May Day

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema crdbronx at erols.com
Sat Apr 28 18:12:28 PDT 2001


Without getting into a wrangle about terminology, it's worth trying to draw a distinction that this misses:


> Indeed, anti-authoritarianism has not always been progressive in nature. Patriotic,
> reactionary rioters, demonstrating in Birmingham in 1791 against those radicals who
> sympathised with the French Revolution, destroyed the laboratory and library of the
> intellectual Joseph Priestley.
>
>
The analysis of authoritarianism the Frankfurt School put forward would call this kind of thing a manifestation of authoritarianism itself -- specifically, of authoritarian rebellion. It remains within a sado-masochistically oedipal characterological framework, and is not anti-authoritarian. Usually, it appeals to another idealized authority. If I recall the rioters against Priestley were a so-called "church and king mob," and loyal to conservative, mystically constituted authorities. Wasn't Priestley a Dissenter?

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema



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