Madhya Pradesh, 52% in Chhattisgarh, 37% in Andhra Pradesh and 37% in Orissa (GOI 2008). The existence of acute poverty and underdevelopment is further vindicated from the fact that the region is among most hunger-prone area in the world (IFPRI 2009).23 It is no coincidence that an influential report by Oxford University (2010)24 put this region as one of the poorest region in the world, worse than sub-Saharan region of Africa. Thus, acute poverty, underdevelopment or extreme backwardness on most basic human development indicators in many ways contributed to the growth of Left-wing extremism in the said region. This poverty and insurgency correlation has been openly established by the government appointed committee. According to this committee, 165 Naxalite-affected districts are among the country’s 200 poorest and most backward districts (GOI 2008). The findings of expert committee that correlate backwardness or gross underdevelopment with growing Naxalite influence are further supported by a number of empirical studies in recent times. In a first kind of empirical study of political economy of Maoist Insurgency in central heartlands of India, researcher J. F. Gomes (2011) used sub-national micro-data to identify the causes of Maoist rise in this vast terrain. Among others, the study found robust correlation between lack of development or low income among adivasis and dalits and growth of insurgency.25 To sum up, various Naxalite groups of different shades have organized impoverished and excluded population of this vast geography by providing economic and material supports. Using the huge space available, the Naxal leadership has taken up the tasks of fighting for minimum wage, NTFPs, land to the tillers, share from minerals. Acute poverty, persistent backwardness and high degree of inequality combined with exploitation and discrimination have created “objective conditions” for rapid popularity of LWE.

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Governance and Insurgency Conundrum The other major factor that has fuelled cycles of Left-wing insurgencies in India is linked to weak mal-governance or governance ridden with serious bottlenecks in terms designs and implementation. This vast region of central India is characterized by weak governance or feeble presence of key service delivery institutions. Wherever, there is state presence, it is largely in oppressive and violent forms (particularly police, revenue and forest departments). In states with substantial tribal population has more tribal population inclined to support Maoist insurgency that is often seen some sort of instrument to get justice and protection from oppressive state agencies such as police, forest and revenue departments. In many cases, adivasis are mobilized by Maoist leadership on the issues of land rights, access to forest and forest-based resource ( jal, jungle and zameen), against police and official atrocities, exploitation by nonadivasis and feeble presence of governance institutions. For instance, many argue that Maoist having strong foothold in much of Bastar and Dandakaranya of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand is on account of governance deficit (lack of justice delivery, rights violations, etc.) (Sundar 2011). Thus, weak state presence and lack of governance have been utilized by rebel groups to their advantages in many ways by providing parallel administration. It is no coincidence that the key slogans of Maoist groups have been to provide instant justice (street justice), to attack the corrupt officials and money lenders and other exploitative symbols such as police and revenue officials. As has been documented extensively, governance vacuum has led to Maoist establishing their form of parallel government in many areas of their control (Shah 2006). They have made elaborate system of awarding punishment through peoples’ courts and delivering basic services including para doctors, running of schools, health-centres (para-medic services), providing food rations to distressed people and carrying out many essential services supposed to be delivered by the designated public institutions. The LWE running parallel government or Janatana Sarkar as they like to call it was best captured in recent times by C. Vanaja, an award winning journalist for her daring reporting of Maoist insurgency in Bastar and Dantewada districts of Chhattisgarh. According to Vanaja, Maoists are everywhere in Dandakaranya; from running schools, providing drinking water, paramedics (trained volunteers in each village/hamlet), ensuring higher price for NTFPs, restoring land rights to dispute or grievance settlements.26 In short, in the absence of strong state presence, Maoists were found running some sort of ‘parallel government’ or a ‘shadow state’ in vast region of central India.27 Ideological Roots of LWE While it is undeniable that various cycles of violent Maoist movements have strongly been rooted in the socio-economic conditions of the people and the failure of civil administration in vast terrain mostly rural and tribal areas to fulfil

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the basic duties of addressing day-to-day problems of the common people, these movements would not have become so formidable and continued for more than five decades without the guiding ideology of Marxism-LeninismMaoism. The influence of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology of political change had gripped many parts of the world and millions of youths in Europe, Asia and America had launched radical struggles to change what they called exploitative capitalist order. These trends were reflected in the national liberation struggles of Vietnamese people; in the civil rights and anti-war movements in the USA; in the students’ agitations in Western Europe; in Che Guevara’s self-sacrifice in the jungles of Bolivia in pursuit of the old dream of international solidarity of all revolutionaries and in China’s Cultural revolution (Banerjee 2009). In India’s case, the communist or radical left thoughts had taken an early root during the Telangana insurrections28 between 1946 and 1951 which then took even deeper root with the news of Cultural Revolution led by Chairman Mao. Mao Tse Tung’s had become a household name among certain section of youth. In fact, a popular slogan then was “China’s Chairman is our Chairman”. While this could not have fired the minds of the rural masses, but it caught on in the university campuses all over the country, many students of Delhi’s elite St. Stephens College even went underground to fight for the revolution (Guruswamy 2010). This was even widespread in many elite institutions of Calcutta (now Kolkata). In short, the revolutionary ideology of Chairman Mao induced thousands of youth to protracted armed movement. Mao’s revolutionary ideology of transforming a semi-feudal society through “mass struggle” and “armed revolution” found reverberations among the new revolutionaries. Mao’s theory of organized peasant insurrection found some serious following among those early revolutionary or radical thinkers such as Charu Mazumdar and Kanu Sanyal. Mao’s idea of armed revolution and class annihilation popularized by Charu Mazumdar though led to major differences among CPI, leading to its split, has survived the time and continues to inspire new leaders and cadres and converts. Despite time to time revision of their understanding of Indian situation, core ideology of overthrowing the oppressive parliamentary system of governance and replacing it with people’s government or janatan sarkar has not changed till date. The revised ideology has not gone obsolete this day (post-globalization and post-Soviet collapse) and proof of this can be found from its continued attraction among urban and highly educated youth and from its spread to much bigger geography with roots deep among the local population. In short, without strong ideological attraction, it would not have been easier to survive through several decades of state onslaughts, internal dissensions and emerged even more formidable among millions of deprived and powerless impoverished population in vast geography merely on the narratives of poverty, inequity and injustices.

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To sum up, the above analyses clearly indicate multiple factors have come to shape Left-wing extremism in different cycles. Certain local context sometime create a situation triggering major spread of such movements, while at times agency factors shape the nature of conflicts. But by and large the major pointers for emergence and sustenance of such violent ideologies are sourced from general disaffection of masses with regard to the manner in which they are treated. The disaffection of local population on deforestation, land acquisition in tribal areas, illegal natural resources markets, violation of rights, injustices and exploitation form the backbone for Maoist to act as saviour. The Maoists have made the tribal people feel more alienated from the state and have created distrust in the political process and solutions. Post-liberalization and globalization of Indian economy, this process of dispossession and impoverishment, has fastened mainly among tribals living in far off corners of the country.

Present Status of LWE After decades of dominance, LWE is experiencing rapid decline. The clearest proof is lowest ever fatalities among civilians and security forces in the last two decades. According to recent Home Ministry release, fatalities from the Maoist-related violence fell below 100 in 2022, lowest in four decades.29 As per the government records, incidents of Maoist violence have come down by 76% and killings of security forces and civilians by 90%. A coordinated and well-calibrated counterinsurgency operation from the federal government and the Maoist-affected states has helped to bring down Maoistsponsored violence to an all-time low, reducing their dominance to few tri-junction districts in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha.30 Unsurprisingly, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) removed 44 districts from Naxalaffected list, while the ‘worst-affected category’ was brought down to 30 districts by the Ministry of Home Affairs. According to ACLED data,31 due to COVID-19, the Maoist-related incidents in 2020 took even bigger dip (30% less) than 2019. The most visible indicator of the sharp decline of LWE can be seen from the thinning bench strength. They are left with few thousands well trained or hardcore fighters. The once formidable insurgency appears very weak and dispirited as the group is experiencing deep fissures within. Its top leadership is getting thinner every day. The security forces in recent years have succeeded in capturing more than 8,000 active cadres in the last four years while an equal number of Maoists have surrendered before authorities. According to Ganapathi, the top Maoist leader who retired recently, the Maoist organization has no new recruitment in a decade and it has lost hold over many liberated zones.32 Importantly, the Maoist organization’s presence is limited to the Bastar region with an area 40,000 square kilometre. This is a huge achievement considering a decade ago Indian state was staring at an insurgency that was spreading like rapid fire and had sway over one-third of territories.

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In short, curtain is down as far the Maoist insurgency in India is concerned. While the rebels may continue to pose a challenge in some pockets of their dominance, given the kind of security capabilities that Indian state has developed over the years, they are unlikely to regain its earlier domination.

Notes 1. This is slight improvement from earlier projection of 223 districts in 2010. See Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) Annual Report for 2010–11. https://www. mha.gov.in/en/document/annual-report-ministry-of-home-affairs-2010-2011. 2. Details can be found at: http://pmindia.nic.in/speech/content.asp?id=311on. 3. Some experts trace origins of the Indian Maoist movement to Telangana movement (1946–51) when Indian Communists, inspired by Chairman Mao’s ‘people’s war’, took up armed struggle in rural Telangana to free peasants from feudal rule. See Ramachandran (2010). 4. An adivasi youth named Bimal Kissan of a remote village called Naxalbari in West Bengal after having obtained a judicial order, went to plough his land on 2 March 1967. However, he was confronted and later on physically attacked by local landlords with the help of local musclemen. Adivasis of the area violently retaliated and started forcefully recapturing their lands. What followed was a rebellion, which left one police sub inspector and nine local adivasi dead. Within a short span of about two months, this incident acquired great visibility and tremendous support from cross sections of Communist revolutionaries belonging to the state units of the CPI (M) in West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir (see Kujur 2008). 5. In the company of firebrand Kanu Sanyal and other communist activists, Mazumdar formed All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) in 1967. This forum which rejected parliamentary path (election) and opted for violent rebellion led to formal split in mother party (CPI) in 1969. Consequently on 22 April 1969 (coinciding with Lenin’s birthday), the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was formed by AICCCR with Charu Majumdar as Secretary of the Central Organizing Committee. It must be mentioned that Charu Mazumdar and Kanu Sanyal were vital to the formation of Communist Party of India, Marxist-Leninist (CPI (M-L) in April 1969, and the basic objective of the party was spelt out in its resolution adopted at the first party congress in 1970 that “India’s liberation would be achieved by a People’s War, which would involve creating small bases of armed struggle all over the country by waging guerrilla warfare” (see Mohanty 1977; Banerjee 1980, 1984, 2009; Roy Burman 2009). 6. Hindustan Times, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/june-25-onthis-day-in-1975-indira-gandhi-imposed-the-emergency-what-remains-of-itslegacy-101624589306289.html. 7. It was in the 1980s, some survivors of the first phase who favoured participation in parliamentary politics and trade union activities went through a serious re-thinking about their strategy and goals. Others stuck with the line of armed struggle while encouraging different forms of mass mobilization through various modes (Banerjee 2009).

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8. For example, the People’s War Group, formed in Andhra Pradesh in 1980 joined in 1998 with CPI(ML) Party Unity formed in Bihar in 1976 to establish CPI(ML) Peoples War, operating in Andhra, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The Maoist Communist Centre, formed in Bihar in 1976, together with the Revolutionary Communist Centre of India (Maoist) of Punjab formed the Maoist Communist Centre of India in 2003, operating in Bihar and Jharkhand. It was the coming together of the latter, MCCI with CPI(ML) People’s War in September 2004, that established the CPI(Maoist). 9. See Jane’s Intelligence Weekly, 2008 visit: http://www.janes.com/products/ janes/defence-security-report.aspx?ID=1065927755&pu=1&rd=janes_com#. 10. See MHA Annual Report, 2009. https://mha.gov.in/documents/annual-rep orts. 11. G.K. Pillai, a former Union Home Secretary in his interview to NDTV on March 5, 2010 said that the current financial strength of Maoists would be around Rs. 1400 crores. 12. According to an arrested Maoist leader Misir Besra, a Central Committee member of CPI (Maoist), the outfits collected over 1,000 crores in 2007 and had set a target of Rs. 1,125 crore for 2008.For details, see A.J. Anoop, Maoist Funding: Dimensions, Sources and Implications, Vivekanand International Foundation brief, 05 January, 2011. https://www.vifindia.org/article/ 2011/january/14/Maoist-Funding-Dimensions-Sources-and-Implications. 13. The Hindu, 2010. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/Green-Huntthe-anatomy-of-an-operation/article16812797.ece. 14. Fact is the tribals owning small pieces of land were continually expropriated by rich landlords and traders which triggered violent uprisings in the region under the new banner called People’s War Group (PWG). These tribals were kept under perpetual bondage towards repayment of small debt supposedly taken generation ago (for more details see Sundaram 1987). 15. The tribals also lose land when there is large scale migration of the non-tribals to the area where they reside. This generally happens when some development projects are located there. The non-tribals who are more cunning create such pressures that tribals are either forced to transfer their land cheaply against the provisions of law or migrate from the area out of fear. They get little help from the administration against forces which unleash such pressures. This phenomenon is known as secondary displacement which remains invisible in the public policy discourse and is not even considered for compensation or rehabilitation of the persons so displaced. They are also demographically overwhelmed which disempowers them in numerous other ways which leads to the loss of identity as well (Bandyopadhyay, 2008, MoRD 2009). 16. Apart from distributing surplus land grabbed from landlords and other rich peasants, the Maoists are in the forefront of demanding the implementation of tenancy regulations and better sharecroppers’ terms (enforcing batai system which gives equal shares to landlord and tenant). See Bela Bhatia (2005). 17. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/naxalism-maoist-attacks-homeminstry-modi-govt-national-policy-and-action-plan-5140028/. 18. For instance, the Wild Life Act 1972 and the Forest Conservation Act of 1980 together created as many as 94 national parks and 492 sanctuaries and made nearly 4 million people residing those places as illegal occupants. No survey was conducted prior to delineating these protected areas to take into account the current occupants and their land rights.

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19. Though there are varied definition of NTFPs by states in India but most of them include honey, seegekai (soap nut), tamarind, tendu, mahua and medicinal plants as minor forest produce. Even Bamboo which is declared as timber is treated as NTPF. 20. According to a recent study, there is direct linkages between insurgency and access to forest resources. The manner in which the state and private traders have conspired to keep NTFPs prices low, exploiting the labor of collectors, and passing these benefits on to end-users, has had a chronic, widespread and lasting impact on the livelihoods of poor adivasis, and is a major cause of unrest in adivasi dominated areas. Over the past twenty years the insurgents’ legitimacy among poor adivasis has been a consequence of their ability to significantly raise the prices of NTFPs. More generally, the basis of insurgent support among poor adivasis is related to their defense of the latter’s interests, which conflict with those of political and economic interests of elites in the dominant society (for an elaborate empirical understanding of the linkages. See Kennedy and King (2009). 21. This aspect of non-implementation of PESA and FRA will be dealt separately in the next section. 22. According to Ghani and Iyer (2010), the lagging regions in India (Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh) are experiencing Maoist insurgency. They find strong correlation between poverty, underdevelopment with insurgency. Also see Collier et al. (2003). 23. The influential 2009 International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Hunger Index Report ranked most of Naxalite affected states in “extremely alarming category” in terms of access to food. Jharkhand one of the worst Naxalite affected states was ranked second after Madhya Pradesh by IFPRI estimates (see, IFPRI Report, 2009). The findings of this study are based on a global poverty index, the Multidimensional Poverty Index or MPI, developed by Oxford University. It takes into account a range of social factors not hitherto considered while measuring poverty and will replace the Human Poverty Index (HPI) which, until now, has formed the basis for the annual U.N. Human Development Reports. 24. The findings of this study are based on a global poverty index, the Multidimensional Poverty Index or MPI, developed by Oxford University. It takes into account a range of social factors not hitherto considered while measuring poverty and will replace the Human Poverty Index (HPI) which, until now, has formed the basis for the annual U.N. Human Development Reports. 25. See Gomes, JF (2011), The Political Economy of the Maoist Conflict in India: An Empirical Analysis. Link: http://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/core/ documents/Gomes.pdf. For similar insights on causes of Maoist insurgency, see Borooah (2008). 26. C. Vanaja, a free-lance journalist won Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism for 2006 for her detailed coverage of plights of adivasis in Maoist areas. See C. Vanaja’s illustrative report “Janatana Sarkar: A Parallel Government in the Dandakaranya, May 15 2006. For more see The Hindu report: http://www.hindu.com/mp/2006/04/19/stories/2006041900990100.htm. 27. Barbara Harris-White (2003) describes as the ‘shadow state’—a network of brokers, advisers, political workers and crooks who have surrounded the official state depriving it of its funds to secure the private benefit of those involved.

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28. Between 1946–1951, in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh faced its first insurrection of the post-colonial era and its single largest insurrection on its soil since the 1857 war of independence. Inspired by Mao’s revolutionary ideas, the CPI leaders organized rebellion against the Nizam of Hyderabad and other exploitative feudal elements. However, this led to split in CPI hierarchy as leaders like Dange, Ajay Ghosh chose parliamentary democracy unlike other comrades. 29. Times of India, February 08, 2023. https://timesofindia.indiatimes. com/india/maoist-violence-down-76-says-shah-vows-to-end-left-terror/art icleshow/97708844.cms. 30. Niranjan Sahoo, The Print, 2019. https://theprint.in/opinion/from-biharto-andhra-how-india-fought-and-won-its-50-yr-war-with-left-wing-extremism/ 254462/. 31. https://acleddata.com/2021/03/11/naxal-maoist-insurgency-trends-inindia-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic/. 32. https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2020/sep/04/retirednaxal-leader-ganapathi-is-not-surrendering-cpi-maoist-2192258.html.

Reference Anoop, A. J. (2011). “Maoist Funding: Dimensions, Sources and Implications”, Vivekanand International Foundation Issue brief, 05 January. https://www.vif india.org/article/2011/january/14/Maoist-Funding-Dimensions-Sources-and-Imp lications Balagopal, K. (2008). “The NHRC on Salwa Judum: A Most Friendly Inquiry.” Economic and Political Weekly 43(51).https://www.epw.in/journal/2008/51/com mentary/nhrc-salwa-judum-most-friendly-inquiry.html Banerjee, Sumanta (1980). In the wake of Naxalbari: a history of the Naxalite movement in India, New Delhi: Subarnarekha Publisher. ——— (1984). India’s Simmering Revolution, New Delhi: Select Book Syndicate. ——— (2009). In the wake of Naxalbari: Four Decades of a Simmering Revolution, Delhi: Sishu Sahitya Samsad. Bhatia, Bela (2005). “The Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.XL, 9 April 2005. Borooah, V. K. (2008). “Deprivation, Violence and Conflict”: an analysis of Naxlite Activity in the Districts of India”, Internactional Journal of Conflict and Violence, 2(2). https://www.ijcv.org/index.php/ijcv/article/view/2770 Collier, Paul., Elliott, V. L., Hegre, Havard., Hoeffler, Anke., Reynal-Querol, Marta, and Sambanis, Nicholas (2003). “Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy”, A World Bank Policy Research Report, Vol. 31 Fernandes, Walter (2008). “The Human Cost of Development—Induced Displacement”, in India Social Development Report, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ghani, Ejaz, and Lakshmi Iyer (2010). “Conflict and Development: Lessons from South Asia.” No. 31, Economic Premise, September. Global Hunger Index (2009). IFPRI, https://www.ifpri.org/publication/2009-glo bal-hunger-index-challenge-hunger-0

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Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs Annual Report 2010–11. https:// www.mha.gov.in/en/document/annual-report-ministry-of-home-affairs-2010-2011 Government of India (2008). “Report of the Planning Commission Expert Group on ‘Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas”, Planning Commission, New Delhi. https://tribal.nic.in/downloads/Statistics/OtherReport/Develo pmentChallengesinExtremistAffectedAreas.pdf Guha, Ramchandra (2007). “Adivasis, Naxalites and Democracy”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 42, August 11. https://www.epw.in/journal/2007/32/spe cial-articles/adivasis-naxalites-and-indian-democracy.html Harriss, John (2010). The Naxalite/Maoist movement in India: A Review of Recent Literature”, ISAS Working Paper, No. 109, July 8. Kennedy J. Jonathan and Lawrence P. King (2009). The Sociology of Insurgency in Indigenous Communities: Moral Economy, Class Analysis, Geopolitical and political Economy Explanations of “Naxalism” in Chhattisgarh, India”, Working Paper series, University of Cambridge. Kujur, Rajat (2008): “Naxal Movement in India: A Profile”, IPCS Research Paper, New Delhi. http://www.ipcs.org/issue_briefs/issue_brief_pdf/848082154 RP15-Kujur-Naxal.pdf Maharatna, Arup. (2005). Demographic Perspectives on India’s Tribes, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Marwah, V. (2009). India in Turmoil, Rupa: Delhi. Miklian, Jason and Scott Carney (2010). Fire in the Hole: How India’s economic rise turned an obscure communist revolt into a raging resource war, Foreign Policy, Sept/October. https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/08/06/fire-in-the-hole/ Mohanty, Manoranjan (1977). “Revolutionary Violence: A Study of the Maoist Movement in India,” New Delhi: Sterling Publishers. Ramachandran, Sudha (2010). ”India’s War on Maoists under Attack”. Asia Times, May 26. Roy Burman, BK (2009). “The Naxalite Movement that was not in Naxalbari”, Mainstream, No-25, June. Sahoo, Niranjan. (2019). Half a Century of India’s Maoist Insurgency: An Appraisal of State Response. ORF Ocasional Paper. https://www.orfonline.org/research/half-acentury-of-indias-maoist-insurgency-an-appraisal-of-state-response-51933/ Shah, Alpa (2006). ‘Markets of Protection: The Terrorist Maoist Movement and the State in Jharkhand, India’, Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 26, No.3. http://coa.sag epub.com/ Singh, Prakash (2010). The Naxalite Movement in India, New Delhi: Rupa. Sundar, Nandini (2007). Subalterns and sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar, 1854–2006. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER 12

Militants, Pirates, or Extremists? Frameworks for Conceptualising Left Wing Extremism in Australia Kristy Campion

Introduction “What about the left?” In the years since the deadly Christchurch attack in New Zealand, in which an Australian right wing terrorist stormed two mosques and shot ninety-one people, this has become a common question posed by the thoughtful and the provocative alike. Having previously published on left wing extremism (XLW) in Australia (Author citation), it was not a field, nor a question, with which I was unfamiliar. But the urgency with which it was asked in the aftermath of fifty-one deaths motivated by a fundamentally different threat was nonetheless surprising—as no mass casualty event has occurred in Australia in connection with the extreme left. What in some cases may have been a question of false equivalency could also have been motivated by genuine concern that this is an overlooked— and under-researched—threat to Australian security. So, what about the left, indeed? This chapter aims to address this question by exploring the contemporary landscape of the Australian XLW. It adopts a theoretical approach by establishing the foundations of the political left wing ideology through its party families and axioms. This foundation was reviewed alongside the manifestos of international left terror organisations to identify epistemic outlooks that

K. Campion (B) Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_12

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support or supplement those axioms. The most prominent axioms and epistemic outlooks were synthesised to produce a new definition to assist in the identification of XLW. This definition is as follows: Left wing extremism refers the use of coercive political violence, militancy, armed struggle, terrorism, or the threat thereof to bring about a desired political change, as motivated by an ideology advancing egalitarianism, liberty, and solidarity, through to opposing established powers, institutions, and capitalist systems.

The two key elements here are (1) clear adherence to left wing ideology and (2) positive evaluations on the use and necessity of violence which meets relevant thresholds. This definition was then applied to the contemporary Australian XLW groups to evaluate whether they actually represented XLW ideology, or if such groups were being painted with a broad brush. It was found that environmental movements in Australia do not demonstrate consistent adherence to political left ideology to qualify as explicitly left wing, while other explicitly left wing organisations failed to meet the violence threshold for extremism. One conclusion is that while the Australian extreme left is an under-researched threat; it is not necessarily overlooked. Further, there is insufficient evidence in the open domain to argue that the reviewed organisations present a violent threat to Australian security.

Methodology This study was conducted in several stages. First, a review was undertaken on the scholarly definitions of the political left, to deduce a set of core axioms through which a broader left party family could be identified. This resulted in hard and soft political lefts. Because of this, the three siblings of the hard left (being anarchism, Marxism, and socialism) were reviewed in turn. These axioms associated with these hard lefts were then reviewed against the manifestos of left wing terrorists ranging from anarchists, to the New Left, and guerrillas. This review established the epistemic outlooks which supported the core axioms and further detailed prominent themes in the discourse. The themes that could be identified in the manifestos were divided between favourable and unfavourable epistemic outlooks. Favourable positions related to themes that were supported, such as feminism, class struggle or selfcriticism, while unfavourable positions related to themes that were opposed, such as imperialism, consumerism or corporatism. Care was taken to ensure a broad note of themes, rather than specific contextual events. By way of example, this means that the specific written response to the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg by the Red Army Faction was noted under the broader theme of opposition to law enforcement. These core axioms and epistemic outlooks were analysed to highlight prominent themes, which emphasised implicit or explicit axioms. This was then synthesised with scholarly theory to inform

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a new definition of left wing extremism. This definition was then applied to contemporary organisations in the Australian context that are commonly considered to be XLW to evaluate just how closely they were related to the political left wing.

The Left Party Family The political left wing, much like the right wing, emerged from the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century. During the sitting of the Estates General in 1789, a vote was cast to decide the future powers of the king. Those who voted for the king to retain his power sat on the right side of the room—and the “right wing” gained connotations of support for hierarchy, order, authority, and privileged conceptualisations of duty. Those who sat on the “left wing” were believed to support equality, progress, liberty, and fraternity. As a result, the second estate, which comprised nobles, predominantly voted on the right in support of retaining the existing power structures and social stratification from which they derived great benefits. However, the third estate of commoners predominately voted on the left to support increased social equality, a democratic republic, and common ownership—initiatives to their benefit (Heywood 2007). Early divisions between left and right were almost indivisible from existing social stratification between rulers and the ruled. In the years that followed 1789, rapid industrialisation brought about advancements in manufacturing around the western world. This meant that a large portion of the population worked in factories for long hours on what accounted for starvation wages. This remodelled working class tended to live in new industrial towns in “the vilest conditions” where any attempt to improve their conditions, such as via protest and strikes, was “brutally suppressed” (Adams 1993, 111). It became apparent among the working class in particular that true equality was mutually exclusive with economic inequality, as exemplified by factory wages, poverty, and intergenerational wealth. Opposition to economic systems such as laissez faire capitalism, which created the environment for oppressive conditions to flourish, soon became deeply interlinked with the left party family because of its existing support for equality and common ownership. Moving into the nineteenth century, new iterations of left wing ideology soon emerged, expanding the left party family and providing greater foundations in political philosophy.

The Three Siblings The three siblings of the far-left must be briefly summarised to establish some of the family foundations. These are Marxism, anarchism and socialism. Marxism in its three main forms (classic Marxism, orthodox communism, and modern Marxism) derives primarily from the works of philosopher Karl Marx and his contemporaries. In their writings, it was argued that divisions

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between the working class and capitalist class were exploitative and the state of exploitation was buttressed by social, cultural, and regulatory institutions. These institutions empowered the capitalist class to create more products at lower costs to improve profits. This disadvantaged the worker, who was seen as a replaceable commodity, and alienated them from their work due to a lack of ownership. Conflict between the worker and capitalist was seen as inevitable as long as these conditions endured. Socialism, suggests Gilabert and O’Neill (2019), is “best defined in contrast with capitalism”. Socialists believe that capitalism creates the environment in which exploitation, alienation and domination occur, therefore preventing true equality from emerging. They have a strong emphasis on equality and believe measures that inform inequality (such as intergenerational wealth) should be neutralised to give all people equal access to resources and the means to flourish. Socialists also seek the redistribution of decision-making power so that people can participate in the decision-making that affects them. This flows on to their rejection of class and social structures which contribute to inequality and division. They support community-orientated initiatives that seek to advance solidarity and cooperation and champion individual freedom, which is construed as the freedom to achieve self-determination without interference or domination by others. This focus on the domination of others became a key focus of anarchism. While there are many forms of anarchism, it generally refers a political theory that is highly sceptical of authority and power structures, property ownership, and means of production (Fiala 2021). Individual freedom and liberty, to anarchists, are infringed upon by governments and their institutions. This is because governments are seen to act through threat and coercion, thereby dominating or modifying the will of the individual and degrading their natural freedom. For that same reason, they oppose organised religions, which are seen to compel continued submission to the state and existing power imbalances. Economic systems, moreover, sustain power imbalances and interfere with the free will of the individual. Collectivist anarchists see private property as theft as it maintains power imbalances and infringes on economic freedom, while individualist anarchists support private property but disagree with economic systems. Anarchism was became principally concerned with the organisation, distribution, and exercise of power, informed by their vision of human nature and agency. These increasingly diverse expressions of left wing ideology continued into the twentieth century. Differences in these left wing iterations arose with these ideologues, often anchored in the “revolutionary forces” from Vladimir Lenin’s revolutionary vanguard to Herbert Mercuse’s revolutionary youth. The New Left identified itself in 1968 and rejected the so-called old left while nonetheless leveraging much of its intellectual foundations. The New Left was primarily anchored in western contexts such as the United States, France, and Australia and became a broad political movement. It championed civil liberty

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and emancipation by campaigning on issues of civil and political rights, reproductive rights, sexual rights, environmental issues, and drug reform. Within this ambit, terrorist organisations emerged claiming to act under the banner of the New Left, fighting against imperialism, militarism, third worldism, and entrenched inequalities. Moving into the twenty-first century and turning towards conceptualisations of the left, it is a broad church of ideas with some common axioms that support a wide array of political positions. Heywood (2007) defined left wing ideology as “a broad ideological disposition that is characterized by sympathy for principles such as liberty, equality, fraternity and progress” and wrote: More generally, left wing political ideas reflected a distaste for capitalism, ranging from a ‘hard-left’ (communism and anarchism) desire to abolish and replace capitalism to a soft left (socialism and modern liberalism) wish to reform or ‘humanize’ the system. (Heywood 2007, 17)

From this, there emerged not a single left wing, but two: the so-called hard left and the soft left. The hard left is a vociferous enemy of capitalism as the key contributor to inequality, and it must be revolutionised. The soft left believes the capitalist system can be “socialised” to reduce inequality by production being under the control of the workers themselves rather than a capitalist class (Gilabert and O’Neill 2019). Capitalism was challenged on egalitarian grounds. Woodward, Parkin, and Summers (2010, 35), when discussing egalitarianism and social democracy, suggest that the “market economy may never be transcended, but it must be tamed”. They further suggest that division between left and right can be made on perspectives on equality. Egalitarianism has numerous meanings on its own, ranging from economic and social equality, to the equal treatment of people in social interactions (Smith et al. 2006). This is also an imprecise and culturally constructed term as Australia, for example, as a penal colony, was not egalitarian from its very inception, with free settlers, convicts, and authorities accorded different privileges. Nonetheless, this highlights a core distinction: the hard and soft left are committed to abolishing social inequalities as their central principle, even if their ultimate goals differ. This reference to egalitarianism also manifests implicitly in the work of Mclean and McMillan (2009), who suggests that support for the working class and opposition to hierarchies are defining characteristics. When defining left wing populism, García Agustín (2020) also highlighted egalitarianism by promoting equality and social justice. Perhaps seeking to end the debate, Fagerholm (2018) provided both minimum and maximum definitions on the radical left party family by synthesising 17 studies. Because of this emphasis on left wing radicalism, the core defining attribute according to Fagerholm was anti-capitalist socialism, capturing economic inequity as the primary foundation for the existing socio-political order. The intent of the radical left,

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therefore, was to challenge this resource distribution through social ownership, which would lead to true economic equality. The maximum definition included this feature but expanded further to feminism, multiculturalism, liberal ethics, anti-imperialism, anti-fascism, ecologism, and more. Fagerholm’s maximum definition highlights a key theme of this chapter concerning the confluence of ecologism and the political left. Environmental movements are commonly associated with the political left, to the extent that a senior American political commentator referred to Brenton Tarrant, a right wing terrorist, as left wing based on his environmental concerns. Environmental movements typically derive from the political philosophy called political ecologism—a body of thought that emerged in the sixties and seventies when awareness of the Earth’s overall decline in health was first identified (as separate but supplementary to the field of study). The Gaia Hypothesis was one such argument, positing that the Earth consisted of a complex, integrated, and self-regulating biosphere. Pamphlets such as Blueprint for Survival (Goldsmith et al. 1972) further argued that human overpopulation, destructive practices, and resource consumption were killing the Earth. Key political ecology positions tend to champion environmental concerns while opposing forces destructive towards the environment. In some cases, political ecology can merge with political left wing positions, producing “green” political parties. These parties tend to support ecological sustainable policy positions, campaign on environmental issues and conservation challenges, and support left party family axioms of equality, liberty, and fraternity. However, at its core, political ecologism is neither left nor right—it can be appropriated by both—and can include “left wing hippies” and guntoting ecofascists. As stated by Woodward, Parkin, and Summers (2010, 38) in the Australian context, “neither feminism nor environmentalism in their generic form can be readily located on the standard Left–Right political spectrum”. And yet this estuary of thought, where the sea of the political left meets the river of political ecologism, may well be key to understanding the contemporary Australian XLW.

The Odd Cousins The foundations of the political left alone, however, cannot inform extremism definitions. More clarity must be sought from the odd cousins of the three hard left siblings: the cousins who conducted terrorism campaigns under the various banners of the political left. This clarity was found in the manifestos of historical terrorists associated with anarchism, the new left in the west, and the new left in Latin America. To review the overarching epistemic outlooks of such actors, and confirm their orientation to the political left, only manifestos from terrorist organisations or individuals were included. For the anarchists, the manifestos of Nikolai Morozov (The Terrorist Struggle), Pyotr Kroptokin (Spirit of Revolt ), and G Tarnovski (Terrorism and Routine) were reviewed. For the New Left, the Red Army Factions Urban Guerrilla Concepts

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and associated post-1968 writings were reviewed, as was Prairie Fire by the Weather Underground organisation. The final set of manifestos was from Latin American individuals (from whom the New Left claimed inspiration), such as Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara and the Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla by Carlos Marighella. From these, favourable and unfavourable epistemic positions were identified. Across the manifestos, favourable positions were identified associated with feminism, reproductive rights, multiculturalism, self-criticism, and the agrarian reform, spanning over fifteen different major themes. However, the most prominent radical themes were supporting: 1. the use of violence to achieve goals, 2. the working class or commoners, 3. liberation and self-determination, especially concerning the Third World, and 4. resource and wealth distribution. Broadly grouped, the XLW manifestos supported political freedoms, ranging from self-determination to solidarity to resource redistribution. The most prominent theme, however, was support for violence, highlighting the extremist element through the positive endorsement of violence. While the environment was an identified theme, it was not a popular theme across the select manifestos, which was surprising as the New Left manifestos were produced during the rise of political ecologism. The prominence of the major themes (excluding the use of violence) confirms the orientation towards the political left, by reinforcing and/or converging with left wing axioms in the hard left fringe. Across the manifestos, unfavourable positions were identified associated with industrialism, poverty, fascism, the media, and existing democratic processes, spanning over thirty different major themes and comprising the greater bulk of the discourse. The most prominent themes opposed in the XLW manifestos were: 1. capitalism and capitalist classes, 2. government and politicians, 3. corporations and businesses, 4. law enforcement inclusive of “secret police”, and 5. the military, including NATO, war and weapons. Broadly grouped, the XLW manifestos opposed economic and financial systems, existing power structures and institutions, and the executors of their will. Less popular but also an important theme was opposition to imperialism generally and American imperialism specifically. Unexpectedly, themes

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opposing fascism and universities as finishing schools for elites appeared irregularly, perhaps an outcome of the manifesto selection. The major themes identified above, however, are confluent with the positions already held in the political left and also reaffirm the continuity of mainstream left wing axioms in the hard left by rejecting or disavowing obstacles to their future alternative. The final section was on explicit or implicit axioms of the political left, such as equality, egalitarianism, liberty, fraternity, unity, cooperation, and social justice. The themes of the terrorist publications correlated with these axioms, confirming their position on the political left. It would appear that the core distinction between the mainstream left, the three siblings, and the odd cousins was the positive evaluation of violence. Differences abound in how political left wing goals can and should be achieved. What separates the odd cousins—the historic left wing terrorists—from the rest is their positive evaluation of violence. According to the selected manifestos, violence—often coached as armed struggle, militancy, or even clearly identified as terrorism— was the only possible solution to address the flaws of society and make way for true human actualisation.

Defining Left Wing Extremism Violence is key to defining extremism of any stripe, and creating a division between those who abide by the rules of the game, and those who do not. That being said, violence does not always appear in definitions on XLW. For example, Balleck (2018, XX) described XLW as “revolutionary” and “forward looking”. This indicates alignment with the general progressivism associated with the political left and was based on the United States XLW. While simplicity is important, this does not assist with identification of XLW groups, using an ideological minimum. A more substantive definition comes from Jungkunz (2019, 102): Ideologically, LWE encompasses two broad streams: Marxism, which stresses the importance of state authority in the process from socialism to communism, and anarchism, which fundamentally opposes the idea of the state and political authority per se. Even though both do not necessarily go against the minimal conditions of modern democracy, it is the dogmatic perception of such ideas as absolute truths that characterise them as anti-pluralist and therefore extremist. Left-wing extremism often manifests itself in the rejection of capitalism, globalisation, militarism and imperialism, and endorses anti-Americanism, antifascism, anti-racism but also anti-Zionism, autonomism and the opposition to repressive law enforcement agencies and practices.

Such a definition aligns more closely with the left party family in terms of ideological content but does not specify the activities serious enough to meet the threshold for terrorism definitions.

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To identify such a threshold, Malkki (2010) suggests that XLW groups such as the SLA comprised two beliefs: the belief that the revolution would not catalyse without armed struggle and the belief that armed struggle would bring new life to the revolution. Violence, then, as both an activity and an end in itself, is essential to this belief. Koch (2018) relates in his research that the International Revolutionary People’s Guerrilla Forces (IRPGF) selfdefine as a “militant armed self-organized and horizontal collective working to defend social revolutions around the world, to directly confront capital and the state, and advance the cause of anarchism” while they routinely train with weapons. Campion (2020) used a similar conceptualisation, describing the extreme left as transcending “normal protest activity and protest driven violence to legitimise the use of violent tactics to bring about the desired political change”. Such insights are useful for triangulating the essence of XLW but nonetheless frame extranormal violence from the left as “armed struggle”, which has connotations with irregular and protracted rebel activity, instead of as a terrorist threat. This becomes the crux of the issue. Denoting an organisation or system of beliefs as extremist or terrorist brings with it a specific set of associations entirely separate from the folk hero or the people’s guerrilla. To some, extremism is framed broadly as beliefs that exist on the fringe of the political centre, while to others, it is relational and embedded in political and cultural contexts (Guiora 2014). It may be worth considering notions of right wing extremism to their political opposites in this case, as Bjorgo and Ravndal (2019) note that extremists reject democratic practices in favour of illegal violence against ideological enemies. While an XLW organisation may support, for example, social democracy, it is nonetheless true that the use of violence by such an organisation marks a departure from democratically acceptable mechanisms for bringing about change. The essentiality of violence must therefore be brought to the fore. This speaks directly to terrorism thresholds. Terrorism, as suggested by Schmid (2012), emphasises the importance of lethal violence and the threat thereof, spanning armed assaults, bombings, kidnappings, hijackings, murder, and more. This clearly creates an expectation of the threshold for violence required to constitute terrorism while nonetheless separating it from and protecting activism. The axiomatic and epistemic beliefs noted earlier can be synthesised with Heywood’s (2007) ideological contour. The first contour is an explanation of the current order. This is where the unfavourable themes emerged, seeking to explain how and why society is flawed and preventing human actualisation. The second contour is a desired alternative order. This is where the favourable themes emerged, supporting a specific or general reform to social conditions and articulating an improved future. The third contour is a theory for political change. This is where the positive evaluations of violence become significant.

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This is because violence may well be the key to distinguishing between farleft radicalism and left wing extremism. The following table broadly crosspollinates Heywood’s framework with the axiomatic and epistemic beliefs that demonstrate ideological contours. Ideological contours

XLW expressions of said contour

Explanation of current order

The current order is fundamentally flawed due to inequality, which results from economic and financial systems, existing power structures and institutions, and the executors of their will. The conditions created by these systems prevent the attainment of equality and social justice and will continue to do so Desired alternative The desired future order is one in which egalitarianism is the primary order organising principle, with broad political freedoms, ranging from self-determination and liberty to social justice and solidarity Theory for political The current system must be changed—and the theories for political change change vary. They range from: 1. mainstream, such as voting and engaging with democratic processes; to 2. radicalism, which involves expressive and demonstrative acts that include civil disobedience and protest; to 3. extremism and terrorism, in which violence is necessary and mandated to achieve the new order

To integrate this research, a minimum definition of left wing extremism could be the use of lethal and coercive political violence, terrorism, or the threat thereof to bring about a desired political change, as motivated by left wing ideology. While this illuminates the violent precondition, it fails to establish the key features of the political left which would make such a definition useful for identifying and classifying. A more useful definition could be: Left wing extremism refers the use of coercive political violence, militancy, armed struggle, terrorism, or the threat thereof to bring about a desired political change, as motivated by an ideology advancing egalitarianism, liberty, and solidarity, through to opposing established powers, institutions, and systems.

