American Anarchists
Anarchism is the belief that society should exist absent of “oppressive” governments, laws, police, or any other authority. Anarchist extremists advocate violence in furtherance of this idea, typically focusing on sub-movements such as anti-racism, anti-capitalism, anti-globalism, and environmental extremism.
Anarchist extremists, or those subscribing to the ideology that condones violence and the use of force, do not have a central leadership and lack organizational hierarchy. These extremists are event-driven and often take advantage of otherwise legal protests to conduct violent counter-protests, destroy public and private property, and attack law enforcement. Common attack targets, chosen for their symbols of capitalism and government, include commercial infrastructure and the financial sector. Vandalism and arson are the most common attack types.
A majority of anarchist extremists are affiliated with Antifa and focus on issues of racism, immigration, and other perceived social injustices. Anarchist extremists will mobilize in response to issues they believe are unjust, carry out criminal and violent acts during otherwise First Amendment-protected events and protests, and target perceived enemies.
Antifa, or anti-fascists, is a movement that focuses on issues involving racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism, as well as other perceived injustices. The majority of Antifa members do not promote or endorse violence; however, the movement consists of anarchist extremists and other individuals who seek to carry out acts of violence in order to forward their respective agendas.
History
Anarchism is defined in the literature issued by Emma Goldman, who for many years was one of the leading anarchists in the USA, as "The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful as well as unnecessary."
The advocates of theoretical anarchism were not necessarily men of violence, nor men familiar with the use of the torch or bomb, but the picture of a society, free from all restraint, has won to the ranks of the anarchists those irreconcilable and ungoverned spirits who want liberty transformed to license and who seek to indulge their passions and greed without incurring the penalties imposed by organized society. As a result, the term "Anarchism" came to be applied indiscriminately to all persons who resort to violence and defy the law of the land, even though their acts may have been inspired by other than political motives.
Many writers on theoretical anarchism express a horror of deeds of violence which cannot in themselves bring political or economic results. The anarchism of Bakunin was the expression of an open warfare against the military and autocratic powers of Russia and elsewhere, rather than terrorism of the individual, or attacks upon individuals or civilians without political purpose.
It is interesting to recall that at the time Bakunin evolved his theories, the spirit of revolution was rife throughout Europe, and the aspirations of small and subject nationalities were finding expression in attacks upon the then constituted authorities.
The nihilists of Russia, although claimed by some writers not to be anarchists, may safely be classed with this group, and their tactics were in the nature of demonstrations against the oppres sion of an autocratic government, and were sanctioned only with apparent reluctance by the leaders of the group.
The philosophy of anarchism was not a spontaneous expression of any one thinker or group of thinkers, but has developed slowly from the earliest time. Socrates and Zeno have both expressed theories analogous of the modern anarchist. Rabelais and Rousseau, and many mediaeval writers, have expressed similar thoughts. It remained for Godwin, however, in his work entitled "Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness," published in 1793, to formulate the more modern ideas of anarchism, although in his work he did not employ the word " anarchism" to designate the theories which he so effectually portrayed. He believed it was essenlial to abolish all laws and the courts for their administration in order to allow real justice development. During the French Revolution the term "anarchist" first made its appearance, and was applied by Girondists to extremists.
In the United States it attained prominence in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Several congresses of anarchists were held, and several newspapers established, notably "The Anarchist" at Boston, " The Arbeiter-Zeitung" of Chicago, and " The Voice of the People" at St. Louis. In 1883 at Pittsburgh, a Congress of twenty delegates representing anarchists and social revolutionaries issued an address to the workmen of America with a program for the destruction of the existing class rule by all means, i.e., energetic, relentless, revolutionary and international action.
Communist anarchism was the parent of the Social Revolutionary Party in Russia, is closely identified with the Communist Socialism of Germany, and the syndicalism of France. Many anarchists believe that Communism is a necessary step in the attainment of true anarchy which in theory can only be instituted when the mass of society have been schooled to freedom.
Leaving aside the advocates of outright dynamitism who believed that by killing off governmental officials they kill off the causes of the evils, the philosophical anarchists claimed that the only thing to be done at present was to enlighten the workingmen as to their interests. This accomplished, a general strike was to be arranged and effected, thus working havoc and demoralization among the ranks of the ruling class and compelling them to surrender all the means of life to the workingmen. Agitation was also to be carried on among the army, etc., in the name of freedom and anything that men ought to hold sacred, prevailing upon them to join the strikers and turn their bayonettes against the rulers instead of against the workingmen. Fighting was inevitable, as no ruler has ever given up rulership peacefully, but victory was assured because of the preponderant number of the striking anck fighting workingmen.
The ideas of Proudhon, especially as regards mutual banking, had a considerable following in the United States. The principal followers of his doctrine were Stephen P. Andrew, William Green and Lysander Spooner. A prominent position among the anarchists of the country was acquired by Benjamin E. Tucker of Boston, who started in 1881 a periodical called "Liberty", which advocated Proudhon's ideas in modified form. The anarchism of this American group, however, found little sympathy among the working-class, its devotees being limited to small numbers of so-called intellectuals. Such workingmen in the USA as believed in anarchism were anarchist Communists, who rarely knew anything about the theoretical anarchism of the older groups.
On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers combined to make the city the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day. On the night of May 4, 1886, a circular call had gathered several hundred anarchists together in Haymarket square, Chicago. The meeting was organized by the anarchist community to protest the murder and wounding of several workers by the Chicago police the day before. The murdered men had been protesting outside the Mc Cormick Reaper Factory, from which they had been locked out by the owners.
