For Our Anarchist Readers

Tonight on American Experience, PBS airs a documentary about a woman who would have hated the idea of PBS: Emma Goldman. The program's well-crafted website includes a full issue of Goldman's monthly magazine Mother Earth.

Comments

[Ruthless]

Don’t know much about Emma, but felt obligated to simply sign in on this one.

I’m a peaceful anarchist.

[Dan]

I’m a peaceful anarchist

You wouldn’t have cared much for Goldman, then. 🙂

[David]

Well, Radosh edited this 2001 book: “SPAIN BETRAYED: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War”, which I’d bet was quite criticial of the Soviet Union’s behavior in the Spanish Civil War.

I doubt Radosh means that Franco was the one betrayed.

http://www.yale.edu/yup/chapters/089813chap.htm

[joe]

David, I cannot tell you how relieved I am that you weren’t trying to squeeze out a 9/11 metaphor.

[David]

The phrenological analysis of Goldman’s head is priceless:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldman/filmmore/ps_head.html

I wonder, will the series treat Goldman’s anti-Bolshevism? Or airbrush this out?

Ronald Radosh talks about her disgust at Soviet communism here:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=5572

[David]

I found this interesting bit on that PBS site:

“Evidence also suggests that Berkman was the main organizer of a planned bomb attack on Rockefeller. An anarchist concept of the era, “propaganda of the deed, ” held that a violent terrorist act could become a catalyst, awakening others to take action against perceived injustice. In this case, the bomb exploded prematurely at a tenement building on Lexington Avenue in New York City, killing three anarchists and a sympathizer. Berkman published an emotional outpouring for the “martyrs” of the explosion in the July issue of Mother Earth. Goldman, who disapproved of the use of terror, was outraged.”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldman/peopleevents/p_berkman.html

Now what event in the more recent past of the far left in the United States does that remind you of?

[joe]

The Weather Underground?

[David]

Yep.

“Oughton was killed when explosives that she and other Weatherpeople were hoarding in a Greenwich Village townhouse unexpectedly detonated in 1970. They’d been planning to blow up Fort Dix.”

http://slate.msn.com/id/1008160/

[Kevin Carson]

Dan,

Wow! I’m surprised Radosh still acknowledges the existence of an anti-Soviet Left (even though he used to be part of it). The only time I’ve seen him and Horowitz distinguish between Stalinists and the libertarian Left, was when THEY were accused of being ex-Stalinists. They’re capable of incredibly nuanced distinctions within the Left, when it comes to explaining exactly where they stood in 1968; but when it comes to describing OTHER PEOPLE, all those nice distinctions go right down the toilet.