This allows for the implicit association with political left axioms of egalitarianism, and political freedoms that relate to liberty, solidarity, and social justice, as manifested in the epistemic themes. It allows for ideological flexibility reflective of those aforementioned positions with respect to the specific left wing utopia. This also allows for support for egalitarian measures like resource distribution, common ownership, and property reform; for advances in liberty relating to self-determination, the third world, and reforms geared towards inclusive progress and actualisation; through to solidary with the working class, the oppressed, and the powerless. It also identifies key epistemic opposition to systems and structures, spanning economic, financial and political systems, and associated hierarchies. While it might seem restrictive,

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the terms are deliberately broad in that law enforcement and the military can be seen as social institutions, while existing powers can refer to government, politicians, powerful capitalists, and so on; systems can relate to national or international orders, imperialism, colonialism, and a diverse array of regulatory and social controls. While the applicability of this definition may not be appropriate beyond the western democratic context, it may still be useful in interrogating contemporary Australian XLW.

The Australian Context In contemporary times, there has been much discussion in Australia of an extreme left but little clarity. A recent policy brief comparing extreme left and extreme right threats found that “the empirical evidence in our research does not suggest that far-left online activity promotes violence as a core strategy” (Davey et al. 2022, 5), which indicates much of the activity has not met thresholds for extremism. Beyond this, much of the discourse is highly politicised. In one example, a right wing senator told a Senate estimates hearing that many right wing extremists “have indicated their politics are not actually rightwing, they are left wing” (Knaus 2020). In another example, a former Minister for Home Affairs declared that “leftwing lunatics” had to be dealt with following a public address by the Director General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) (Murphy and Remeikis 2020). When reporters queried if the minister meant Islamist groups, he replied, “Yes, I do and anybody in between”. Further questions were described as “semantic”. As a matter of national security, this area of inquiry is deserving of the greatest level of precision. The Sea Shepherd, Extinction Rebellion Australia, Fireproof Australia, ANTIFA, and the Black Flags will be reviewed in turn.

Sea Shepherd The first organisation up for consideration as a manifestation of XLW is the Sea Shepherd. The Sea Shepherd has long been subject to debate, ranging from descriptions of environmental activism, protest, and disobedience to terrorism and political violence. Within the ambit of the latter, the Sea Shepherd is often discussed within the ambit of environmentalism, supposedly aligned with left wing politics. The Sea Shepherd was established in 1977 by Paul Watson, a Canadian environmental activist using a converted British trawler (Shepherd 2022). It appears first to have made news in Australia in 1979, when eight members were arrested for scuffling with authorities and spraying dye on newborn harp seals to thwart attempts to hunt the seal pups for their white fur (AAP-AP 1979). It made headlines a few months later, in July, when the Sea Shepherd rammed a Portuguese whaling ship, Sierra. Watson told the press it was to stop the killing of whales and further detailed:

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...we hit at about 12 knots just behind the bows...we ripped her open for about two metres...exposing refrigerated whale meat through the cargo space. (AAPReuters 1979)

Watson scuttled his trawler after this event, stating “just like in wartime, you don’t leave that amount of money in the hands of the enemy” (AAP-Reuter 1980). A refit of the Sierra was then bombed by unknown individuals who claimed they did it for the Sea Shepherd (Nagtzaam and Lentini 2007). A year later, Sea Shepherd was incorporated in Oregon as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Six Australians were among those who, in 1981, infringed on Soviet Arctic territory to photograph illegal whaling (AAP 1981). It soon expanded to establish a presence in twenty countries, including Australia. The Sea Shepherd has made its ideological position clear via its website, which demonstrates a singular axiom for protecting ocean ecosystems. Campaigns have focused on protecting whales, dolphins, birds, and so on from unsustainable, illegal, exploitative, or destructive practices. The website focused on ecological concerns and championing the environmental cause, while the identified axioms of the political left (egalitarianism, liberty, equality) did not manifest, nor did the other epistemic outlooks prominent among the XLW. Whatever the individual beliefs and politics of members, the organisation’s front-facing materials do not indicate anchorage in political left axioms. Instead, it appears demonstrably focused on concerns relevant to political ecologism. The Sea Shepherd website states it has used “innovative direct action tactics to defend, conserve and protect the delicately-balanced biodiversity of our seas and enforce international conservation laws” (Shepherd 2022). Its activities demonstrate endogenous constraints due to this ideology, ranging from hauling illegal fishing gear, preventing poaching, fouling propellers, ramming, sinking, or pursuing other vessels. Later in 2007, it was contested that the Sea Shepherd crew threw smoke bombs at a Japanese whaling ship and interfered with whale blood drainage from flensing decks. In light of these activities, Nagtzaam and Lentini (2007, 112) suggested that the “Sea Shepherd engages in what could be considered to be piracy, vigilantism, terrorism, as well as (self-ascriptively) enforcing environmental law”. The Sea Shepherd activities do not meet extremism thresholds through violence—either through stated support for, or positive evaluations of, violence; or the conduct of activities likely to cause or threaten lethal violence. The organisation’s actions, while in some cases unlawful, do not meet the violence thresholds. Under the definition provided here, the Sea Shepherd is not an XLW organisation but remains an ecologically-focused activist organisation.

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Extinction Rebellion The second organisation to consider in association with the XLW definition is Extinction Rebellion Australia (XR). Extinction Rebellion emerged in the United Kingdom in conjunction with Rising Up; an activist network with left wing ideology demonstrated by its commitment to abolishing inequalities and hierarchies and the expansion of safe spaces, tolerance, and inclusivity (RU 2022). Unlike Rising Up, XR decided it needed to reach beyond the “leftist echo chamber” to leverage concerns about social justice and equality towards the climate emergency (Taylor 2020). Several months after establishment, on 31 October 2018 the British XR announced its Declaration of Rebellion against the UK government in London’s Parliament Square (Global 2022). Its primary focus was the climate emergency and the failure of governments to exercise the appropriate duty of care to safeguard ecosystems for future generations. It quickly became a global network, with an Extinction Rebellion Australia chapter making itself known in an April 2019 sit-in of South Australia’s Lower House of Parliament. Since then, Extinction Rebellion Australia (XR) has launched its own website emphasising the positions of its global network. It states that its core strategy is mass disruption in urban centres “through nonviolent civil disobedience” and elsewhere reiterates it is a non-violent network. Its key ideological focus is the environment: We are in a climate emergency. Life on Earth is in crisis. Our climate is changing faster than scientists predicted and the stakes are high. Biodiversity loss. Crop failure. Social and ecological collapse. Mass extinction. We are running out of time, and our Government has failed to act. We have a moral duty to rebel— whatever our politics. (XR 2022)

XR seeks to transcend the left–right divide and unite people from diverse backgrounds in the service of the climate emergency. The Canberra chapter’s website also expressly states: “we do not align with any political party but rather use non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to persuade governments to act justly on the climate and ecological emergency” (XRACT 2022). While this might be stated, it is nonetheless relevant that of its ten core principles, one relates to a political left wing axiom, where the group seeks to break “hierarchies of power for more equitable participation” (XR 2022). While left wing axioms may underlie its activities, the epistemic outlooks point towards an ecological, rather than political left, focus. This is further supported by an open letter undersigned by over 250 Australian academics, who reemphasised the ecological focus and supported non-violent civil disobedience and disruption (Malins et al. 2019). XR has also engaged in campaigns of civil disobedience. In Queensland, XR members have disrupted traffic in the Brisbane CBD and chained themselves to various locations, including mining sites. There were allegations that the

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Queensland Government fabricated claims that the protesters were locking themselves to structures using booby-trapped devises of glass and gas, citing a photo from January 2018—before the emergence of Extinction Rebellion— as evidence (Smee 2019). No charges were laid in relation to such offences. Also in Queensland, XR members blocked traffic in the CBD of Brisbane, and one woman suspended herself off a bridge in 2020. In the Australian Capital Territory, XR set a pram on fire in front of Federal Parliament House, set off flares, graffitied “duty of care” on pillars, superglued themselves to the forecourt, and vandalised the Prime Minister’s Lodge in August 2021 (Gould 2021). This activity fails to demonstrate support or positive evaluations for violence and remains firmly within the ambit of civil disobedience. As a result, the XR as it currently stands cannot be considered XLW.

Fireproof Australia In 2019–2020, Australia experienced a catastrophic bushfire season that burned 24 million hectares, killed 33 people directly and another 450 indirectly from smoke inhalation, and left around 18,000 people displaced (Cook et al. 2021). Only one in ten families displaced by the Black Summer fires have had their homes rebuilt, with many still living in caravans or with inadequate access to water and sanitation facilities (Pender 2021). Within this context, former members of XR splintered to form their own organisation called Fireproof Australia—a new green shoot in Australia’s climate activism ecosystem. Fireproof has more short-term goals, including acquiring an air-tanker fleet to fight bushfires, smoke-proofing schools, and other vulnerable locations, and taking immediate action to rehome the survivors of recent flood and fire events. Fireproof members commit themselves to civil disobedience measures and further state: We are a politically unaffiliated group of ordinary citizens taking action to force our government to respond urgently to the climate crisis. We have been researching successful techniques which have been used in the past by common people to bring about political change. We refuse to stand by whilst our nation is destroyed and our people abandoned. (Australia Fireproof 2022)

Much like XR, Fireproof explicitly rejects anchorage in either the political left or right. Even though it may be motivated by political left axioms such as community solidarity; it is not accompanied by epistemic outlooks clearly associated with the political left. Much like XR and Sea Shepherd, the primary motivations of FA are principally ecologically-grounded. While this splinter has been described as “radical”, the tactics executed so far mirror that of XR. On 13 April 2022, a truck stopped on Sydney Harbour Bridge during the morning rush. Activists superglued themselves to the bitumen, set off a flare, and waved flags emblazoned with Fireproof Australia. The Sunday before, another activist was charged after invading a

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football field during a game and lighting a flare. Much like XR and the Sea Shepherd, Fireproof has not yet shown support for violence in connection with its goals, but it has described its campaign as one of “civil resistance proportional to the existential threat we face” (Australia Fireproof 2022). While this could be interpreted a number of ways depending on perceptions of proporitionality, the organisations current “Blue Lights” policy of making way for ambulances and firetrucks indicates they do not wish other people to come to harm through their actions. While organisational views of proportionality are subject to change, the organisation has not reached violence thresholds required to constitute extremism, in line with existing environmental activist organisations.

Antifa Turning away from the environmental organisations conflated with the political left wing, we must review contemporary manifestations of the political left, starting with the ANTIFA movement. Meaning “Anti-fascist”, ANTIFA traces its origins back to resistance to fascist regimes during the rise of Nazi Germany, often in association with Antifaschistische Aktion, an organisation related to the German communist faction. It has inconsistently re-emerged to confront fascism, including in the United States around 2016 in the ambit of rising white nationalism and the Charlottesville rally (Lafree 2018). It gained further prominence in Germany in 2017, when the anti-fascist “Black Bloc” and associates took aim at the G20 as a representation of economic fascism and looted stores, burned cars, and committed vandalism in Hamburg (Koch 2018). It is a transnational movement, being both disaggregated and leaderless, containing a heterogeneous array of politically motivated elements seemingly from the left party family, but united in its self-designation and its opposition to fascism. It has been the subject of numerous academic studies but with little Australian focus (Koch 2018, Copsey 2018, Copsey and Merrill 2020, Speckhard and Ellenberg 2020). In Australia, ANTIFA hit the headlines in December 2015, when blackmasked individuals counter-protested the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Cronulla Riots, which were a multiphase confrontation between white nationalists and Australians of Middle Eastern appearance. Since then, activities have largely involved confrontation politics, such as counter-protesting at far right rallies, confronting white nationalists, and civil disturbances at key events. In one incident, glitter and a sticky substance were thrown at a conservative public figure during a 2017 book launch. This interaction is not entirely oneway: in 2020, supporters of Australian ANTIFA Facebook pages were verbally abused by the far right Proud Boys at their place of work. While this is not a comprehensive review of the activities of Australian ANTIFA designates, it nonetheless establishes the spectrum of their activities in line with transnational counterparts.

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The wider ANTIFA movement is not solely oppositional, however, with Arlow (2019) suggesting that the presence of fascism is entirely required for it to manifest. This is because it is the “site of left convergence”, which means that its aim to continue to deny political space to fascists is enduring. Moreover, Koch (2018) noted that the anarchist core can seek to inspire wider resistance and hierarchy reform. That being said, ANTIFA—as a selfdesignation crossing numerous subcultures and milieus around the world—has no central doctrine or shared ideology (Copsey and Merrill 2020). The movement is united on a single axiom: opposition to fascism. According to the key points of unity described in the Torch Network, which is a network linking select ANTIFA outfits, its aims are to disrupt fascism, oppose all forms of oppression, support each other, not rely on law enforcement of the judiciary, and hold themselves personally accountable. A study by Davey et al. (2022) on Australian anti-fascism specifically notes that it is framed as the “good fight”, claiming its legitimacy from historical inaction during the rise of Nazi Germany and seeking to mainstream its struggle. This may have its foundations in political left axioms, but lacks specific epistemic outlooks to align it clearly with a specific left faction. ANTIFA, as a diverse movement, contains individuals and groups pursuing divergent strategies for political change, such as liberal activism, legislative approaches, or militancy and violence. Contemporary anti-fascists are divided on militancy, with some in favour of violent street fights with fascists, while others maintain their role is to protect and escort the targets of fascist violence (Bray 2017). Noting the overlap between militant anarchists and the punk scene, Koch (2018) suggests that non-violent action failed to entirely satisfy subcultural elements with ANTIFA and select outfits began to accept the use of violence to achieve hard left egalitarian goals. It has also been argued within ANTIFA outfits that violence is counter-productive and ineffective (Arlow 2019). Others suggest that violence should be undertaken purely in self-defence, which is not commensurate with the violence thresholds for extremism and terrorism (Lafree 2018). Perspectives on this vary, as Copsey and Merrill (2020) argue that the ANTIFA slogan “by any means necessary” could hypothetically justify more severe violence in the future. It is suggested here that based on current ANTIFA activity in Australia; the movement does not meet the threshold for violence. However, its positive evaluation of the use of violence generally to confront fascism could be subject to more lethal interpretations by self-designated individuals in the future.

Outlook While the XLW in Australia, with reference to public ASIO Threat Assessments (Burgess 2022), does not appear to pose an immediate threat in its current state, it is necessary to consider what factors may alter the threat landscape in future. Ideologically motivated extremism is prone to idiosyncratization, reinterpretation, and re-imaginings. Movements, groups, and individuals cannot

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be expected to maintain static belief systems, especially when their ideology is routed in their ever-changing contemporary contexts (Campion et al. 2021). Two considerations may be potential impacts on the current state of play: ideological convergence and cumulative extremism. Ideological convergence is a term offered by Hoffman and Ware (2020) to explain the blending of extremist ideologies, sometimes referred to as “salad bar ideologies”. (A similar term was proposed by Koch in 2021, being Fused Extremism). In the case of ideological convergence, the adoption of new ideological positions, attributes, or concerns can be identified within or between extremist movements or groups. Hoffman and Ware (2020) note in particular “the far-left and the far-right coming together to protest police violence and advance militant anti-government positions” is one example of convergence between movements. Ecofascism is an example of convergence within a movement, uniting fascism and environmentalism. Ideological convergence highlights the flexibility and adaptivity that permeates ideological systems— whether left or right—to incorporate new (and seemingly contradictory) positions. An ideological convergence of Australian XLW beliefs with another extremist ideology is likely to alter the threat landscape and our understanding of its nature. The challenges posed by ideological convergence are manifold: it can delay or obstruct the identification of a particular threat, cause community confusion, and complicate counteraction to say the least. Cumulative extremism is another potentiality. Scholars have long debated cumulative extremism since it was first proposed by Eatwell (2006). It promotes the idea that differing extremist movements can develop a pattern of animosity, and fuel each other via overt or covert actions. In one example, Eatwell points to the deliberate actions of an anti-fascist cell in the United Kingdom which fuelled tension between the Muslim community, the extreme right, and police (Eatwell 2006, 213). In other cases, the interaction is not one of antagonism but of admiration, such as neo-Nazi groups praising jihadists. In any event, a level of antagonism does exist in Australia between the XLW and the extreme right (XRW). For example, an anti-fascist organisation called Campaign Against Racism & Fascism (CARF) planned a rally outside of Legacy Gym, a neo-Nazi location frequented by the National Socialist Network (SITE 2023). The cycle of protest and counter-protest between factions is not uncommon, nor are the disputes which tend to follow about how many attended for either side. Cumulative extremism, and the energisation of animosity between differing factions, also has the potentiality of altering the outlook for the Australian threat landscape.

Conclusion Australian XLW is an under-researched space in terrorism studies, but it could not be argued that the threat is entirely overlooked. While misunderstandings are rife in public discourse, this study has aimed to elucidate the core axioms of the political left and the congruent epistemic positions to assist in future

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identification. This yielded a new minimum definition of XLW, as describing the use of coercive political violence, militancy, armed struggle, terrorism, or the threat thereof to bring about a desired political change, as motivated by left wing ideology advancing egalitarianism, liberty, and solidarity, through to opposing established powers, institutions, and systems. It is established here that prominent Australian organisations in the open domain, that are often considered XLW, are in most cases not left, and not yet extreme. While confusion between green politics and the black bloc is likely to continue, it is important to strive for clarity and precision in national security discourse. This ranges from ideological classifications to forms of action. Thus far, the line dividing civil disobedience from extremist violence and terrorism has not been crossed. Positive evaluations on violence were both explicit and intrinsic to historic left wing terrorism and may therefore provide the skeleton key to identifying and evaluating left wing threats in contemporary Australia.

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CHAPTER 13

Left-Wing Revolutionary Violence in Africa John LeJeune

Introduction: Left-Wing Extremism in the African Context Following Uwe Backes (2007, 249, 250), we understand “extremism” to encompass political support of: (a) “‘monism’ and ‘monocracy’ in the sense of…a bundled claim to power which…eliminates any competition;” (b) an anti-pluralist (or “palace type”) orientation in which “entitlement to have one’s say and discussion are undesirable;” and (c) “an exclusive demand for truth-, interpretation and organization which pleads ‘higher insights,’ ‘incontestable authorities’…[and] immunizes itself towards criticism.” As such, “Extremist ideologies unpack a bipolar, Manichean world view which…justifies a clear friend-foe differentiation.” Within this broader framework, we understand “left-wing extremism” (LWE) to encompass extremist views against capitalism, globalization, militarism, imperialism, racism, and other forms of oppression (Jungkunz 2019, 102), including class-based oppression exercised by the state. Traditionally, LWE is further understood to be split into Marxist and anarchist camps. The former “stresses the importance of state authority in the process from socialism to communism,” while the latter “fundamentally opposes the idea of the state and political authority per se” (Jungkunz 2019, 102). A separate question concerns the means that extremists are willing to use to achieve their goals. As Backes (2007, 257) writes of such groups, “Their grandiose aims, seen as sacrosanct, allow for the use of violence and, J. LeJeune (B) Georgia Southwestern State University, Americus, GA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_13

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in the extreme case, even mass murder as legitimate;” but “Nevertheless, it would be inappropriate to see the use of violence or illegal methods as defining characteristics[.]” This is because, for ambitious extremist groups, the question of violence might be “answered differently from the perspective of different strategic considerations,” even where a willingness to use radical and destabilizing violence remains steadfast. This essay examines left-wing extremism and its relation to left-wing violence in the context of anticolonial Africa in the mid-to-late twentieth century. While no single model can describe or explain African decolonization in the decades after World War II, violence was often (but not always) at the epicenter of anticolonial movements. In some cases, like the liberation of the British Gold Coast in 1957, or of French West Africa between 1958 and 1960, the final steps to independence were relatively nonviolent (Nkrumah 1971; Chafer 2017). But elsewhere, a core legacy of Africa’s decolonization was the bloodshed of liberation struggle, where extremist political groups confronted and employed violence strategically to oust colonial powers and build new nations. In the process, the staggered liberation of African nations saw an outpouring of theoretical innovation to explain, legitimate, and coordinate the use of revolutionary violence. As this essay highlights, in colonial Africa, revolutionary thought and praxis were deeply intertwined. Political leaders like Kwame Nkrumah (British Gold Coast) and Amílcar Cabral (Portuguese Guinea), and revolutionary cadres like Frantz Fanon (French Algeria), developed novel political theories while waging left-wing, socialist anticolonial struggle. And while diverse contexts and personalities produced varying approaches to organized revolt, producing a rich multiplicity of variants on what we have called “left-wing extremism,” a common set of problems also confronted and shaped anticolonial liberation movements throughout the continent. To contextualize the cases that follow, here we highlight these common problems. Not least among them was the moral-political problem of violence itself. If colonial violence had entrenched foreign domination, then to what extent was revolutionary violence both necessary, and legitimate, to alter that situation? When adopted, how should violent action be organized, and with what political strategy? Who or what would constitute legitimate targets, and what were the ethical limits, and long-term implications, of sabotage, war, and terror tactics for a post-colonial political order? The debate over violent versus nonviolent struggle was a live one among Africa’s statesmen, and by the first All-African People’s Conference in 1958, a split among Africa’s most prominent leaders was evident (Ahlman 2010). A second problem confronting anticolonial rebels was cultural. Even before World War II, anticolonial writers like Martinican poet Aimé Césaire and Senegal’s Léopold Senghor coined the term “Negritude” to describe what Senghor called “the sum of the cultural values of the black world” (Senghor 1970, 180) which had been denied, destroyed, and degraded by colonial powers, and whose rehabilitation would be essential components of post-colonial freedom.

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“I am talking about societies drained of their essence,” wrote Césaire, “cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out” (Césaire 2000, 43). That colonialism was racial domination was obvious; but the problem facing revolutionary leaders was how to elevate African cultural dignity without essentializing or unduly constraining African culture itself. From this perspective, at least two diametrically opposed concerns emerged (See esp. Rabaka 2009, 111–163). The first was associated with “Senghorian Negritude,” a romantic and “nostalgic Negritude” that sought a restoration of pre-colonial African values, but in the process risked reviving stereotypes that “often mirror the very values European colonizers and white enslavers projected onto Africa and Africans,” including “Eurocentric…projections of primitivism” (Rabaka 2009, 113, 137, 159). On the other hand, to reject the centrality of black cultural values within anticolonial revolution was to misunderstand the stakes of colonial liberation. “It is when negritude renounces itself that it finds itself,” wrote Sartre controversially, “[I]t is when it accepts losing that it has won,” for “the colored man…is walking on this ridge between past particularism–which he has just climbed–and future universalism, which will be the twilight of his negritude” (Sartre 1965, 51; Rabaka 2009, 117). But Sartre’s thesis was problematic because colonialism imposed not just political domination, but psychological trauma via cultural domination and annihilation. Under these circumstances, assimilation would not do, and African peoples would have to forge a cultural path that recognized their own particularity. Césaire influentially sought a middle path between communist universalism and leaden traditionalism. “I criticized the Communists for forgetting our Negro characteristics,” he said contra Sartre. “I maintained that the political question could not do away with our condition as Negroes…that the emancipation of the Negro consisted of more than just political emancipation. […] Our struggle was a struggle against alienation” (Césaire 2000, 85–86, 89). But while “I systematically defend our old Negro civilizations…the problem is not to make a utopian and sterile attempt to repeat the past, but to go beyond…It is a new society that we must create, a society rich with all the productive power of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of olden days.” For the colonized, this would come only “from their liberating struggle, from their concrete fight for life, freedom, and culture” (Césaire 2000, 51–2, 56–57). The question, then, was how their liberation struggle would do this. To answer that question, the vanguard of Africa’s anticolonial leaders typically stood somewhere on the Marxist or socialist left. Marxism was and remains the most influential political philosophy for recognizing and resisting the brutal exploitation of the dispossessed, and it was Lenin, the prototypical (and prototypically violent) Marxist revolutionary, who famously called imperialism the “highest stage of capitalism.” But as noted above, the anticolonialist’s embrace of Marxism was complicated by the centrality of class, and absence

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of race consciousness, in Marxist theory and among European Communists. Rabaka (2009, 116) summarizes the issue bluntly–while “non-white radicals are usually initially attracted to Marxism because of its…critical theoretical preoccupation with exploitation, alienation, oppression, and domination; and, its emphasis on social transformation and the promise of liberation,” when they “realize that when white Marxists speak of ‘exploitation’ or ‘oppression’ rarely is racism critically considered, they immediately find Marxism to be a false doctrine[.]” Notwithstanding, Africa’s revolutionary leaders often retained a Marxist-socialist orientation, for Marxism provided the most robust and actionable vocabulary for analyzing and attacking the colonial situation, whether via the language of class conflict, its critique of capitalism and socialist economic orientation, or via the Marxist-Leninist model of party organization and revolutionary tactics. Across the continent, anticolonial resistance reflected both an appropriation and modification of Marxism. Colonialism brought additional challenges to Africa’s revolutionaries. These included the arbitrariness of colonial borders, which encouraged ethnic regionalism, and the colonial use of tribal divide-and-conquer tactics, which exacerbated ethnic rifts. Under these circumstances, how to unify nations against imperialism, including establishing a singular “national consciousness,” was not straightforward. Moreover, colonialism produced woefully distorted colonial economies, structured to cater to the market and resource needs of the metropole, rather than the economic and manufacturing potential of the periphery. Political independence was distinct from economic prosperity, and absent comprehensive economic planning, post-colonial states risked remaining underdeveloped and under the thumb of “neocolonial” domination through finance and capital. The leaders of Africa’s anticolonial movements thus faced a series of complex and interrelated problems, including: (a) winning the anti-imperial war; (b) nation-building among ethnically diverse populations; and (c) supporting economic development consistent with the humanistic and socialist ideals of the revolutionary movement. In tackling these problems, ideology was critical for giving direction, purpose, and coherence to the movement, while violence was “not simply…an option thrust upon Africans by circumstances created by Europeans,” but “an issue and strategy, which Africans cautiously and thoughtfully deliberated as they began to imagine Africa’s place in the burgeoning post-colonial world” (Ahlman 2010, 68). By the mid-to-late 1960s, the theory and reality of anticolonial revolt had swung in the direction of violence, and below we examine three indicative left-wing anticolonial movements.

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Kwame Nkrumah and the Gold Coast: From Positive Action to Continental Violence C. L. R. James called the liberation of the British Gold Coast, spearheaded by Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party (CPP), “one of the most significant revolutions of the [twentieth] century” (James 2022, 5), for it exploded the racist myth of African political immaturity used to justify colonialism. The Gold Coast achieved independence via an organized mass movement that adhered to nonviolence. Nkrumah called this strategy “Positive Action,” “the adoption of all legitimate and constitutional means by which we could attack the forces of imperialism in the country,” including “legitimate political agitation, newspaper and educational campaigns and, as a last resort, the constitutional application of strikes, boycotts, and non-cooperation based on the principle of absolute non-violence” (Nkrumah 1971, 111–112). Anticolonial revolt, argued Nkrumah, proceeded in two phases. In phase one, national liberation is pursued via a combination of “‘positive action’” (see above) and “‘tactical action,’” during which “the movement must make its ideology clear and convincing” (Nkrumah 1971, x). Linking “positive” and “tactical” action was a quasi-Leninist theory of organization. Mass movements “cannot act with purpose,” writes Nkrumah, “unless they are led and guided by a vanguard political party” (Nkrumah 1971, ix), for “The history of colonial liberation movements shows that the first essential thing is ORGANIZATION. Some may say ‘unity’, but unity presupposes organization… to unify the country” (Nkrumah 1973, 80–81). In this vein, before founding the CPP, Nkrumah started the Accra Evening News, which “became the vanguard of the movement and its chief propagandist, agitator, mobiliser and political educationist” (Nkrumah 1971, 93–94). After national liberation, “a greater task comes into view,” namely phase two, the establishment of “economic independence that should follow and maintain political independence,” i.e., “a socialistic society,” or a “system based on social justice and a democratic constitution” (Nkrumah 1971, x). In 1949, Nkrumah split from the anticolonial but bourgeois United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) to form a more militant and overtly socialist party, the CPP. This “was to be a mass-based, disciplined party pursuing policies of scientific socialism.” It would practice “democratic centralism” (“decisions freely arrived at, and loyally executed”), and its “immediate task was to obtain ‘Self-Government NOW’ ” (Nkrumah 1973, 57). And as summarized in the 1949 pamphlet What I Mean by Positive Action, the CPP would adopt Positive Action to pursue its political objectives (Nkrumah 1973, 85, 91–95). The ensuing steps to Ghana’s independence can be briefly summarized. In January 1950, prompted by dissatisfaction with constitutional reforms, the CPP successfully called for Positive Action boycotts and a general strike throughout the Gold Coast. Nkrumah and associates were arrested, but the CPP dominated the ensuing Legislative Assembly elections, giving the CPP a claim to democratic legitimacy that it would not relinquish. Subsequently,

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Nkrumah leveraged his position as Prime Minister, and the CPP’s dominating position following a series of successful election campaigns (in 1951, 1954, and 1956), to consolidate popular support for independence and eventually pass motions in the Legislative Assembly for Gold Coast independence under a unitary state. Noting that the CPP “had been returned to power with a majority of over two-thirds and that the motion for Independence had been passed…72 votes to none,” Britain recognized Ghana’s independence on March 6, 1957 (Nkrumah 1971, 285). The gaining of independence marked a moment of transition for Nkrumah, Ghana’s President until a 1966 coup. “Long before 1957,” Nkrumah writes, “I made it clear that the two major tasks to be undertaken after the ending of colonial rule in Ghana would be the vigorous prosecution of a Pan-African policy to advance the African Revolution, and at the same time the adoption of measures to construct socialism in Ghana” (Nkrumah 1973, 125). Regarding the former, on the eve of independence Nkrumah rededicated Ghana to “the struggle to emancipate other countries in Africa, for our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent ” (Nkrumah 1973, 121). Accra subsequently hosted the Conference of Independent African States (CIAS) and All-African Peoples Conference (AAPC) in 1958, and the Positive Action Conference for Peace and Security in Africa in 1960. Among other things, Nkrumah used these forums to link Positive Action to a unified moral vision of the “African Personality.” As Ahlman (2010, 73, 74) summarizes, Nkrumah saw decolonization “as a process of consciousness building, one that brought to life an African past robbed of the continent’s peoples,” and he construed Positive Action as the foundation of “a philosophy of radical humanism designed to secure Africa’s pride of place in the emerging postcolonial world.” If pursued collectively, Nkrumah believed that “We in Africa may…become a new force on the world scene,” offering moral “leadership” in a barbaric nuclear age (See PAC 1960, 18). This background makes Nkrumah’s support of violence by the mid-1960s jarring. But on inspection, it is consistent with his overall approach to “scientific socialism.” As already mentioned, from the outset, Nkrumah distinguished between the liberation and socialist phases of revolution, the former being the “essential pre-requisite for the revolution to bring about a radical transformation of society.” But socialist transformation is the “more difficult and protracted struggle,” partly because the “broad base” required to oust the imperialists included “[i]ndigenous bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements, deeply committed to capitalism” (Nkrumah 1973, 151). Thus if “In the struggle for independence…[c]lass cleavages are temporarily blurred,” then “once independence is achieved, class conflicts come to the fore over the social and economic policies of the new government” (Nkrumah 2006, 57–58). In Ghana, he identifies “large farmers” and “cocoa brokers” as among this rural and urban bourgeoisie of 1.4 million and 300,000, respectively (Nkrumah 2006, 57). Thus by 1970, Nkrumah writes that “experience has shown that under conditions of class struggle, socialist revolution is impossible without

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the use of force,” which requires among other things “the politicising of the army and police…firmly under the control of the socialist revolutionary Party” (Nkrumah 2006, 80, 43). To actuate this transformation, in 1964, Ghana formally became a oneparty state, and Nkrumah soon wielded almost total control over Ghana’s mass media (Biney 2011, 114–5). That same year saw commencement of a “Seven Year Development Plan” designed for “the building of a socialist state,” whose “strategy was for the public sector, which controlled key areas of the economy, gradually to overtake the private sector until eventually the private sector was entirely eliminated” (Nkrumah 1973, 181–2). Nkrumah’s politics never embraced revolutionary terror or radical class warfare, and he accepted a “phasing out period” of capitalism (Nkrumah 1973, 182). But his “concept of organization became more clearly Leninist,” including a “policy of harassing, and later persecuting, the regime’s opponents” (Mazrui 1966, 11). Nkrumah’s ouster by “traitors and their neocolonialist agents” in 1966 (Nkrumah 1973, 162) elicited his strongest advocacy of violence, writing in the Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare that “Peaceful positive action to achieve liberation has been proved ineffective” due to “the advent of neocolonialism on a massive scale” and “the increasingly continental dimension of our struggle” (Nkrumah 1968, 52). Even in liberated states, “neocolonialism” sustained the domination of imperialists via “economic control,” “puppet governments,” military dependence, and other insidious means (Nkrumah 2006, 70–1). In response, Nkrumah argued that Africa must develop a unified military and economic base. Armed revolt must not only oust imperialist rulers, but dismantle neocolonial economic structures, and in so doing lay the groundwork for pan-African freedom and socialism. This would require close cooperation and collective strength: “The new phase of the armed revolutionary struggle in Africa embraces the entire continent,” wrote Nkrumah, including “the political unification of Africa” (Nkrumah 1968, 1), and a continental revolutionary army subordinate to an All-African Committee for Political Co-ordination (AACPC), the latter responsible for “co-operation between the ruling parties of the liberated territories building socialism” (Nkrumah 1968, 57). Combining Africa’s military forces would support liberation movements throughout Africa, and coordinating socialism would end neocolonial dependence. Violent struggle would midwife African socialism, which in turn would birth a modern “African personality” defined by “the cluster of humanist principles which underlie the traditional African society,” including “African communalism” (Nkrumah 2009, 79, 69).

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Amílcar Cabral in Portuguese Guinea: The Theory of Peoples’ AntiColonial War Amílcar Cabral was perhaps the most gifted leader of anticolonial revolt in Africa. His African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), founded in 1956 as the PAI, led a protracted armed struggle against the Portuguese empire that resulted in independence for Guinea-Bissau in 1973–4 (and Cape Verde in 1975). Like Nkrumah, Cabral considered revolutionary action a means of simultaneously rehabilitating and transfiguring African cultures; and like Nkrumah, he envisioned anticolonial revolution as a socialist and pan-African event waged against capitalist imperialism and neocolonialism. But unlike Nkrumah, Cabral defeated colonialism using military violence rather than Positive Action. Cabral’s revolutionary theory encompassed the interrelation of political, economic, cultural, and armed resistance in Guinea-Bissau (Cabral 2016), and below, we explain Cabral’s initial turn to violence, and his theory of anticolonial warfare, cultural nation-building, and socialist reconstruction. In September 1956, Amílcar Cabral and a group of associates founded the African Independence Party (PAI), later renamed the PAIGC, to pursue the “independence and union of the peoples of Guiné and Cabo Verde, whose motto will be unity and struggle” (Mendy 2019, 97). The PAI/PAIGC’s methods were initially nonviolent. Its leaders “had formed the conclusion (which later they were to regard as mistaken) that the social bases for the struggle lay in assembling a mass of laborers in the marketing centers,” and had successfully initiated seaman’s strikes by July 1959 (Cabral 1979, xxvii). But the August 3, 1959 massacre of fifty striking dockworkers in Pidjiguiti ended this phase, prompting a strategic shift to “mobilize and organize the rural masses” and proceed “through struggle by all means possible, including war” (cited in Mendy 2019, 103). As Cabral wrote one year later, “since Portugal intends to use violence to defend her interests, we will be ready to answer with violence” (Cabral 1979, 27). The ensuing armed struggle began on January 23, 1963 when a “PAIGC commando unit” of about twenty attacked the Portuguese garrison at Tite (Cabral 1979, xxxi; Mendy 2019, 125). It combined continuous guerrilla warfare against Portuguese forces with a long-term ratcheting of military capacity, aided by fellow African or other communist-socialist states. It also included state-building and infrastructure development in PAIGC-occupied areas. March 1964 saw the first PAIGC Congress establish a seven-person War Council, headed by Cabral, to direct the campaign, and the reorganization of its guerrilla army into the People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARP), which included the Popular Army, Popular Guerrillas, and Popular Militia (Mendy 2019, 135–6). The Army and Guerrillas would fight the Portuguese directly, while the Militia would protect PAIGC-controlled areas by arming the people, for “The more weapons there are for our supporters, the more

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certainty our population and our people will feel the struggle is really theirs” (Cabral 1979, 77; Cabral 2016, 150). As Davidson writes, Cabral’s “insistence on the need for revolutionary struggle” never “[led] him into any acceptance of violence for its own sake” (Cabral 1979, xv). The FARP offensive was “contained by [Cabral’s] idea of a ‘clean war,’” where “Prisoners of war were to be treated well and civilian casualties avoided” (Mendy 2019, 186). Cabral insisted on “selective violence…aimed only at the forces of repression (army, police and colonial agents),” also including “sabotage [of] the colonial economy both by passive resistance and armed action” (quoted in Mendy 2019, 121; Cabral 1979, 240), and manifesting a “struggle against Portuguese colonialism” and not “the Portuguese people” (Cabral 2016, 83). Diplomacy brought military supplies from allied African states including Ghana, Morocco, and Algeria, and a safe base of operations in Guinea; while left-wing Marxist allies including China, the U.S.S.R., and Cuba provided weapons and training (Mendy 2019, 117–118). The Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies (CONCP) also facilitated cooperation between socialist-nationalist movements across the empire. By January 1973, FARP boasted a formidable corps of 7,000 well-trained and heavily armed combatants (Mendy 2019, 184). Meanwhile, the PAIGC’s political strategy in liberated areas was that “We have to improve the population’s living conditions and organize their life better” (Cabral 1979, 107). By setting up schools, libraries, health and agricultural services, access to goods, and people’s courts, the PAIGC would be both “Party” and “developing state” with local legitimacy (Cabral 1979, 237). Cabral wrote that “national liberation is necessarily an act of culture” (Cabral 1979, 143). The armed struggle is a “painful but effective instrument for developing the cultural level both for the leadership strata…and for the various social categories who take part” (Cabral 1979, 151–2). Large segments of the native “petty bourgeoisie,” for example, having tried but failed to “integrate itself with [the foreign] minority, often to the detriment of family or ethnic ties” (Cabral 2016, 165), through anticolonial struggle experience a “spiritual reconversion,” or “re-Africanization,” “through daily contact with the mass of the people and the communion of sacrifices which the struggle demands” (Cabral 1979, 145). But while a “primary aspect of our armed resistance” is “the defense of our dignity as Africans” (Cabral 2016, 140), this is not wholesale cultural restoration. Cabral, while recognizing the “universal value of African culture,” rejects essentialist notions of “continental or racial cultures” (Cabral 1979, 148, 149), arguing that the liberation struggle must “liquidate the colonial culture and the negative aspects of our own culture in our spirit,” to thereby “create a new culture, also based on our traditions, but respecting everything that the world has won today for serving people” (Cabral 2016, 117). Accordingly, “we have to base our culture on science,” and “rid our culture of everything

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insofar as it is antiscientific” (Cabral 2016, 124). Cabral makes similar arguments for preserving the Portuguese language, both as a common language linking diverse groups and for its practical efficiency (el Nabolsy 2020). Cabral’s model of mass-based anticolonial war incorporates simultaneous state- and nation-building. Like Nkrumah, Cabral’s Leninist approach requires a “firmly united vanguard” party to lead, organize, and educate the masses (Cabral 1979, 132). The “revolutionary consciousness of the mass of the people…is not and never was spontaneous,” he argues, and history teaches that “the dynamic existence of a strong and united Party was indispensable” (Cabral 1979, 120). Thus, while the PAIGC’s War Council exercised political leadership over FARP, in liberated areas and elsewhere, the PAIGC focused political education on “love for our land and for our people” and “love for our Party,” including “editing new books, speaking of our Party, of our struggle, of our land, of the present and future of our people, of our people’s rights” (Cabral 2016, 123, 132). Internally, the PAIGC practiced “self-criticism,” “collective leadership,” “democratic centralism,” and “revolutionary democracy,” linking deliberation, discipline, and duty (Cabral 1979, 245–50). Externally, it built a mass base of national and revolutionary consciousness by facilitating collective struggle and educating the peasants and working classes. The PAIGC would also attempt to steer post-colonial order. Like Nkrumah, Cabral understood the liberation phase to precede socialism. But he also saw in armed struggle the opportunity to prepare socialism by the “development of revolutionary consciousness ” (Cabral 1979, 136). Cabral invoked Party leadership not only to “unite everybody in the national liberation struggle,” but to also function as “an instrument…which can solve all other contradictions” (Cabral 1964). In Portuguese Guinea, for example, special attention must focus on the revolutionary consciousness of the petty bourgeoisie, the presumptive “inheritors of the colonial state.” Through struggle and education, cadres of this class must internalize the working-class spirit, and as post-colonial governors, they must voluntarily “commit suicide” as a class, understanding and embracing that “by sacrificing itself it can reincarnate itself, but in the condition of workers or peasants” (Cabral 1964). This is Cabral’s answer to neocolonialism. The PAIGC’s program was “notably devoid of specific socialist political guidelines” (Chabal 1981, 48), but the native petty bourgeois, given their dominant economic and political position, can play “a prominent–and even decisive–role in the struggle for the elimination of foreign domination” if they “repudiate the temptations to become ‘bourgeois,’” and deeply “identify with the classes of workers” (Cabral 1979, 135, 136).