There had been more or less trouble between the police and this class of incendiaries who made the vehicle of "free speech" the means of defying and insulting the power that protected them, even in their defiance of law, and on this fateful night, six companies of police, numbering 174 men, marched from the Desplaines street station to disperse the crowds.
A man upon the wagon arose, lighted a bomb and threw it into the ranks of the policemen, and this was followed by a fusilade of shots from both sides. When a semblance of order had been restored it was found that Officer M. J. Degan had been killed, six other policemen fatally injured and sixty-six persons wounded. Arrests followed, six of the principals were condemned to death and three others were sent to the penitentiary.
The Haymarket bomb seemed to confirm the worst fears of business leaders and others anxious about the growing labor movement and radical influence in it. The St Louis globe said, "There are no good anarchists except dead anarchists." The Chicago Daily News, stated, "The anarchists are amenable to no other reason except that taught by the rifle and the club." The New York Times offered the following solution to the anarchist threat, "In the early stages of an acute outbreak of anarchy a Gatling gun, or if the case be severe, two, is the sovereign remedy. Later on hemp, in judicious doses, has an admirable effect in preventing the spread of the disease." [hemp presumably in the form of rope, not smoke]
Four US anarchist political prisoners were hanged in Chicago on November 11, 1887. The day before his execution, Louis Lingg committed suicide by detonating a bomb in his mouth. Governor John P. Altgeld later granted an absolute pardon to the remaining defendants convicted of participating in the Haymarket bombing.
Most prominent among the leaders of the Anarchist Communist movement in America, so far as prolific propaganda is concerned, were Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, who were deported to Russia on the steamship "Buford." Their official organs were "Mother Earth" and "The Blast," respectively. The anarchists under the leadership of Goldman and Berkman, took an active part in the pacifist movement during the war, and immediately prior thereto, distributing a large amount of anti-draft and antimilitary literature, and organizing the No Conscription League.
In her essay on "Marriage and Love," Emma Goldman says, at page 242, "Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little state and church-begotten weed, marriage?.....
"Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual . . . Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed it will. No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action."
It is impossible to give any coherent or comprehensive statement of this movement in the United States, because it is carried on by isolated groups, clustering about individual leaders, in large measure carrying on their work clandestinely.
The anarchists'practical influence upon the affairs of government was limited, being confined principally to political assassinations, such as the murder of King Humbert of Italy in 1900, and President McKinley at Buffalo in 1901.
President McKinley was shot by the anarchist Leon F. Czolgosz (Shawl-gotch) while holding a reception in the Temple of Music on the Pan-American Exposition grounds, Friday, Sept 6, about 4 pm. Secret Service Agents Foster and Ireland were standing directly across from the President, closely scanning each man and woman passing along in the line.
When Czolgosz paused before President McKinley the government officers saw before them a quietly dressed, intelligent-appearing young man with reddish hair and smooth-shaven cheeks. His right hand was thrust beneath the lapel of his coat, and a handkerchief was wrapped about it in such a way as to give the Impression that it had been injured. Two shots were fired. Every act of the assassin had been watched by the secret service officers, but they were not quick enough to stop him.
Leon F. Czolgosz, the assassin, was a man 23 years of age, of Polish parentage, who claims to have been born in Michigan, but whose home is in Cleveland. It was thought that he is but the tool of a conspiracy, but as yet there is no proof of this. Czolgosz claimed that he had been converted to anarchy by the lectures of Emma Goldman; that he had no confederates. Emma Goldman, who was said by Leon Czolgosz to have inspired him to assassinate McKinley, was arrested.
George E. Corner, Superintendent of Police in Cleveland, who made a most careful investigation, stated positively that he had been unable to connect Czolgosz with anarchists or any society of anarchists. Great weight must be attached to what Corner said, not only because he was superintendent of police in the city where Czolgosz had lived for a long time, but also because he was one of the best detectives in the country and had looked into the matter very carefully.
The trial of Czolgosz which took place in the city of Buffalo, N. Y., on September 23-4, 1901, Hon. Truman C. White, Presiding Justice, was neither attended by delay "nor harassed by the trivial technicalities of the law." The "machinery of justice" moved so smoothly and so rapidly, that the jury was procured, the case tried, and a verdict of guilty rendered within a period of two court days. The trial of Czolgosz which took place in the city of Buffalo, N. Y., on September 23-4, 1901, Hon. Truman C. White, Presiding Justice, was neither attended by delay "nor harassed by the trivial technicalities of the law." The "machinery of justice" moved so smoothly and so rapidly, that the jury was procured, the case tried, and a verdict of guilty rendered within a period of two court days.
Czolgosz said the night before his execution, "I would like the American people to know that I had no use for priests. My family are all Catholics and used to go to church until the hard times of 1893. We had been taught by the priests that if we would pray God would help us along, but it did no good; it didn't help us and we stopped going to church at that time." He also said at this interview: "McKinley was going around the country shouting prosperity when there was no prosperity for the poor man. I am not afraid to die. We all have to die sometime."
Czolgosz was executed by electricity on the morning of October 29, 1901. He declared "I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people—the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime. I am sorry I could not see my father." That conscious life was absolutely destroyed the instant the first contact was made, was conceded by all of the medical witnesses present; also that organic life was abolished within a few seconds thereafter.
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