From the "National Bolshevik" loons.
Michael Pugliese P.S. Never read it, but U.C. Press published a book on Bellamy, back in the 80's by Arthur Lipow, "Authoritarian Socialism in America." Preface by Michael Harrington, who rightly quibbled with the title. And in case y'all missed it on NPR the other day, Seymour Martin Lipset was interviewed on Talk of the Nation, about his new book on American Socialism. http://npr.org/programs/totn/ Think it was Thursday. Listen to the Real Audio ram file.
Muichael Pugliese
Dan <spartacorps at yahoo.com> To: RED-BROWN EGROUP <redbrown at egroups.com> CC: Subject: [redbrown] NATIONAL LIBERATION NEWS #9
...<AMERICAN POPULISTS: THE FIRST NATIONAL SOCIALISTS?> This interesting excerpt comes from the following article: Ezra Pound: Protector of the West http://esu.simplenet.com/ezra.htm
"The Populists called themselves "National-Socialists", long before that term was heard in Europe.(...) The Populist Party's platform for the 1886 election was almost entirely written by Edward Bellamy. Bellamy was a novelist-journalist, whose utopian work, Looking Backward, had sold over 1 million copies in the U.S. alone.(...) Looking Backward, is set in the year 2000, and recounts the victory of National- Socialism: the nationalization of the banks and railroads, along with a host of reforms to alleviate the lot of the working-man without invoking Marxism. The syndicalism of Georges Sorel was a major influence upon the Populists, as it was upon the one-time Socialist, Benito Mussolini. (Mussolini had been named "Benito", which is not an Italian name, by his anarchist father, in honor of Benito Juarez, the Mexican revolutionary responsible for the execution of Maximillian".
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<INFO REQUEST #1> As you probably know by now, I recently translated an article that delved into the much-neglected history of paganism in the pre-WWII German left-wing: http://www.nationalbolshevik.com/synergon/TRANSFolkSocialism.html
I'm aware from talking to old-timers that a similar kind of folkish atmosphere existed in the Canadian and US left at around the same time. In Canada, J.S. Woodsworth, the founder of the Federated Labour Party (later called the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and today, the New Democratic Party), was a known pantheist who pulled his children out of Sunday school and taught them a nature religion instead. He was also a strong opponent of multiculturalism. Tommy Douglas- the CCF Premier of Saskatchewan, Leader of the NDP for a decade, a confirmed pacifist in WWII, and architect of Canada's socialized medical system- was a strong supporter of the eugenics (or "hereditarian") movement that was popular in the 1930s. Practically every leading Canadian suffragette-Nellie McClung, Emily Murphy, Helen Gregory MacGill, Henrietta Edwards, Charlotte Whitton, Agnes MacPhail, and so on- held some sort of racialist and/or eugenic beliefs, some of which were rather extreme. And, of course, Margaret Sanger- the American founder of Planned Parenthood- was noted for her strong support of "racial hygiene" and even met with the Klan's female auxiliary.
Anyway, I'd like to eventually write an article on the North American left and its various flirtations with paganism, racialism, nature-worship, etc. If you have any facts or leads I can follow on this topic, please pass them on to me at spartacorps at yahoo.com .
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