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Frantz Fanon and the Algerian War: Nation-Building Through Violence The French-Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962, after which a government led by Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) achieved independence from France. The FLN’s guerrilla war employed radical forms of violence scarcely contemplated by Nkrumah or Cabral. It also spawned a wealth of theorizing about the use, legitimacy, and limits of anticolonial violence, most notably by Frantz Fanon, a black French Martinican and psychiatrist who, after serving as head of Algeria’s Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital starting in 1953, would join the FLN, coedit its propaganda newspaper El Moudjahid, and serve as revolutionary Ambassador to Ghana. Both the notoriety of Fanon’s writings, and the terrifying scenes they address, require delicate examination of the interaction of theory and praxis in Algeria. And Fanon’s writings, juxtaposed with FLN actions, reveal two general patterns: first, a positive association of violent action with both the reassertion of the colonized’s humanity and the creation of national and revolutionary consciousness; and second, a ratcheting escalation of anticolonial violence and terrorism in response to fluid and evolving political circumstances (LeJeune 2019). The FLN began its violent campaign on November 1, 1954, launching seventy unannounced, coordinated attacks “against specific public installations, private property of the grands colons, French military personnel and gendarmes, and Muslim collaborators.” Importantly, “European civilians–especially women and children–were to be strictly immune” (Horne 2006, 83). The revolt’s leaders published a manifesto for the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), identifying “National independence,” “political house-cleaning through the destruction of the last vestiges of corruption and reformism,” and the “pursuit of North African unity in its national AraboIslamic context” as its objectives. They also promised to pursue these ends “by every means until the realization of our goal,” premising any negotiation with the French on “recognition of Algerian nationhood by an official declaration” (Horne 2006, 95). Hutchinson (1978, 43, 41) called the November 1 attacks “spectacular terrorism,” intended “to provoke ideological awareness and sympathy from the Algerian masses…to enlist their active aid in the struggle against the French.” And while the FLN leadership would form the vanguard of this struggle, as Fanon wrote, “The essence of any revolution of some depth…is to bring movement to the masses, to enliven them by catalyzing their energies, by setting them off on the conquest of their rights” (Fanon 2018, 582). French civilians were spared in part to avoid a disproportionate French response, à la the May 1945 “Sétif massacre” that resulted in around 6,000 Muslim Algerian deaths (Horne 2006, 26–28). And indeed, some years earlier, the violence of Sétif had marked a turning point in the resolve of many FLN leaders, including those who had served in France’s Algerian regiments during

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World War II. After Sétif, and after a series of broken promises and abandoned reforms to improve the lives of Algerian Muslims, violence seemed the only answer for at least two reasons. First, as Fanon wrote, “colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence” (Fanon 2004, 23). Second, colonialism subordinates and traumatizes the colonized in a manner that only violence can address. Colonialism instantiates a “repository of prejudices, myths, and collective attitudes” that Europeans hold toward the colonized (Fanon 2008, 165). The colonized in turn are perennially refused (and never will attain) assimilation to the colonial culture, while their own culture is continually disparaged and destroyed, leaving the colonized in a cultural no-man’s-land without human recognition or dignity. Accordingly, and drawing on Hegel’s master–slave dialectic, Fanon argues that violence— the manifest willingness to struggle for one’s humanity or ideal—addresses this problem of racial and cultural trauma. On one hand, argues Fanon, “A people that undertakes a struggle for liberation rarely legitimizes race prejudice,” because the fight to the death garners respect from the colonizer. It “opens at last” the colonizer to the colonized, at which point “The two cultures can affront each other, enrich each other” (Fanon 1967, 43–44). Quoting Hegel, through violent struggle “They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing each other” (Fanon 2008, 192). At the same time, the colonized reaffirm their own humanity through action and resistance. “The colonized subject discovers reality and transforms it through his praxis, his deployment of violence and his agenda for liberation” (Fanon 2004, 21). “At the individual level,” Fanon writes, “violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence” (Fanon 2004, 51). Violent struggle also lays the foundations of a new and progressive national culture birthed by the revolutionary experience. “It is the necessities of combat that give rise in Algerian society to new attitudes, to new modes of action, to new ways” (Fanon 1965, 64). For example, the FLN’s campaigns in the maquis and, perhaps most notably, the urban terror bombings of the Battle of Algiers organically transformed attitudes about family and gender roles. Through revolutionary praxis the “young girl, unveiled only yesterday…relearns her body, re-establishes it in a totally revolutionary fashion” (Fanon 1965, 58–9). If before the revolution she “never left the house without being accompanied,” now she is “entrusted with special missions” and “spends the night with an unknown family, among militants.” Meanwhile, “Involved in the struggle, the husband or the father learns to look upon the relations between the sexes in a new light. The militant man discovers the militant woman, and jointly they create new dimensions for Algerian society” (Fanon 1965, 59–60 nt.14). These new elements of social equality and human possibility, cultivated through revolutionary praxis, lay the foundations of a post-revolutionary

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socialist culture grounded in, among other things, gender equity and equity within the family. The FLN’s radical violence would escalate considerably in the years following the November 1 attacks. Most notorious are the grotesque and civilian-murdering raids of the Philippeville massacre launched on August 20, 1955, and the urban bombing, civilian terror campaign of the Battle of Algiers in 1956–7. Though variously explained–whether as retaliation for collective punishment of Algerian Muslims in the French countryside (the former), or a response to the desperate circumstances posed by the influence and intransigence of the urban French pied noir population (the latter)–the FLN’s programmatic use of civilian terror, including against uncooperative Muslim Algerians or rival Algerian anticolonial groups, gave the FLN’s campaign a physiognomy distinct not only from Nkrumah’s later advocacy of violence, but even Cabral’s strategic use of it. On this point, Fanon distinguished between what he called “a brutality and contempt for subtleties and individual cases which is typically revolutionary,” and “another type of brutality with surprising resemblances to the first one which is typically counterrevolutionary, adventurist, and anarchist,” and which if “not immediately contained it will, without fail, bring down the movement within a few weeks” (Fanon 2004, 95). Fanon condemned the bloodlust and brutality of Philippeville, while noting that it is “The role of the political party…to curtail this violence and to channel it by providing it with a peaceful platform and a constructive basis,” since “to stay on the ground of the universal, violence must first be fought with the language of truth and of reason” (Fanon 2018, 655; LeJeune 2019, 23–24). On the other hand, while acknowledging the “battle of conscience” when “one takes the step of placing a bomb in a public place,” Fanon accepted that, at least by 1956, French actions had left the FLN “no choice but to adopt forms of terror which until then it had rejected” (Fanon 1965, 55). Only violence that manifested thoughtful, careful, and strategic action qualified as praxis, whereas wanton violence would corrupt national culture and hinder the revolution. But nothing about this platform inherently excluded radical terrorism. By 1962, the FLN’s guerrilla war had exhausted France, and the Evian Accords consolidated FLN rule. But the path to socialism was unclear. As Horne (2006, 407) observes, “In reading El Moudjahid…one finds little serious discussion of social aims of the future Algerian society.” In addition, the FLN’s secular Marxist-Leninist orientation caused friction with Algeria’s Islamists. Nonetheless, the FLN’s use of terror had one immediate consequence for post-colonial neocolonialism and socialism, namely the panicked exodus of the entire French pied noir population, and the spontaneous appropriation and socialization of their abandoned industrial and agricultural enterprises, ratified by the Algerian state (Byrne, 433).

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Conclusions and Future Directions Our three historical cases bring into relief the range of practical and theoretical problems that Africa’s post-World War II left-wing anticolonial movements faced, the strategies they adopted, and the factors shaping their choices. As such, this essay offers a foundation for understanding how left-wing extremist movements varied throughout Africa in response to a range of structural, political, personalistic, and other factors, and for comparing our cases with other left-wing movements not examined here, including e.g., the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO) in the Portuguese empire; or alternatively, with non-left-wing extremist movements like Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion (1952– 1960), which “had no Marxist ideology” and, in lieu of “the standard agents of propaganda and politicization of the masses,” “employed ancient oaths and…invoked deities” (Maloba 1993, 11). Mau Mau also lacked the Leninist party structure associated with left-wing movements, giving its “militarist spirit” a comparatively spontaneous and under-politicized character (Maloba 1993, 121). Many theoretical problems also warrant further study, including the fluid nature of nonviolence, violence, and radical terror as strategic choices of leftwing extremist groups. Often, political demonstrations that end in extreme state violence—as in the May 1945 Sétif massacre, the February 1948 shootings in Accra, the August 1959 Pidjiguiti massacre, and the March 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa—are turning points toward anticolonial violence. But as the Gold Coast shows, this is hardly automatic, and as comparison of the PAIGC and FLN shows, violence itself has many strategic variants. Comparative analysis of the nonviolence-violence-terror calculus in these states remains fertile ground for research. In addition, the legacy of African anticolonial revolt raises practicaltheoretical questions about revolutionary processes and the possibilities of post-colonial, multinational integration. The twilight of African (and Middle Eastern) imperialism saw many failed attempts in this direction, including collapses of the United Arab Republic, Mali Federation, and Union of African States, with other pan-African organizations limited in their powers. As Kloman, Jr. (1962, 387) put it in 1962, while “The numerous unification efforts now underway in Africa represent one of the most significant developments in the brief post-independence era…Paradoxically, the issue of how to achieve unity is becoming one of the principal divisions between African states.” Africa’s history can help us understand how political and economic factors, in addition to geographic, ethnic, ideological, and personal ones, determine the limits and possibilities of international cooperation and integration. Finally, one increasingly salient strand of research examines the potential impact of climate change on armed conflict in Africa (Koubi 2019). The suggested mechanisms linking climate change to violent conflict include,

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among other things, the effects of “changes in precipitation and temperature, rising sea level, and natural disasters,” which “are frequently assumed to lead to loss of livelihood, economic decline, and increased insecurity either directly or through forced migration” (Theisen et al. 2013, 615). Specific cases, including the “first climate change conflict” in Darfur (Sova 2020)— attributed in part to rainfall decreases, desert expansion, and resulting conflict between Arab herders and African farmers—have increased visibility of this problem, particularly in the Sahel. But notably, the literature linking environmental factors to conflict is itself conflicting and inconclusive (Koubi 2019). What can be said is that “climate change acts as a threat multiplier in several of the world’s regions,” and “its effects on conflict are likely to vary with contextual factors such as national and local economic development, political institutions, and administrative capacity of national and local governments to address climate-related problems” (Koubi 2019, 355, 348). Entrenched authoritarianism, economic underdevelopment, and weak administrative capacity frequently beset post-colonial African states, and while research to date has examined how these factors contribute to violence, separate lines of inquiry could address the topic of extremism.

References Ahlman, Jeffrey S. 2010. The Algerian Question in Nkrumah’s Ghana, 1958-1960: Debating ‘Violence’ and ‘Nonviolence’ in African Decolonization. Africa Today 57(2): 66-84. Backes, Uwe. 2007. Meaning and Forms of Political Extremism in Past and Present. Central European Political Studies Review 9(4): 242–262. Biney, Ama. 2011. The Political and Social Thought of Kwame Nkrumah. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Byrne, Jeffrey James. 2009. Our Own Special Brand of Socialism: Algeria and the Contest of Modernities in the 1960s. Diplomatic History 33(3): 427–447. Cabral, Amílcar. 1964. Brief Analysis of the Social Structure in Guinea. Posted at: https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/cabral/1964/bassg.htm Cabral, Amílcar. 1979. Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings. Trans. Michael Wolfers. Intro. Basil Davidson. New York: Monthly Review Press. Cabral, Amílcar. 2016. Resistance and Decolonization. Trans. Dan Wood. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Césaire, Aimé. 2000. Discourse on Colonialism. Trans. Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press. Chabal, Patrick. 1981. The Social and Political Thought of Amilcar Cabral: A Reassessment. The Journal of Modern African Studies 19(1): 31–56. Chafer, Tony. 2017. Decolonization in French West Africa. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford: Oxford University Press (oxfordre.com). el Nabolsy, Zeyad. 2020. Amílcar Cabral’s Modernist Philosophy of Culture and Cultural Liberation. Journal of African Cultural Studies 32(2): 231–250. Fanon, Frantz. 1965. A Dying Colonialism. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays. New York: Grove Press.

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Fanon, Frantz. 2004. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press. Fanon, Frantz. 2018. Frantz Fanon: Alienation and Freedom. Ed. Jean Khalfa and Robert J.S. Young. New York: Bloomsbury. Horne, Alistair. 2006. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962. New York: New York Review of Books. Hutchinson, Martha Crenshaw. 1978. Revolutionary Terrorism: The FLN in Algeria, 1954–1962. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. James, C. L. R. Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. Jungkunz, Sebastian. 2019. Towards a Measurement of Extreme Left-Wing Attitudes. German Politics 28(1): 101–122. Kloman, Jr., Erasmus H. 1962. African Unification Movements. International Organization 16(2): 387–404. Koubi, Vally. 2019. Climate Change and Conflict. Annual Review of Political Science 22: 343–360. LeJeune, John. 2019. Revolutionary Terror and Nation-Building: Frantz Fanon and the Algerian Revolution. Journal for the Study of Radicalism 13(2): 1–44. Maloba, Wunyabari O. 1993. Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mazrui, Ali. 1966. Nkrumah: The Leninist Czar. Transition 26: 8–17. Mendy, Peter Karibe. 2019. Amílcar Cabral: A Nationalist and Pan-Africanist Revolutionary. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1968. Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare. London: PANAF. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1971. Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah. New York: International Publishers. Nkrumah, Kwame. 1973. Revolutionary Path. New York: International Publishers. Nkrumah, Kwame. 2006. Class Struggle in Africa. London: PANAF. Nkrumah, Kwame. 2009. Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonization. New York: Monthly Review Press. Positive Action Conference for Peace and Security in Africa (PAC). 1960. Accra, Ghana: Community Centre. Rabaka, Reiland. 2009. Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing the Black Radical Tradition, From W.E.B. Du Bois and C.L.R. James to Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Sartre, Jean Paul. 1965. Black Orpheus. The Massachusetts Review 6(1): 13–52. Senghor, Léopold Sédar. 1970. Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century. In Wilfred Cartey and Martin Kilson, ed., The Africa Reader: Independent Africa, 179–192. New York: Random House. Sova, Chase. 2020. The First Climate Change Conflict. World Food Program USA, December 19 (updated version). Accessed at: https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/thefirst-climate-change-conflict/ Theisen, Ole Magnus, Nils Petter Gleditsh, and Halvard Buhaug. 2013. Is Climate Change a Driver of Armed Conflict? Climactic Change 117(3): 613–625.

CHAPTER 14

Left-Wing Extremism and the War on Civilization José Pedro Zúquete

Introduction Anarchism is a known manifestation of left-wing extremism with its absolute rejection of power and authority, its non-acceptance of any sort of legitimacy to states, and its purpose of abolishing all sorts of hierarchical institutions in order to bring about a society without government and domination. This chapter’s focus is on one of its strands: anti-civilizational anarchism (anti-civ), especially the impact of anti-civilization thought on two variants of anarchism: green and insurrectionary. On the green anarchism side, anti-civilizational anarchism blames anthropocentrism—the view that humans are the most central and significant beings—for the ecological death of planet Earth. This current of thought— which is also called anarcho-primitivism—may lead to different reactions and directions, from attempts to live in small off-grid communities to actively trying to undermine the techno-industrial system—the civilization—responsible for the catastrophe. The belief that we are living through times of accelerated climate catastrophe and mass extinction of all sorts of living organisms—and that industrial society is simply not sustainable making its collapse a sine qua non requisite—drives not just the activists’ hatred for civilization but also their righteous mission of waging a war on its techno-industrial infrastructures and accelerating its downfall.

J. P. Zúquete (B) Institute of Social Sciences, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_14

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Insurrectionary anarchism, for its part, also sees the world through the lens of catastrophe, even if in a somewhat less ecocentric and more human-centered fashion. There is a war waged by an evil authoritarian and exploitive system— that has as its highest symbols the state and capital—against the people all over the planet. This civilization—sustained by a techno-industrial complex that increasingly imposes totalitarian control over the masses—generates all the widespread existential misery and dehumanization. For that, it must be physically confronted through acts of vandalism, sabotage, arson against its infrastructural resources, and attacks against its agents. Green and insurrectionary currents are not two separate fronts of the anticivilizational direct action. The former is more focused on man’s use and abuse of nature and nonhumans, while the latter is geared toward man’s violence against other men. However, both intersect and converge at the criticism of techno-industrial society—which ultimately must be taken down as it currently exists—and at the defense of clandestine asymmetric warfare against a disastrous civilization. Anti-civilizational militancy spawns anti-tech terrorism, whether by ecowarriors or insurrectionists. The manifestations of this type of militancy and the influence of Ted Kaczynski over this development will both be discussed. At the same time, toward the end of the chapter, the possibility that anticivilizationism will trigger new convergences between different groups, will be probed—individuals and formations united not by ideology, but by the single-minded goal to attack the system, to lash out, in a nihilist wave seeking turmoil, chaos and accelerate the undoing of civilization. Against Technology The idea that techno-industrial development is a source of an evil that must be vanquished is dominant in radical environmentalist and insurrectionary milieus, and is situated within a larger history of criticism of the impact of technology on earth and society. Anti-tech theorists and activists often invoke the example of the Luddites during Great Britain’s industrial revolution, who broke machinery out of their opposition to the mechanization of the textile industry. Even if, in all fairness, these nineteenth-century rebels were much more enmeshed in labor disputes and class struggle than in any sort of wider anti-technology philosophy (Jones 2006). This broader critique of technology is more a feature of what came to be known as neo-Luddism and is invested in tearing down the grip of modern technology on nature and humans. Earlier criticisms of the techno-industrial paradigm from the mid-to-late twentieth century are brought back to substantiate neo-Luddites’ dark view of the present and the future. Such is the case with the American philosopher and theorist of technology Lewis Mumford, who decried the mechanization of civilization; it is run by technology to such an extent that technology emancipated itself and transformed itself into a system of increasing absolute control deleterious to both humans—who are

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massified and dehumanized—and the natural world. Although, unlike neoLuddites, Mumford was not anti-technological per se and wrote about the potential benefits of technology, he alerted society in his 1970 book to the dangers of the modern “megamachine,” and proclaimed that “[n]othing less than a profound reorientation of our vaunted technological way of life will save this planet” (Mumford 1970; Critchley 2012). Other critics of modern technological society, such as the French social critic Jacques Ellul, are also widely referenced in the anti-civilization critique in order to convey the key idea that technology is not viewed instrumentally (as just physical machines, tools, at the service of humans) but substantially as a universal, autonomous, and abstract system of meaning. This system is not neutral: its effects are at the heart of a total system of domination of humans and destruction of nature (el-Ojeili and Taylor 2020). The neo-Luddite rage against the megamachine stems from this core anti-technological belief. Conquering Domestication The anti-technological dimension of contemporary anarchism1 —in light of what is perceived as an unprecedented “technological assault on society and the biosphere”—is likely to deepen, as anarchist theorists argue, as the crisis worsens. Green anarchism has taken the lead in such critique—with anarchoprimitivists such as John Zerzan arguing for the abolition of the totality of industrial civilization due to its ruinous effects on both the human and natural worlds. Zerzan looks back more than 10,000 years, to the Neolithic era and the beginning of agriculture as the source of the evil of domestication (of plants, animals, and humans themselves). This has only gotten worse with each technological development leading to today’s world of impending environmental collapse and full alienation of humans not only from the natural environment but also from each other in their hyper-medicalized, anxious, and unhappy existences. Zerzan argues that only foraging and a return to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that antedated farming and sedentism would remedy this wrong turn (Zerzan 2005). Industrial civilization, it is argued, makes humans—who are not a domesticated species—live an inauthentic life that goes against human nature. From this anti-civilizational standpoint, rewilding is the only way forward: a return to a more wild—untamed and feral—condition will free both humans and the planet of the unsustainability and destructiveness of techno-industrial civilization. This notion of de-domestication—which originates from the green anarchist camp—is crucial to the anti-technological activism of insurrectionary anarchism. Escaping domestication entails liberation from a tech-saturated world and all its technologies of surveillance and control meant to herd humans, tame them, and subdue any resistance to the hegemon. This is the pathway to autonomy and freedom.

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Expediting Collapse: Radical Environmentalists “I need to be clear about where I stand: I want nothing more than to bring down the entire technological culture of death.” The radical American environmentalist Derrick Jensen wrote this to the imprisoned lone bomber Ted Kaczynski, more popularly known as “the Unabomber,” with whom he corresponded in the late 1990s (Jensen 1999). Kaczynski’s manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future—published after a nearly twenty-year lethal letterbombing campaign targeting individuals accused of advancing technology at the expense of nature—became a reference not just for environmental extremists but also anti-tech radicals and, more generally, anti-civilizational critics. Kaczynski’s manifesto laid out the case against the destabilizing effects of technology on “the human race” and argued that technology, “which seeks to expand indefinitely the power of the system,” must be stopped in its tracks in order to return to nature (“Wild nature”), viewed as “that which is outside the power of the system” and the diametric opposite of technology (Kaczynski 1995: 24). The issue of what could be done to accelerate the demise of the technological juggernaut was therefore the crucial one, with Kaczynski saying in the first interview he gave after his arrest, to a green anarchist writer, that “I don’t think there is any controlled or planned way in which we can dismantle the industrial system [and so] the only way we will get rid of it is if it breaks down and collapses” (Kaczynski 1999). Kaczynski was aware of green attempts to “dismantle the industrial system,” particularly the activism of Earth First! (whose magazine he read)—a self-described eco-defense group founded at the start of the 1980s and dedicated to defend “Mother Nature” from industrialism with a combination of non-violent direct actions (from civil disobedience to sit-ins and blockades) and ecological sabotage, or ecotage, aiming at dismantling machines and equipment. Its 1990s offshoot, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), became even more focused on destructive tactics through autonomous cells that carried out numerous clandestine acts of arson, sabotage, and vandalism on timber and logging companies, private homes, automobile dealerships, power plants, and other exemplars of antinatural human development. With a similar ethos to the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) that predated it, and which targetted especially the meat industry, food processing plants, fur and leather companies, and universities (START 2013). Ecoterrorism (see Liddick 2006) became a central concern of authorities, and many individuals were convicted in ecosabotage-related charges in the early 2000s through the FBI’s campaign Operation Backfire. The crackdown on these groups became known as the “Green Scare”—as dubbed by activists to criticize what they saw as the “invention” by the ruling powers of eco-terrorism. They rejected the label terrorism—for radical environmentalists, attacks on the infrastructures of an “ecocidal” techno-industrial system have nothing to do with terrorism. As Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman contended in the late eighties, “It’s not terrorism and it’s not vandalism [but]

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It’s a form of worship toward the Earth. It’s really a very spiritual thing to go out and do” (NYT 1989). Foreman’s characterization of such activism as spiritual or reverential is still a dominant view in radical environmentalist milieus. The same can be said about the issue of violence. Humans are not the target of such actions, and the destruction of property and technology is not in itself violence—in fact it is often interpreted as the “prevention” of violence against nature. “Defensive violence is of course justified,” argues Zerzan, but “a deeper question is what is meant by violence.” He further clarified that “targeted property destruction is not violence, for example, and is in fact a needed tactic” (Zerzan 2010)2 . As fellow anarcho-primitivist Kevin Tucker states, “Our targets aren’t people. It’s political power and the whole society. You don’t have to kill people to take that out” (PCP 2006). The issue of violence is ultimately a moot point for Deep Green Resistance (DGR)—self-described as an “eco-guerrilla network”—co-founded, in 2011, by Derrick Jensen—a former correspondent of Kaczynski. Unlike more mainstream environmental groups, it is anti-civilizational: “Deep Green Resistance starts where the environmental movement leaves off: industrial civilization is incompatible with life. Technology can’t fix it, and shopping—no matter how green—won’t stop it” (Jensen et al. 2011). DGR is an attempt to build an organized resistance from within the anti-civ millieu: “Those in power will come down on us if we resist. It doesn’t matter if that resistance is violent or nonviolent,” they wrote in their Strategy to Save the Planet (Jensen et al. 2011). “It’s resistance that brings the risk and retaliation, and it’s resistance that our planet needs.” That strategy calls for the end of civilization because of its “irredeemability” owing to its destruction of the natural world and destruction of human sociability, as Jensen argued in his two-volume Endgame (2006). Defining itself as an “above ground” organization, DGR sees the complementary work of “underground” groups as a crucial tool to bring down civilization through sabotage and asymmetric warfare against its infrastructures. “We are an above ground movement that is willing to defend the relentless attacks on life. We are also willing to admit that defense is not enough,” DGR proclaims. “We need other brave, moral, and strategically aware people to form underground groups and fight this culture before it wipes out life.” DGR adds that “[i]f we don’t, we will die and so will nearly everything else from bacteria to blue whales.” In the “Decisive Ecological Warfare” section of their Strategy to Save the Planet, the DGR founders put forth potential scenarios of action to accelerate the collapse and ushering in of a post-civilizational existence. One of them called “All-Out Infrastructure Attack” reads, In this scenario, well-organized underground militants would make coordinated attacks on energy infrastructure around the world. These would take whatever tactical form militants could muster—actions against pipelines, power lines, tankers, and refineries, perhaps using electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) to

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do damage. Unlike in the previous scenario, no attempt would be made to keep pace with aboveground activists. The attacks would be as persistent as the militants could manage. Fossil fuel energy availability would decline by 90 percent. Greenhouse gas emissions would plummet. The industrial economy would come apart. Manufacturing and transportation would halt because of frequent blackouts and tremendously high prices for fossil fuels. Some, perhaps most, governments would institute martial law and rationing. Governments that took an authoritarian route would be especially targeted by militant resisters. Other states would simply fail and fall apart.

This scenario “guarantees a future for both the planet and the human species. This scenario would save trillions upon trillions upon trillions of living creatures. Yes, it would create hardship for the urban wealthy, though most others would be better off immediately” (Jensen et al. 2011). A “radical environmental just war theory” (LeVasseur 2017, 120), in which guerrilla warfare is legitimate and the least evil option (to do nothing is to embrace the apocalypse), undergirds the ethos of these eco-warriors and their related groups elsewhere. In France, Deep Green Resistance is Vert Resistance—which also defends the benefits of an organizational split between one public and one secret wing—aimed at putting the techno-industrial system on the defensive. As stated by one of its founders, “Our objective is not to prevent the system from destroying everything. Our goal is even more ambitious: it’s about recovering what it destroyed to rebuild something else, it’s also about making this megamachine unfit to destroy anything more. It is therefore not a defensive program, but an offensive one” (Vert Resistance 2020). The idea here, recurrent in the DGR literature, is that acts of sabotage—as long as the right targets are chosen—can trigger a cascade effect that may precipitate the downfall of the entire system (Vert Resistance 2019). In one of his letters from prison, Kaczynski criticized the wider green anarchist movement for having tamed their “rebellion against civilization.” “Whatever philosophical or moral rationalizations people may invent to explain their belief that violence is wrong,” he wrote, “the real reason for that belief is that they have unconsciously absorbed the system’s propaganda” (Kaczynski 2003). It is undeniable that, in the case of the DGR, it does not reject violence in principle as a modus operandi. In fact, its manifesto discusses the strategic uses of assassination—stating at one point that “uniquely valuable individuals make uniquely valuable targets for assassination by resistance groups.” This is in line—it should be added—with Jensen’s own views of pacifism as a “pathology” that is harmful for social change by deliberately discounting the known truth that “one reason violence is used so often by those in power is because it works.” In fact, Jensen writes, violence “works dreadfully well. And it can work for liberation as well as subjugation” (Jensen 2007). In the wider anarchist camp, radical environmentalist groups like DGR are not the only ones invested in violent anti-civilizational direct action in the pursuit of such liberation.

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Taking Down the Techno-Prison: Insurrectionalists Insurrectionary anarchism draws from the wider history of anarchism of resistance—through a variety of tactics of direct action—to the perceived oppression of state and capital (Zúquete 2016). Insurrectionary resistance shuns passivity and, through clandestine warfare, takes the fight to the enemy. The Italian insurrectionary essayist Alfredo Bonanno wrote, as the 1990s were coming to a close, that the methods of insurrectionalism are “selforganization, permanent conflictuality and attack.” Committed to a war of attrition, informal, mobile networks of cells carry out “constant unannounced attacks” while refusing “all the political forces that claim to represent anyone or anything” (Bonanno 1999). The dawn of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of insurrectionary networks committed to a type of urban guerrilla warfare involving arson and bombings not only of property and infrastructures—as symbols of the oppression, such as banks, government and security agencies, corporations— but also of individuals as representatives of the “tyranny” of state and capital. The Italian-originated Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), together with the Greek Conspiracy Cells of Fire (from 2008 onwards) and a myriad of other small cells in Europe, South America, and Southeastern Asia, formed the International Revolutionary Front (IRF). The IRF is a horizontal network with no leader or no central command, dedicated to global sabotage and direct action (see also Marone’s chapter). The overriding ethos is one of attack—of raiding, striking, and disrupting enemy positions. In the words of a militant, it is an “international conspiracy of anarchists of praxis” that “sets fire on the defensive positions of reformist society-ist anarchists” and aims to get “rid of the smell of mold that has settled in anarchy seen at amphitheatres” while filling “the air with the smell of gunpowder, black anarchy, night-time, explosions, gunshots, sabotages” (TAL 2013). The attacks are done under the umbrella of the FAI/IRF network, but each individual, or cell, chooses its target of choice according to each local or national political rationale. “The state will not merely whither away, thus anarchists must attack, for waiting is defeat,” proclaimed an insurrectionary anarchist (TAL 2001). To an increasing degree, the technological apparatus of the putative forces of domination is coming under insurrectionary attack. To be sure, the recognition of the crucial role played by technology in the build-up of new forms of oppression and exploitation predates twenty-first-century insurrectionary anarchism—it was widely discussed, for example, in the pages of the Detroit-based anarchist magazine Fifth State in the 1970s (Millett 2004). As the reality of a runway, pervasive, and totalizing industrial technology that completely envelops human beings on all fronts, clearing the way for their absolute surveillance and control, has deepened, so has its rejection within the insurrectionary milieu—and the willingness of those who rejected it to act against it. In the article “A hero for our time,” writers for the anarchist collective Crimethinc stated that “we should read [Kaczynski’s] manifesto and come to

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our own conclusions, rather than allowing the press and popular opinion/ paranoia to decide for us” (Crimethinc 1997). One of Kaczynski’s postmanifesto writings, titled “Hit where it hurts,” postulated that “to work effectively toward the elimination of the techno-industrial system, revolutionaries must attack the system at points at which it cannot afford to give ground. They must attack the vital organs of the system” (Kaczynski 2002). Kaczynski’s conclusion that attacks against the critical infrastructures of technocapitalism are necessary has become a staple of insurrectionary insurgency. It is present throughout the French Invisible Committee manifesto that the “logic of insurrection” against the system must be geared toward attacks on operational targets that lead to “arresting the flow of its circulation and distribution,” such as transport and communication systems (2010). More and more, attacks on the techno-empire through soft targets—“some [of which] seem unreachable, yet all their tentacles are Achilles’s heels” reads a pro-arson flyer—are being expanded to include the power grid and telecommunication networks. Law enforcement agencies are aware of the increasing relevance of tech-related targets; for instance, the 2022 EUROPOL trend report mentions the visibility of “newer themes” such as those related to “digital society and advanced technologies” for potential terrorism from the “left-wing and anarchist extremist” landscape. Many examples since the 2010s exist of this anti-technology logic of insurrection at work. As when the Italian “Olga Cell” (named after CCF prisoner Olga Ikonomidou) of the FAI/IRF claimed responsibility for the shooting of an Italian CEO of a nuclear agency. “We have crippled Roberto Adinolfi, one of so many sorcerers of the atom with a candid spirit and a clean conscience,” they announced. “State and science, capitalism and technology are only one thing, one single Moloch,” their communiqué declared (325a 2012). This attack, in 2012, “was supposed to be the first in a series of seven—then thwarted—subsequent actions targeting technology companies specialized in defense and security” (Lubrano 2021, 5). In Greece, anti-technology sentiment is one of the motives for attacks by anarchists, because it is “perceived to serve the aims and power of the ideological hegemonic actors of the system” (Rori and Georgiadou 2023). For example, a group operating under the IRF moniker set fire to the headquarters of Microsoft in Athens. The group’s communiqué quoted Kaczynski in its accusation against the “techno-industrial complex” for being at the service of domination, power, and the imposition of totalitarian control (325b); years later, a Greek government data center was attacked with incendiary bombs in a protest against data trawling technology increasingly used by intelligence agencies and governments for surveillance (DCD 2021). Masts, networks, and wireless infrastructures are preferred targets. In Germany, the anarchist Vulkangruppe, or Volcano Group, used incendiary bombs to destroy high-voltage electricity and telephone cables, and also destroyed telecommunication cables in attacks that were “intended to stop any further weakening of fundamental rights and the expansion of the surveillance measures” (GTD 2020). In east-central France, an anarchist

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collective A.C.R.A.T.E.S (Coordinated Associations for the Anti-Tech Revolt and Eco-Sabotage) attacked cell phone towers in order to interrupt “the dependency that the techno-world needs to survive” (ANews 2021). Anarchist sites openly endorse the sabotage of the system. Warrior Up, for example, exhibits brochures and manuals “that can help us to better contribute to taking down the megamachine,” with an “arson and sabotage page” that lists techniques to burn electrical boxes, trainstopping, and “how to destroy cell phone towers.” Their rallying-cry states that Warrior Up is “Against 5G and the world which needs it.” To an increasing degree, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)—with 5G mobile networks at the heart of its massive capacity—and the impact of digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) are at the top of concerns for anarchists invested in attacking the techno-industrial state. In an editorial to an issue of 325—published in English, Spanish, and Italian—titled “Against the Fourth and Fifth Industrial Revolutions,” the nostate collective rails against the rise of the “techno-prison world,” adding that [w]e are at a critical junction before the rise of smarter-than-human generalized machine intelligence which will govern society and the State, leading to a widening abyss between the included and the excluded, not to mention the frightening realities of repression … China is a dangerous enemy of freedom and is a developing contemporary model for the new global prison-society based on technological subservience, mind-control, brutality and mass incarceration.

The 4IR is only a first step, but one that will pave the way to the Fifth Industrial Revolution (5IR) reads the text of an anonymous anarchist that “begins at that point where there is mass acceptance of these new technologies that converge within our bodies, environments and realities to such as degree that the machine-world is ever-present, even at a nanoscale or at the furthest reach of humans into space.” The collective adds that “the technocrats and elites do not want the true realities of these technological developments to be known until it is too late to do anything about it.” Humanity is hurtling toward a new dystopic era of “Singularity” where AI reigns supreme and machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence. Against this machine-dominated world, reads the editorial, “the black flag has to return. Propaganda by the deed. Attacks that strike the powerful in their hearts and make the fear change sides. Actions that sabotage the social machine and give it seizures” (325 2020). Under Operation Adrean, UK counter-terrorism forces apprehended the suspected administrator of the site, Toby Shone, and charged him with terrorism (the charge was subsequently dropped for minor, unrelated drug charges). In an interview from prison, he declared that he sees the police operation as yet another confirmation of the making of a totalitarian surveillance machine, as a move toward a society where the state gives itself more and more control, enabled by technological advances. “It’s possible to make a broad argument,” he said, “that society itself is transforming into a world

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where everything and everyone is trackable, monitored and profiled. Any realities that don’t conform to this new vision of how regulation and digitalization is to function is seen as a threat to power.” Shone further believes that “at an international level, a resurgence of anarchist, anti-civilization and anti-capitalist action is taking place. And the state is aware of that fact, and seeks to cut any wild roses before they bud” (Canary 2022). The anti-techno-industrial writings and declarations of another anarchist prisoner, the Italian activist and FAI militant Alfredo Cospito, serving a sentence for the shooting of the nuclear executive, found often echo in insurrectionary networks. In an interview published in the anarchist paper Vetriolo, Cospito said that anarchists must cause “as much damage as possible” to the “megamachine,” the ruling “hyper-technological system.” Cospito noted, “Technology is no longer at the service of capital, on the contrary increasingly capital is at the service of technology, this is the direction in which we are heading … We have seen it with nuclear weapons, we will see it with the enormously more devastating and uncontrollable artificial intelligence, we are going ahead automatically without any possibility of turning back.” Any antitech insurgency must not misplace its focus and instead zeroing in on the right targets. “It is not the robots that are our enemies, but those who design them, capitalism and the states, that finance these projects, men and women in flesh and blood.” Cospito added, “Those running this ‘revolution’ today are a limited number of scientists, super-specialized technicians in a few centers scattered around the world. They all are within reach of an anarchist international, a combative one, even if limited in strength.” In Cospito’s perspective, anarchism must move beyond simply attacking property and targeting the humans responsible for this “brave new world.” He invokes propaganda by the deed and reaches back into the history of anarchist terrorism—for example, the Galleanist bombings in the early 1900s in the United States—as quintessential to the nature of the movement. Insurrectionary anarchism should not pull punches. Why? Is “sabotage” perhaps more subversive, more dangerous to the system than the physical elimination of a boss? Certainly today it involves a greater reaction by the system, more repression. But “fear” is never a good counselor, it makes us lose our rationality, our sense of reality. Perhaps the sense of loss of reality is due to the tomes and tomes, the endless “sociological” disquisitions of anarchists on the word “terrorism,” and on how this word can “isolate” us and is uniquely the product of power. Terrorism is a practice that anarchists (as almost all revolutionary and people’s movements) have always used. I will never tire of repeating it no matter how inconvenient and a bearer of repression it might be, because I believe that intellectual honesty and coherence go hand in hand, and in order to be credible, therefore effective. (Dark Nights 2021)

Some insurrectionary formations have adopted the word “terror” or “terrorism” in their self-descriptions (Loadenthal 2017: 119–20), but even if the intent on striking at individuals seems to be increasingly on the table,

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a strategy for targeted killings has not yet become part of the modus operandi of insurrectionary attacks. It is nevertheless a possibility that it will grow out of this milieu as the anti-civilization rhetoric steps up. In any case, these issues of terrorism and lethal violence will be even more present in the next, ideologically adjacent group under scrutiny.

At the Intersection of Nature and Insurrection: Wild Individuals Eco-extremism is the name by which a group of individuals in Mexico calling themselves Individualistas Tendiendo a Lo Selvaje (Individualists Tending toward the Wild - ITS) described their anti-civilizational mission. ITS launched this mission with attacks on bio-nanotechnology scientists at the start of the 2010s. Defining itself as an “anti-industrial, anti-technological, and anti-civilization group formed by radical environmentalists” (ITS, 65), ITS operates under an anti-civilization framework—which from the outset they identified with the “techno-industrial system” (or “technological dominating civilization”) and have attacked this system in the name of “Wild Nature.” Its first communiqué, posted on the site Maldición Eco-extremista (Eco-extremist curse—taken down in 2022), declared that “we prefer to return to nature, respect her absolutely, and abandon the cities to maintain our claim as Anticivilization Warriors … we still continue to have Wild Instincts that we hurl in defense of the whole that we are a part of—the earth” (ITS, 15). As they declared their rationale for their war on civilization in their third communiqué: “Nature is good, Civilization is evil.” A nihilistic dimension has been present in ITS from its early stages and has only grown with the passage of time. The idea that their actions are not driven by a grandiose plan of “salvation” or adhere to a blueprint has been a staple of the group. ITS is devoid of any yearning for meliorism or belief in progress; it despises reformism and rejects what they call leftism vanguardism: “With the acts that we carry out, ITS do not want to improve Civilization, we do not want to live on a happy planet all taking each other by the hands like a disgusting hippie commune, we do not see a utopia or a paradise, we see Reality” (ITS, 60). The only thing that matters “in this dying world” is to act against civilization not out of hope but out of wrath: “and although all this is useless and futile, we prefer to be defeated in a war against total domination than to remain inert, waiting, passive, or as part of all this” (ITS, 15). ITS rejects all ideologies—including anarchism, which they shun for its hope that the destruction of the Techno-industrial System, or Civilization’s collapse, will usher in a “new world” of mutual aid and solidarity; ITS makes an exception to this exclusion for those “sincere people” in insurrectionary milieus “who do not feel the need to construct a new society, but rather to destroy the existent, a mission that for us is not leftist” (ITS, 99). Even Ted Kaczynski— praised in the first ITS communiqués as someone who “contributed greatly to the advance of anti-technological ideas”—is criticized by ITS for putting

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his hopes on the outdated concept of revolution. Kaczynski fell short here not only because revolution would lead to reformism within the same civilization, but also because the die has already been cast, meaning that technology has obtained such a tight grip over humans that it is pointless to expect any success of the Unabomber’s solution of “educating the masses” to foment an anti-technology uprising. If Kaczynski left prison, he “would realize that now people are alienated more with the use of technology and that they have even put it on an altar as their deity, their sustenance, their own life” (ITS, 22). This position led to Kaczynski castigating ITS’s “hopelessness about the possibility of eliminating the technological system” as its gravest flaw. From the outset of their existence, ITS’s motivations have been detached from its political demands, from putting pressure on authorities, or from any intent of awakening the consciences of other human beings to the impending civilizational collapse. Instead, the impetus is one of punishment—the dominant ethos is one of revenge, of slaying the slayers. ITS displays an animistic view of this vengeance—as a “Wild Reaction”—or as stated in its now-defunct blog, “the truth is that in every attack against civilization, eco-extremists act possessed by that spirit of what you call the Wild Forest” (Malditos, 24). Its grounds for attacking scientists and technologists—as indicated by their first communiqués—stem from this spirit of retribution: “We have no hesitation in attacking those persons who are key to the climax that technology wants to achieve” (ITS, 14). Or, in a rhetorical question, “Did those who modify and destroy the Earth think their actions wouldn’t have repercussions? That they wouldn’t pay a price? If they thought so, they are mistaken” (ITS, 105). This willingness to target human beings entails a rejection of sabotaging tools and machines as insufficient: “[W]e are not some simple saboteurs placing bombs, we are more than that” (ITS, 41). It also extends to a wider philosophy of “indiscriminate attack.” This is explained in Atassa, an eco-extremist compilation of writings, published by the Berkeley-based anarchist publisher Little Black Cart and intended for dissemination in the English-speaking world. There are no innocent victims, says one writer: [T]here really is no such thing as collateral damage in a struggle for survival and this is why I would argue that the so-called innocent victims of random acts of terrorism are neither innocent nor victims. They are complicit on a lot of levels and mostly by their inactivity and refusal to resist the juggernaut of civilization and its many agents of complicity. (Atassa # 2, 87)

“The common citizen isn’t a ‘fellow worker,’ he’s just another lackey of civilization. We attack with the intention of causing the maximum amount of harm possible against selected or indiscriminate targets, without regard for collateral damage,” writes another contributor (atassa # 1, 155). This connects with their view of the masses as beyond redemption because they are “alienated,” constituting the “swarm of alienated beings … the conforming masses”

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(atassa # 2, 150), which has given ITS a misanthropic character that has deepened in recent years. ITS has developed through different phases since its emergence in 2011. It has been argued (Lubrano 2021, 8) that since its third stage—after the short period, roughly a year (2014–15), in which it transformed itself as a cluster of like-minded groups labeled Wild Reaction—ITS became even more radical, maybe due to the inclusion of new younger members. This radicalization occurred particularly on its indiscriminate attack front, although many of its tendencies (the nihilism, the misanthropy) had already been present in its DNA. In its first phase, ITS sent mostly letter and parcel bombs to the so-called accomplices of the destruction of Wild Nature—injuring some and killing at least one scientist. Its post-2016 targets have also included a student and hiker; the group has also falsely claimed responsibility for other attacks— for example, the killing of two tech entrepreneurs in the United States. These false claims added to the blustery, fabricated image that is associated with the group. A British documentary filmmaker dropped its intention to make an ITS doc because “while researching for it, it became clear that the majority of claimed ITS attacks were lies. ITS has written more communiqués than they’ve done attacks. A doc would be pointless” (Hanrahan 2019). What is a fact is that the rejection of ITS within the broader anarchist movement has only intensified with this newest phase of the group, which has bashed “all those humanist anarchists who masturbate with the idea of human progress” while further renouncing any sort of morality, or adherence to a moral compass (such as making sure to avoid human fatalities in their nihilistic quest for civilization’s destruction (ITS 2017, 34)). Within this paradigm, the terrorism label is fully embraced: “Up with the selfish individualists, the eco-extremists, the terrorist nihilists who shake off the disease of humanism and strike without any remorse!” one of the group’s declarations closes (ITS 2017, 35). ITS militants connect their violent take down of civilization within the longer history of anarchist terrorism: “We remember their [anarchist-terrorists] deeds as irrefutable proof of the fierceness of past anarchists. They were very different from the dominant paradigm of the modern anarchist, who has turned into a caricature by his acceptance of alternative, but still civilized, moral values” (atassa # 1, 138). “Anything that attacks the political and social fabric of the techno-industrial civilization” is valuable to eco-extremism, as one atassa contributor argued, “[it] has something to teach the individualist” (atassa # 2, 39). One issue of Regresión, an eco-extremist magazine “against techno-industrial progress,” featured an article on the valuable teachings of the strategy of terror promoted by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS): “Although not all ISIS attacks have been carried out by so many people with a degree of complex military training, and without spending a great deal of money, ISIS has taught us that to hit savagely many times it is only necessary to act in silence, alone and know the basics regarding the weapons used in attacks.” Among the “[m]any lessons

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[that] can be drawn from ISIS,” the Regresión author wrote, “for the continuation of our war against civilization, from combat-propaganda strategies to ways to go unnoticed by the computer and physical security of the authorities. I repeat, valuable things can be learned from ISIS or condemned, as most humanist sheep do” (Regresión). The anti-ITS reaction—triggered especially for the defense of indiscriminate terror—led to many vitriolic, verbal disputes within the vast anarchist camp, with ITS excoriated as “eco-extremism Nazi Aztecs,” “eco-fascists,” or a “death cult.” A contributor to the anarchist site It’s Going Down excoriated ITS’s “kill ‘em all” premise for failing “to grasp that even in the rare anarchist action which resulted in the loss of civilian life, it has never been anarchist praxis to kill people for the sake of killing people” (Campbell 2017). At the same time, ITS spread beyond its borders, especially to other South American countries such as Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. The intent was to make ITS a sort of international brand—a self-defined “international terrorist mafia”—under which autonomous cells and “wild” individuals carried out attacks against the techno-industrial system. In 2019, the ITS-affiliated Brazilian group Sociedade Secreta Silvestre (Secret Wilderness Society) threatened to kill then-President Jair Bolsonaro, denounced as a “negationist of the climate catastrophe,” and his environment minister while carrying out a series of IED attacks against a power substation, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, and a church (Veja 2019). In Chile, an ITS member using the online avatar Tanu—one of the spirits of the indigenous Patagonian Selk’nam people—was sentenced for 45 years in prison for a series of attacks between 2017 and 2019, including two frustrated crimes of qualified homicide and the crime of exploded device injury, targeting the owner of the world’s biggest copper miner (Ex-Ante 2022). “‘ITS is in Argentina’, that was part of the message we left in an envelope stuffed with black powder at the Retiro bus station [the main terminal of Buenos Aires] … a fact that was silenced by the press like so many others,” read an ITS communique. The Argentine Federal Police announced in 2022 that it had neutralized an ITS cell comprising a father and son, and arrested both (TN 2022). It has been argued (Fleming 2022) that anti-technology radicalism, instead of radical environmentalism, is what drives ITS—it is not eco-terrorist group (focused on property) but a “novel kind of anti-tech terrorist group.” There is merit to this argument as long as it is kept in mind that it is not possible to understand ITS without acknowledging the destabilizing impact of climate collapse—however, the point is well taken that ITS does defy an easy categorization. As will be discussed in the final section that ambiguity seems to be more a sign of things to come than an aberration.

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New Convergences and Strange Bedfellows Anti-civilization activists come in many forms. The anti-civilization matrix— and ideas of the urgent need for techno-industry and civilization to break down—has fostered a network of a variety of individuals and groups which has climate apocalypse increasingly at the center. Some of these groups are motivated by dread about climate apocalypse, others by fury over it; some take advantage of it to install a new order, and some are driven by an amalgam of all of these. Narratives of civilization’s foundering have the potential to lead to an informal, fluid, convergence between groups with divergent backgrounds or visions of “after collapse,” which are nevertheless tied by a practice of sowing chaos within the much-maligned civilization—loosely “united,” then, by both declinism and modus operandi. Instead of waiting for civilization to collapse, they want to accelerate this collapse—hence, they are often seen, especially on the far right of the spectrum, as having an ideological style (though not necessarily a full-fledged ideology) known as accelerationism. There are already signs of this emergent paradigm. For example, a continuum between some sections of green anarchism and far-right ecologism—or, as it is increasingly called, eco-fascism. Although by itself not new— there was a Nazi ecology, for example—in some sectors of the right—mostly fringe and online subcultures—eco-fascists are gradually acknowledging both climate change and its existential threat to the survival of nations and peoples, especially whites. They often invoke the deep ecologism of naturalists such as Pentti Linkola, his ominous views about the impact of overpopulation, and his calls for a drastic reduction in human population in order to allow the recovery of nature and preserve the wilderness. For eco-fascists, a scenario of large-scale human migration from the global south to the north due to resource scarcity caused by climate change and hazards is the dystopic future that must be stopped by any means necessary. Another reference for this as-of-yet-marginal subculture—active mostly on Alt-tech platforms such as Telegram and Gab— is Ted Kaczynski, praised for his views on the need to destroy the system and for attacking head-on civilization and its infrastructures (Farrell-Molloy and Macklin 2022). For example, the “eco-right’s willingness to engage with the eco-extremist tendency” in the digital realm, sharing themes and memes, has been noted by a scholar (Loadenthal 2022, 187). The ideological convergence of different themes from different sources (creating “salad-bar” ideologies)—but nevertheless under a wide umbrella of “anti-civilizationism”—facilitated, not without a sense of irony, by digital connectivity—may increase the phenomenon of self-radicalized individuals, or lone attackers, rather than specific terrorist groups, which are easier to track and neutralize (Ware and Waldo 2022). Relatedly, collapsism may also induce the phenomenon of fringe fluidity—meaning the individual transition from one form of extremism to another (Gartenstein-Ross and Blackman 2019). One such case happened with a member of Atomwaffen Division

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(AWD)—founded in 2015 and renamed National Socialist Order in 2020— with the aim of ushering in societal collapse and destroying the system through political violence. A member of one of its cells in Colorado—whose online avatar was Saor, or Gaellic for “free”—had previously been a member of Earth Liberation Front (EF 2019). A similar eco-fascist trajectory is observed— and denounced as such by former fellow anarchists—in two former Animal Liberation Front activists who launched a “Vegan Final Solution” platform advocating a “misanthropic worldview” and regarding most humans, “the gluttonous, selfish drones that shovel dead animals into their grotesque faces,” as unworthy of life (Ishkah 2021). At the same time, collapsism is not only facilitating the blurring of ideological edges between different anti-civ activists—of which accelerationism is an indication—but may also trigger a phenomenon of neo-Luddite political violence (independent of and cutting across the left–right scale) that can conceivably grow as the perceived collapse of civilization accelerates. If the use of emerging technologies for political violence by non-state actors has been addressed as a growing threat (Cronin 2020), attacks against technology— or technophobic terrorism—may not be far behind in the threat hierarchy. There seems to have been for some time now a diffuse popular awareness about it; for example, a 2006 survey of Internet leaders, activists, and analysts by the Pew Research Center showed that a majority of respondents believed that by 2020 there would be a group of technology refuseniks and that while some would live off the grid, others would attack the grid and “commit terror acts” (Pew 2006). Futurists have hypothesized the rise of “bioconservatism terrorism—particularly in response to 4IR and the coming fusion of biology and technology and post-human transhumanism (Torres-Soriano and Tobozo-Buezo 2019). The sociologist of religion Bryan S. Turner wrote about one potential future of globalization characterized by environmental collapse, population growth, pandemics, famine, and the struggle over scarce resources, resembling “not the Brave New World of Huxley or that of Orwell in Nineteen EightyFour, but the world of Mad Max,” or global anarchy. Turner pointed out that all major catastrophes in history have “produced major religious responses.” In this pessimistic scenario of the ending of civilized life, the contemporary arrival of “climate collapse cults” (Moore and Roberts 2022), of diverse varieties and backgrounds, could well be a hint of things to come.

Note 1. The anti-tech dimension in contemporary anarchism is not, of course, the only one. As stated by anarchist theorists, contemporary anarchists have a “lovehate relationship with technology” (Amster 2012: 172). Uri Gordon calls it a “curious ambivalence” (2008:109), because if on one hand they are involved in many campaigns of resistance to the introduction of new technologies, on the other hand make they the most extensive use of communication technologies.

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2. The ideia that it is urgent to break the taboo against targetting property is openly defended by some influential voices within the wider climate movement. See for example the work of the Swedish Marxist scholar and activist Andreas Malm who called for a campaign of sabotage of fossil fuel infrastructure in his 2021 book How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire (London: Verso).

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LeVasseur, Todd. 2017. “Decisive Ecological Warfare: Triggering Industrial Collapse via Deep Green Resistance,” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, Volume 11, Issue 1, pp. 109–130. Loadenthal, Michael. 2017. The Politics of Attack: Communiqués and Insurrectionary Violence, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Loadenthal, Michael. 2022. “Feral Fascists and Deep Green Guerrillas: Infrastructural Attack and Accelerationist Terror,” Critical Studies on Terrorism, Volume 15, Issue 1, pp. 169–208. Malditos. Available at: https://we.riseup.net/assets/319060/MALDITOS.pdf Millett, Stephen. 2004. “Technology is capital: Fifth Estate’s critique of the megamachine”, in Jonathan Purkis & James Bowen, Changing Anarchism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 73–98. Moore, Sam and Alex Roberts. 2022. The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right, London: Polity. Lamprini, Rori and Vasiliki Georgiadou. 2023. “Left-Wing Extremism in Greece,” in Jose Pedro Zuquete (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, New York: Palgrave. Liddick, Donald R. 2006. Eco-Terrorism: Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements, Westport, Connecticut, Praeger Publishers. Lubrano, Mauro. 2021. “Stop the Machines: How Emerging Technologies are Fomenting the War on Civilization,” Terrorism and Political Violence, published online, May 4. Mumford, Lewis. 1970. The Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich NYT—New York Times. 1989. “IDEAS & TRENDS; Saboteurs for a Better Environment,” July 9, available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/09/weekinrev iew/ideas-trends-saboteurs-for-a-better-environment.html?searchResultPosition=6 Parsons, Sean. 2018. “Ecocentrism,” in Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach, edited by Benjamin Franks, Nathan Jun, and Leonard Williams, London: Routledge, pp. 219– 233. Pew Research Center. 2006. “The Future of the Internet,” September 24, available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2006/09/24/the-future-of-the-int ernet-3/ PCP—Pitsburgh City Paper. 2006. “Wild Times Ahead: Waiting for the End of Civilization with Anarcho-Primitivist Kevin Tucker,” July 13, available at: https://www. pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/wild-times-ahead/Content?oid=1337295 Regresión—Quadernos Contra el Progresso Tecnoindustrial, n. 6. START—National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. 2013. “An Overview of Bombing and Arson Attacks by Environmental and Animal Rights Extremists in the United States, 1995-2010,” May, available at: https://www. dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OPSR_TP_TEVUS_Bombing-Arson-Att acks_Environmental-Animal%20Rights-Extremists_1309-508.pdf TAL—The Anarchist Library. 2001. “Some Notes on Insurrectionary Anarchism,” Summer, available at: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/killing-king-abacussome-notes-on-insurrectionary-anarchism TAL—The Anarchist Library. 2013. ‘Fragment: Violence’ by L, June 24, available at: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/l-fragment-violence

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The Invisible Committee. 2010. The Coming Insurrection (Los Angeles: Semiotext (e)). TN. 2022. “Individualistas Tendiendo a lo Salvaje”, el grupo eco terrorista que la policía detectó en el país, March 17, available at: https://tn.com.ar/policiales/ 2022/03/17/individualistas-tendiendo-a-lo-salvaje-el-grupo-eco-terrorista-que-lapolicia-detecto-en-el-pais/ Torres-Soriano, Manuel & Mario Tobozo-Buezo. 2019. “Five Terrorist Dystopias,” The International Journal of Intelligence, Security, and Public Affairs, Volume 21, Issue 1, pp. 49–65. Turner, Bryan S. 2007. “The Futures of Globalization,” in The Blackwell Companion to Globalization, edited by George Ritzer, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 675–690. Veja. 2019. “Líder de grupo terrorista revela plano para matar Bolsonaro,” July 19, available at: https://veja.abril.com.br/brasil/bolsonaro-terror-capa-veja/ Vert Resistance. 2019. “Arrêter de perdre nos luttes: De la guerre d’usure à l’échec en cascade,” November 19, available at: https://www.vert-resistance.org/strategies/arr eter-de-perdre-nos-luttes/ Vert Resistance. 2020. “Arrêtons de «défendre » l’environnement,” December 14, available at: https://www.vert-resistance.org/strategies/arretons-de-defendre-lenvir onnement/ Ware, Jacob and Cleary Waldo. 2022. “Ideological Leaderless Resistance in the Digital Age,” October 26. GNET, available at: https://gnet-research.org/2022/10/26/ ideological-leaderless-resistance-in-the-digital-age/ Warrior Up. “How to destroy cell phone towers,” available at: https://warriorup.nob logs.org/post/2020/03/02/how-to-destroy-cell-phone-towers/ Zerzan, John (ed.). 2005. Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections, Port Townsend, Washington: Feral House Zerzan, John. 2010. E-mail Communication with Author, August 2. Zúquete, José Pedro. (2016). “World War A: Contemporary Anarchists and Extreme Left Perpetrators” In M. Fredholm (Ed.), Understanding Lone Actor Terrorism: Past Experience, Future Outlook, and Response Strategies, pp. 46–65. London & New York: Routledge. Taylor & Francis.

CHAPTER 15

Environmental Apocalypticism, Other Forms of Eco-Extremism, and Their Links to the Left-Wing Extremist Scene Miroslav Mareš

Introduction Eco-extremism is a specific form of extremism, which is (under various names) discussed in academic literature and used in governmental documents. Its public reception is very sensitive, and many scholars, politicians, and activists reject this term as inadequate. To distinguish between legitimate and necessary protection of the environment and excessive extremist misuse of such ideas and behavior is problematic. Environmental rights (including animal rights) are thematized in various ways by extremists of various ideological and religious orientations. These scientific and practical challenges are analyzed in this chapter. It explains the basic elements of academic discussion on ecoextremism with a focus on environmental apocalypticism, then is the term eco-extremism conceptualized and its overlap with other forms of extremism (mainly left-wing extremism) is described. After a brief outline of the historical development of eco-extremism is presented, its recent development trends, and the modus operandi of eco-apocalyptic entities. Governmental reactions to these trends are described. In the last part, possible scenarios of the future development of eco-extremism are outlined.

M. Mareš (B) Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_15

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Academic Discussion on Eco-Extremism and Interconnected Terms The term eco-extremism is used with various meanings. Some scholars use the term environmental extremism synonymously with the term eco-extremism, while some others distinguish between them or even use the umbrella term “green extremism” (Binka 2008). The term eco-extremism is not so frequently used as the term environmental radicalism, which is by some scholars presented with normatively positive connotation and non-extremist meaning; other scholars use it de facto synonymously with eco-extremism. Many authors affiliate environmental extremism (or eco-extremism) with animal rights extremism (Posluszna 2015), while the others strictly separate both these concepts (Binka 2008). The academic discussion on eco-extremism is closely interconnected with discussion on eco-terrorism (or environmental terrorism) (Raufer 2018), which is sometimes criticized due to inadequate use of the term terrorism for various forms of sabotage (eco-sabotage) or civic disobedience (Hirsch-Hoefler and Mudde 2014). On the other hand, several authors also discuss the core ideology of eco-authoritarians from the point of view of democratic political theory (Humprey 2007). The normative and ideological biases have a strong impact on public debate as well as on academic discussion on these issues. Identifying the borderline between the scientific approach and activism can be difficult in specific cases (Keller 1998). In general, we can distinguish between academic papers written 1. by sympathizers of radical or even extremist environmentalism, 2. by dominantly neutral scientists in relation to the researched topic, and 3. by biased critics of environmental activism (overestimation of threat and/ or not adequate use of terms as eco-terrorism/extremism is typical of them). The conceptualization of environmental terrorism is very different or even contradictory in relation to the above-mentioned concepts of terrorist violence, which are based on pro-environmental beliefs. This environmental terrorism according to Daniel M. Schwartz is connected with specific forms of environmental destruction. He stated: “Environmental destruction or the threat thereof can be labeled ‘terrorism’ when: (1) the act or threat breaches national and/or international laws governing the disruption of the environment during peacetime or wartime; and (2) the act or threat exhibits the fundamental characteristics of terrorism (i.e. the act or threat of violence has specific objectives, and the violence is aimed at a symbolic target)” (Schwartz 1998, 483). This concept is also not connected with ideological environmentalist background, similar to the use of the term eco-terrorism for threatening attacks against environmental activists (Mareš 2005, 290). These approaches are based on different categorizations of terrorism, and they will be no more discussed in this chapter.

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Conceptualization of Eco-Extremism and Its Overlap with Left-Wing Extremism The paper is focused on ideologically reasoned eco-extremism, specifically on its recent “apocalyptic forms” and on its interconnections with left-wing extremism. The first challenge in the definition of eco-extremism is the definition of extremism as such (Backes 2007). In an etymological sense, it also determines a use in ordinary langue; the term “extremism” is used for labeling some extraordinary or furthermost positions. In political theory and interconnected disciplines, the ongoing stormy discussion about the adequacy of the use of extremisms makes finding the commonly accepted global definition difficult (Bötticher and Mareš 2012). If we use the general conceptualization of extremism as the furthermost position in relation to the specific middle, then it can be difficult to identify recent extremes in the environmental dimension. The demands of eco-extremism should be—by definition—focused on something very different than the political mainstream in this environmental field. However, if we look on the specific demands of contemporary eco-extremists, their ideal or final goals in environmental protection seem to be sometimes similar to mainstream demands, but the difference is in requested time (achieving carbon neutrality, for example) and interconnected issues, including broader and deeper changes of societal order and limitation of personal freedom in relation to environmental protection. This aspect is also connected with the specific conceptualization of extremism in a part of Western political and academic milieu, in which extremism is understood as an antithesis of the democratic constitutional state. This approach is also represented in this book in the chapter by Uwe Backes. From the perspective of this definition, eco-extremist demands aim against the rules of democratic political order and against at least some fundamental values of contemporary democracies. Discovering anti-democratic elements in environmentalist demands is usually difficult, while they can add adjectives “environmental” or “ecological” to the term “democracy.” However, in fact in such so-called democracy, real substantive democratic elements are eliminated due to the primacy of environmentalist goals (for example, due to the delegation of essential decisions to non-elected eco-activists instead democratic elected institutions). Environmental extremism can be divided into more ideological subcategories. Extremist fringes rooted in the so-called deep ecology are specific, relatively autonomous categories of extremism (with some similarities to religious extremism, such as the belief in “Mother Gaia” etc.), while various other streams of eco-politics are connected with left-wing or right-wing extremism. In these, overlap categories can be eco-politics expressed in an extremist way (it means that the actors are both eco-extremists and left-wing or right-wing extremists) or the eco-politics can be non-extreme; however, its actors are left-wing or right-wing extremists.

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The spectrum of left-wing extremist variants in both above-mentioned categories is broad because it reflects the whole spectrum of extremist leftwing ideologies which means various streams of communism or extremist socialism and anarchism. Anarchist streams can be distinguished between anarcho-primitivists (with ties to deep ecology) and “societal-focused” anarchists (Bötticher and Mareš 2012, 386). With respect to the contemporary development, trends in apocalypticism in green politic (McNeish 2017) is essential to mention also the category of eco-religious extremism, which can be used in two meanings—firstly as a mixture of religious confessions (paganist, Christian, including various Christian confessions, Islamist, “new” sects and cults, etc.) or as specific belief in supernatural beings which represent nature (in this category can be seen the overlap with deep ecology) (Bötticher and Mareš 2012, 386). The challenge with the definition of eco-extremism is also connected with the used means. This issue leads to misunderstanding. The breaking of the law in the name of the protection of natureincluding the breaking the law in democratic states—is not always determined by extremist goals (in the abovementioned Backes´s conceptualization of extremism) and, on the other hand, various environmentalist groups, which recently acting within the scope of existing law, can have extremist goals. They will be implemented after the seizure of power when the eco-dictatorship will be established (Bötticher and Mareš 2012, 384). If we stay by illegal methods of promoting environmental interest, they can have various intensities and impacts on the security of democratic countries. Civil disobedience, nonviolent blockades, or “performative” protests (banners on the nuclear power plants etc.) are—at least in limited scope—not a real threat to security, and they generally aim not against the democratic constitutional rule as such. On the other hand, violent subversive and vigilante pro-environmental activities in democratic countries which are focused on severe harm to human physical health and mostly again human life are a priori connected with non-respect to specific democratic procedures. It is important to mention, that only a small part of unlawful acts committed by activists in the name of protection of nature and animal rights can be—from an academic point of view—labeled as terrorism, despite the fact that in governmental reports in several countries (including US and UK) are labeled as such. Cas Mudde and Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler came to this conclusion in their well-backgrounded paper. They argue that “less than 10 percent of all criminal actions of the movement can be categorized as ecoterrorist” (Mudde and Hirsch-Hoefler 2014, 597). As terrorist acts are considered mostly bomb attacks and arson attacks threatening people (Mudde and Hirsch-Hoefler 2014, 597). Recent trends in eco-terrorism are—at least up to now—not connected with serious violent or even terrorist activities. On the other hand, they are characterized by the mass breaking of the law in various places and by the spread of controversial ideological messages. If we want to understand the

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recent state of eco-extremist activities, it is important to analyze the complex of historical roots and determinants of contemporary movement; however, in this chapter are not in-depth analyzed issues related to overlaps between leftwing extremism and leftist eco-groups, which are described and discussed in the chapter by José Pedro Zúquete in this book.

Brief History of Eco-Extremism Eco-extremist activities can be historically divided into several waves, and within these waves, various strategies and tactics can be identified. Ecoextremism was typical of several geographical areas mainly North America, UK, and Western Europe; after the fall of communism, it was rooted in limited scope also in Central and Eastern Europe (Mareš 2008). It seems to be mostly a phenomenon connected with the development of Western societies, despite the fact, that it claims global goals. Origins of contemporary eco-extremism can be seen in the political streams which arose from the protest movements in USA and Western Europe at the turn of 1960s and 1970s. Environmental agenda became a main part of activities of various groupings, including extremist fringes. Probably the first interconnection of eco-extremist ideas and terrorist acts was the action of the group called R.I.S.E. (Reconstruction, Society, Extermination) in Chicago in 1972. According to W. Seth Carus, two young activists “were on the verge of releasing typhoid bacteria into the Chicago water supply system as part of a plot to commit mass murder” (Carus 2001, 55). The attack was a failure, however. Perpetrators published a manifesto, which “started with an assertion that mankind was destroying itself and the planet, and that the only way to preserve the environment was for the human race to be wiped out except for a select group of people who would live in harmony with nature” (Carus 2001, 58). This incident remained relatively isolated act. Since the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of monkeywrenching activities occurred in North America and the UK; this wave also continued in the 1990s. It was based on the strategy and tactics from the novel by Edward Abbey called “The Monkey Wrench Gang” about a group of activists destroying property, first published in 1975 and then republished several times (Abbey 2000). Monkewrenching was typical of groups like Earth First! or the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), later also the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). The supporters of this sabotage tactics reasoned breaking the law “to facilitate the democratic process” (Young 1995, 207). In a similar sense stared to use the term “Ecotage” (inspired by the activist book from 1972), which combines the words ecology and sabotage and—as an expert Elzbieta Posluszna wrote— “became a term describing the actions aiming at the destruction of equipment used for the devastation of nature” (Posluszna 2013, 133). While the majority of the groupings and individuals in this wave attacked only the property, several attacks were also aimed against human beings. For example, Animal Right Militia sent letter bombs to Marget Thaetcher in 1992

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(Liddick 2006, 37). The most well-known case of these era—Theodore John Kaczynski aka Unabomber—who attacked by letter bombs several people from academic, research, and business environment can be assessed as a relatively autonomous phenomenon. He criticized leftism in his manifesto. However, he was respected due to his anarcho-primitivist views of society in some anarchist circles (Mareš 2005, 295). The first wave of eco-extremism, ecotage, and eco-extremism in North America was motivated mostly by the “resisting the destruction of natural diversity and wilderness areas” (Young 1995, 201); however, also the apocalyptic views of the destruction of the planet were used in eco-extremist propaganda. As Line Nyhagen Predelli stated, a new generation of activists of the Eart First! group extended the previous strict concentration on wilderness issues to “the organizational platform to include social issues” (Predelli 1995, 125). The eco-extremism in North America was also originally characterized by strong bio-centric views. However, it was later interconnected with left-wing extremist “social issues” groupings. But in controversial cases, this symbiosis failed. David Foreman from the Earth First! rejected in 1986 the aid to the hungry people in Ethiopia due to the need “balance in nature.” He was strongly criticized by the social anarchists (Bookchin and Foreman 1991). Close ties existed between left-wing extremist and environmentalist movements in Western Germany. Mostly the theme of resistance against nuclear power plants mobilized various protest forces in Western German society, with stronger intensity after the tragedy in Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986 (similar to several other Western countries). Sabotages and damage of property were tolerated by so-called eco-fundamentalists and eco-socialists in the country (Kreutz 1989, 79). At the time, the young Green Party was on the rise in Western Germany. Within this party two factions struggled in the 1980s. The so-called Fundis (as “fundamentalists”) tried to keep the Greens as protest oppositional movement without compromises in environmental and social issues, while pragmatic Realos (as Realists) tried to find coalition partners and to achieve Green goals by step-by-step compromises (Katsiaficas 2006, 198). The Fundis were supported by left-wing extremist autonomous subculture, a specific mixture of anti-establishment communist and anarchist ideologies characterized by militant activities. After the victory of Realos faction at the turn of 1980s and 1990s within the Green party, the autonomous left the cooperation with the party (Katsiaficas 2006, 208). German development can be seen as a development model in Western countries, of course, with many national and regional specifics. The mainstreaming and moderation of initially extreme or radical politics can be observed on the one hand, the ongoing extremist character and radicalization of new eco-extremists on the other hand. In the 1990s and in the first half of 2000s, the campaign of militant ecoextremists and animal-right extremists with bio-centric views culminated in

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several countries, as the Earth Liberation Front attacks in the USA (which caused mass economic losses and damages, as the arson attack at buildings and ski lifts in Vail, Colorado, in 1998) (Liddick 2006, 5), Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty attacks in the UK, or assassination at Dutch far-right politicians Pym Fortuyn committed by animal-right activist Volkert van der Graaf in Netherlands on 6 May 2022 due to Fortuyn’s critical attitudes toward the environmental movement (Posluszna and Mareš 2016, 96). Environmental agenda interconnected with broader social justice demands became an important part of the anti-globalization movement at the turn of the 1990s and 2000s, in which many left-wing extremists and eco-extremist grouping were engaged. The rise of the AG movement was accompanied by violent mass demonstrations with the participation of Black Bloc militants (Mareš 2007, 305–307). Left-wing terrorist groups sometimes choose targets, and they reasoned it with environmental arguments too, as the kneecapping attack at Roberto Adinolfi in 2012 shows. He was the chief of the Italian nuclear company, and the attack was committed by the Olga nucleus of the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front (FAI/IRF) (Marone 2014, 23–24). In sum, both environmental bio-centric extremists, as well as left-wing extremists with human-centric (or anthropocentric) views, use the environmental agenda in their politics and they act by violent as well as nonviolent means.

Contemporary Development Trends in Connections Between Left-Wing Extremism and Environmental Apocalyptic Actors The mid of second decade of the twenty-first century is characterized by the establishing of new organizational forms of environmental activism in which parts occupied extremist political positions. They exist besides the abovementioned forms with longer historical traditions, and recently they have a dominant position in environmental extremism and radicalism. These new forms are characterized by a renewed apocalyptic rhetoric, which is focused on the threat of extinction of mankind and biological species on the planet Earth. The main message of this apocalyptic rhetoric is human-centric, even though a large part of the movement also uses bio-centric arguments. Development of these parts of the environmental spectrum is very dynamic, and several different trajectories of the rise and decline of specific groups and campaigns can be observed. Contemporary apocalyptic environmental politics is not reserved only for some militant or extremist streams. It became political mainstream in many Western countries, and it is also propagated at the international level. On the other hand, the “new” environmentalist scene criticized the old one due to its pragmatism and treason of original environmentalist values. As an example,

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the accusations against the German Greens from the side of new movements can be mentioned (Hockenos 2023). The borderline between extremist and non-extremist politics is difficult to identify in many cases due to similarities in public arguments between the mainstream and extremists and due the hidden goals of eco-extremist subjects. The respected mainstream persons of the environmental scene can participate in the same actions with some extremists, as the case the Greta Thunberg (icon of contemporary mainstream eco-politics) shows. She participated in protest against the enlargement of the coal mining area in Hambacher Forest in 2019 alongside left-wing extremists (Goertz 2019, 30); in January 2023, she was even detained by German police in similar protests close to German village Lützerath (Thomas, 2023). Greta Thunberg symbolizes the political, societal, and media interest into protests which should stop the climatic changes caused by human activity. Swedish teenager (born 2003) started her School strike for the climate in 2018, which won global attention and popularity, followed by the mass movement Fridays for Future (FFF). This movement acts nonviolent, expresses respect for democratic politics, and is considered as moderate representative of contemporary environmental politics. However, some extremist groups—as the German organization Interventionist Left (IL)—tried to use Thunberg´s and FFF’s popularity for their own propagandist purposes, including rejection of democratic procedures (Goertz 2019, 30). The IL infiltrated activities of the campaign with stabile organization elements called Ende Gelände (End Terrain) which started in 2015. A coalition consisting of several leftist and environmentalist groups creates its background. It protests against brown coal mining and uses various methods of direct actions, including occupying mining areas after breaking police cordons (Foltin 2016, 50–51). Ende Gelände has also its pendant in the Czech Republic called the Limity jsme my (We are limits), which is infiltrated by the domestic left-wing extremist scene (Ministry of Interior of the CR 2018, 19). Both Ende Gelände and Limity jsme my represent continuity with several innovations with former forms of everyday activism of extreme left and radical environmentalism. The innovative element is mostly the focus on stop of coal mining due to the impact of coal consumption on climatic changes, while the keeping of wilderness or existing villages plays a subsidiary role. Scenes of clashes with police in countryside areas show similarities with protests against nuclear power plants and nuclear waste in previous decades.

Extinction Rebellion New image and politics came into environmental activism in 2018 thanks to the UK-founded group Extinction Rebellion (XR), which quickly won huge attention. Its regional branches were founded in many countries—researchers Peter Gardner, Tiago Carvalho, and Maria Valenstain identified in summer

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2021 in 79 countries 1.265 local chapters of the XR worldwide, over 70% in Europe, 12.5% in North America, and the rest in other continents (Gardner et al. 2021). Due to this, mass scope can be seen the diversity of activities and regional partnerships with other actors. The core of the XR was created by activists engaged previously in various anti-governmental protests activities (a. o. the Occupy movement) (Wilson and Walton 2019, 13–14), however, not in the “hard” left-wing extremist scene. They belonged to nonviolent antiestablishment critics. The manifesto of the XR, the “Declaration of Rebellion,” starts with the apocalyptic message: “This is our darkest hour. Humanity finds itself embroiled in an event unprecedented in its history. One which, unless immediately addressed, will catapult us further into the destruction of all we hold dear: this nation, its peoples, our ecosystems and the future of generations to come” (Extinction Rebellion 2018). On the base of these arguments, the XR rejects the recent governments. Despite the fact that XR urges democratic values, the recent democratic elected governments are targets of the rebellion: “We, in alignment with our consciences and our reasoning, declare ourselves in rebellion against our Government and the corrupted, inept institutions that threaten our future. The wilful complicity displayed by our government has shattered meaningful democracy and cast aside the common interest in favour of short-term gain and private profits. When Government and the law fail to provide any assurance of adequate protection, as well as security for its people’s well-being and the nation’s future, it becomes the right of its citizens to seek redress in order to restore dutiful democracy and to secure the solutions needed to avert catastrophe and protect the future. It becomes not only our right, it becomes our sacred duty to rebel ” (Extinction Rebellion 2018). The XR propagates breaking the law within the civil resistance model, among others due to the fact that it “creates the social tension non-violent and the public drama” (Hallam 2019, 101). It calls for nonviolent means of action (Hallam 2019, 101). However, in reality, several sabotages and blockades with serious impacts on the freedom of movement of non-engaged people were carried out by the XR members. Direct physical violence against human beings or their threats was never used. The cases of smashing of windows at Barclays Bank in Stroudon 20 March 2022 (de la Mare and Limbu 2023) or blockades of the tube in Canning Town in London on 15 October 2019, which caused the anger of traveling people, and some of them attacked XR activists (Fotaki and Foroughi 2022). This action was discussed in the movement, which is based on the leaderless model, but in fact, some activists and cells have a privileged position, as the case showed. Despite the fact, that the majority of the XR members were against the action, real leaders pushed it (Fotaki and Foroughi 2022, 15). Outside the UK came to various blockades or symbolic damages/painting buildings by the XR groups many times, for example, in Australia (Jarzabkowski et al. 2022, 23–25).

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As mentioned above, the activities were nonviolent in the sense of the lack of intentionally threatened human lives and health. But the public image of the XR was affected by several punishments of the XR activists and by questionable reception of XR activities in society. On 31 December 2022, the XR in the UK announced “a controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic” (Extinction Rebellion 2022) with the goal, of winning broader public support. In the same statement, the XR stated: “But people do care, and changes to democracy that free and empower the voices of the people through Citizens Assemblies could balance the tables and bring about the positive societal tipping point we all need” (Extinction Rebellion 2022). The conceptualization of democracy in public statements of the XR is focused mostly on “citizens assemblies,” which should solve the environmental and other problems. Contemporary representative democracy is in crisis from the point of view of the XR (Berglung and Schmidt 2020, 72). These controversial attitudes toward liberal democracy, together with an image of the cult of death (Walter 2022) and feelings of moral superiority make more serious concerns about the overlap of—at least part—the XR with extremism than small-scale sabotages and blockades. This possible extremism is more “pure” environmental than left-wing due to the lack of leftism in the core ideology of the XR. Berglund and Schmid came in the research on the XR to the conclusion that the XR is not an anarchist organization because it does not share anarchist views of the state, and criminal justice system and the traces of anarchist politics (mostly horizontal decision-making) “are much less visible in XR than they are in many other social movements, including Occupy” (Berglund and Schmid 2020, 21). The above-mentioned religious (or quasi-religious) cult character of the XR is weakened or even eliminated thanks to the appeals to scientific knowledge and religious neutrality. Some local groups of the XR can be infiltrated by traditional left-wing extremists, but the overlap is not huge.

Other Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements and Networks A similar situation is in the new organization and networks, which arose in the first years of the third decade of the twenty-first century in Western Europe. The collation Just Stop Oil was established in 2022, and it vandalized several places this year, blocked roads, and later it started new tactics of the daubing of works of art with paint (Stott et al. 2022, 5). These tactics also inspired the original German group, Last Generation (Letzte Generation), founded in 2021. Its blockades of roads and runways have a significant impact on public travel. During the blockade in Berlin in October 2022, the rescue service car with an injured woman was stuck in a traffic jam allegedly caused by the LG blockade. This incident caused anger against the LG (Marcus 2022). The LG also has branches in Austria, where activists glued to the street seriously disrupt

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public traffic. Supporters on sidewalks monitor the police and public reactions (some people strongly disagree with the activities of the LG) (Mareš 2022). Similar to the XR, the LG does not consist of left-wing extremists (Turpeinen 2023); it is a new specific fringe of radical environmentalism rejecting compromises with governmental structures. In Germany, it had at the beginning of the year 2023 around 600 members, and in Austria around 50 (Rosenauer 2023). In 2022, LG joined the transnational network of environmentalist groups called A22 (the Just stop Oil! is its member too). In its declaration, the group declares itself as democratic, and at the same time uses it commits to mass civil disobedience. With pathetic words, it tries to mobilize new supporters: “Sacred rights require a sacred duty to defend them. And until everyone is free, none of us are free” (A22 Network 2022). The uncompromised rhetoric of the A22 together with small-scale breaking-the-law activities makes against concern about its relation to democratic pluralism and mechanisms of representative democracy; on the other hand, these mechanisms were not verbally attacked by its activists (up to now), and they are not intentionally violent against human targets. Their actions cause significant economic losses for various subjects. Besides these “middle-class” fanatic eco-movements without strong links to the left-wing extremist scene, the new forms of militant eco-anarchism are active in the contemporary world. The Tyre Extinguishers, established in 20’s are an example. In its manifesto the stated: “We are defending ourselves against climate change, air pollution and unsafe drivers. We do this with a simple tactic: Deflating the tyres of these massive, unnecessary vehicles, causing inconvenience for their owners” (Tyre Extinguishers 2022). They attacked around 10,000 cars worldwide, in Leeds, also the emergency cars of the Yorkshire ambulance service (Gayle 2022). The whole alarmism eco-apocalyptic movement is adaptable to new challenges, and various new forms of activism can be expected.

Selected State Reactions to Apocalyptic Eco-Movements Governmental institutions in the homeland security sector reacted to the wave of new eco-apocalyptic movements which broke the law, mainly by mass blockades and vandalizing. Standardized actions of riot police forces were used in the UK, Germany, and in several other countries. Violent clashes occurred mostly in Germany in Hambacher Forest and around the village Lützerath; however, militants mainly came from the traditional leftwing extremist autonomous milieu. German riot police was criticized because some police officers got stuck in mud during one operation in January 2023 (Morris 2023). Greater impact has the ongoing discussion on official extremist labeling of new eco-apocalyptic groups. The symbol and a brief description of the XR were included in the materials of the UK police forces about radicalization

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after an adverse reaction from a part of the media, and the political scene declared that XR is not viewed as an extremist group (Silke and Morrison 2022, 890). In Germany, the Ende Gelände was mentioned in the report of the internal intelligence agency in Berlin in 2020 in the chapter on left-wing extremism. The reason was the infiltration of the interventionists left to the EG. This inclusion in the report was strongly criticized by the Green party and the Left party in Berlin local assembly (Jansen 2020). Criticism toward the Czech ministry of interior from the non-governmental activist scene came in a similar situation in the Czech Republic. After the group Limity jsme my was mentioned in the governmental report on extremism due to interconnection with an anarchist scene (Limity jsme my 2017). A new challenge to German security policy is the activity of the LG. After several regional politicians and experts demanded to include this group in the official category of extremism, the director of the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution Thomas Haldenwang rejected this step. He stated that the LG is breaking the law and that these activities should be prosecuted by means of criminal law. However, the LG allegedly does not threaten the democratic constitutional order. The left-wing extremists tried to influence the LG (Glöckner 2023).

Conclusion The contemporary wave of eco-apocalyptic movements continues in the use of apocalyptic agenda by eco-extremist and eco-radical forces. The appeals on the threatening extinction of mankind serve not only to the justification of breaking-the-law, however, but also to the superior moral statements against the representative democracy, which should be substituted by new forms of government (citizens assemblies etc.) and/or by the obedience of elected politicians to the opinion of the “eco-apocalyptic” vanguard. This could be warning signs of the development toward extremism. However, the problem with the use of the label of extremism related to these movements is complicated due to the heterogeneous character of involved groups with varieties of tactic strategic goals, with possible hiding of real goals in some cases, and with the stormy development of the whole movement. The traditional concept of left-wing extremism is valid not only for small parts of the eco-apocalyptic movement, but it is crucial for labeling as extremists by governmental bodies. Extremist fringes of eco-apocalyptic movement are more under the influence of some new progressivist leftist streams, or they are pure environmentalist, without the stronger impact of leftist or rightist politics. The quasi-religious element can also be visible in the “Cults” character of some of the movements. The mortal propaganda can also cause suicidal tendencies by some activists, as cases of the self-immolation of a climate activist in Washington in 2017 or the acceptance of Medical Assistance in Dying by the XR activist in Canada show (Stott et al. 2022, 13).

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The future scenarios of the development of the eco-apocalyptic movement and its impact on democracy also differ. The “black scenario” is characterized by growing radicalization toward anti-democratic values and violent means, including terrorist campaigns (Mustasilta 2020). As the darkest sub-category of this scenario, the establishment of eco-dictatorship can be mentioned. The grey scenario keeps the recent trajectory of development; it means stable subversive eco-apocalyptic movements, in which excesses are tolerated and justified by its allies in the political spectrum and mainstream media, however, without impact on the whole political regime. White scenario connects moderation of eco-apocalyptic movements, rejection of extremist fringes, and tolerant involvement in the democratic discussion about the protection of climate and nature.

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PART I

Contentious Issues—The Mainstreaming of Left-Wing Extremism

CHAPTER 16

Left-Modernist Extremism Eric Kaufmann

Introduction The hegemonic ideology in both the high and mass culture of anglophone western countries is what I term left-modernism, a blend of liberalism and socialism applied to the cultural sphere (Kaufmann 2003). The ‘left’ side of left-modernism is cultural socialism. We can think of cultural socialism as a belief system that takes the concerns of liberalism (religious and racial minorities, women, homosexuals) and plugs them into the slot in the socialist ‘oppressor-oppressed’ console vacated by the proletariat. Like all ideologies, left-modernism can be taken to an extreme. Indeed, whilst liberalism, socialism, nationalism, ecologism and other ideologies have generally been forced to moderate in western societies, left-modernism has been permitted to run virtually unchecked within the culture and elite institutions of several western societies. That is, more than any other ideology, left-modernist extremism is not only tolerated, but has achieved a position of hegemony in—especially anglophone—western societies. The sharp end of this extremism has been to foment populist reaction and political division as ethnic majorities and men react to the left-modernist denigration of their identity and the ‘anti-racist’ reluctance amongst mainstream politicians to control immigration. Polarization in turn sets the scene for both populist agitation and antifa violence. In addition, left-modernist extremism produces a series of downstream effects. These include a rise in violent E. Kaufmann (B) University of Buckingham, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_16

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crime and rioting due to the anti-policing movement; a somewhat increased targeting of ‘white-adjacent’ groups such as Asians and Jews; a reluctance to address controversial phenomena such as Muslim teenage prostitution rings; the unexamined use of gender reassignment surgery and puberty blockers on young people; and a wariness when it comes to interrogating the link between the surge in mental illness and LGBT identification amongst the under 30s. Left-modernism’s illiberalism also shuts down important conversations, such as how to increase birth rates or counter the decline of the two-parent family, which have serious social knock-on effects. Others argue that it divides the West and empowers foreign adversaries such as China or Russia, who use left-modernist excesses to tarnish liberal democracy at home whilst deflecting foreign criticism of their authoritarianism. Meanwhile these powers simultaneously encourage left-modernist and anti-leftist extremism online, further sowing divisions that help weaken its western adversary (Murray 2022: 78; Stokes 2023, ch. 7)

The Rise and Rise of Left-Modernism Left-modernism crystallized in its fullest form in the United States because the immersion of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) bohemian intellectuals in urban America’s immigrant and African-American diversity incubated new notions of multiculturalism and anti-white self-repudiation. This established the template for a new ideology which others subsequently built upon and has since spread to Europe. The American ‘lyrical left’ avant-garde began in the second decade of the twentieth century in Greenwich Village, New York, attained dominance in the American high culture by the 1930s, and achieved wider penetration during the late 1960s. The period since has been marked by a shift of emphasis within left-modernism from artistic modernism to cultural socialism—that is, from an emphasis on iconoclastic aestheticism to identitarian moralism. What I would emphasize, however, is that both components are integral to left-modernism, even as the ethical has eclipsed the aesthetic. Between the 1910s and 1960s, the left-modernist critique of WASP America focused on its cultural sterility and its ‘square’ puritan approach to culture and alcohol. However, there was also a latent political critique of WASP dominance. The ascent of left-modernism’s cultural socialist ‘alter’ over its modernist ego from the mid-1960s produced an increasingly intolerant morally absolutist radicalization whose sensibility expanded within universities in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Due to a conjunction of favourable conditions—new social media, a partisan ‘clickbait’ model of online journalism, greater sorting of American voters by ideology into partisan boxes, the erosion of patriotic civil religion amongst the educated public—this ferment broke into the mass culture in the mid-2010s in the form of what Goldberg (2019) and Yglesias (2019) term the ‘Great Awokening’.

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As noted, left-modernist ideology consists of two components, modernism, which represents an aesthetic sensibility that rejects tradition and contemplation in favour of novelty and diversity (Bell 1976); and cultural socialism, which calls for the redistribution of resources, power and self-esteem from ‘oppressor’ to ‘oppressed’ race, gender and sexual identity groups (Kaufmann 2022). The latter also includes an emphasis on protecting such groups from expansively-defined harms, including subjectively experienced emotional ‘traumas’ known as ‘microaggressions’. This arguably stems from what Haslam (2016) terms ‘concept creep’ in psychotherapy, involving the medicalization of formerly everyday emotions and behaviours. Cultural socialism has been the dominant pole of left-modernism since the 1960s. Yet, even today, a ‘weird’ artistic modernism, featuring countercultural styles such as coloured hair or black attire, remains the movement’s aesthetic. Only when modernism’s transgressive, anti-majoritarian ethos pursues ‘cultural appropriation’ of minority motifs, or when sexual exploration veers into upholding perceived power inequalities (as with pornography, prostitution or pederasty), does cultural socialism serve as a check on modernism.

The Emergence of Left-Modernism Left-modernism is the hegemonic ideology of our time. It is a compound belief system which synthesizes elements of liberalism and socialism. This new hybrid began around the turn of the twentieth century with the modernist movement in art and architecture. This involved a new sensibility based on a rejection of traditional motifs, techniques and narratives, be these Christian, classical or national. What Daniel Bell terms ‘antinomianism’ and Robert Bellah refers to as expressive individualism became the animating force in the culture, and was oriented to deconstructing or superseding traditions and boundaries (Bell 1976; Bellah [1985] 1996). Modernism was typically advanced through the activity of avant-garde bohemian intellectuals in urban areas such as Paris’ Left Bank or New York’s Greenwich Village, beginning in the nineteenth century and first chronicled in Henri Murger’s Scenes de la vie de Boheme (1851). Politically, these bohemian modernists were often, though not always, on the left. Utopianism’s radical rejection of bourgeois mores appealed to modernist sensibilities, which often prompted modernists to embrace socialism, anarchism, or, especially prior to World War I, fascism (Bell 1980: 147–8). During the interwar period, modernism came to be more closely associated with the left, despite the excesses of the Stalinist regime. Most interwar artistic movements, such as dada and surrealism, leaned left. Coteries of intellectuals sprang up, often revolving around periodicals, and brought to life in a vibrant social world of salons, as with London’s Bloomsbury Set. Most important for our purposes were modernist intellectuals in the immigrant gateway cities of America, especially New York. In the early 1910s, a set of WASP bohemian intellectuals began to emerge around the urban enclave of

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Greenwich Village (Fishbein 1982). Influenced by European modern art, they also adapted modernism to the polyglot context of New York, with its nonWASP immigrant-origin majority and emerging African-American population in Harlem. Where European left-modernists trained their fire on bourgeois mores, American left-modernists included a critique of their own ethnic majority group and a multicultural conception of nationality. The key figure here is Randolph Bourne, whose seminal essay ‘TransNational America’ appeared in the establishment periodical The Atlantic in 1916. Bourne at once raked his own ethnic group over the coals for being narrow and provincial, calling for them to disown their ethnic traditions and embrace cosmopolitanism whilst celebrating minorities who stick to their ethnicity and religion instead of becoming assimilated ‘cultural half-breeds’ (Bourne [1916] 1964). That is, Bourne extolled the virtues of what I term ‘asymmetrical multiculturalism’, in which ethnicity is positive for minorities and negative for majorities (Kaufmann 2003). Bourne and his fellow Young Intellectuals, in common with their European counterparts, also explored drug use, modern art, psychotherapy and open sexual relationships. Expressive individualism was central, providing a through line to earlier individualist-anarchist movements such as Fourierism in the mid-nineteenth century (Bell 1971, 1980). The Young Intellectuals were typically drawn to the utopianism of socialism and were critical of the cultural conservatism inherent in the Protestant Progressive movement and Republican Party (which endorsed immigration restriction and the prohibition of alcohol). This said, many acknowledged that their poetry and art, which inclined them towards the sensual, clashed with the arid materialism of their Marxist politics (Aarons 1961: 50, 57). In the 1930s, the bohemian torch was passed from the Young Intellectuals, centred around specialized publications like The Masses to a new group known as the New York Intellectuals, focused on The New Masses and, especially, Partisan Review (Cooney 1986). The New York Intellectuals featured second-generation Jewish writers alongside WASPs. These writers broke with communism after Stalin’s Show Trials (1936), banning of artistic experimentation (1938) and the Nazi-Soviet Pact (1938). Figures such as Philip Rahv, Meyer Shapiro and Stuart Davis celebrated modernism as an antidote to both fascism and communism. But they went further, attacking liberal-nationalist artists of the popular American Scene school, such as Thomas Hart Benton, as fascists (Doss 1991: 118–25). Here we see a continuation of the anti-WASP ethos of the Young Intellectuals, but with the added feature of ‘cancel culture’ in which the definition of a term like fascism undergoes concept creep in order to silence competing forms of artistic expression. A vigilant attitude towards fascism in the context of the late 1930s and World War II is understandable, but this move revealed an illiberal underbelly to left-modernism which would become increasingly manifest after the mid-1960s.

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Cultural Socialism The New York Intellectuals were highbrow anti-fascist modernists who also rejected communism. Politically, they endorsed New Deal liberalism. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Beatnik movement displayed a somewhat similar set of elements, blending modernist counterculture with a generally New Deal social democratic orientation. This left-liberal matrix contained the potential for a move in several ideological directions, but was in many ways quite different from contemporary left-modernism. Identity politics and a cultural approach to power were noticeably absent. What changed in the 1960s was the emergence of cultural socialism. This essentially involved ethnic majority intellectuals (now white rather than WASP due to the assimilation of Jews and Catholics) adopting the perspective of, inter alia, Third World socialists and Black Power radicals. The conduit through which both ran were student protestors, who were lionized by the New Left as one of the few agents of change in the West. Anti-colonial movements in Algeria, Vietnam, Cuba, Kenya and elsewhere in the 1950s and 1960s gave rise to a new non-aligned Third World socialism which looked to Mao, amongst others, for inspiration. An early point of crossfertilization with the western left was Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth ([1961] 1963), complete with a glowing foreword from Jean-Paul Sartre. Whilst Fanon, of French-Caribbean origin, did not entirely give up on the western working-class as an agent of change, it is clear that he saw more radical potential in the Third World lumpenproletariat than the First World proletariat. Post-Fanon, this lumpenproletariat would dislodge the proletariat from its Marxist pedestal, signifying a ‘cultural turn’ of the left away from traditional Marxist class analysis. A second aspect of the cultural turn was the increasingly critical tone adopted towards the white working-class. In the post-war period, Critical Theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Erich Fromm viewed the working-class masses as often authoritarian, and readily subject to manipulation (Adorno et al. [1950] 2019). As early as 1960, American sociologist C. Wright Mills saw more radical potential in middle-class students than the working-class, urging his audience to ‘forget Victorian [class] Marxism’ and embrace the new agents of change. Critical Theorist Herbert Marcuse, the key bridge to New Left cultural socialism, likewise extolled the virtues of the student rebels, whom he linked to his heroes, Third World socialists carving a new path between western capitalism and Soviet bureaucratization: ‘the triumph of the Cuban revolution, Vietnam, and the “cultural revolution” in China’, Marcuse gushed, would bring liberation (Marcuse 1971).

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The Impact of the Sixties Radical Sensibility Third World independence movements were one source of excitement for the emerging western cultural socialists and their student radical fellow-travellers. Another was Black American radicalism. As early as the mid-1950s, an antiwhite discourse casting whites as ‘devils’ had emerged amongst black radicals around Elijah Muhammad. This strand would later find expression in the late 1960s Black Power radicalism of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, formed in 1966 (Boyd 1998). Established left-wing ‘New York Intellectual’ stalwart Susan Sontag, having been essentially silent on the race issue prior to 1966 was commissioned by Partisan Review, the esteemed organ of the anti-communist left-liberal New York Intellectuals, to write about this edgy new development in American society and politics. Channelling the hip energy of Third Worldism and black radicalism, she was moved to write: ‘The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone—its ideologies and inventions—which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself… This is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future’. Sontag’s anti-whiteness drew on the anti-WASP template established since Randolph Bourne’s seminal 1916 article deriding his own group. However, instead of repudiating the majority tradition as boring, Sontag focuses upon it as violent and oppressive. This was new. For Sontag, aesthetic modernism takes a back seat to a cultural socialist radicalism focused on power. This is clear in her exultation that ‘“the Negro” is fast becoming the American theatre’s leading mask of virtue….for sheer pain and victimage, the Negro is far ahead of any other contender’ (Sontag 1966, quoted in Carson and Robbins 2019). Whilst Sontag’s focus is political, her superlative style reflects the exaggerated politico-emotional rhetoric of the sixties, with its fusion of art and politics. Others on the established liberal-left reacted differently, especially to student radicals who disrupted classes and manifested an anti-intellectual style. Critical Theorist Theodor Adorno, for instance, called the police on student radicals who disrupted his 1969 Frankfurt Institute for Social Research lecture, and, along with Jurgen Habermas, dubbed them ‘left-wing fascists’. Meanwhile established New York Intellectuals like Daniel Bell and Nathan Glazer, though sympathetic to civil rights and against the Vietnam War, moved right in reaction to the students’ preference for crowd-based bullying tactics and emotive chants over respectful intellectual discourse and policy prescriptions (Bell 1976: 130, 132). For Bell, the 50s high cultural sensibility was ironic, intellectual and sophisticated, whilst that of the late 60s evinced ‘a concern with violence and cruelty; a preoccupation with the sexually perverse; a desire to make noise; an anti-cognitive and anti-intellectual mood; an effort once and for all to erase the boundary between “art” and “life”; and a fusion of art and politics’. The latter, in his estimation, recalled the anarchist terrorist wave of

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the 1890s, whose intellectualized form of violence (‘propaganda of the deed’) infused politics with performance. Bell also remarked that the 60s sensibility was in part a throwback to the World War I-era Village radicals epitomized by Bourne (Bell 1971). This 1960s cultural upheaval presaged an anarchist transformation of the western left. Intellectuals were inspired by events on the ground in this period, and often seemed to be playing catch-up with those making history. Internationally, as noted, the anti-colonial struggle took centre stage. However, domestically, especially in America, the so-called ‘new social movements’ of race, ethnic, gender and sexual minorities took off (Melucci 1980: 219–21). Whether this be Black Panther radicalism, second wave feminism or the new gay activism of post-Stonewall Riot New York, this radical ferment entranced the mainly white male New Left intellectuals. Whilst some of this activity sought a classical liberal pursuit of equal rights and non-discrimination, radicals pushed beyond towards cultural socialism, with its focus on ‘equal results’ and using power to level so-called power structures. Writing two decades later, traditional socialists such as Eric Hobsbawm bemoaned the new anarchic cultural left as having abandoned any vision of national solidarity for a purely oppositional form of multicultural identity politics (Hobsbawm 1996).

The Civil Rights Movement and the Revolution in Public Morality What is distinctive about the sixties cultural revolution is that it was not merely an elite movement like anarchism of the Young Intellectuals. Instead, it coincided with a major reordering of western societies’ value publics. For instance, white opposition to interracial marriage fell from 60% in 1963 to 38% in 1972. In 1963, only 18% of people said sex before marriage was acceptable for those engaged to be married. By 1972, though using a different question, 49% said premarital sex was either acceptable or only ‘sometimes’ wrong (Mayer 1992: 366–71; Roper 2017). The racial and sexual revolution came first, with attitudes towards gays taking longer to liberalize: in Britain, for example, it was not until the 2000s that the share of those saying homosexuality is ‘always’ or ‘almost always’ wrong dipped below 50% (BSA 2013). Meanwhile, the proportion of American 18–24 year-olds in college more than doubled, from 15% in 1950 to nearly a third in 1970 (Delli Carpini 1986: 29). Major expansion took place later in Britain, but in both countries there was significant growth in higher education in this period. Part of this increase involved universities absorbing formerly avant-garde intellectuals: even Partisan Review and its circle came to be housed in, and funded by, universities (Wilford 1995: 18, 108). All told, the spirit of left-modernism suffused the humanities and social science departments of the growing new universities.

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The Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Racism Taboo The Civil Rights movement of 1955–1965 sought to win equal rights for African-Americans in the segregated South and ensure that black Americans could vote rather than run the gamut of poll taxes, literacy tests and intimidation which kept them away from the voting booth. The success of this movement, led in its later phases by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. After 1965, the movement shifted from ensuring equal rights for African-Americans to, in Lyndon Johnson’s (1965) words, achieving ‘equality of result’. Affirmative action in hiring and contracting, the busing of black students to whiter school districts and, subsequently, the use of ‘disparate impact’ and ‘hostile environment’ logic by the courts led to concept creep in the meaning of racism, the rise of racial sensitivity training in organizations and a transition from cultural liberalism to cultural socialism (Caldwell 2020; Lehman 2021). For Shelby Steele, a black conservative writer, the Civil Rights movement resulted in white Americans, and America more broadly, admitting culpability for past sins. This, in his view, delegitimated the entire narrative of progress and nationhood that had been the lodestar of the American story since 1776. More generally, whereas black and other non-white peoples had irrationally deferred to the moral authority of white people before the mid-1960s, now it was white people irrationally deferring to the moral authority of black people. Instead of treating individuals as moral equals, whites—and American institutions—had to ‘dissociate’ from racism to retain their moral bona fides. Affirmative action programmes, racial sensitivity training and other cultural socialist policies with no proven record of effectiveness were not, in Steele’s estimation, designed to improve the lot of blacks but rather to virtue signal that an individual or organization was in step with the new public morality (Steele 2006). Steele argues that the new public morality disadvantages blacks by robbing them of agency and convincing them that white people must solve their problems. Race riots such as that in Los Angeles’ Watts district in 1965, those following the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, or those associated with the Rodney King beating, are, for Steele, a political performance. Triggering incidents such as the arrest of a black motorist for drinking and driving in Watts are sometimes unremarkable in relation to the wider pattern of violence and whites are almost never targeted, in part to win favour in the wider society. However, the riots have a powerful impact on deprived black communities (Steele 2006). Between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, violent and property crime doubled in America and the quality of innercity neighbourhoods deteriorated, a major change from earlier decades when black neighbourhoods were often better kept than white areas (Sowell 2009). Whereas nearly 8 in 10 black births were within married families in the decades

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until 1960, the share born out of wedlock soared from the mid-60s, reaching 70% by the early 1990s (Wikipedia 2022). Much of what we have in recent years, notably the upsurge of Black Lives Matter activism following the Ferguson, Missouri riots of 2014 and George Floyd killing of 2020, can be subsumed under Steele’s rubric. Yet what is arguably just as consequential is the role of public morality in instituting a race taboo. Paul Krugman writes that large homes on Long Island suddenly repainted their statues of black coachmen white around 1965 in order to not typecast African-Americans as servants. ‘In our public discourse’, Krugman recounts, ‘overt racism became utterly taboo. And whilst it did not literally happen overnight, it did happen fast’. This shift followed on from a more gradual change in public mores that began in the 1940s and 1950s. In surveys, the share of Americans opposed to segregated sections for black people in ‘street cars or buses’ increased from just 44% in 1942 to 78% by 1963 whilst, according to survey research I have conducted with elderly Americans, racist nursery rhymes and sayings came to be frowned upon in the 1950s (Schwartz 1967: 12–13). Even so, whilst the taboo was strong enough to force President Lyndon Johnson to shelve Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on the travails of the black family in 1965 it was still not fatal in meetings, as late as 1967, for LBJ to use the ‘N’-word to refer to black Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, whom he appointed (Serwer 2014). This showed that even as there was a public taboo on racism, this had some way to percolate, both in terms of social scale and institutional practice. Meanwhile, in Britain, the anti-racism taboo did not emerge in force until the 1980s: my sample of elderly Britons locates the advent of the anti-racism stigma some 15–20 years later than those in America. Whilst the stigma took hold much earlier at the elite level in Britain (Bleich 2003), anti-racism did not define public morality as early as it did in America. We can see this in Google Ngram Viewer, which catalogs words used in American and British English books. British English books only reach the 1969 frequency of using ‘racism’ in American English in 1981 (Google 2022). Whilst it is tempting to view the change Steele identifies as a mere shift of moral authority between white and black, this is difficult to chime with the many occasions where an ‘admission’ of an error has not led to guilt within a dominant group. Whether Protestants granting rights to Catholics in England in 1829, the end of American Slavery in 1865, votes for women in the US in 1920 or the waning of American anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism in the post-1945 period, concessions were not followed by a new set of public taboos revolving around majority guilt. On the other hand, numerous upper- and middle-class individuals in socialist countries embraced an ideology which denigrated their class and celebrated the working-class. ‘Bourgeois’ was a societal epithet, and political correctness was oriented around the proletariat. This only occurred because

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the elite intellectual left, including numerous figures from privileged backgrounds such as Marx and Engels, empathized with a group (workers) other than their own, transferring their loyalty from their own class, nation or ethnic group to a universalist ideology which worshipped another group (the proletariat) as its totem. What then occurred under Lenin or Mao was the ascendancy of socialism as a political force, which could enforce its moral order on the upper and middle classes. The new moral power of the proletariat rode upon the coattails of an ideological power shift. In other words, the transfer of moral authority from the upper class to the working-class was a by-product of the transfer of moral power from right to left. These examples serve to illustrate that the acknowledgement of past wrongs to an oppressed group only involves a transfer of moral authority to it, and the adoption of taboos around offending it, when there is an internecine power shift within the dominant group that permits that transfer of moral power. The winning coalition consists of the dominant group left plus the oppressed group it claims to speak for. The subaltern group gains moral authority, but so does the dominant group left which claims the mantle of defender of the subaltern group against the predations of the majority. In the American case, it was the rise of the cultural left (a.k.a. left-modernism), gaining authority in arts and letters between the wars, ascending after 1945, and accelerating to reach a tipping point of power with the rise of universities and television in the 1960s that set the stage for the racial power shift Steele experienced. This left-wing ascent was assisted by the fact that left-modernism, in the form of the New York Intellectuals in America, and pan-European left in Europe, had a strong record of resisting both fascism and communism (Kaufmann 2003). One reason for this success was that left-modernism’s emphasis on liberty and equality prior to the 1960s was liberal, emphasizing equal rights and freedom. Left-modernism came to narrate its exploits as that of the unchallenged moral victor of twentieth century struggles against authoritarianism even as liberal nationalism rather than liberal cosmopolitanism had done most of the heavy lifting. The civil rights movement crowned its purported achievements even as both Christianity and a northern-inflected American liberal nationalism played major roles in movement success. The student rebels’ disavowal of Moscow as authoritarian helped convince the authorities that they were not a fifth column for the communist enemy but instead carried forth an older anti-communist left-liberal tradition. The cognitive-emotional structure that underpinned left-modernism, however, was one wherein minorities were viewed empathetically and positively whilst majorities were perceived with suspicion or outright negativity. Left-modernism’s moral leadership thereby came to acquire a reflexive attachment to minorities and hostility to majorities. Its success in erecting its cultural underdog paradigm as that of almost the entire American meaning-making class represented a transfer of power from right to left which included replacing conservative taboos (over swearing, sex, divorce, race, homosexuality) with progressive ones (over racism, and later sexism, homophobia and transphobia).

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Only in this context can we understand the loss of whites’ moral authority and blacks’ concomitant acquisition of it. Whilst Steele is correct to see this as a loss of America’s institutional authority, encompassing the national narrative, the police, university authorities and even professors, it can also be viewed as a win for a moral-perfectionist variant of American identity over traditional American identity. That is, an America that flagellates itself for its moral failings and thereby demonstrates its virtue as a moral power in the world. Leftmodernist universalism, not post-1776 constitutional liberalism and historical particularism, would define the nation. The pattern of positive and negative emotional valences I term the ‘liberal identity’ bridges the pre-1965 liberal, and post-1965 cultural socialist, phases of left-modernism. Thus when Lyndon Johnson’s Howard University speech shifted the emphasis from equal rights to ‘equality of result’, left-modernists viewed this as a seamless journey underpinned by a consistent set of emotional attachments even though it represented a full-scale abandonment of cultural liberalism for cultural socialism, as Martin Luther King’s lieutenant Bayard Rustin lamented (Kaufmann 2020). All the intellectual somersaults in left-modernism from Third World socialism to structuralism, postmodernism to critical race/gender/feminist/ queer theory, can be viewed as passive ‘riders’ carried by the emotional ‘elephant’ of the liberal identity (Haidt 2012). That is, the particular logical and semantic innovations are considerably less important than the basic ‘majority bad, minorities good’ emotional engine.

The Rise and Rise of Cultural Socialism The period since the mid-1960s is one in which a new moral paradigm, cultural socialism, was ascendant in the US. To a large extent, everything after this point represents an unfolding of the logic of this new belief system and the attendant identity politics it both spawned and drew upon. Its sacred totem of race was joined by ethnicity, sex and sexuality as ‘new social movements’ such as those of Amerindians, Chicanos, Quebec and Irish nationalists, feminists, gays and, much more recently, transgender individuals took off and gave energy to the parent ideology (Gonzalez 2022; Melucci 1980). Whilst there were tensions between group identitarians and the cultural socialist movement (as with gender critical feminists and trans campaigners), contradictions between various race, gender and sexual identity movements have been largely contained by maintaining a common enemy, the ‘pale, male, stale’ conservative. Increasingly hyperbolic catastrophizing around white supremacy and fascism is the cultural socialist movement’s attempt to keep the focus on the majoritarian foe and away from the numerous contradictions that would otherwise set subaltern identity groups against each other. A number of commentators hold that the Great Awokening that took place from 2015 onward was spawned by a new ‘i-gen’ generation who grew up with social media, were not permitted to play outside and did not

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learn how to manage their own conflicts (Lukianoff and Haidt 2018). Whilst these are contributing factors, I am not convinced they are central. Instead, the Great Awokening is arguably the third upsurge of emotional energy for cultural socialism, akin to the First (1725–1750) and Second (1815– 1840) Great Awakenings in American Protestantism and the pentecostalist Azusa Street Revival. We can see these by tracking the use of the cultural socialist terms ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’ in American English books since 1960 in Fig. 16.1 (Google 2022). Notice the surges, corresponding with the late 60s New Left, late 80s/early 90s rise of political correctness, Afrocentrism and multiculturalism; and late 2010s Great Awokening. Each wave has produced cancel culture and an assault on majority group traditions and identities. With the left firmly in the cockpit of the culture, the ‘traditionalist’ backlash has had to rely mainly on the populist rural and working-class white masses. Whilst there have been elite dissenters such as 1980s–1990s anti-PC liberals Frances Fukuyama, Nathan Glazer, Allan Bloom or Arthur Schlesinger (or 2010s figures like Mark Lilla, Bari Weiss or Steven Pinker), the number of college presidents or corporate leaders resisting the demands of cultural socialist activists has always been miniscule. Those who have engaged in cancel culture or attacks on western traditions have generally pushed on open doors and been obeyed. From the gun-toting Black Panthers and their white Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) counterparts occupying the president’s office at Cornell in 1969 to strikers’ demands for 50 black studies positions at the University of San Francisco the same year to Jesse Jackson and 500 protestors’ successful call for an end to the western civilization requirement at Stanford in 1987 to the cancel culture mobs of Evergreen State and Middlebury in the 2010s, cultural socialist activists have faced open doors and obliging administrators (Lowery 2009). Why such fertile soil? Because of Shelby Steele’s shift in public morality, which, as noted, is not just a transfer of moral authority from white to black, but from right to left. With this normative structure of taboos and eidolons in place, any fundamentalist appeals to the sacredness of totemic racial (and later

Fig. 16.1 Frequency of terms ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’ in American English Books (Source Google 2019)

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gender and sexual) groups was bound to resonate and quieten those trying to resist it. In explaining religious fundamentalism, one must first account for the underlying religion. Where there is a consensus over values, the incentives shift from finding creative syntheses of opposing views to exemplifying common beliefs (Ellis 2020). In a pious society, it make sense for an entrepreneur to exemplify religious virtue, and it is very difficult for people to argue against someone who says that the holy book calls for a separation of men and women, or abstention from alcohol. So too with cultural socialism, which has come to be woven into the fabric of the culture of the West, especially at the elite level, and in the anglophone West. In order to explain woke fundamentalism we must first understand the banal cultural socialist tissue of public morality which prepares the terrain. Anyone trying to resist the advance of cultural socialism must contend with charges of racism, sexism, homophobia (and more recently transphobia) which represent, in John McWhorter’s words, ‘social death’ in modern western societies (McWhorter 2021). The reason that resistance marks one out as radioactive is because of Steele’s new anti-racist (later anti-sexist and anti-homophobic) public morality. With Steele’s cultural highway in place, only the cars, i.e. the supply of radical activists, were missing. Everything since the mid-60s can be viewed as a matter of increasing the supply and reach of activists. The expansion of universities from the 1960s in North America, and from the 70s and 80s in Britain, including new ‘grievance studies’ fields like black, indigenous or women’s studies, helped produce more footsoldiers for the movement (Rojas 2007). These became academics or populated diversity training bureaucracies as well as student wellness, human resources and communications departments. Culture, not legal self-interest, explains the rise of wokeness. Whilst legal compliance with Civil Rights law was an important force multiplier in the US, this relied on over-broad cultural socialist interpretations of the letter of legislation by successive left-leaning Supreme Courts whose justices were swayed by the new cultural socialist public morality. For instance, the idea of ‘disparate impact’ in the landmark Griggs v. Duke Power (1971) case was initially meant to only apply to firms such as Duke Power that had a history of overt racial discrimination. Instead, this came to be loosely interpreted as the idea that any policy producing disparate outcomes between racial groups being interpreted as racist. Meanwhile, when Reagan issued orders that tightly constrained the interpretation of affirmative action, organizations continued to zealously pursue these policies, indicating that normative rather than compliance considerations drove their decision-making (Lehman 2021). This also explains why cultural socialism went from strength to strength in countries such as Canada (and, later, Britain) which did not have the same legal framework as the United States. The ‘concept creep’, since the 1980s, of terms such as bullying, harassment, prejudice and trauma to encompass less serious phenomena likewise stems from normative pressure to inflate harms experienced by marginalized

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groups (Haslam 2016). Just as ‘hot’ nationalist agitation is only possible within a word of ambient ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig 1991), this creeping ‘banal cultural socialism’ created the rich cultural soil which ‘hot’ woke fundamentalism was able to exploit from the mid-2010s. Are woke capitalists and bourgeois bohemians (Brooks 2010) not adopting wokeness for status reasons, or profit? This is the thesis of a range of commentators, from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to Vivek Ramaswamy (2021) and Batya Ungar-Sargon (2021). Yet this places the cart before the horse. As Max Weber notes, culture is the switchman which sets the track on which the locomotive of self-interest runs (Eastwood 2005: 90). In thinking about the woke (i.e. cultural socialist) juggernaut, Arthur Stinchcombe’s model of historicist causation is helpful. Ideologies are cultural engines whose effects become causes, in a self-motivated feedback loop. In this manner, cultural socialism offers incentives (in both financial and psychic terms) for fence-sitters and skeptics to adopt the ideology. The more that do so, the stronger its pull. Cultural socialist ideology also creates stories, myths and religious rituals that offer additional inducements to adherents. Fundamentalists in particular are rewarded with a rush of moral virtue as they internalize the real or imagined praise of society. Finally, cultural socialism establishes taboos and institutional enforcement tools to punish the few who are inclined to deviate from its orthodoxy (Stinchcombe 1968; Mead 1934).

Fundamentalism Spreads off Campus Banal cultural socialism infused the public morality of western countries, beginning in the US around 1965. But the supply of cultural socialist fundamentalism originated on campus. As David Rozado’s study of 75 million academic abstracts and 25 million news stories shows, journalism lagged academia in the frequency of its use of social justice terms like racism and sexism. Then, suddenly, during the 2010s, journalism converged with academia (Rozado 2022). Here is where social media’s rise is important. It created a conduit between academia and journalism. Meanwhile newspapers like the New York Times evolved from a classified advertising to revenue-for-clicks model. This incentivized a shift to partisan rather than balanced, opinion-driven more than fact-based, journalism, sucking in ideological influences from academic radicals (Klein 2020). Meanwhile social media magnified the power of cultural socialist ‘norm entrepreneurs’ (to use Cass Sunstein’s phrase) to raise punitive flash mobs online and on campus, and to perform for a global audience (Sunstein 2019). Trump’s election in 2016 may have added fuel to the movement, as the populist Republican dominated the headlines. Despite all this, it is vital to bear in mind that the fundamental motor of change since the 1960s has been cultural, in which the logic of left-modernist ideology unfolds, incentivizing activists both spiritually and materially to take it to higher levels to maintain movement interest and energy. Cancel culture has

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been in train since Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on the black family was shelved by LBJ in 1965 and Arthur Jensen’s colleagues called for his work on racial IQ differences to be retracted in a 1969 open letter. Technology, alongside the spread of cultural socialism to a wider range of ‘hot’ believers (who in turn act as vectors), is a supply-side factor which supercharges the reach of fundamentalism. Meanwhile, banal cultural socialism pervades the wider high culture, as it has in America since 1965, acting as a force multiplier for the small numbers of ‘hot’ woke fundamentalists. Cultural socialism is both a public and private source of morality. On campus, most staff and students are true believers in banal forms of cultural socialism. Thus a clear majority of American elite undergraduates think that speakers who say abortion should be illegal under any circumstances, or that Black Lives Matter is a hate group, should not be permitted to speak on campus (FIRE 2021). Three-fourths of British social science and humanities academics support political correctness, weighing its defense of minorities more highly than its threat to free speech (Kaufmann 2021). Yet, even in organizations such as the police, military or defense industry where the median view is against cultural socialism, wokeness often prevails. This occurs because the cultural liberal or nationalist majority is unable to martial the arguments or withstand the accusations of racism (or other cultural socialist taboo violations) that would be required to resist the spread of banal cultural socialism. As noted at the outset, cultural socialist extremism produces a wide range of serious downstream effects beyond the loss of expressive freedom and the denigration of white and male identity. Indeed, the impact extends from anti-Asian or anti-Semitic violence to policy failures on immigration, crime, child protection, health, family policy, homelessness, border security and more. Perhaps most seriously, woke extremism produces a paralyzing sclerosis of the political system as a result of majority-group reactance, populism and polarization, weakening the West as a beacon of liberal democracy around the world.

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CHAPTER 17

The Woke Phenomenon: Its Impact and Different Responses Pierre Valentin

The Post-protestant Ethic Hypothesis of Woke Resistance There are few words in the English language which have seen such a spread both in the English-speaking world and beyond in such a short timespan than the term woke. Borne from Afro-American slang in the Twentieth Century, the term was then used in 2008 song Master Teacher by Erykah Badu. The Black Lives Matter movement helped it become mainstream in 2013 and 2014 with the hashtag #Staywoke. “Wokeism” both retains and radicalizes several elements of classic left-wing ideologies, such as the liberal focus on minority rights and underdog figures, the anarchist desire for revolution, the critical theorist’s fierce criticism of the status quo, as well as the Marxist oppressor/oppressed binary, amongst others. Hence although it does also subvert certain important elements of these schools of thought, it would still be unwise to claim that woke ideology appeared out of thin air. The extremist element in this left-wing ideology can be found in its desire to flip the current order on its head by any means necessary. Woke ideology has sometimes displayed its willingness to dehumanize those considered political adversaries by negatively essentializing an “oppressor” category such as white people, or men. Some words are depicted as violence, which then, in turn, legitimizes the use of real violence, as many cases of “cancelled” lectures have P. Valentin (B) Paris II Panthéon-Assas University, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_17

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demonstrated. In the Western world, it is arguably one of the most influential forms of left-wing extremism, as we will document with analysis of several different countries. Before proceeding any further, I would like to offer the following preliminary definition: Woke ideology perceives Western societies as being fundamentally ruled by structures of oppression, hierarchies of domination, and systems of power which have the effect—whether voluntarily or not—of “inferiorizing” the Other (i.e. various minority figures, whether they be sexual, religious, or ethnic minorities), through often invisible means. The “woke” are those who know this and make it their life’s goal to awaken others to this terrible state of affairs by attracting attention, raising awareness, and performing social activism such as publicly “cancelling” those who appear to deviate from this goal. This rough sketch being insufficient to get a proper grasp of what this phenomenon truly entails for Western societies, we now turn to succinctly analyse the woke philosophy. What Is “woke”? One of most exhaustive books on woke philosophy is Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody (2020) by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. The authors go through the various branches of woke ideology, which they term “Critical Social Justice (CSJ)” throughout. Critical Race Theory (CRT) for example, which gained influence in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is a criticism of “colour-blind” approach of race defended by classical liberals, and Pluckrose and Lindsay summarize it in the following manner: “racism is present everywhere and always, and persistently works against people of colour, who are aware of this, and for the benefit of white people, who tend not to be, as is their privilege” (2020, 120). In a similar fashion, Ibram X Kendi, possibly the most famous advocate of CRT, argues that “the common idea of claiming ‘colour blindness’ is akin to the notion of being ‘not racist’—as with the ‘not racist,’ the colour-blind individual, by ostensibly failing to see race, fails to see racism and falls into racist passivity. The language of colour blindness—like the language of ‘not racist’—is a mask to hide racism” (2019, 10). Here we can grasp why the Oxford English Dictionary definition of “woke”, added in June 2017, misses a crucial distinction. By merely stating: “originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice”, it fails to distinguish between earlier progressivism (which the woke phenomenon may force us to call “old school/classical progressivism”) and this more recent movement. Where the former prided itself on not seeing race, the latter prides itself on precisely the opposite. Moreover, the latter’s premises rest on the fact that the former movement did not actually achieve much. For instance, they assert things like: “progress in American race relations is largely a mirage obscuring the fact that whites continue, consciously or unconsciously, to do all in their power to ensure their dominion and maintain their control” (Bell 1987, 159). Hence desegregation is often

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seen as having only made racism more subtle and discreet, and in no ways less pervasive or powerful a force. This does not stop defenders of woke ideology of sometimes strategically placing themselves in the footsteps of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, despite the fact that in their manual on Critical Race Theory for example, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic openly defend the following statement: “Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law” (2001, 3, emphasis added). Evidently, there is nothing in this statement that a classical liberal or progressive could agree with, despite the fact that most of them would still see themselves as “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice”. Other branches of woke philosophy include postcolonialism, queer theory, intersectional feminism, disability studies, fat studies. These theories and “studies” vary greatly in the segments of the population they aim to speak to, in their conceptual structures, and in some of their political goals. In fact, they differ so much that some have argued that an umbrella term such as “woke” could never possess any real meaning. If these theories all contradict each other, can they still really be “branches” of the same philosophical tree? This is where intersectionality comes in, attempting to glue together these otherwise incompatible movements. On a very basic level, Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory (initially) more or less only stated that one could be discriminated along different axes, sometimes simultaneously (Crenshaw 1989, 1991). As Pluckrose and Lindsay phrase it, Crenshaw “uses the metaphor of a roadway intersection to examine the ways in which different forms of prejudice can ‘hit’ an individual with two or more marginalized identities. She argues that—just as someone standing in the intersection of two streets could get hit by a car coming from any direction or even by more than one at a time—so a marginalized person could be unable to tell which of their identities is being discriminated against in any given instance” (2020, 123). How does this “glue” these disparate movements? When the word was first used, it was still unclear. However, intersectionality evolved, both by always adding new axes of discrimination—moving from merely race and sex to disabilities and transgenderism—whilst simultaneously being gradually reimagined as a form of “unity of the oppressed”, the oppressed being united precisely due to their oppression by “the System”. In other words, their unity is negative; they stand together in opposition to the racist, sexist, transphobic status quo. This does not erase their internal contradictions—indeed, the infamous “TERF wars” (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) have made that quite clear—but it does a decent job in focussing their attention away from them, and towards the maleficent institutions that need to be deconstructed, which can (temporarily and imperfectly) bind this coalition together through its opposition to said institutions. If this is not explicitly written down in Crenshaw’s first two articles on the matter, it is what intersectionality has become

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in practice, and as far as we know, she hasn’t complained about the way things have turned out. This leads us to our second point of unity: every single branch of woke philosophy, despite their internal disagreements, functions in roughly the same way. Their first step is to identify a traditional Western norm (or sometimes a universal norm which will be depicted as being specifically or merely Western), such as heterosexuality, or even living in good health. The second step is to put forth all of those excluded from this norm (such as homosexuals and people who are morbidly obese, two categories of people which intersectionality no longer minds placing in the same conceptual box) through the use of targeted empathy, often on social media. The end result, or at least the goal, is to paint said norm as deeply exclusionary, unjust, and fundamentally arbitrary, hence facilitating its destruction. Such an approach appears to be very effective in furthering the woke agenda. This is why it is pursued because, as we shall seek to demonstrate, wokeism aims for strategical use rather than conceptual accuracy. In other words, a good concept is one which furthers the cause, rather than one which is merely true, or even coherent. One example of this is the notion of “strategic essentialism” as conceptualized by the postcolonial thinker Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, which we could define as a tactic which seeks to sometimes essentialize a marginalized group to better resist against the “colonisers” depending on whether it is politically convenient at a given time (Sokal, 2005, 111). Despite the fact that essentialism and liberal individualism are philosophically incompatible, the ends justify the means. As Pluckrose and Lindsay point out, wokeism “seeks not to be factually true but to be strategically useful in order to bring about its own aims, morally virtuous and politically useful by its own definitions” (2020, 39). This now helps us to better understand its paradoxical relationship with the civil rights movement, as it both criticizes civil rights ideology whilst claiming to be walking in its footsteps. Furthermore, it has to deny that these forces actually achieved much (or else wokeism would serve no purpose) and whilst also ostensibly inscribing itself at the tail end of a well-respected movement. But what could be so great about a collective effort that allegedly only served to make racism harder to detect (and hence to fight), whilst also defending what is at best a naïve colour-blind philosophy? One way of explaining this contradiction is thus precisely to see it as a strategical move rather than an attempt at philosophical coherence. British, American, and French Wokeism Now that we have solid grasp of what wokeism is, let us attempt to compare how three different nations have reacted to it. In other terms, we are faced with the difficult task of measuring how woke a country is. A few methodological remarks must be made before proceeding: there is no such thing as a perfect thermometer on this matter, and it will prove difficult to reach

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anything resembling mathematical certainty here. However, by using polls as well as an analysis of discourses found in various parties and media, patterns will nevertheless begin to emerge quite distinctly. Let us start with the most obvious. The word “woke” only recently arrived in France from the United States. In 2018, Le Monde described the phenomenon as an African American one, in an article titled “Don’t be cool anymore, be woke” (Bherer 2018), demonstrating the need for a translation of a term which had been used in its political sense for several years prior in the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom. Similarly, the aforementioned (Oxford) English dictionary definition entry of the word arrived in 2017, whereas the French version from Le Petit Robert was only added in autumn of 2021. In addition, the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in the United States in June 2020 saw a wave of riots that included over $2 billion in property damage and set the stage for dozens of murders (RealClearInvestigations 2022). Some important protests also took place in the United Kingdom, and an important quantity of public statues were toppled (as documented by the History Matters Project: a compendium of evidence), but there was pretty much nothing of any similar scale which took place in France. In fact, French President Emmanuel Macron, usually perceived as a centrist politician, firmly stated in September 2020: “We never choose a part of France, we choose France, which is why we don’t topple any statues”. Again, if this can certainly be explained in large part due to the differing histories regarding race relations (contra to what French wokeism would like to believe), our hypothesis is that this is not a sufficient explanation, especially if we remind ourselves that wokeism is not reducible to the question of race or CRT. A further element of proof can be taken directly from the horse’s mouth: Rokhaya Diallo, a famous French journalist who wrote the foreword to one of Ibram X Kendi’s very first books translated in French under the name Racisme, Une autre histoire de l’Amérique, regularly writes op-ed’s for the Washington Post berating France’s backwardness and incapacity to treat minorities the way the young American leftists think they should. Another example distinguishes the British and French discourses on the matter. In September 2021, Keir Starmer, head of the Labour party, stated on the BBC that it was wrong to say “only women have a cervix”, in an attempt to avoid the wrath of the British transgender movement. Whereas some wrote this off as being a position held only on the left, when the conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson was asked the same question a few weeks later (“is it not right to say ‘only women have a cervix?’”), his response was surprisingly similar. He hesitated, and although he alluded to biology at the beginning of his answer, when pressed by the GB News interviewer he could only respond with a vague “I think everybody should be treated with dignity and respect”. In other words, he refused to clearly oppose the movement. Nevertheless, a few months later he was announcing: “I don’t think biological males should be competing in female sporting events”. This type of (very) public hesitations

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on the question of transgenderism does not take place with French right-wing politicians. As a New York Times piece recently admitted (and as many Americans would agree), “Today’s culture war is being waged not between religion and secularism but between groups that the Catholic writer Matthew Schmitz has described as ‘the woke and the unwoke’” (Hochmann 2022). This is not nearly the primary line of conflict in French politics, as was evident to those who observed the French presidential campaign; a campaign which successively centred around the questions of immigration, insecurity, COVID measures, the Ukraine war and purchasing power. For the United Kingdom, conversely, pollster Frank Luntz demonstrated at length just how much of a dividing line the subject was becoming. Conducted in June 2021, his polls established that the question of wokeism had entered the top three most important ideological subjects for the British public (Luntz, 2021). He also claimed that the United Kingdom would soon follow the United States of America in making it the most important debate over the next six to twelve months (Sharma 2021). Whether one believes this prophesizing to now be validated, these various elements combined are enough for our limited purposes in establishing that it is much more of an important subject in the United Kingdom and the United States than in France. Explaining the Discrepancy: Formulating a First Hypothesis There are several ways to explain this discrepancy, and we do not mean to casually disparage any, certainly not least the fact that French and American history have wildly differing relationships to the question of race. However, that hypothesis, although highly pertinent, has been offered before. It does not explain the United Kingdom’s relative lack of antibodies. More importantly, wokeism is, once again, not reducible to the issue of race. Max Weber understood that theological matters could lie upstream from culture or economics. The Protestant ethic according to him was a key precondition for the emergence of modern capitalism, for instance. In a similar fashion, our initial hypothesis will go as follows: a post-Protestant culture weakens a nation’s resistance to a woke takeover. Before testing this hypothesis, let us first draw important intellectual similarities between these two moral frameworks and hence understand why this could be the case in the first place. Let us also note that the huge influence of the Protestant religion on America’s culture has long been described by authors as famous as Alexis de Tocqueville, Samuel Huntington, and of course, Weber himself. In An Anxious Age, The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America (2014), Joseph Bottum furthers their line of analysis by examining a group of Americans whom he describes as “post-Protestant”, heirs to “mainline” Protestantism, a strand which he sees as more moderate and less modernist than its evangelical cousin. Post-Protestants are defined in particular by their Protestant cultural context, but the prefix post implies that they no longer

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believe in the existence of Christ. In short, this expert of religion in politics distinguishes between practising Protestants and merely cultural ones. Bottum focusses heavily on the Protestant theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, and even unearths a quotation from a century ago that sounds eerily similar to the woke writings of today: “As long as a man sees in our present society only a few inevitable abuses and recognizes no sin and evil deep-seated in the very constitution of the present order, he is still in a state of moral blindness and without conviction of sin… No man can help the people until he is himself free from the spell which the present order has cast over our moral judgment” (2014, 71). Putting this quotation side by side with Rokhaya Diallo’s definition of “systemic racism”, the resemblance is striking. She talks of a racism “that is not the work of individuals guided by their will. It is not a matter of morality or individual responsibility. It is a political phenomenon that is inseparable from a history that has created unfavourable relations for minorities […]. Individuals may not be racist, but they may evolve in an environment that is racist, and contribute to it in spite of themselves” (quoted in Taguieff 2020, 24). In both cases, evil, and the “very structure of the present order”—the whole fabric of social reality—are synonymous, and awareness of this dramatic state of affairs is meant to be the first step towards liberation. According to both conceptions, evil is to be understood as “systemic” and certainly not as a phenomenon reducible to individual acts. For Diallo as for Rauschenbusch, one could be evil without knowing it because of “the spell which the present order has cast over our moral judgment” which would push people to contribute to evil “in spite of themselves ”. This is why we should wake up, by becoming aware of the omnipresence of sin. As Bottum neatly summarizes, according to Rauschenbusch: Sin is not any particular action. Sin is not an action at all. It is a shroud, a “treasonable force,” that spreads across human society. It is the cause of social actions. And our confidence in our salvation comes solely from a personal, interior rejection of that evil […] Salvation itself is essentially an attitude of mind for Rauschenbusch. It is the always present, always necessary understanding that behind the social order stands positive and really existing evil. (2014, 66)

An “attitude of mind” that today seems to be embodied by the slogan “Stay woke”: stay awake, stay vigilant, evil is still present everywhere. Here we understand the inseparable link between the two pillars of this way of thinking; if my salvation depends on an internal rejection of an evil world, then it necessarily requires the very existence of this evil world in the first place. A not-so-bad world is a potentially not-so-good Self. Hence to abandon the belief in the fundamental depravity of the world would mean falling back into a deep existential anguish about one’s own redemption. This could explain the origins of the woke mentality, which goes as follows: “I know I am good because I know the world is bad”. We could add: “Since I know that the world is lost,

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therefore I know that I am saved”. The posture of constant opposition, the certainty that the world is vile, and the belief in one’s own salvation are tightly conceptually linked. We now perhaps better understand the wish to deny that any real progress was achieved by the civil rights movement. As Bottum reminds us, “to let go of belief in the actual, all-determining existence of these evil things would mean, for the new class, the loss of selfesteem—indeed, the loss of all sense of the moral self. It would mean the end of confidence and the return of anxiety about salvation” (2014, 74). This mentality, of course, flatters the ego of the post-Protestants. It is here that Bottum introduces an important distinction. This new class, though better-off than the average American, does not feel itself to be “elite in any economic or political sense of real personal power; instead it is full of people who feel redeemed. Of course, that word, too, is not one they would use of themselves, but nothing else seems as precise” (2014, 130). Rather than elites, then, we are dealing with “chosen ones” in the religious sense of the term: those chosen by God to spread the good word to those who are asleep (2014, 14). So here we may perhaps have the best definition of the woke activists: a small, enlightened, awakened elite, which would be determined above all by its “feeling of opposition” to the world around it (2014, 71). As the author puts it: “post-Protestants believe that the best way to know themselves as moral is to define themselves in opposition to such bigotry and oppression—understanding good and evil not primarily in terms of personal behaviour but as states of mind about the social condition. Sin, in other words, appears as a social fact, and the redeemed personality becomes confident of its own salvation by being aware of that fact” (2014, 15). Here we find two recurring patterns of wokeism: both the feeling of moral superiority and the predominance of negation; of defining oneself in opposition to. Furthermore, Protestantism—being more individualistic than Catholicism—asks its adherents to carry the awareness of this sin within themselves rather than relying on the community to “hold” its members to high standards of behaviour. In addition, it has no clear method of absolving its members of sin; no sacrament of reconciliation as such (unlike Catholicism). Thus, this heightened awareness of sin will inevitably have strong social consequences, especially when we retain the cultural aspects whilst losing the actual belief in Christ, redeemer of sins. In an interview with Le Figaro, Bottum summed it up as follows: “Christ pays the debts of original sin, freeing us from it. If you take Christ out of the picture, on the other hand, you get… white guilt and systemic racism” (Mandeville 2020). Why Is This Hypothesis Promising? The materialist reader is bound to express scepticism towards those like Bottum who grant religion real causal power over culture. To convince him— other than point out that it appears to explain our US/UK vs France divide on resisting wokeism—one might highlight that An Anxious Age was published

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in 2014, at the early stages of the woke phenomenon, and that at that time Bottum was one of the few to highlight its clear connections with religion. Since George Floyd’s death in the early summer of 2020, this perspective has become much stronger as religious behaviour is now far more visible and evident, to the point that this connection is now being drawn repeatedly (Barone 2020; Jivani 2020; Schmitz 2020). For example, there were many depictions in America of religiously charged activities, such as “people washing their feet, drawings of Floyd with a halo, people kneeling” or even “flogging themselves in some cases” (Valentin 2020). Add to this an important correlation, which Bottum does not fail to highlight. The collapse of Protestant religious practice roughly coincides with the rise of this post-Protestant ethic. In 1965, more than 50% of Americans belonged to Protestant congregations (Collins 2020). From 1990 to 2000, the attendance of the United Church of Christ decreased by 14.8% and the Presbyterian Church (USA) by 11.6% (Bottum 2014, 89). For a nation that will have bathed in mainline Protestantism as its “cultural Mississippi” (2014, 12) irrigating the whole country, to now have less than 10% of Americans who adhere to it is clearly a dramatic collapse. In addition, those who practise tend to be very old on average (2014, 89), whereas the opposite is true for adherents of wokeism. Today, this near-vertical fall continues, at a time when wokeism has never been so ardent. Therefore, as one dies out the other appears to rise and take its place, filling the spiritual void. Furthermore, as Bottum acknowledges in an interview, the six species of social sin which Walter Rauschenbusch listed map on neatly on this new movement’s focal points: “If you go through the list, they are exactly what radicals are objecting to now: bigotry, the ignorance of the uneducated, power, corruption, militarism and oppression. It lines up so perfectly with today’s agitation” (Collins 2020). Moreover, there is a striking semantic similarity. In the United States, one same event has occurred several times. Religious revivals—which sought to remind the crowds the importance of a sense of personal guilt, awareness of omnipresent sin, and the need for salvation through Christ—have impacted the history of American Protestantism, allowing church attendance to (briefly) surge each time. The first occurred between 1730 and 1740 and the third in the 1850s-1900s. These bursts of emotion within Protestantism are referred to as “Great Awakenings ”. The fact that these post-Protestants were willing to call themselves “woke”—unwittingly harking back to the history of Protestantism, as it were—is a direct confirmation of the author’s intuition. So much so that some people call what we know today “the Great Awokening ” (Kaufmann 2020). Modifying the Hypothesis It may appear that we should conclude our argument here in affirming that post-Protestant cultures manifestly have fewer antibodies against the woke

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“virus” than post-Catholic ones, especially considering it is empirically backed by the case studies of France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. However, having had the opportunity to submit this application of the hypothesis to Bottum himself, his nuance was particularly interesting (Valentin 2021). Bottum cited the Irish counterexample: a historically very Catholic country that allowed itself to be woken up rather effortlessly. As he argues, Catholicism there was artificially inflated by the fact that it was also a political identity with the struggle between the Irish and the English, Catholics against Protestants. We can see that they resist very little. So, in my opinion, we have to distinguish countries where Catholicism had a political and identity dimension, such as Ireland, from other countries such as France, Italy, Spain, etc. These Latin countries are interesting to study, because they are both Christian and anticlerical. The Italians and Spaniards sometimes seem to say “of course the Church is right, but the priests are all corrupt”. The Latin countries, with their paradoxical alliance of anticlericalism and Catholicism, seem better able to resist, except in places where Catholicism was political. Tocqueville says the same, in a similar vein, in De la démocratie en Amérique: America is doomed to collapse because it is not Catholic. We don’t have that resource in America to resist the new woke priests and preachers.

Thus, perhaps the paradoxical combination of anti-clericalism and postCatholicism would appear to be the most effective cultural heritage in resisting the allure of wokeism. No other Western country than France combines anticlericalism and Catholicism to such an extent, and no other nation defies its woke takeover as much, which could strengthen the potency of this argument. Therefore, the now-modified hypothesis could be restated in the following way: a post-Protestant culture weakens a nation’s resistance to a woke takeover, and the Western nations which appear to resist the most are both post-Catholic and anti-clerical. This version of the hypothesis, somewhat more complex than the previous iteration, is also supported by the fact that Québec is more impervious to wokeism than the rest of Canada. The comparison here is very direct (Québec being inside Canada), making it of great use for testing said hypothesis. Québec is historically catholic and also rather anti-clerical, whereas the rest of Canada has been heavily Protestant. The contrast, for starters, between Justin Trudeau and François Legault (Québec’s Prime Minister) is particularly striking. When Trudeau openly confesses that many Canadian institutions are systemically racist, Legault, despite strong media pressure in the autumn of 2020, denied that any such “systemic racism” flows through his society (Beauregard 2022, 222). Furthermore, this divide is particularly plain on the debate around laïcité (the specifically French conception of “secularism”) and a nation’s relationship to Islam. Wokeism, as Pierre-André Taguieff notes in L’imposture Décoloniale, is usually driven by a “selective xenophilia” (2020, 41). This explains why “the decolonial relativisation stops at Islam, placed outside of criticisable cultural

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forms, enshrined as untouchable, […] the only true ‘revolutionary agent’ in the contemporary world” (2020, 52). Conversely Françoise David—a member of the left-wing party Québec Solidaire which clearly states on its website its support for feminism, ecology, and social justice—was not frightened of openly saying in 2011 that the burka and niqab were “prison clothes” (habits-prisons ), and a “sign of women’s oppression” (quoted in Beauregard 2022, 91). Now, if Québec Solidaire has since abandoned these kinds of declarations, one would be hard pressed to find any such statements from Canadian’s left-wing politicians over the past decades. Two-thirds of the québecois public still support the laïcité draft bill termed Loi 21 (Beauregard 2022, 203), which aims to place the principle into the Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and to prohibit the wearing of religious symbols by certain persons in positions of authority, including judges, policemen, teachers and headmasters of public elementary and secondary schools. This legacy of post-Catholicism and laïcité, despite its apparently contradictory nature, can still be seen feeding Québec’s public opinion in certain situations. For instance, as the young essayist Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard points out, “even though the vast majority of Québecers no longer practice religion, roughly 65% of them were opposed to the removal of the crucifix [from the Assemblée Nationale], while most supported the principle of laïcité” (2022, 128). Moreover, in a moment that arguably embodied this transatlantic postreligious divide, the education ministers of both France and Québec boldly criticized “cancel culture” and the woke burning of books which took place in Ontario (Canada, once again) in a joint statement (Roberge and Blanquer 2021). Unsurprisingly, they also repeated in it the importance of defending the principle of laïcité. Moreover, if one had to boil it down, what distinguishes the French and Québécois public discussions from their American and British counterparts is that France and Québec (still) have a non-woke left that retains some political weight. In fact, this anti-clerical left resists precisely because it sees in these woke preachings the “new priests” of our times. The weekly magazine Marianne (the name is a reference to a woman who symbolizes the French République) embodies this particularly well, with many of their articles attacking figures of the new woke left (or the Christian right alike) with phrases such as: “New priests are popping up every day. They preach relentlessly in the name of the good…” (Dedieu 2022). Similarly, the Jean Jaurès foundation (named after a left-wing politician who helped to write the 1905 laïcité law for the separation of church and state) published a lengthy and vigorous critique of wokeism and cancel culture in 2021 (Large and Rabinovitch 2021). Interestingly even the NUPES political coalition (which includes, amongst others, what is left of the socialist party as well as the green party), despite being led by far-left politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has had to at least pay lip service to “the defence of the universalist and secular (laïque) République” in its common programme.

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In Québec, members of this secularist and universalist “old” left in Québec also sometimes mock the “new priests of the moral order” when attacking woke ideology (Fortin 2020). The most famous example of this anti-clerical left in France is undoubtedly Charlie Hebdo, which exemplifies this older generation and the (albeit waning) influence it holds in French political discourse. The satirical magazine published a special issue in May 2021 named “Allez tous vous faire offenser!” (“Go and get offended, all of you!”) directly attacking wokeism and cancel culture, and, once again, deploring “the new priests of thought”. In other words, this is a left which is often more scared of political Islam and wokeism than of being (usually incorrectly) tarred with the brush of being called “islamophobic” and racist. This is why the woke/ anti-woke divide in France does not as neatly map on to the left/right political divide than it does in the United States of America and Canada, which also partly explains why it is a less influential movement in France and Québec. Conclusions, and Possibilities for Future Research In this chapter we have developed and tested the post-Protestant ethic hypothesis of a culture’s resistance to woke ideology (or lack thereof). This first required a working definition and presentation of the woke philosophy. Secondly, we have aimed to compare the various levels of “wokeness” present in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and France respectively, before concluding that the latter nation is (currently) less susceptible to a woke cultural takeover than the first two. Thirdly, we sought to explain this discrepancy by positing that a post-Protestant ethic weakens a nation’s resistance to wokeism. Fourthly, we explained why we thought this hypothesis could work. Finally, we refined our hypothesis and included comparisons between Canadian and Québécois political discourses, which led us to state that a post-Protestant culture weakens a nation’s resistance to a woke takeover and the Western nations which appear to resist the most are both post-Catholic and anti-clerical. Once again, this line of analysis does not carry the pretence of being in any way causally sufficient to explain the growth of wokeism. Having a common language (English) and a nation’s racial history are factors which certainly play a considerable role too. Importantly, we have not claimed that France nor Québec will continue to resist as much as they have in the future, nor that any Western post-Catholic anti-clerical culture is in any way eternally immune to wokeness; we have merely noted that (as of now) they are undoubtedly resisting better than the United States, and Canada, respectively. We have generated clear, falsifiable hypotheses about which countries will have more chances of stemming the woke tide. Perhaps further research, in time, could provide detailed case by case analyses of countries (especially non-anglophone ones) like Germany, Spain, or Italy to further confirm or nuance the “Woke post-Protestant ethic hypothesis”.

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References Barone, Michael. June 11, 2020. The new religion of woke anti-racism. American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved on 15 June 2022 from: https://www.aei.org/opeds/the-new-religion-of-woke-anti-racism/. Beauregard, Étienne-Alexandre. 2022. Le Schisme Identitaire. Éditions Boréal. Bell, Derrick. 1987. And we are not saved: The elusive quest for racial justice. Basic Books. Bherer, Marc-Olivier. March 3, 2018. Ne soyez plus cools, soyez «woke». Le Monde. Retrieved on 15 June 22 from: https://www.lemonde.fr/m-perso/article/2018/ 03/03/le-woke-mot-d-ordre-de-la-vigilance_5265097_4497916.html. Bottum, J. (2014). An anxious age: The Post-Protestant ethic and the spirit of America. Image. Collins, Sean. August 14, 2020. Wokeness: Old religion in a new bottle. Spiked. Retrieved on 15 June 22 from: https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/08/14/wok eness-old-religion-in-new-bottle/. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1991. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review. Dedieu, Frank. February 20, 2022. Sandrine Rousseau, Edwy Plenel, BHL… Notre top 10 des pires donneurs de leçons. Marianne. Retrieved on 15/06/ 22 from: https://www.marianne.net/politique/sandrine-rousseau-edwy-plenel-bhlnotre-top-10-des-pires-donneurs-de-lecons. Delgado, Richard & Stefancic, Jean. 2001. Critical race theory: An introduction. NYU Press. Fortin, Steve E. July 9, 2020. Les nouveaux curés de l’ordre moral…. Journal de Québec. Retrieved on 15 June 2022 from: https://www.journaldequebec.com/ 2020/07/09/les-nouveaux-cures-de-lordre-moral. Hochmann, Nate. June 5, 2022. What comes after the religious right? New York Times. Retrieved on 15 June 2022 from: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/01/ opinion/republicans-religion-conservatism.html. Jivani, Jamil. October 23, 2020. Jamil Jivani: Wokeness—The new religion of the left. National Post. Retrieved on 15 June 22 from: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/ jamil-jivani-wokeness-the-new-religion-of-the-left. Kaufmann, Eric. June 22, 2020. The great awokening and the second American revolution. Quillette. Retrieved on 15 June 22 from: https://quillette.com/2020/06/ 22/toward-a-new-cultural-nationalism/. Kendi, Ibram X. & Diallo, Rokhaya. 2021. Racisme, Une autre histoire de l’Amérique. Éditions Alisio. Kendi, Ibram X. 2019. How to be an antiracist. Random House (Kindle Edition). Large, Renaud & Rabinovitch, Ruben. September 19, 2021. Des Hussards Noirs de la République à la Chronique des Bridgerton. Fondation Jean-Jaurès. Retrieved on 15 June 2022 from: https://www.jean-jaures.org/publication/des-hussards-noirsde-la-republique-a-la-chronique-des-bridgerton/. Luntz, Frank. July 6, 2021. CPS publishes landmark survey by Dr Frank Luntz on politics, economics and culture wars. Centre for Policy Studies. Retrieved on 15 June

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2022 from: https://cps.org.uk/media/post/2021/cps-publishes-landmark-surveyby-dr-frank-luntz-on-politics-economics-and-culture-wars/. Mandeville, Laure. September 24, 2020. «La passion religieuse a échappé au protestantisme et met le feu à la politique». Le Figaro. Retrieved on 15 June 2022 from: https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/la-passion-religieuse-a-echappeau-protestantisme-et-met-le-feu-a-la-politique-20200924. Pluckrose, Helen & Lindsay, James. 2020. Cynical theories. How activist scholarship made everything about race, gender, and identity—And why this harms everybody. Pitchstone Publishing. Policy Exchange. 2022. History matters project: A compendium of evidence. Retrieved on 15 June 2022 from: https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/history-mat ters-project/. RealClearInvestigations. January 4, 2022. Updated and reposted: RealClearInvestigations’ Jan. 6-BLM Riots Comparison. Retrieved on 15 June 22 from: https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/09/09/realclearinv estigations_jan_6-blm_comparison_database_791370.html. Roberge, Jean-François & Blanquer, Jean-Michel. October 21, 2021. Jean-Michel Blanquer et Jean-François Roberge: «En France comme au Québec, sauvons l’école de la “cancel culture”». Le Figaro. Retrieved on 15 June 2022 from: https:// www.lefigaro.fr/vox/societe/jean-michel-blanquer-et-jean-francois-roberge-en-fra nce-comme-au-quebec-sauvons-l-ecole-de-la-cancel-culture-20211021. Schmitz, Matthew. September 25, 2020. The woke and the un-woke. Tablet Mag. Retrieved on 15 June 2022 from: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/art icles/woke-religion-america. Sharma, Ruchira. July 5, 2021. The UK is divided over ‘woke’ and ‘nonwoke’ issues, study says—And it’s getting worse. iNews. Retrieved on 15/06/ 22 from: https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/woke-non-woke-issues-uk-divided-culturewars-politics-study-1086733. Smith, Matthew. May 18, 2021. What does ‘woke’ mean to Britons?. YouGov. Retrieved on 15 June 2022 from: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articlesreports/2021/05/18/what-does-woke-mean-britons. Sokal, Alan. 2005. Pseudosciences et Postmodernisme. Adversaires ou compagnons de route?. Odile Jacob. Taguieff, Pierre-Andr´e. 2020. L’Imposture décoloniale. Science imaginaire et pseudoantiracisme. Éditions de l’Observatoire. Valentin, Pierre. November 20, 2020. Jonathan Pageau: «La messe purement virtuelle va mener à la destruction des églises de nos villages». Le Figaro. Retrieved on 15 June 2022 from: https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/societe/jonathan-pageau-la-messepurement-virtuelle-va-mener-a-la-destruction-des-eglises-de-nos-villages-20201120. Valentin, Pierre. November 8, 2021. «Le péché originel sans rédemption s’appelle le privilège blanc». Le Point. Retrieved on 15 June 2022 from: https://www.lep oint.fr/debats/le-peche-originel-sans-redemption-s-appelle-le-privilege-blanc-0811-2021-2451109_2.php.

CHAPTER 18

Ideological Corruption of Science: Is the Right Always Wrong? John Staddon

Introduction Left-wing critics are much more likely to try to suppress scientific findings than critics with other political persuasions. Moreover, they do so while at the same time claiming that the researchers they are trying to cancel are anti-science. A contradiction like this is characteristic of extremist politics. In this chapter, I document the charge that left-wing extremism poses a grave danger to science. Science is an evolutionary process. A discovery begins with ideas and observations that are guided by intuition and opportunity. There is no algorithm. This is a process of Darwinian variation. Hypotheses emerge from this inchoate process. These are then tested, ideally by experiment. If experiment is not possible, then systematic observation may show if predictions match reality. Will the eclipse happen when theory says it should? Do X and Y covary in a variety of contexts, suggesting that “X causes Y”? In this way true propositions, facts, can be winnowed from false via a process of Darwinian selection.1 This is an oversimplified picture, of course, but it shows the various ways in which ideology can corrupt science: by limiting variation—some questions are forbidden; by limiting methods of selection—only some test methods are permitted; and finally, by making some conclusions, some scientific facts, unacceptable.

J. Staddon (B) Duke University, Durham, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_18

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Fact, Passion and Action The most pervasive corruption of science comes from failure, or unwillingness, to separate fact from passion. A fact, or a factual claim, is neutral, has no valence. A space alien, seeing a man kicking a puppy, would have no more reaction than we observing an ant bumping its head on a grain of sand. But of course most humans would react to cruelty, would feel moved to do something about it: “To state the fact and to ring the bell is one and the same thing. No amount of naturalization will clean this little statement from being read as an attribution of responsibility that requires action and probably a fight.” So said science-studies pioneer Bruno Latour about the motivating effect2 of the ‘fact’ of climate change. Many facts, from climate change to the price of beer, can elicit violent reactions. Indeed, for Latour and his followers fact and feeling are inseparable, and they are quite happy about that. But Latour here flies in the face of Sociology, Enlightenment philosophy and the testimony of many scientists. All make a necessary distinction between matters of fact and passion, between “is” and “ought,” between data and the values they represent—values which will often be different for different people. Scientific Facts, on the other hand, are common to all: public knowledge in the word of John Ziman (1968); passions, on the other hand, are rarely universal. The issue for this chapter is the distinction between the simple existence of a fact and any action it might evoke. To Mr. Spock a fact, any fact, is a static thing that rings no bell, elicits no action in and of itself. A scientist like Charles Darwin could write, Spock-like, “A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, a mere heart of stone.”3 Science is corrupted by the passion evoked by some facts and by the actions to which those passions give rise. Many facts elicit emotional reactions, yet a fact to which we are indifferent is unlikely to play any part in human affairs. A scientist cannot be indifferent to his findings, but he should elicit the right emotions, provoke actions that advance understanding rather than retard it. It is unlikely that Henri Becquerel was unmoved when he understood the implications of his fogged film; nor was Darwin unaffected when he read Malthus and came up with the idea of natural selection (“I had at last got a theory by which to work…”). In short, there are some reactions proper to science and some inimical to it. What is sometimes called the is-ought distinction is true but is only a part of the story. A fact, or factual claim, will often provoke some action. For present purposes, the relevant distinction is not between reaction and no reaction but between reactions compatible and incompatible with science. The emotional reactions of Darwin and Becquerel were compatible with, indeed, essential for, the science that followed. But politically motivated reactions are almost invariably incompatible with the scientific search for truth.

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“Many Conservatives Have a Difficult Relationship with Science---We Wanted to Find Out Why” In the contemporary US the dominant rhetoric in establishment news sources from paper to pixels, is that people with right-wing political views are predominantly anti-science—opposed to the process, critical of the results (Lewandowsky and Oberauer, 2021). Left-wingers, on the contrary are portrayed as open-minded and pro-science. There have been a few attempts to demonstrate scientifically the incompatibility of science and right-wing politics. A recent article by two respected cognitive psychologists, rather condescendingly entitled “Many conservatives have a difficult relationship with science—we wanted to find out why,4 ” begins by claiming that “nearly a third of Americans still do not accept that fossil fuel emissions cause climate change, even though the scientific community settled on a consensus that they do decades ago.” The authors assume that the problem must be with the dissenters. But even a minimal knowledge of history of science shows that consensus is not the same thing as truth. There are many examples where advances, from heliocentrism to continental drift, overthrew a previous consensus. Yet the idea that consensus is equivalent to truth is taken for granted by many left-wing commentators.5 One of the authors in a video lecture shows another misunderstanding, deriding critics of global warming for demanding “proof” by saying that in science there is no such thing as proof, only “weight of evidence” (by which he seems to mean a head-count of scientists). But although science is not democratic, proof is certainly possible, in the sense that evidence may overwhelmingly favor just one of a number of competing hypotheses. That is all that “proof” means in science and all that critics are asking for.

Can Political Bias Be Studied Scientifically? The “find out why?” piece suggests that conservatives can’t handle science. It summarizes a longer, academic article (Lewandowsky and Oberauer 2021), which surveyed two groups of more than 1000 people asking them questions both direct and indirect about their political and religious beliefs as well as their opinions on various contentious science-related issues such as climate change, evolution and the exceptional (or otherwise) status of human beings. Subjects were asked to respond on a 7-point scale (“strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”—“don’t know” was not an option). Statistical techniques were used to derive conclusions, which are treated as causal: e.g., “Worldviewmotivated rejection of science…” and “There is clear evidence that the rejection of some scientific propositions is driven by religious beliefs…”. even though the cited studies are all just correlational (does religious belief cause rejection of science, or the reverse?). The authors are careful to avoid direct imputations of causality, but their general drift is apparent: “Worldviews have been repeatedly found to override

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other variables such as knowledge and education or science literacy,” which strongly suggests that the worldview, not data which may have led to it, drives opinion. The authors conclude: The results … that are most novel and relevant involve the exceptionalism, nationalism, and religiosity constructs. In line with our expectation that the norms of science challenge conservative world views, greater religiosity and endorsement of the free market were also associated with greater nationalism.

A naïve reader might conclude from this paper that “science shows” that a conservative worldview is incompatible with science. In fact, it is hard to know what to make of a study like this. The social issues are complex in the extreme: is “science” a single psychological entity, or do people perhaps treat different scientific findings differently? Is all science condemned or only certain findings? Is political ideology sui generis or is it a product of other factors, some endogenous, possibly, but others dependent on experience? How meaningful are the data—answers of 1000+ people to 46 informally devised questions? These answers were analyzed by a complex statistical model which purported to extract six “latent variables” labeled Exceptionalism, Nationalism, Religiosity, Free market, Climate science, Vaccinations, where Vaccinations stands for “resistance to vaccination,” Exceptionalism stands for “Humans are special,” etc. The model seems to be linear—additive. Were nonlinear models tried? How dependent are the conclusions on the type of model, the questions asked? Would more nuanced, even multidimensional, questions (rather than a linear one-to-seven scale) have yielded a different structure? The one thing we can be sure of is that the authors disagree with critics of mainstream views about climate change, evolution and vaccination. Most studies along these lines seem to support the establishment view that the ‘right’ is uniquely opposed to science. Yet a careful search reveals almost no examples where right-wing groups have attempted to suppress, as opposed to question, scientific findings.6 On the other hand, scientific work that comes to conclusions, or studies topics, opposed by left-wing groups is enthusiastically suppressed (I give examples in a moment). Rather than struggle through a swamp of obscure statistical constructs, a better way to understand the current situation is just to look at what people on the left and the right have actually said and done in response to controversial science-related issues, bearing in mind the overwhelming dominance of left-wing print, TV and internet media7 in most Western countries.

Climate Change Climate change is an incendiary scientific issue that provides many examples of politically tinged reaction. A recent article in the respected popular science journal Scientific American is fairly typical: “The Antiscience Movement Is

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Escalating, Going Global and Killing Thousands: Rejection of mainstream science and medicine has become a key feature of the political right in the U.S. and increasingly around the world.” The article goes on to say: Antiscience has emerged as a dominant and highly lethal force, and one that threatens global security, as much as do terrorism and nuclear proliferation. We must mount a counteroffensive and build new infrastructure to combat antiscience….Antiscience is the rejection of mainstream scientific views and methods or their replacement with unproven or deliberately misleading theories, often for nefarious and political gains. It targets prominent scientists and attempts to discredit them [emphasis added].8

Several things are noteworthy about this article in a major science journal. First, its emotional tone: the writer is upset and makes no attempt to conceal it. Second, the reference to “deliberately misleading theories” suggests that right-wing critics are paranoid, clutching for political reasons at ridiculous notions just to discredit true ideas they dislike. Third, unproven ad hominem allegations—“for nefarious and political gains”—are now considered acceptable criticism even in a supposedly scientific journal. Unfortunately, Scientific American is not alone: Nature and Science, the two premier general-science peer-reviewed journals, have also become increasingly political in recent years, with editorials such as “Climate change denialist given top role at major U.S. science agency,” “US proposal for defining gender has no basis in science: A move to classify people on the basis of anatomy or genetics should be abandoned” and “Protect rights and advance gender equality to mitigate climate change” have become routine. In fact there is substantial, reasoned dissent9 from the prevailing alarmist view of climate change, based as it is largely on complex mathematical models. Critics such as Bjorn Lomborg, Richard Lindzen, Steven Koonin, William Happer and many others have pointed out the limitations of, and increasing divergence among, General Circulation Models (GCMs) which, as Nobelist Syukuro Manabe pointed out to Freeman Dyson many years ago, are useful for understanding climate but not for predicting it (Lemonick 2009). Long-term data on extreme weather events also show only no or weak trends.10 Similarly, correlational data across geological eras show only a weak relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature (Staddon 2022, chapters 10 and 11). This level of climate skepticism is obviously more popular among right- than left-wingers. The left is well represented by grumpy teenager Greta Thunberg’s “wake-up” speeches before distinguished worldwide audiences, and carried to an almost ludicrous extreme by the BBC, most recently showing its somnolent news audience Greta’s interactions with a six-year-old climate activist, all in honor of the COP26 climate conference. Critics of the received view are routinely dismissed as “deniers” and their motivation slandered by ad hominem allegations of links to the energy industry (see for example Staddon 2020).

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It is difficult to find those on the left who believe in anthropogenic climate warming (AGW) rebutting critics by dealing with the details of their arguments. Most effort seems to go into stigmatizing skeptics and exaggerating the number of so-called climate scientists who support the standard narrative.11 In fact, most critics agree that the climate is warming and that the ocean is rising, as it has for thousands of years. Where they disagree is on the precision with which change can be predicted, the importance of human-generated CO2 as a contributor and the potential benefits as well as costs of an increased CO2 level. Conservatives are happy to engage in this debate, their left-wing critics, not so much.

Disparities and Systemic Racism America has the misfortune of being the last anglophone nation to give up slavery, an almost universal custom for civilizations in general and still popular in some parts of the world. Despite the decisiveness of its rejection and the horrific human cost of the Civil War, the race problem in the US recedes for a few decades only to revive long after its initial cause should have faded into history. In 2020, there was another revival prompted by videos of white police brutality against a handful of black victims. Widespread left-wing claims of ‘systemic racism,’ not only in national police forces but also ‘baked in’ to the population at large, are now generally accepted by mainstream media and much of the US population. The outrage provoked by viral videos seemed to carry with it an immunity to overwhelmingly contradictory empirical data—fact vs. passion, passion usually wins. For example,12 “a 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects.” This same article also notes that while blacks make up only 23% of New York City’s population, they comprise 73% of all shooting victims; most of the perpetrators are also black. Blacks are around 25% of all those shot by police; on the other hand, around 60% of all murder and robbery defendants are black, and so on. There is no evidence of ‘systemic racism’ in most police forces. Or indeed anywhere else. For example, there are 32 US cities with populations greater than 400,000 where blacks are a minority. Of those 32, no less than 20 have black mayors.13 Just how racist can the general population be if they are happy to elect a disproportion of black officials? In addition to mayors, there are thousands of black legislators across the country at all levels, from councilor to vice-president. Meanwhile surveys seem to show a steady improvement in race relations generally (although there has been a bit of a slowdown recently14 ). The absolute status of blacks has improved almost unchecked for many decades. Such downturns as have occurred seem more attributable to ill-conceived welfare measures than intentional discrimination. For example, Lyndon Johnson’s well-intentioned “Great Society” was followed by a steady growth in black single-parent families.15 Did the great

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society cause this deterioration of black family life? Impossible to say, but the fact that the new welfare arrangements meant that single motherhood became more economically viable probably played a role. Which is not to say that racism doesn’t exist; only that it must be a relatively minor impediment to the success of African Americans. (In recent years, of course, being black has been an advantage for college and some job applicants.16 ) As the absolute economic situation of blacks has improved, their relative status has not. Numerous racial disparities—of wealth and other measures of social status—remain. How to explain them? “When I See Racial Disparities, I See Racism,”17 proclaimed Prof, Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University and 2021 recipient of a Macarthur “genius” award. “Disparities equals racism” is now accepted without question by many. Yet it is obvious nonsense. So why did Prof. Kendi say it and why has it achieved left-wing acceptance? Perhaps Kendi has not read important books on the subject, such as Thomas Sowell’s Discrimination and Disparities (Sowell 2019), which discusses numerous non-racist causes of racial disparities? Sowell provides a carefully reasoned discussion of why a racial disparity by itself is completely uninterpretable. It is truly appalling that Prof. Kendi, with a best-selling book (2019) as his platform, is either unaware of this basic fact or willing to ignore it in service of a political motive. Or perhaps Kendi is deficient in logic, like another race-and-ethnic studies scholar, Tukufu Zuberi, who wrote18 : “the schooling a student receives can be a cause, in our sense, of the student’s performance on a test, whereas the student’s race or gender cannot” (Zuberi 2000). At least since the time of Aristotle, logicians have distinguished between efficient and material causes. Yet Prof. Zuberi seems not to know the difference. Of course, schooling is important, but who is schooled also makes a difference: a five-year old will learn less from a class on calculus than a teenager. The constitution and culture of the individual, which is signaled by both race and sex as well as age, makes a difference to the effect of “the schooling” he or she receives—obviously. Outcome is affected by both exogenous and endogenous causes. So Prof. Zuberi is either ignorant or is intentionally distorting the truth. But the campaign to block study of endogenous causes of racial differences has been distressingly effective. Denied access to the material causes of racial disparities—individual differences in home, culture and constitution, a specter—systemic racism—has been conjured up as a substitute. Unmeasurable, hence inexpugnable, the idea has successfully blocked scientific investigation of the real causes of group disparities in wealth and other social indicators. Once again, the problem seems to be an inability to separate fact from emotion. If the fact makes people uncomfortable, a common impulse is simply to suppress it. The political left seems to be much more susceptible to this scientific blind spot than the right and the topic of race provides many examples. Here is a final one: a 2011 statistical study (Arcidiacono et al. 2012) of black and white course grades co-authored by two Duke University economists and

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a sociologist, and still unpublished at the time, found: “At [Duke University], the gap between white and black grade point averages falls by half between the students’ freshmen and senior year…[which suggests] that affirmative action policies are playing a key role to reduce racial differences ….However, this convergence masks two effects. First, the variance of grades given falls across time… Second, grading standards differ across courses in different majors” [emphasis added]. In other words, entering black students initially prefer STEM courses more than do whites, but they tend to shift their preference to social science and humanities in later years more than do white students. The difference between white and black average GPA declines from 0.5 to 0.33 between students’ freshman and senior years. Legacy19 students follow the same pattern. Inference: the decline is probably not because the black students improve, but because they switch from harder STEM courses to easier social science and humanities courses. This purely statistical study provoked a demonstration, led by Duke’s Black Student Alliance,20 which pronounced the work racist: “We do not stand for that type of racist inquiry…” Again, the reaction of the students (and, to a degree, the Duke faculty and administration) was misplaced passion. A fact is just a fact; they might have contested it and inferences were made from it, asked for more evidence, any one of a number of scientific questions. Instead à bas la science! was the cry.

Sex and Gender Race and climate change aren’t the only scientific issues that have become politicized: sex and gender is if anything even more inflammatory and here we see much evidence that the left may be more guilty than the right of corrupting science: “Are gender feminists and transgender activists undermining science?” is the title of a Feb. 10, 2017, Los Angeles Times op-ed. Indeed they are, when they deny the reality of psychological as well as physical differences between males and females21 —and seek the cancellation of all (even, or perhaps especially, feminists (Stock, 2021)22 who insist on the reality of biological and psychological differences between men and women (Wright).23

The Coronavirus Pandemic The COVID crisis has created an environment where science has suffered. First, it seems to have politicized scientists. A recent survey found that essentially every scientific society, from the AMA to the Royal Academy of Engineering has felt it necessary to pronounce on COVID no matter how irrelevant the specialty. But the main problem has been the public pronouncements from official sources, such Chief Medical Advisor to the President, Dr. Anthony Fauci, which have been both inconsistent and sometimes illmotivated. The inconsistency has been widely noted: wear masks, don’t wear

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masks, self-isolate indoors and/or outdoors, vaccines for all except those recovered from infection or—mandatory vaccination for all. Some of this vacillation was no doubt in response to new data, but the public was rarely informed in a nuanced way, and each message was happily amplified by statistically illiterate journalists writing to excite and amuse rather than inform. As for ill-motivation, often Dr. Fauci’s intent seems to have been to persuade the public to do what he deems best rather than inform them about the pros and cons of different courses of action.24 For a politician in an emergency, deceit might be justifiable, at least according to Machiavelli. It is never acceptable for a scientist. Most important of all, official scientific sources almost never admit their uncertainty, never say that they simply don’t know the answers to some important questions. In short, they often treat the population as if they are idiots, or at least children who must bamboozled or coerced into doing the right thing—and the reputation of science takes a beating.25

Anti-Science Anti-science reactions are of several sorts. A popular strategy is the explicit attempt to erase information that makes an audience unhappy. Heather Mac Donald26 recently described27 the bizarre experience of an emeritus professor of astronomy who was forced to withdraw a paper about a way to improve the predictive value of citation counts, which are often used to evaluate scientists for promotion and salary raises. Their limitations are well understood28 : citation count is only loosely related to real merit and in unedited form these counts create a damaging “publish-or-perish” pressure for authors and an incentive to create worthless “pop-up” faux-academic journals (Staddon 2018) for ambitious publishers. Mac Donald writes “On November 1, astronomer John Kormendy withdrew an article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), after a preprint version he had just posted on the web drew sharp criticism for threatening the conduct of ‘inclusive’ science.” In other words, the author felt obliged to obliterate a long, carefully done and successfully peer-reviewed article simply because a vocal mob objected to its conclusions. The hysterical “pain” and “hurt” suffered by these people—together, perhaps, with his own acceptance of ‘equity’ as an “honorable aim”—was enough to intimidate Kormendy into retracting his own perfectly reasonable paper. By acquiescing to “equity” ideology, Kormendy in effect turned a blind eye to a basic scientific fact: individuals differ and because they do different groups— racial, cultural, whatever—will rarely score the same on almost any rigorous test of merit. Hence, “equity” (aka “equality of outcome”) is not the same as, and may often be incompatible with, scientific excellence and a “diverse” scientific community may not be an “excellent” one.29 By failing to reject the diversity fallacy, Kormendy became vulnerable to his anti-merit attackers. (It

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is interesting that ideologues often attack most viciously not outright opponents of their creed but individuals who are sympathetic but show signs of deviation.) Even better than eliminating a scientific finding is canceling the finder who might, after all, go on to do more damage to the prevailing orthodoxy. The most sensitive orthodoxy in recent times turns out, again, to do with individual differences. “All men are created equal” but unfortunately except in the legal sense, they are not. Some are smart or more virtuous than others and this was well known and accepted—until yesterday when, suddenly, all became equal. Since they are obviously not, society must be at fault and “The proper aim of the left [became] equality of outcome rather than equality of result” (Wooldridge 2021). So a combination of willful ignorance and egalitarian ideology led to scholars like Charles Murray, Linda Gottfredson and Michael Levin being placed on “do not invite” lists. Murray, co-author of the 1994 The Bell Curve, has a secure position and sufficient eminence to survive attempts to cancel him. But many others are not so lucky. For example, take the case of University of Chicago professor Dorian Abbot who was invited to give a prestigious lecture at MIT on his specialty, exo-planets. “He said that his planned lecture at M.I.T. would have made no mention of his views on affirmative action. But his opponents in the sciences argued he represented an “infuriating,” “inappropriate” and oppressive choice.”30 So, his talk, completely unrelated though it was to the source of his critics’ objections, was canceled. Much the same things has happened to Charles Murray: criticized for one thing, invited to talk about another, canceled anyway.31 Once again, fact—science—gives way to passion.

Indoctrination In years past an application for a research grant from a government agency was often required to contain a brief formulaic bow to the inclusion of women and “underrepresented minorities.” In Canada this process has reached the modern equivalent of swearing an oath to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England—customary in nineteenth-century Oxbridge and happily absent since then—but now revived in secular form. For example, an applicant to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (ARTP program) is told32 : In your application, you must explain how equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) considerations are integrated into the following criteria, respectively: • 2. Ability of the college: Identification of at least one concrete practice that will be implemented to ensure that EDI is being intentionally and proactively considered during the identification, selection, recruitment and/or integration of research personnel into the research team.

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• 4. Training: Identification of a minimum of one concrete practice that will be implemented to promote the participation of a diverse group of students and other trainees, including those from underrepresented groups, as well as to promote an equitable, inclusive and accessible training environment. You must give examples of specific initiatives and measures that you have or will put in place to support EDI in the composition of your research team and training plan, instead of simply stating that your institution’s EDI policy will be followed or that the team is already complete and/or diverse. For additional guidance, see the questions below… [italics added, boldface in original]

This section continues for more than 800 words, ending with a recommendation that applicants unfamiliar with the (scientifically discredited33 ) notion of ‘unconscious bias’ “are encouraged to take the tri-agency Unconscious bias in peer review module, which takes approximately 20 minutes.” The tacit (false) assumption is that all these EDI efforts are not only compatible with scientific excellence but are actually essential to it. At least one Canadian scientist has rebelled against this autocratic directive, which requires political activism to be part of his research. In November 2021 the Canadian National Post reported the case of Patanjali Kambhampati, a respected if slightly acerbic, professor of chemical physics at McGill University. Kambhampati is himself of Indian ancestry and has suffered some of the racism EDI policies are supposed to eliminate. Impatient with the requirement he wrote in his application “We will hire the most qualified people based upon their skills and mutual interests.”34 This was not good enough. Two proposals of his were rejected without even undergoing peer review. For the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) bowing to the diversity dogma is clearly more important than the research itself. In apparent confirmation, around the same time “the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, gave Dr. Lana Ray, a professor at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., a $1.2-million grant to study cancer prevention using traditional Indigenous healing practices…Ray said, ‘We need to stop framing prevalent risk factors of cancer as such and start thinking about them as symptoms of colonialism.’” Do we, really? There may be some small reason for looking at novel prophylactics, even if they are suggested for non-scientific reasons. But to give a substantial grant to advance ‘anti-colonialism’ serves not science but racial politics.

Mission-Creep The situation in the US is not yet quite as bad as in Canada. But in recent years, a radical equity-first activist ideology has begun to pervade government science entities such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.35 For example, in the summer of 2021, proposals were

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invited for a program devoted to “Racial Equity in STEM Education.” The Synopsis36 reads in part: Persistent racial injustices and inequalities in the United States have led to renewed concern and interest in addressing systemic racism. The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR) seeks to support bold, ground-breaking, and potentially transformative projects addressing systemic racism in STEM… Core to this funding opportunity is that proposals are led by, or developed and led in authentic partnership with, individuals and communities most impacted by the inequities caused by systemic racism. The voices, knowledge, and experiences of those who have been impacted by enduring racial inequities should be at the center of these proposals… Competitive proposals will be clear with respect to how the work advances racial equity… [emphases added]

Several proposals have been funded, some with objectives that in other times would have been regarded as racist. One, for example, explicitly aims to reduce the proportion of computer science workers who are “white and Asian, able-bodied, middle to upper class, cisgender men.” Once again, science takes second place behind racial and ethnic balance.

Conclusion Facts and factual claims point nowhere, have no valence. Hume was right that a fact is not a value, but without eliciting some emotion, no fact will have any effect either good or bad. The issue is not “let no factual claim elicit any emotion”; the issue is, “What emotion is appropriate?” The scientific answer is that the first emotion should be curiosity: “How do they know?” that this fact or claim is true. No other emotion, be it fear, disgust or even delight is appropriate until we can be assured of a claim’s veracity. Only then is action appropriate. What is never appropriate is to suppress or censor any factual claim because it goes seems to threaten a political belief. Yet this has become a ubiquitous tactic especially for those on the left of the political spectrum—even as they accuse those on the right of being ‘anti-science.’ Yet any dispassionate analysis will surely discover much more vigorous suppression of unwelcome ideas by the left than by the right. John Staddon

Notes 1. Philosopher Hans Reichenbach made a similar dichotomy many years ago between what he called the context of discovery and the context of justification, but the Darwinian view is of more practical use because it draws attention to process rather than context. Hans Reichenbach Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, rev. Mar. 23, 2021. 2. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/139-AAA-Washington.pdf.

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3. Letter to T. H. Huxley (9 July 1857). 4. https://www.theconversation.com/many-conservatives-have-a-difficult-relati onship-with-science-we-wanted-to-find-out-why-165499. 5. See for example, https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/33/1/facts-vs-pas sion-the-debate-over-science-based-regulation. 6. There are few examples of right-wing attempts to suppress people voicing views critical of them: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-drawn-toconspiracy-theories-share-a-cluster-of-psychological-features/. These attempts seem to be uniformly unsuccessful. In contrast, administrators, faculty and students tend to support left-wing cancellation attempts. 7. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-liberal-leaning-media-has-passed-its-tip ping-point-11590430876. 8. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-antiscience-movement-isescalating-going-global-and-killing-thousands/#, March 29, 2021. 9. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/11/25/why-eve rything-they-say-about-climate-change-is-wrong/?sh=1870ed4812d6; https:/ /www.wsj.com/articles/unsettled-review-theconsensus-on-climate-116193 83653; https://www.lomborg.com/. See also Staddon 2022. 10. Opinion: This climate change contrarian gives us an important reminder about science in general. 11. https://www.forbes.com/sites/uhenergy/2016/12/14/fact-checking-the-97consensus-on-anthropogenic-climate-change/?sh=582274851157. 12. The https://www.city-journal.org/repudiate-the-anti-police-narrative. 13. https://blackdemographics.com/culture/black-politics/black-mayors/. 14. https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2020/09/21/the-cultural-revolutioncoming-to-a-campus-near-you/. 15. https://www.city-journal.org/html/black-family-40-years-lies-12872.html. 16. Whoops! CRT advocate Ibram X. Kendi is mocked for deleting tweet about how white college applicants are LYING about their race to get accepted ‘because it undermined his argument about privilege’. 17. New York Times, March 27, 2018. 18. Tukufu Zuberi (2000) Deracializing Social Statistics: Problems in the Quantification of Race. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March 1. Available at, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1049479. 19. Students admitted not on academic merit but because of their parents’ relationship to the university, as alumni, donors, etc. (Former Vise-President Al Gore’s four children all went to Harvard: coincidence?). 20. https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/unpublished-study-draws-ire-minori ties. 21. See, for example, Kuhle BX. Evolutionary psychology is compatible with equity feminism, but not with gender feminism: a reply to Eagly and Wood (2011). Evol Psychol. 2012 Jan 11;10(1):39-43. PMID: 22833845. 22. see also https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/nov/03/kathleenstock-says-she-quit-university-post-over-medieval-ostracism. See also JK Rowling joins 150 public figures warning over free speech. 23. Colin Wright “The New Evolution Deniers,” 2018, available at: https:// quillette.com/2018/11/30/the-new-evolution-deniers/; Staddon, John “Why Can’t Academia Tolerate Dissent on Biological Sex? National Review,” May 20, 2021, available at: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/why-cantacademia-tolerate-dissent-on-biological-sex/.

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24. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covid-cor onavirus.html. 25. See, for example, What Happened: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on 19 Months of COVID. 26. See also https://quillette.com/2021/11/10/an-astronomer-cancels-his-ownresearch-because-the-results-werent-popular/. 27. https://www.city-journal.org/scientific-merit-and-the-equity-cult. 28. John Staddon (2018) https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2018/01/sciencejudged-useful-peer-review/. 29. Staddon, J. (2021) The diversity dilemma. Academic Questions, Fall, 2021, (34(3) 109–111. 30. M.I.T.’s Choice of Lecturer Ignited Criticism. So Did Its Decision to Cancel. NYT Oct 20, 2021. 31. https://www.wsj.com/articles/middlebury-college-students-disciplined-in-cha rles-murray-protest-1495665459. 32. https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Innovate-Innover/ARTP-PRAT-Con_eng.asp; See also Jordan Peterson’s vigorous critique of DEI in Canada https://nation alpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-why-i-am-no-longer-a-tenured-professorat-the-university-of-toronto. 33. Singal, J. (2017) The Creators of the Implicit Association Test Should Get Their Story Straight. New York Dec 4. https://www.chronicle.com/art icle/can-we-really-measure-implicit-bias-maybe-not/, “the IAT provides little insight into who will discriminate against whom, and provides no more insight than explicit measures of bias”. 34. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/minority-professor-denied-grants-bec ause-he-hires-on-merit-people-are-afraid-to-think. 35. How Identity Politics Is Harming the Sciences and see https://nexus.od.nih. gov/all/2021/11/03/reaffirming-nihs-commitment-to-workforce-diversity/ for summary of the NIH commitment. 36. Racial Equity in STEM Education (EHR Racial Equity).

References Arcidiacono, P., E. M. Aucejo and K. J. Spenner. 2012. “What Happens After Enrollment? An Analysis of the Time Path of Racial Differences in GPA and Major Choice.” IZA Journal of Labor Economics, 1:5, October. Available at: https://iza jole.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2193-8997-1-5. Kendi, Ibram X. 2019. How to be An Antiracist. London: Penguin. Lemonick, Michael 2009. “Freeman Dyson Takes on the Climate Establishment.” Yale Environment 360 3603 Environment360, June 4, 2004. https://e360.yale.edu/fea tures/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_climate_establishment. Lewandowsky, Stephan, and Klaus Oberauer. 2021. “Worldview-Motivated Rejection of Science and the Norms of Science.” Cognition, Volume 215. Available at: https:/ /www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027721002390. Staddon, John. 2018. Scientific Method: How Science Works, Fails to Work, and Pretends to Work. London: Routledge Staddon, John. 2020. “Whatever Happened to History of Science? How Scholarship Became Politicized Story-Telling” (September 21, 2020). Center for the History

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of Political Economy at Duke University Working Paper Series, Working Paper No. 2020–10, Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id= 3696580. Staddon, John. 2022. Science in an Age of Unreason. Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway. Stock, Kathleen. 2021. Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism. London: Fleet. Sowell, Thomas. 2019. Discrimination and Disparities: Revised and Enlarged Edition. New York City: Basic Books. Wooldridge, Adrian. 2021. The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World. Kindle Edition. Skyhorse.

CHAPTER 19

The Radicalization of the American Academy Lee Jussim , Nathan Honeycutt , Pamela Paresky , Akeela Careem , Danica Finkelstein , and Joel Finkelstein

Introduction This chapter reviews evidence regarding the radicalization of the American academy, including real-world events and results from national surveys. We focus primarily on the American academy because we are most familiar with it.

L. Jussim (B) · A. Careem · D. Finkelstein Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Careem e-mail: [email protected] D. Finkelstein e-mail: [email protected] P. Paresky SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. Finkelstein Network Contagion Research Institute, Princeton, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected] N. Honeycutt The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Philadelphia, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2_19

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Why a chapter on the radicalization of the academy? Academic institutions exist for two primary purposes: (1) To educate young adults; (2) Through scholarship, to seek truth, wisdom, understanding, and insight. Indeed, along with media and scientific private enterprises (e.g., biotech, pharmaceutical, and engineering companies) it is one of the main institutions in the democratic west organized around discovering and disseminating truths. However, the goals of discovery and education become compromised when the academy places higher value on political or activist agendas. In this review, after documenting the extreme political skew of the American academy, we focus mainly on evidence regarding the ways in which that skew has proven a fertile ground for the production of bizarre, inflammatory claims that are generally unhinged from scientific evidence. This chapter is not “balanced” in the sense that it focuses almost entirely on left-wing extremism in the academy, with almost no reference to rightwing extremism. That is because, as we shall show, the Far Left is massively overrepresented in the American academy, and there is hardly much Right to speak of. The study of right-wing extremism is important and interested readers can find many sources that address it (e.g., Altemeyer 1981); but it has little relevance to understanding the American academy in 2022. Defining Terms Because our analysis focuses on the academy in the United States, our terms are selected to apply to it and are not intended to describe other countries. Left: Anyone from center-Left people who votes mostly for Democrats, to radical Marxists, intersectionalists, critical (race) theorists, and Social Justice Advocates. Right: Anyone from center-Right who votes mostly Republican, to fascists and White supremacists. Radicals: Those endorsing beliefs on any extreme end of the political spectrum. Activist: Anyone seeking to achieve political goals as a participant, instigator, or leader of any sort of group effort. Extremism: A tendency in behavior, group identity, and belief toward profound convictions opposed to universal human rights, liberal democracy, and rule of law and/or advocating the supremacy of a certain group (racial, religious, political, economic, social, etc., e.g., Trip et al. 2019). In order to understand and contextualize this review of left-wing extremism in the American academy, this chapter is organized as follows. First, we briefly review recent research on the political psychology of left-wing extremism and authoritarianism to provide a sense of some of its common manifestations outside of academia. Second, we address the radicalization of academia itself.

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We review real-world events that we consider to be manifestations of left-wing extremism in academia. Although there are far more events than we could possibly include in this sort of review, those included are concrete manifestations of academic extremism. These stories should not be interpreted in the same manner as experiments or surveys. They are presented here to augment, but not replace, other forms of scientific analysis. The third section focuses on scientific analysis by reviewing large-scale survey evidence regarding the political beliefs of academics, including endorsements of censorship and purging colleagues with whom they disagree, and the implementation of political exclusion and censorship policies by major academic organizations. The final section reviews some of the ways the embrace of Far Left political activism has led to unjustified and even bizarre social scientific claims, and constitutes an ongoing threat to research integrity.

The Psychology of Left-Wing Extremism and Authoritarianism Although there is no single authoritative definition of authoritarianism, modern scholarship emphasizes dogmatism, intolerance of outgroups, a rejection of individual rights in subordination to group identities, aggressiveness toward one’s opponents (Altemeyer 1981, 1996; Costello et al. 2022; Conway et al. 2018). Authoritarian beliefs and attitudes are those that reject fundamental human rights, such as freedom of speech and press, and due process protections. One may hold an authoritarian belief in one domain (e.g., speech) without holding it in another (freedom of religion). The point is not that the person is “an authoritarian;” it is, instead, that the person holds one or more implicitly authoritarian beliefs or values. We next review the evidence of authoritarian beliefs and values on the American left. Support for Restricting Speech Although both liberals and conservatives endorse speech restrictions on campus (but for different issues), liberals and women are far more likely to support speech restrictions, and to consider hate speech itself a form of violence (Ekins 2017; Clark and Winegard 2022). For example, in CATO’s survey of 2300 Americans, Democrats favored government restrictions on hate speech more than did Republicans (52% v. 27%), liberals more than conservatives (47% v. 23%), and women favored them more than men did (48% to 32%). Liberals and women supported government restrictions not merely on hate speech, but on “offensive” speech (Ekins 2017). Majorities of Democrats, liberals, and women reported favoring new laws making it illegal to say “offensive” things about Black people (endorsements from 51–61%). Conversely, majorities of Republicans, conservatives, and men opposed such laws (opposition ranging from 64 to 72%). Furthermore, majorities of Democrats, liberals,

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and women reported endorsing hate speech as a form of violence (59–66%); although substantial portions of Republicans, conservatives, and men also did so, it was at considerably lower levels (40–43%). At the same time that majorities consider hate speech a form of violence, 1/3 of those identifying as “very liberal” in the American National Election Study endorsed the use of actual violence to achieve political goals (Goldberg 2021). Support for Restricting Academic Freedom A recent study of over 500 college students (Rausch et al., 2023) found results broadly consistent with the CATO (Ekins 2017) study. The more that the students endorsed social justice, the less they endorsed academic freedom (r = −0.15), advancing knowledge (r = −0.38) and academic rigor (r = −0.39). Women were less supportive of academic freedom, advancing knowledge, and academic rigor, but placed more value on social justice and emotional well-being than did men. Although some have made the case that social justice movements have historically benefited from free speech protections (Mchangama 2022), in the twenty-first century, social justice and free speech are psychologically inversely related. The Psychology of Left-Wing Authoritarianism The recent blossoming of research on Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA) also provides important insights into possible manifestations in academia. Conway et al. (2018) simply took existing measures of right-wing authoritarianism and flipped the ideological affinity of the targets. As they wrote (p. 7), they took items such as this one: “It’s always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in government and religion than to listen to the noisy rabblerousers in our society who are trying to create doubts in people’s minds” and simply changed the target, so that “For the LWA scale, this item was adapted to read ‘It’s always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in science with respect to issues like global warming and evolution than to listen to the noisy rabble-rousers in our society who are trying to create doubts in people’s minds.’” Despite 50 years of social psychologists claiming to be unable to find much evidence of LWA in the democratic west, Conway et al.’s (2018) simple change of target was enough to reveal comparable levels of LWA and RWA in their samples. Furthermore, Conway et al. demonstrated strong relations between LWA and dogmatism and prejudice against religious minorities (comparable to findings of strong relations of RWA to prejudice against ethnic minorities). Recent work by Costello et al. (2022) has been the most ambitious of the new assessments of LWA, including scale development, rigorous psychometric analysis, and validation work across five samples (including over 2000 Mechanical Turk workers and a sample of over 4000 obtained from You rMorals.Org). Key findings were that LWA primarily manifests as support for

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“top-down censorship” (willingness to deploy authorities to limit right-wing beliefs and behavior), “anti-hierarchical aggression” (support for punishing those in power, overthrowing the established order, and political violence), and “conventionalism” (high adherence to norms espoused by revolutionary authorities). Even after controlling for political ideology, high LWA was associated with dogmatism, support for banning right-wing speakers, preference for political control over individual liberty, political intolerance and prejudice against political opponents, support for lethal political violence, and social vigilantism (imposing one’s views and morals on others). Follow-up research has further validated Costello et al.’s scale by showing that those holding strong LWA attitudes supported a whole toolbox of authoritarian measures to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic (Manson 2020). Specifically, LWA correlated with support for violating basic human rights, such as prohibiting misinformation (r = 0.37), restricting right to protest against the government (r = 0.40), and restricting rights to jury trials (r = 0.41). In addition, LWA also predicted support for all sorts of heavy-handed government measures, such as mandatory person-tracking apps for phones (r = 0.32), surveillance of churches (r = 0.49), and the government running the economy (r = 0.41).

The Radicalization of the American Academy In the next sections, we present evidence documenting the left-wing radicalization of academia. That evidence is presented in two parts. The first part reports recent real-world events of “acceptable” and “unacceptable” discourse in academia, events which, though anecdotal, provide a good introduction to how Far Left extremism manifests. The second part reviews the nowconsiderable quantitative evidence from surveys regarding the Far Left skew of academia, and the presence of a large minority of Far Left extremists. Real-World Events Emblematic of the Radicalization of Academia Radicalization can manifest in many ways, but two of the most common are: (1) One make almost any statement, no matter how bizarre, unjustified, or inflammatory, and if it is framed as some sort of social justice, have a very nice career; (2) If one criticizes some aspect of social justice in academia, one is at serious risk of being denounced, public shamed, sanctioned or ostracized. We give examples of each next. Rutgers White people are villains. Brittany Cooper, a tenured Rutgers professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, in an interview on The Root (2021) stated: “White people are committed to being villains in the aggregate,” which she then followed up with, “We gotta take these motherf***ers out but we

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can’t say that. I don’t believe in a project of violence.” Although there was a public outcry about this statement, Cooper has not, as far as we know, suffered professional damage, disinvitations, or deplatforming, as have others for challenging social justice shibboleths. Chancellor and Provost apologize for condemning antisemitism after being denounced. In May 2021, intense fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza triggered a spate of attacks on Jews and synagogues in the U.S. (Goldstein 2021; Graham and Stack 2021). In response, the Rutgers Chancellor-Provost’s Office released a statement that read: “We are saddened by and greatly concerned about the sharp rise in hostile sentiments and anti-Semitic violence in the United States. Recent incidents of hate directed toward Jewish members of our community again remind us of what history has to teach us.” The statement also condemned “all forms of bigotry, prejudice, discrimination, xenophobia, and oppression, in whatever ways they may be expressed” (Sales 2021). The following day, this statement was denounced by the Rutgers chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP 2021) on the grounds that it “conveniently ignore[d] the extent to which Palestinians have been brutalized by Israel’s occupation and bombing of Gaza,” and “cannot be separated from widespread attempts to conflate antizionism with antisemitism…” What is going on here, however, is the reverse—SJP, by denouncing the condemnation of antisemitic attacks in America, is justifying or deflecting criticism of such attacks on the grounds of antizionism. Contra the SJP denunciation, Human Rights Watch (Goldstein 2021) unambiguously acknowledged that “just as it is a hate crime to attack an Asian American for how China’s authoritarian rulers may have handled Covid,” it is antisemitic to treat American Jews as if they embody the Israeli government. If this was just another example of SJP engaging in antisemitism under the guise of antizionism, it would not say much about the academy in general or Rutgers in particular. What makes this event relevant to this chapter is the response of the Chancellor’s & Provost’s Offices to the SJP denunciation. It was emblematic of one of the themes of this chapter: One can make almost any claim, no matter how bizarre, inflammatory, or hate-mongering, and, as long as it is framed as some form of “social justice,” one will receive widespread support and credibility from within academia. On cue, the Chancellor’s and Provost’s offices released an obsequious public apology laced with social justice buzzwords, including: “We understand that intent and impact are two different things…In hindsight, it is clear to us that the message failed to communicate support for our Palestinian community… We sincerely apologize for the hurt this has caused…we will take the lesson learned here to heart, and pledge our commitment to doing better.” It probably would have ended there, but for the loud public outcry from outside of Rutgers, protesting the absurdity and offensiveness of apologizing for condemning antisemitic attacks in the U.S. In response to those public protests, the President of Rutgers, released an obfuscatory statement: “Rutgers deplores

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hatred and bigotry in all forms. We have not, nor would we ever, apologize for standing against anti-Semitism. Neither hatred nor bigotry has a place at Rutgers, nor should they have a place anywhere in the world. At Rutgers we believe that anti-Semitism, anti-Hinduism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism, intolerance and xenophobia are unacceptable wherever and whenever they occur (Graham and Stack 2021).”1 The entire affair was reported and summarized at NJ.com (Panico 2021) and testifies to the effectiveness that even bizarre and unsubstantiated allegations of some sort of “ism” have at extracting confessions of guilt (even when none exists) at even the highest levels of academia. Yale In April 2021, New York psychiatrist Aruna Khilanani was invited by the School of Medicine’s Child Study Center to give a lecture at Yale’s weekly educational forum for medical faculty, students, and staff known as Grand Rounds. The talk was titled “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind,” and was the topic of an exposé by Herzog (2021). In her talk, Khilanani made numerous bizarre statements, such as: “White people are out of their minds and they have been for a long time,” and the “cost of talking to White people at all is the cost of your own life as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil.” In case you did not get her point, she added, “I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step…”. One might dismiss this as the ravings of an aggrieved lunatic, but neither the Yale notables who invited her, nor many of those who heard her speak, seemed to think so. During the question and answer period after the talk, several members of the audience expressed fawning admiration with comments like: Thank you for shaking [things] up; I feel shaken up in a good way… Thank you for this…it’s the truth… I really appreciate your comments.

Much like the Rutgers antisemitism incident, Yale only distanced itself from Khilanani after there was loud outcry from the general public (Colon 2021). In academia, you can make all sorts of bizarre claims if you frame them as some form of social justice. The Saga of Dorian Abbot Dorian Abbot is a professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago. In 2021, he posted videos on YouTube critical of the manner in which Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) was being implemented there

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(Abbot 2022). He was immediately denounced by graduate students, some professors, and at least one postdoc in a public letter and mob on Twitter. Those denouncing him called for restrictions on his teaching and mentorship, and called on others to also denounce him and anyone who supported him. Shortly thereafter, Abbot’s scholarship on the ecology of exoplanets earned him an invitation to speak at MIT’s Carlson Lecture, which is devoted to bringing important scientific advances to the general public. But, after publishing an editorial in Newsweek critical of DEI, a Twitter mob and MIT graduate students denounced him, and successfully pressured the lecture organizers to disinvite him. Similarly, David Romps—once Director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center—proposed inviting Dorian to present his research at the BASC. This produced an uprising of outrage among the faculty, leading to Romps’ resignation (Crane 2021). The Saga of Dorian Abbot is not a scientific study, but it is more than a lone anecdote; it is emblematic of the modern implementation of social justice. Academics in three major influential institutions, Chicago, MIT, and Berkeley denounced, deplatformed, or sought to punish Dorian for the legitimate expression of views they opposed, in the name of social justice. This is exactly what one would expect if the inverse relationship between support for social justice and free speech found in surveys characterizes large swaths of academia, and emblematic of the manner in which if one criticizes social justice, one risks professional sanction. The Radicalization of the American Academy: Results from Surveys The stories about Yale, Rutgers, and Dorian Abbot are mere anecdotes, albeit anecdotes from major and influential universities. However, our argument is not that the radicalization of the academy is something that manifests in a few unusual anecdotes; it is that these anecdotes constitute the tip of a very large iceberg. We now turn our attention to that iceberg by reviewing studies of the politics of the (mostly American) academy. The American Academy does not merely skew Left, it skews extremely Left in two senses: (1) The skew itself is extreme; and (2) people who self-describe as being on the extreme Left of the American political spectrum are vastly overrepresented. The next section, then, is in three parts: (1) A brief review of Americans’ political distribution (for comparison); (2) A review of the evidence regarding the extremity of the political skew in academia; and (3) A review of studies assessing how many faculty identify as being on the extreme Left. The Political Distribution of Americans As of October 2022, 29% of Americans identified as Democrats, 33% as Republicans, and 35% as Independents (Gallup 2022). The “Hidden Tribes” study of 8,000 participants found that only 8% of Americans identify as “progressives,” the furthest Left of all the groups in their study (Hawkins et al.

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2018). Results from a Pew Research Center survey produced similar patterns. The most extreme Left, the Progressive Left, were 6% of the population and “have very liberal views on virtually every issue and support far-reaching changes to address racial injustice and expand the social safety net.” (Pew Research Center 2021). The Political Distribution of Academics Surveys conducted over the past 50 years investigating the ideological composition of university faculty have consistently demonstrated that faculty (particularly in the social sciences and humanities) are decidedly on the Left side of the political spectrum (see Honeycutt and Jussim 2020 for a review) and this skew is growing. Honeycutt and Freberg (2017) reported that in their sample of university professors from four California state universities (n = 618), 71.1% identified as liberal, 15% moderate, and 13.8% conservative. Other recent work using faculty voter registration data has found that faculty registered as Democrats outnumber Republican faculty in every academia area, with an overall ratio of 8.5 Democrats for every one Republican (Langbert 2018; Langbert and Stevens 2021) but with (sometimes much) larger ratios in most social science and humanities fields (the fields most likely to address political and politicized topics). Thus, at the most basic level, and consistent across many different data sources collected at different times using varying methods, the political identity of academics has been and continues to skew further Left. However, it is not just that the skew is extreme, it is that the Far Left is massively overrepresented in academia (compared to the single digit representation in the population). To see this ongoing change, it is instructive to compare the results of the most recent survey of academics’ politics with older work. Gross and Simmons (2014) recruited a national sample of 1417 American professors in 2006 and is one of few studies to assess levels of leftwing extremism. Honeycutt (2022) asked similar questions of a large national sample of tenured/tenure-track American professors (n = 1861). Findings of the two surveys are shown in Table 19.1. More faculty members identified as part of the extreme Left in 2022 (compared to 2006), and even more graduate students identified in the Left-extremes than faculty. Today’s graduate students are tomorrow’s faculty, so it appears that the Left skew of the faculty is likely to become more extreme (in senses of both statistical skew and political extremism) in the future. Targets: Experiences with Authoritarian Behavior Many studies report evidence of a hostile environment within academia for scholars on the Right or those who criticize certain beliefs or values held sacred by some on the Left (many of whom may themselves hold left-wing political views). One survey of 292 social psychologists found conservatives reported experiencing a hostile work environment to a much greater extent

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Table 19.1 Faculty and graduate students identifying as radical, political activist, Marxist, or Socialist, and those who “selected at least one of these.” Gross and Simmons (2014)—Faculty

Radical Activist Marxist Socialist Selected at least one

11.2% 13.5% 3% Not asked Unable to determine

Honeycutt (2022)—Faculty

Honeycutt (2022)— Graduate Students

17.2% 22.3% 7.9% 26.0% 40.4%

33.7% 25.4% 20.4% 43.9% 57.8%

Percent of faculty who indicated these labels described them at least moderately well (i.e., with a score of 4 or higher)

than did liberals (means of 4.7 and 1.9, respectively, scale from 1 [not at all] to 7 [very much]; Inbar and Lammers 2012). This was then replicated and extended in a study of 618 academics from across the disciplines in California state universities (Honeycutt and Freberg 2017) and in an international (2/3 European, 22% U.S.) sample of philosophers (Peters et al. 2020). Kaufmann (2021) curated survey results from a variety of sources in both the U.S. and U.K. and found that right-wing academics reported four to eight times higher levels of being threatened by disciplinary action than did left-wing academics. Both a hostile environment and being targeted with punishment for political views reflect one of the key elements of authoritarianism: aggression directed toward one’s political opponents. Perpetrators: Endorsement of Authoritarian Behavior Willingness to discriminate on political grounds. Many academics openly declare blatant hostility to conservatives. Depending on the measure and the cutoff, 30–80% of academics across several surveys explicitly state that they would discriminate against conservative viewpoints and individuals in hiring, publication, grants, or conference presentations (Honeycutt and Freberg 2017; Inbar and Lammers 2012; Peters et al. 2020). All of these surveys used the scale midpoint (say, 4 on a 1–7 scale ranging from not at all to very much) as the cutoff for “willingness to discriminate.” If one were to use a cutoff of 2 (reflecting anything above “not at all”) the proportion approaches 80% (Jussim et al. 2015). A recent nationwide survey of over 1800 academics and 1700 graduate students (future academics) from across the disciplines found similar results (Honeycutt 2022). Whether these results can be taken at face value, however, is unclear. Perhaps social desirability concerns depress willingness to report willingness to discriminate. Even if we take the findings at face value, these results may help

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explain the slow exile/exodus of conservatives from academia. Academia is not completely closed to conservative students, but when large enough minorities of academics express overt hostility to conservatives, it is difficult for most conservative students to avoid it completely. As such experiences of hostility accumulate, many who might otherwise be interested in careers in academia may decide to avoid working in professions where they are at unusually high risk of a hostile work environment. Similarly, at the faculty level, whether it is job search committees, paper reviews, or grant panels, it usually only takes one or two negative voices to torpedo a possible job interview, paper acceptance, or grant funding. Although some can enter academia and succeed despite these headwinds, it will be far more difficult for them to do so than for left-wing students and academics, who face little or no such political headwinds. Punishing opponents. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) maintains a Scholars Under Fire database (FIRE 2022; see also German and Stevens 2021, 2022). Scholars are considered “under fire” when they are targeted for professional punishment for engaging in forms of speech that are protected either under the U.S. Constitution or principles of academic freedom (German and Stevens 2021, p. 6). FIRE’s database counts being subjected to some sort of formal investigation as being under fire, even if the target is ultimately exonerated. This is because the time, stress, and resources necessary to defend oneself in the face of such investigations is plausibly viewed as its own form of punishment, whether or not the target is ultimately vindicated. Furthermore, as well-documented by analyses of the McCarthyism of the 1940s and 1950s (Schrecker 1986), such investigations tend to have a widespread chilling effect on speech, because even those not investigated get the message that one’s career may be at risk if one expresses the targeted viewpoints and therefore self-censor. FIRE’s database currently includes incidences going back to 2015 and is a living record in that it increases as new scholars come under fire. As of this writing, it documents over 700 scholars who have come under fire. In 2021 alone, FIRE tracked over 200 such targeting incidents, with almost half involving scholars targeted from their Left. FIRE’s database provides ample evidence of such attacks from the Right (more than half), but these are almost entirely from outside of academia, rather than from inside, and, as such, are not relevant to this chapter on extremism within academia. Nearly all the attacks from within the academy came from the Left. Given the base rate of a massive disproportion of faculty on the left, it is likely that most scholars under fire were also on the political Left. However, they were either not as Far Left as the people targeting them, or they were targeted because they challenged or criticized some belief or value held sacred by academics on the Left. Intolerance of political opponents and attempts to punish or censor them is a hallmark of authoritarianism. The numbers in FIRE’s database might be dismissible as small given that they occur in a country with hundreds of thousands of professors. However, FIRE’s database almost surely underestimates the number of faculty who have

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been targeted by academic left-wing mobs, because we know of events that did not rise to FIRE’s attention or meet their selection criteria, some of which can be found in Stevens et al. (2018), and others which can be found in Shields and Dunn (2016). It is a near-certainty that far more incidents of shunning and ostracism, not to mention reputation-smearing whisper campaigns, interviews-never-received, promotions never granted, jobs never offered, and the like have occurred than will ever be recorded. It also does not take many such incidents for faculty to “get the message” and self-censor to avoid career-damaging punishment, which may explain the much higher levels of self-censorship among conservative faculty (Kaufmann 2021). Academic demography and grassroots endorsement of censorship and the erosion of support for academic freedom. Willingness to censor one’s opponents is one of the central features of left-wing authoritarianism (Costello et al. 2022) and there is ample evidence of endorsement of censorship throughout academia. Most scholars under fire in FIRE’s database were targeted for their speech (as opposed to, e.g., their behavior). In addition, however, there are widespread and growing grassroots support and organizational efforts for eroding academic freedom protections. These are discussed next. One example is the Princeton Faculty Letter (2020), which called for Princeton to: “Constitute a committee composed entirely of faculty that would oversee the investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty, following a protocol for grievance and appeal to be spelled out in Rules and Procedures of the Faculty. Guidelines on what counts as racist behavior, incidents, research, and publication will be authored by a faculty committee for incorporation into the same set of rules and procedures.” Whereas harassing any member of a university community (e.g., by targeting them with slurs) is legitimately prohibited, expressing ideas that some people consider racist are well within the protections afforded by academic freedom. Indeed, this captures one of the problems with this type of censorship: What counts as “racist” is so inherently ambiguous that such a policy would inherently infringe on open discourse around controversial topics involving race simply by virtue of chilling such discussions through fear of punishment. Although Princeton University has not yet adopted this policy, the fact that hundreds of faculty, graduate students, and alumni signed on to the open letter advocating for top-down censorship serves as evidence of grassroots support for it. We documented in the prior section on the psychology of left-wing extremism how Democrats, liberals, and women are far more supportive of censorship than are Republicans, conservatives, or men. We next review evidence on how these national trends are manifesting in academia. A recent survey of over 1000 North American academics (Kaufmann 2021) found that those who were younger, minorities, or women, and who identified as either Far Left or as activists, were more likely to support a campaign to dismiss a colleague on political grounds. This survey found that about half of younger Far Left academics support such a campaign, a proportion that

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declines among academics who are older or less Far Left. When asked about prioritizing social justice or academic freedom, younger academics, women, and Far Left activists endorsed social justice more so than did older academics, men, and those not on the Far Left. Similarly, results of a survey of 468 professors found that men (60%) were more likely than women (40%) to endorse the idea that “scholars should be completely free to pursue research questions without fear of institutional punishment for their research conclusions” (Clark and Winegard 2022). In the same survey, when asked about whether scientists should prioritize truth or equity, 66% of men whereas 43% of women prioritized truth. Although women only rarely responded with a blunt “no” or “equity” to these questions, majorities chose the response option, “it’s complicated.” What exactly was meant by this was not explored in this study. Nonetheless, such a result is consistent with national surveys described earlier (Ekins 2017; Rausch et al., 2023) showing greater support for censorship among women. Because these results are correlational, we do not know what causes what. Nonetheless, descriptively, the demographic groups that have, so far, been less supportive of free speech and academic freedom are becoming more represented, and more influential, in the academy. Institutional and Organizational Implementation of Censorship and Political Intolerance The combination of grassroots support and activists who capture positions of leadership and power means that powerful institutions and organizations within academia are being recruited to implement censorial policies and political discrimination against both people and ideas. We next review some of the manifestations of this sort of institutional/organizational capture. Censorship policy, Nature. Nature is a family of very high impact journals. Unfortunately, its scientific standards are also in the process of being compromised through censorship-by-policy in the name of social justice. Nature’s new ethical guidelines (Nature Human Behaviour 2022) include this: “Harms can also arise indirectly, as a result of the publication of a research project or a piece of scholarly communication—for instance, stigmatization of a vulnerable human group or potential use of the results of research for unintended purposes (e.g., public policies that undermine human rights or misuse of information to threaten public health).” In an article titled The Fall of Nature, Winegard (2022) argued that “Editors will now enjoy unprecedented power to reject articles on the basis of nebulous moral concerns and anticipated harms.” This problem is further compounded by the finding identified in recent research showing that people tended to overestimate others’ harmful reactions to studies and underestimate their benevolent reactions (Clark, et al., 2023). For example, after reading about real findings showing that child abuse produces few long-term effects on adults, people estimated that over 30% of readers would take child abuse less seriously (a harmful reaction), whereas only

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about 12% did take it less seriously. Similarly, people estimated that under 60% would call for more research on child abuse (a benevolent reaction), whereas over 75% did so. However, Clark et al. (2023) did not examine academics. Thus, we do not know for sure that overestimation of harms manifests in a similar manner among their reviewers. But the policy itself does nothing to ensure against either such overestimation, or that there is any consideration of whether the benefits of censoring something controversial outweigh the costs. Censorship practices at The National Institutes for Health (NIH). NIH is a vast network of U.S. institutions that, among their many missions, disburses tens of billions of dollars in funding to support scientific research. It is funded by taxpayer dollars, which one might think would come with a requirement to make data as widely available as possible. But this is not the case, at least not according to a report by University of Minnesota geneticist James Lee (2022) which stated: My colleagues at other universities and I have run into problems involving applications to study the relationships among intelligence, education, and health outcomes. Sometimes, NIH denies access to some of the attributes that I have just mentioned, on the grounds that studying their genetic basis is ‘stigmatizing.’ Sometimes, it demands updates about ongoing research, with the implied threat that it could withdraw usage if it does not receive satisfactory answers. In some cases, NIH has retroactively withdrawn access for research it had previously approved. Note that none of the studies I am referring to include inquiries into race or sex differences. Apparently, NIH is clamping down on a broad range of attempts to explore the relationship between genetics and intelligence.

Such practices violate the spirit if not the letter of NIH’s own policy, which states this: “The NIH GDS (Genetic Data Sharing) policy explicitly encourages the broadest possible use of findings and development of products/ technologies from the use of NIH-funded genomic data to promote maximum public benefit” (NIH 2014). Although that policy was adopted in 2014, it was recently reaffirmed (NIH 2022). “Maximum public benefit” probably gives the NIH wiggle room to argue that censoring certain types of usage does not technically violate their policy, as long as NIH decision-makers believe there is potential for “harm” resulting from that usage (as with Nature). Should they make such an argument, we would have two replies: (1) The evidence that liberals vastly overestimate certain types of harm (reviewed previously herein) provides no basis for having confidence that NIH will engage in censorship in either a judicious or politically neutral manner; (2) However justified they believe such censorship is, it is still censorship. Mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements as compelled speech or censorship. Although the meaning of the terms “ diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” is often either not articulated or articulated but used in ways that contravene that articulation (Honeycutt and Jussim, 2023), in general,

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DEI involves efforts to ensure academia welcomes people from underrepresented or marginalized groups. In the American academy, mandatory DEI statements for applicants for academic jobs have become widely implemented with astonishing rapidity, and the momentum for their spread is still rising (Maranto et al. 2022). Although the different types of diversity are nearly infinite (Jussim, 2023), DEI in academia is typically narrowly focused on a set of demographic categories for whom the Left desires special protections (see Honeycutt and Jussim 2022, for a report documenting both the prevalence and disingenuousness with which DEI programs are being implemented, with specific references to a slew of University of California system schools (Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, San Diego, UCLA) and Minnesota, NYU, Oregon, Texas, Rutgers, University of Pennsylvania, Vassar, Cornell, and Brandeis). The most benevolent interpretation of these developments is that they constitute incentivizing and enforcing (through selection of personnel with “good” DEI statements) individual affirmative action-like efforts. In this context, however, it is worth noting that race, ethnicity, and gender-based preference policies are far left of the American mainstream. For example, California, the most populous state in the U.S., with over 10% of the country’s entire population, a state in which White people are a minority, and which is one of the most liberal states in the country, has voted twice to ban affirmative action in hiring (Friedersdorf 2020). Similarly, national surveys also show widespread opposition to affirmative action. In a national Pew survey, over 70% of Americans stated that they believed that race should not be a factor in college admissions, including large majorities of Black (59%) and Hispanic (68%) respondents (Gómez 2022). In another Pew survey, over 70% said race should not be considered in employment decisions, including 54% of Black and 69% of Hispanic respondents (Horowitz 2019). Thus, even at its most benevolent, DEI promotes policies far Left of the American mainstream. But there are also good reasons to doubt that mandated DEI statements are entirely benevolent. One is that they can constitute a political litmus test, ensuring that academia selects for endorsement of a Far Left view of “social justice.” Worse, requiring a “good” DEI statement as a condition of admission or employment is a form of compelled speech or censorship. People who desire a job in academia, admission to a graduate program, or to present at a scientific conference, but also oppose affirmative action/DEI and yet are required to write a DEI statement as the price of admission, have a difficult choice: Write a statement disingenuously professing allegiance to the DEI political agenda in order to have a career, write one (thereby formally meeting the requirement) that rejects allegiance to DEI, or degrade their career prospects or advancement by not applying to programs that require DEI statements. If they chose to write a disingenuous statement, DEI statement mandates constitute a form of organizationally compelled speech, though it is not compelled by the state (unless it is a state university). If they write a statement

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rejecting allegiance to DEI ideology and policies, and this counts against them, it is also a form of compelled speech. If would-be applicants instead chose not to apply, mandatory DEI statements function as a form of organizational censorship. Many people seem to erroneously believe that censorship is something only the government can do. Any institution, organization, business, group, or individual who successfully prevents expression or dissemination of an idea has engaged in censorship. The prevention does not need to be absolute; a platform that removes a book for sale in response to an outrage mob is engaging in censorship on that platform, even if the author can distribute it on other platforms. In the U.S., private censorship is generally legal; private actors, whether corporate, institutional, organizational, or even social media outrage mobs can legally censor anything they like. It is still censorship, just not state censorship. Mandatory DEI statements that must endorse particular practices can function as a form of censorship because anyone unwilling to endorse DEI political activism/affirmative action or specific types of DEI actions/activities will likely be prevented from having opportunities for jobs in which they can conduct and disseminate scientific research. Similarly, when DEI statements are required for any who wish to present at academic conferences, anyone who opposes affirmative action-like practices, and refuses to lie about it will be prevented from presenting. Thus, the policy restricts dissemination of science for non-scientific reasons and, as such, constitutes censorship. This is not hypothetical; it is happening now. DEI statements that fail to endorse the “right” types of diversity are indeed being treated as disqualifying (Honeycutt and Jussim 2022). University administrators and at least one professional society president have admitted that they are used as an “additive” component of an application (building in discrimination against those who do not provide one or who provide statements deemed “poor” by virtue of not endorsing social justice dogmas and practices). Yet other times, officials claim DEI statements are only one component of an application but, instead, use them as an initial screen, meaning that DEI statements below some threshold of meeting progressive values are precluded from further consideration (Honeycutt and Jussim 2022). This institutionalizes political viewpoint discrimination. Threats to Science The radicalization of academia means that, as demonstrated throughout this chapter, Far Left ideology has infused itself not only into who gets hired, but into what topics and findings major journals will publish, professional societies will permit to be presented, and major grant agencies will support. There are, however, more subtle ways in which radicalization manifests. In this section, we review some of the ways it leads to production of dubious or even entirely invalid “scientific” claims in the peer reviewed literature.

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Peer Reviewed Journals: Bizarre Claims and Practices in the Name of Social Justice Grievance Studies Affair. Beginning in 2017, as part of an academic whistleblowing operation, Lindsay et al. (2018) wrote twenty academic papers all of which made radical social justice claims. Within a year, seven were accepted for publication in peer reviewed journals. Two were given “revise and resubmits,” which usually indicates a paper is on a path to acceptance (the review process was never finalized because these papers were withdrawn when the sting-like nature of the affair was exposed). Affilia, a journal of feminist social work, accepted their treatise consisting of rewritten excerpts from Mein Kampf using “intersectionalism” in the place of “our movement.” Claims in the 9 papers included advocating for white students to be chained to desks (to experience oppression), and that to prevent rape culture, men should be (metaphorically) leashed like dogs. The latter paper received honorary recognition from the journal it was published in, Gender, Place, and Culture. Parasitic Whiteness. An article appearing in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association was titled On Having Whiteness (Moss 2021). Its abstract includes the following statement: “Parasitic Whiteness renders its hosts appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse. These deformed appetites particularly target non-white peoples. Once established, these appetites are nearly impossible to eliminate.” Perhaps the best comment on this statement is its similarity to a passage from Mein Kampf (Hitler 1925/1999, p. 16): “This pestilential adulteration of the blood, of which hundreds of thousands of our people take no account, is being systematically practiced by the Jew to-day. Systematically these negroid parasites in our national body corrupt our innocent fair-haired girls and thus destroy something which can no longer be replaced in this world.” The degradation of Nature. A recent paper in Nature: Geoscience made the strong claim that minorities in geoscience face a “hostile obstacle course” to their professional advancement (Berhe et al. 2022). Its centerpiece was what would in any other context be considered a political cartoon: It shows a White man and a Black woman, professionally dressed, at the base of a staircase; to head up the staircase, the White man has a few minor obstacles, like orange cones; the Black woman faces a staircase laced with barbed wire, spikes, fire, and landmines, and with a ball and chain locked to her ankle. This is a political cartoon, not scientific theory or evidence; and nothing quite says “politicization of science” better than Nature publishing a political cartoon as the centerpiece of a supposedly scientific article. But it gets worse. The thematic claim of the article is this quote (p. 2): “…the experience for minoritized scholars is more like a vicious or hostile obstacle course.5,6,7,8,9,10 ” 5–10 are citations. In scientific scholarship, citations typically document the scientific evidence on which claims are made. Not here. Citation 5 is to a tweet declaring that engineering constitutes a hostile obstacle course for Black engineering PhDs. Citation 6 is a report interpreting

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a dream of a Black woman. Citation 7 involves interviews with 28 graduate students. References 6 and 7 do not even rise to the level of pseudoscience (which usually does have some evidence, even if misrepresented or misinterpreted), 8’s sample size is meaninglessly tiny. We stopped fact-checking the list of citations at that point. That the reviewers and editor considered this a scientific article worth publishing is a damning indictment reflecting the corruption of peer review. It attests to the recurring theme of this chapter that one can make all sorts of unjustified claims in academia if framed as some form of social justice, and even get published in the apex scientific journal Nature. Social science on politicized issues is pervasively dubious. Space limitations prohibit a thorough review of the many ways in which social justice has corrupted social science. Therefore, we briefly mention additional failures of social science purporting to advance some form of social justice and direct readers to relevant reviews and critiques. So many of the many strong claims once common about implicit bias (supposed unconscious racism that is pervasive and powerful) have either been debunked or rendered dubious (Corneille and Hütter 2020; Jussim et al., in press; Machery 2022) that some scientists have called for abandonment of the term altogether (Corneille and Béna 2022). Racial resentment scales, once widely believed to capture subtle forms of prejudice, often capture nonracial political beliefs and attitudes (Cramer 2020). Rather than being powerful and pervasive, self-fulfilling prophecies are usually weak, fragile, and fleeting (Jussim 2012). Pre-registered tests of gender-based stereotype threat have, so far, all failed (Finnigan and Corker 2016; Flore et al. 2018). Microaggression research is characterized by strong claims but weak evidence (Cantu and Jussim 2021; Lilienfeld 2017). Rather than being broadly inaccurate, studies of racial, gender, and age stereotypes generally find moderate to high levels of accuracy (Jussim et al. 2016). Experimental studies of “system justification” (psychological processes relied on by conservatives to justify inequality and oppression) show the hallmarks of being unlikely to replicate (Sotola and Credé 2022). Studies advancing social justice or environmentalism were overrepresented among those that triggered psychology’s replication crisis (Honeycutt and Jussim, 2023). And this is an incomplete list (see Crawford and Jussim 2018; Honeycutt and Jussim 2020, 2023, for more).

Conclusion In this chapter, we have reviewed evidence for the radicalization of the (mostly but not exclusively) American academy and some of its downstream consequences. Surveys of faculty show overrepresentation of the Left in the American academy, including massive overrepresentation of people holding Far Left views. A recent national survey has found that these developments appear to be seeping into the American consciousness—although most Americans underestimate the political skew of academia, the greater the perceived

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skew, the less credibility they ascribe to its scholarship (Marietta and Barker 2019). Downstream consequences include: 1. the regular expression of bizarre and inflammatory statements, unhinged from anything recognizable as scientific evidence, by academics in both formal presentations and the peer reviewed literature if those statements are framed as advancing social justice; 2. a rise in authoritarian behavior manifesting as regular attacks seeking to punish academics who express views that violate values and beliefs held sacred on the political Left; 3. explicit endorsement and implementation of censorship of ideas critical of or which challenge social justice values and policies; and 4. the regular appearance in the peer reviewed literature of unjustified claims about the power and pervasiveness of various phenomena that provided useful rhetorical ammunition for advancing claims about social justice. There are many things that could be done to address these problems. Universities could implement stronger protections of free speech and academic freedom. The government could make funding contingent on universities providing such protections. Universities could proactively seek greater political diversity among newly hired faculty. Within existing academia, faculty committed to pluralism, neutrality, and objectivity (no matter how difficult those may be to achieve) can form new organizations that eschew political litmus tests and censorship. However, we are not optimistic about any of these potential solutions being widely adopted anytime soon. If little or nothing is done, the American academy is on a course to become the intellectual wing of Far Left political movements, providing some indeterminate mix of actual advances to knowledge and propaganda masquerading as scholarship.

Notes 1. Herzog obtained the recording of the talk and the question and answer period afterwards. She then shared that recording with one of the authors of the this chapter (Jussim).

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Index

0–9 5G mobile networks, 265 325, 265

A A22 Network, 287 Abbot, Dorian S., 336, 349, 350 Academia. See Universities Academic freedom, 346, 353–355, 361 Accelerationism, 32, 271, 272 Activist groups, 23, 31, 71, 91, 281, 282, 344 Adivasis (India), 205, 207–211 African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), 248–250, 254 Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), 251 Alinsky, Saul D., 25 Alio, Giuseppe, 3, 4 American National Election Survey (ANES), 45, 46, 50 Anarchism, xiii, xvi, 1, 2, 5, 8, 12, 13, 15, 20, 220–222, 224, 226, 227, 257, 259, 266, 267, 272, 280, 297, 301 Anarcho-primitivism, 257 Anarcho-syndicalism, 5 Ancillon, Friedrich, viii Animal Liberation Front (ALF), 15, 260, 272, 281

Animal rights extremism, 278 Animal Rights Militia (ARM), 281 Anti-authoritarianism, xvi Anti-capitalism, 71 Anti-civilization, 257, 259, 266, 267, 271 Anti-constitutionalism, 104 ANTIFA definition of, xvi violence and, xvi Antifa, 20, 22–24, 26–35, 53–55, 57, 58, 63, 64, 71, 73–76, 233, 234 definition of, 30 violence and, 24, 26, 31, 73, 295 Anti-fascism, xi, xvii, 20, 21, 34, 71, 224, 226, 234 Anti-globalism, 23 Anti-imperialism, 92, 154, 224 Anti-militarism, 9 Anti-Nazi League, 22 Anti-pluralism, 107 Anti-science, xvii, 327, 329, 335, 338 Anti-Semitism, 22 Anti-semitism, 303, 349 Anti-technology, 264, 268, 270 Apocalypticism, xvii, 277, 280 Arson, 34, 43, 63, 258, 260, 263, 265, 280, 283 Art, 167, 168, 171, 172, 179, 286, 297, 298, 300, 304 Assassinations, 1, 2, 4–7, 93, 107, 116, 126, 193, 204, 283, 302

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. P. Zúquete (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Left-Wing Extremism, Volume 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36268-2

367

368

INDEX

Atassa, 268, 269 Australia, xvii, 67, 219, 220, 222, 223, 229–236, 285 Autonomous movement, 279

B Backes, Uwe, xiv–xvi, 42, 103, 104, 106, 241, 279, 280 Bastar region, 213 Berkman, Alexander, 5, 7, 8, 12, 14, 15 Black blocs protests and, 15, 26 violence and, 15, 236 Black Lives Matter (BLM), xvi, 20, 28, 32, 33, 53–59, 62–64, 67, 70–77, 303, 309, 313 Black Panthers, 300, 301, 306 Bohemian, 296–298, 308 Bolivarian Movement, 138 Bolshevism, 12 Bombs/bombing, xi, xvi, 1, 4–13, 15, 54, 71, 132, 205, 227, 230, 252, 253, 263, 264, 266, 268, 269, 280–282, 348 Bonanno, Alfredo, 263 Bottum, Joseph, 318–322 Bourne, Randolph S., 298, 300, 301 Bravo, Douglas, 142–145, 151 Bray, Mark, 15, 24, 25, 31, 33–35, 43, 234 Bresci “Circle”, 8 British Gold Coast, 242, 245 Buda, Mario, 12, 13

C Cabral, Amílcar, 242, 248–251, 253 Canada, 22, 60, 64, 288, 307, 322–324, 336, 337 Cancel culture, xvii, 298, 306, 308, 323, 324 Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), 34 Caron, Arthur, 7, 8 Castro, Fidel, 138, 139, 141, 143, 144, 151 Censorship, 345, 347, 354–358, 361 Césaire, Aimé, 242, 243

Charisma, 154 Charlie Hebdo, 324 Chávez, Hugo, xvi, 138, 145, 148, 150–154 Chavismo, 145, 148, 150, 153, 156 Cinchoneros Popular Liberation Movement (Cinchoneros – Honduras), 96 Civil disobedience, xvii, 44, 228, 231, 232, 236, 260, 280, 287 Collapse, xvii, 42, 47, 92, 192, 195, 205, 212, 231, 254, 257, 259–261, 267, 268, 270–272, 321, 322 Collapsism, xvii, 271, 272 Colombia, xvi, 101–103, 109–112, 115–119, 132, 145, 207 Communal councils (CC), 154 Communist International (Comintern), 85, 86, 185, 187, 190 Communist Party of Burma (CPB), 192, 193, 196, 198 Communist Party of El Salvador (PCS), 86, 94 Communist Party of Honduras, 86 Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), 191, 192, 198 Concept creep, 297, 298, 302, 307 Conservatism, 34, 44, 45, 47, 88, 125, 134, 298 Conservatives, 32, 34, 35, 42–47, 50, 55, 70, 71, 73, 74, 92, 105, 111, 123, 125, 127–129, 133, 233, 302, 304, 305, 317, 329, 330, 332, 345, 346, 351–354, 360 Conspiracy Cells of Fire (CCF), 263, 264 Cooper, Brittney, 347, 348 Corruption of science, 328 Cospito, Alfredo, 266 Counterinsurgency, 204, 206, 213 Counterterrorism, x, 30, 70, 74, 265 Covid-19 pandemic, 347 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 315 CrimethInc., 27, 263, 264 Critical Race Theory (CRT), 314, 315, 317 Cronaca Sovversiva, 5, 6, 10, 12, 14 Cuban Revolution, 88, 92, 94, 123, 124, 127, 131, 139, 144, 153, 299

INDEX

Cults, 143, 154, 186, 286 Cultural radicalism, xv, 300 Cultural Revolution (China), 160, 163–165, 167, 169, 171, 178, 212, 299, 301 Cultural socialism, 295–297, 299, 301, 302, 305–309 Culture war, 318

D Day, Dorothy, 14 Debray, Régis, 88, 139, 142 Deep ecology, 279, 280 Deep Green Resistance (DGR), 261, 262 Delegitimization, 302 Democratic Party, 44, 55, 67, 68, 86 Democrats, 28, 33, 45, 47, 55, 62, 344, 345, 350, 351, 354 Demonization, xii Denunciation, 3, 348 Deplatforming, 348 Diallo, Rokhaya, 317, 319 DiAngelo, Robin, 62 Die Linke (Germany), vii, 131, 288, 351, 353, 357, 360 Direct action, xv, 14, 15, 26, 27, 89, 125, 145, 230, 231, 258, 260, 262, 263, 284 Dispossession, 208, 213 Dissent, ix, 153, 331 Doxing, 26 Dystopia, 43

E Earth First! (EF), 260, 281, 282 Earth Liberation Front (ELF), 15, 260, 272, 281, 283 Eco-extremism, xvii, 267, 269, 270, 277–282 Eco-fascism, 271 Eco-terrorism, 260, 278, 280 Egalitarianism, xiii, 59, 220, 223, 226, 228, 230, 236 Ende Gelände (Germany), 284, 288 Engels, Friedrich, 304 Environmental democracy, 279

369

Equity, 57–68, 75, 77, 253, 335, 355 European colonialism, 252 EUROPOL, 264 Exclusion, ix, 10, 67, 87, 105, 124, 206, 267, 345 Extinction Rebellion (XR), 231–233, 284–288 Extremism definition of, vii–x, 58, 279 hard and soft, 220 history of, viii stigmatising word and, 70 the psychology of, x, 354 the study of, viii–x, xii, 102

F Fanon, Frantz, xvii, 242, 251–253, 299 Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), 95–97 Farabundo Martí Popular Liberation Forces-FPL (El Salvador), 94 Feindbilder (enemy pictures), 152 Fireproof Australia, 229, 232 Floyd, George, 28, 29, 43, 56, 57, 60, 61, 63, 65, 67, 73, 77, 303, 317, 321 Foquismo, 139, 148 Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), 309, 353, 354 Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), 265, 272 France, xii, xv, 5, 13, 188, 222, 251, 253, 262, 264, 317, 318, 320, 322–324 Free speech, 25, 57, 309, 346, 350, 355, 361 Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional-FALN (Venezuela), 140, 144, 145 Fundamentalism, xvii, 307–309

G Galleani, Luigi, 4–6, 8–12, 14, 15 Gatekeeping/gatekeepers, viii Gauche prolétarianne (France), 92, 96, 114, 115, 117, 126, 130, 152, 153, 224, 231, 245, 253

370

INDEX

Gender, 33, 47, 252, 253, 296, 297, 301, 305, 307, 314, 331, 333, 334, 347, 359, 360 Gender theory, 305 German Communist Party (KPD), 20 Germany, xv, 21, 55, 67, 69, 102, 233, 234, 264, 282, 287, 324 Goldman, Emma, 12, 14 Great Awokening. See Wokeism Guatemalan Labour Party (PGT), 90 Guerrilla Army Of The Poor-EGP (Guatemala), 90 Guerrillas, 88, 91–96, 101, 107, 111, 112, 114, 124, 125, 128–133, 138, 140–143, 146, 148, 151, 191, 196, 197, 220, 227, 248, 251, 261–263 Guevara, Che, 85, 139, 142, 212, 225 Guevarism, 88, 89 Guzmán, Abimael , 131–133 Guzmán, Abimael, 131

H Hambacher Forest, 284, 287 Hatred, 3, 23, 146, 257, 349 H`ô Chí Minh, 187 Holst, Henriette Roland, vii Homophobia, 22, 304, 307 Horseshoe theory, 33

I Illegal, 26, 72, 104, 106–110, 112, 207, 213, 227, 230, 242, 280, 309, 345 improvised explosive device (IED), 270 India, xi, xvii, 64, 69, 101–103, 207–211, 214 Indiscriminate attack, 268, 269 Individualistas Tendiendo a Lo Selvaje (Individualists Tending toward the Wild - ITS), 267 Indonesian Communism, 186, 190, 196, 198 Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), 263, 264, 266, 283 Insurrectionary anarchism, 258, 259, 263, 266 International Revolutionary Front (IRF), 263, 264, 283

Intersectionality, 315, 316 J Jensen, Derrick, xvi, 260, 261 Jesse, Eckhard, xii, xv Johnson, Lyndon, 302, 303, 305, 332 Juntas Patrióticas de Liberación (Colombia), 109, 111–116, 118 Juste Milieu (happy medium), viii Just stop oil!, 287 K Kaczynski, Ted, 258, 260–264, 267, 268, 271 Kendi, Ibram X., 57, 314, 317, 333 Khilanani, Aruna, 349 Khmer Rouge, 63, 195 Kidnapping, 107, 132, 142, 145, 147, 149, 227 Kormendy, John, 335 Kropotkin, Pyotr, 224 L Labour party, 317 Laïcité, 322, 323 Lana, Ray, 337 Land acquisition, 207, 208, 213 La salute è in voi! - Health [or Salvation] is in you! (manual, 6, 9, 13 Last Generation, 286 Latin America, 63, 88, 101–103, 111, 112, 126, 128, 129, 134, 224 Latour, Bruno, 328 Leadership, 14, 24, 34, 59, 77, 90, 91, 96, 112, 124, 125, 127, 130, 132, 133, 151, 186–189, 192, 195–198, 210, 211, 213, 246, 249–251, 304, 355 Left-modernism, xvii, 295–299, 301, 304, 305 Left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), 344, 346, 354 Left-wing extremism (LWE) and guerillas, xvi, 204 and terrorism, x, 58, 103 and violence, xi, xii, xiv

INDEX

definition of, xii, xiii, 102 engagement in, xiv gender and, 33 in academia, xvii, 345 the study of, xv, 101–103 variants of, xiii, 242 Lenin, Vladimir, 131, 132, 185, 243, 304 Lexington Avenue explosion, 8 Lianke, Yan, 169, 173 Liberalism, 35, 223, 295, 297, 299, 302, 305 Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO), 254 Liberation Theology, 89 Liga Socialista–LS (Venezuela), 148 Limity jsme my (Czech republic), 284, 288 Little Black Cart, 268 Ludlow Massacre (1914), 6

M Machurucuto raid, 143 Mad Max, 272 Maduro, Nicolás, xvi, 138, 150, 154–156 Majumdar, Charu, 214 Malayan Communist Party (MCP), 191, 193, 197 Malm, Andreas, 273 Mao/Sun Cult, 167 Maoism, xvi, 110, 114, 115, 161, 193 Mao, Tse Tung, 113, 212 Marighella, Carlos, 225 Marxism-Leninism, xv, 85, 111, 146, 187, 188, 196 Marx, Karl, xiii, 131, 132, 221, 304 Mau Mau Rebellion, 254 Mental health, 33 Middle class, 72, 124, 126, 128, 304 Mob rule, 27, 335, 350, 358 Moderation (politics of), viii Monkey Wrench Gang, 281 Mooney, Tom, 9 Moral absolutism, 296 Moral vision, 246 Morazanist Patriotic Front (Honduras), 96

371

Morozov, Nikolai, 224 Movimiento al Socialismo–MAS (Venezuela), 143, 146 Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria-MIR (Venezuela), 128, 131, 137, 139–143, 146 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 303, 309

N Nadales, Gabriel, 20, 23–26, 30–32 Nanotechnology, 267 National Liberation Front–FLN (Algeria), 92, 94, 144, 251–253 Nature, ix, xv, 47, 71, 105, 113, 123, 125, 128, 152, 190, 213, 222, 235, 254, 258–261, 266, 267, 271, 280–282, 323, 355, 359, 360 Naxalites, 204–207, 210 Negritude, 242, 243 Neo-luddism, 258 New convergences, 258, 271 New Left, 14, 127, 220, 222–225, 299, 301, 306 New York Intellectuals, 298–300, 304 Ngo, Andy, 20, 23, 25–27, 29–31, 33, 34, 71 Nieves, David, 148, 149 Nihilism, 269 Nkrumah, Kwame, 242, 245

P Palmer, Mitchell, 11, 12 Pan-Africanism, 246–248, 254 Paramilitarism, 114 Partido de la Revolución Venezolana (PRV ), 143–147, 149, 151 Pathet Lao (Laos), 188, 194 People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), 254 People’s Revolutionary Army-ERP (El Salvador), 94 People’s Vanguard Party-PVP (Costa Rica), 86 People’s War Group–PWG (India), 204, 205, 207 Pessoa, Fernando, vii, xiv Petkoff, Teodoro, 139–143

372

INDEX

Podemos (Spanish political party), 138 Polarization, xvi, 19, 25, 35, 41, 102, 130, 150–152, 295, 309 Police brutality, 332 Political bias, 329 Political intolerance, 347, 355 Pol Pot, 189, 190, 195 Popular Fighters Group (Greece), 283 Portuguese Guinea, 242, 248, 250 Positive Action, 245–248 Post-Catholicism, 322, 323 Post-Protestantism, 318, 320, 321, 324 Prefigurative politics, 34 Primitivism, 243 Princeton Faculty Letter (2020), 354 Progressives, 14, 32, 35, 42, 43, 50, 71, 89, 91, 93–95, 117, 127, 130, 155, 192, 252, 298, 304, 315, 350, 351, 358 Propaganda by the deed, xvi, 1, 5, 15, 265, 266 Property destruction, 34, 261 Protests, xi, xiii, xv, 6–10, 15, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26–29, 33, 43, 56, 62, 70, 72, 74, 77, 90, 93, 129, 144, 208, 227, 228, 235, 280, 282, 284, 285, 317, 347, 348 Public opinion, xvi, 151, 323

Q Québec, 322–324 Queers, 305, 315

R Race taboo, 303 Racism, xi, 22, 23, 26, 34, 57, 58, 61, 66, 68, 75–77, 241, 244, 302–304, 307–309, 314–316, 319, 320, 322, 332, 333, 337, 338, 349, 360 Radical environmentalism, 270, 284, 287 Radicalization and terrorism, x definition, 223 Rauschenbusch, Walter, 319, 321 Reactance, 309 Real-existing socialism, 221

Rebel Armed Forces-FAR (Guatemala), 90 Reconstruction, Society, Extermination (R.I.S.E.), 281 Red Army Faction (RAF), 21, 220, 224 Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse), 21 Redemption, 6, 110, 268, 319 Redneck Revolt, 23, 53, 73 Regresión, 269, 270 Reinoehl, Michael Forest, 31, 64 Religion, x, 19, 35, 113, 116, 118, 190, 222, 243, 272, 296, 298, 307, 318–321, 323, 345, 346 Religious revival, 321 Republican Party, 298 Republicans, 28, 33, 44, 45, 47, 50, 70, 308, 344–346, 350, 351, 354 Revenge, 4, 6, 10, 171, 178, 268 Revolution, viii, 3, 31, 85, 86, 88, 89, 93–96, 110, 111, 124, 137, 139–141, 145, 148, 154, 160, 161, 166, 185, 193, 212, 227, 246, 248, 252, 258, 301, 313 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), 107, 108, 116, 145 Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200), 148, 150–152 Revolutionary Movement 13th November-MR 13 (Guatemala), 90 Revolutionary Organization of the People in Arms-ORPA (Guatemala), 90, 91 Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers (El Salvador), 96 Revolutionary Popular Forces Lorenzo Zelaya- FPRLZ (Honduras), 96 Rewilding, 259 Right-wing extremism, x–xiii, xvii, 33, 42, 72, 103, 106, 279 Riots, xvi, 3, 5, 15, 27, 28, 41, 43, 67, 73, 151, 233, 287, 302, 303, 317 Rockefeller Jr, John D., 6, 7 Rodríguez, Jorge, 148, 149 Roosevelt, Theodore, vii, xiv, 3 Rose City Antifa (RCA), 23 Royalism, 188

INDEX

S Sabotage, 242, 249, 258, 260–263, 265, 266, 278, 281, 282, 285, 286 Sacco and Vanzetti, 12, 13, 15 Sacralization, xvi, 167, 179 Sandinista National Liberation Front (Nicaragua), 92 Sandinista revolution, 95, 131 Sanyal, Kanu, 212 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 243, 299 Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, 230 Second Declaration of Havana, 140 Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path – Peru), 131 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 242 Separatism, xi Sexism, 22, 304, 306–308 Shone, Toby, 265, 266 Sin, 302, 319–321 Sison, Jose Maria, 192, 193, 197, 198 Sneevliet, Hendricus , 190 Sneevliet, Hendricus, 190 Socialism of the Twenty-first Century, 150, 153 Social justice, 60, 63, 139, 223, 226, 228, 231, 245, 283, 308, 323, 346–350, 355, 357–361 Social media, 27, 32, 53, 75, 296, 305, 308, 316, 358 Social movements, xv, 89, 91, 95, 97, 207, 286 Social question, 2, 12, 14 Soe, Thakin, 192 Soros, George, 32 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 316 Squatting, 21, 191, 197 Stalin, 20 Stalin, Joseph, 298 Steele, Shelby, 302–307 Strategy, ix, xiv, xvi, 14, 20, 24, 27, 33, 47, 85, 86, 88–92, 94, 95, 108, 123–128, 130, 133, 138, 139, 142, 143, 145, 150, 160, 186, 187, 190, 193, 195, 206, 231, 234, 244, 247, 249, 254, 261, 267, 269, 270, 281, 335 Sun as symbol (China), 178 Sunstein, Cass R., 308 Surveillance, 72, 259, 263–265, 347

373

T Taguieff, Pierre-André, xii, xiv, xvi, 319, 322 Techno-industrial civilization, 259, 269 Terrorism, x, xi, xv–xvii, xix, 4, 5, 11, 13, 15, 30, 45, 49, 58, 59, 67, 70, 72–75, 103, 220, 224, 226–229, 234, 236, 251, 253, 258, 260, 265, 266, 268, 269, 272, 278, 280, 331 The Invisible Committee, 264 The Tyre Extinguishers, 287 Third Worldism, 223, 300 Torch Network, 23, 234 Transphobia, 304, 307 Tricontinental conference, 141 Trotskyism, 95 Trotsky, Leon, vii Tse-Tung, Mao, 113 Tucker, Kevin, 261 U United States of America (USA), 21, 31, 212, 281, 283, 318, 321, 324 Unite the Right Rally (2017), 20, 27 Universities, xiii, xv, xvii, 27, 28, 42, 55, 59–66, 68, 70, 75, 76, 87–90, 93, 94, 111, 115, 139, 141, 145, 148, 150, 192, 212, 226, 260, 296, 301, 304–307, 336, 350–352, 354, 356, 357, 361 USSR, 124, 139, 140, 143, 145 Utopia, 144, 175, 178, 228, 267 V Valdinoci, Carlo, 12 Van der Graaf, Volkert, 283 Vanguardism, xiv, 267 Vert Resistance, 262 Violence, x–xvii, 1–5, 9, 13–15, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, 33, 41–47, 49, 50, 56, 58, 59, 70, 73–77, 89, 101, 105–109, 117, 129, 132, 142, 143, 146, 147, 161, 173, 191, 193, 208, 213, 220, 225–230, 233–236, 241, 242, 246, 248, 249, 251–255, 261, 262, 267, 272, 278, 295, 301, 309, 313, 345, 347, 348 and violence, xii

374

INDEX

Vulkangruppe – Volcano Group (Germany), 264 Vysotsky, Stanislav, 22–24, 26, 33, 34 W Wall Street bombing (1920), xvi, 13 Warrior Up, 265 Weather Underground, 21, 225 White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP), 296–299 Wokeism, xvii, 59, 75, 313, 316–318, 320–324 Women, xiv, 6, 7, 49, 60, 61, 66, 71, 76, 92, 142, 147, 176, 187, 205,

251, 266, 295, 303, 307, 317, 323, 334, 336, 345, 346, 354, 355 Workers’ Revolutionary Party, 96 World Social Forum (WSF), 153

X Xi, Jinping, 160, 163, 169, 174, 175

Z Zerzan, John, 259, 261 Zuberi, Tukufu, 333