Abstract: Welcome to the second issue of JSR's eleventh year. Our issue has several themes that intersect in various ways. First, we include a landmark study of "eco-terrorism" that clearly concerns a global phenomenon. Second, we have an article on Maoism in Portugal, again highly international, and third, we have several articles on African-American radicalism, followed by a conversation between Ramona Africa, Morgan Shipley, and Jack Taylor, and five book reviews.This issue begins with an extensive study of what Michael Loadenthal refers to as "eco-terrorism," in quotation marks because he examines in detail a timeline that includes more than 27,000 events to determine the extent to which "terrorism" accurately describes ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Beginning in the 1960s, a political movement emerged that advanced a radically new critique of environmental and animal use practices. These new ideological tendencies were characterized by a shift not only in philosophical outlook but also in language and collective practice. This time period is often associated with the founding of the deep ecology framework, authored by Arne Naess in 1973,1 replacing the environmental protectionism of the past, as well as notions of animal liberation, inspired by a 1975 book of the same title by Peter Singer.2 Just as Singer's notion of liberation replaced previously popular notions of animal welfare or rights, the groups that formed during this time replaced previously dominant ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Despite their atypicality, some nontraditional groups and individuals were included in the dataset. For example, the actions of the Unabomber were included because of a shared ideology, despite atypical methods. Similarly, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's attacks were included because of shared tactics and ideology despite the fact that the group is not clandestine. For some groups, incidents were included on a case-by-case basis, as attack histories lacked a unity of purpose. For example, the Canadian group Direct Action carried out a number of attacks, only one of which was included in the dataset, as it was carried out with an environmentalist justification whereas other attacks were done for ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In the 1960s and 1970s, the influence of Maoism extended all over the world, although its ideological impact has mainly been associated with certain specific national contexts. The aim of this article is to analyze the projection of Maoism in Portugal in the final years of the Estado Novo dictatorship, focusing on the intervention and discourse of the Movimento Reorganizativo do Partido do Proletariado (MRPP; Movement for the Reorganization of the Party of the Proletariat). The MRPP was not the only organization that claimed an explicit link with Maoism, but it was the one that most clearly combined an imaginary link to the Chinese Cultural Revolution with a particular mix of youth activism, triumphalism and ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In late 1990s Illinois, a group of African American prisoners calling themselves the Death Row 10 (DR10) forged a partnership with radical anti–death penalty activists in Chicago to help win their release and reinvigorate a movement to abolish capital punishment. Led by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP), a multiracial yet largely white middle-class offshoot of the International Socialist Organization (ISO),1 this movement represented the latest in a long tradition of cooperation between radical activists and black prisoners extending back to the 1930s and earlier. Throughout the twentieth century, leftist organizations, including militant black nationalist groups, consistently joined prisoners' friends ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The problem is that not enough has been completed to analyze the ways in which rhetoric functions to uncover the revolutionary roots of anti-prison rhetoric specifically, and revolutionary thought in prisons generally. This problem is important for several reasons. First, if scholars confine themselves to only looking at anti-prison rhetoric that originates outside of the locus of the prison, then a good deal of prisoners' revolutionary ethos falls by the wayside.1 Furthermore, such a focus may leave prisoners' voices muted in favor of anti-prison elites, nonprofit groups, and academics.2 Second, failing to account for the way in which revolutionary ideas are developed, or even the ways in which they are expressed ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Ramona Africa remains an active and vocal member of MOVE, a family of strong, serious, and deeply committed revolutionaries that was created and organized by John Africa in 1972. A predominantly African American interracial coalition of activists makes up MOVE's constituents. As this interview demonstrates, MOVE was concerned not only with the black liberation struggle but also with animal and environmental rights, economic justice, and police brutality. MOVE centers their political and spiritual philosophy on "Life"—the force behind all living and sentient beings. In 1985, concerned with MOVE's revolutionary activities, police bombed the communal house MOVE shared. One of the two survivors of the shooting and ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This book is a result of assiduous research, primarily in the archives of the Communist International (Comintern), in the former Soviet Union. Holger Weiss, a historian at the Abo Akademi University in Finland, traces the Comintern's engagement with black radicalism, especially through the medium of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW). The work meticulously traces the first black Communist activists, English-speaking Afro-Caribbean migrants in the United States, who became the core of black Comintern cadres. The study then proceeds to examine early Comintern attempts to recruit followers in West Africa, a task made difficult not only by the fact that most of Africa was under European ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The subtitle to Jonathan Pieslak's marvelous new book, Radicalism and Music, suggests that it is merely an "an introduction" to the subject matter, but the author is far too modest; it is considerably more than that. Opening by juxtaposing the remarks of two activists from very different political perspectives—an animal liberationist and a white supremacist—about the role of music in their political education, Pieslak captures the promiscuous power of song, in all its forms, to shape the views of, and generate agency in, political actors, radical and otherwise. This is, of course, not a new claim—as Plato famously observed in The Republic, "never are the ways of music moved without the greatest political laws ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: As a student of second-wave feminism, I have been familiar with Judy Tzu-Chun Wu's work for a while now, and I was looking forward to the publication of her book. Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era provides a much-needed transnational perspective on peace activism during the Vietnam War, a well-studied chapter in American history, yet one whose history has been told strictly from an American point of view until now. Radicals on the Road examines the transnational dialogues created by American peace activists who traveled to Southeast Asia before and during the Vietnam War as well as organized conferences in Canada where they welcomed delegates from Vietnam ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: IBelong Only to Myself: The Life and Writings of Leda Rafanelli by Andrea Pakieser is a complex biography, one that deconstructs radicalism and highlights the continued relevance of Rafanelli's individualistic interpretations of religion, gender, and politics. Pakieser incorporates traditionally biographical prose alongside Rafanelli's personal and professional writings to construct a unique and compelling record of Rafanelli's beliefs and work, while simultaneously framing Rafanelli's principles and writing as revolutionarily, even by contemporary standards.Leda Rafanelli self-identifies as an anarchist Muslim. Neither Rafanelli nor Pakieser shy away from the fact that this is an unusual and contradictory concept ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Kristen Ghodsee's latest book is her most unique. Following several ethnographic studies of Bulgaria's opening to the capitalist, democratic West after 1989, The Left Side of History is the work of a public intellectual. Ghodsee slips off the cloak of scholarly reserve in favor of a choppy, dynamic narrative that scrutinizes the demonization of the left in historical narratives and political discussions after the Cold War. This reflection on the appeal of communist ideals is steeped in an awareness of a current crisis in capitalism. A Western scholar, Ghodsee does not pine for the "good old communist days," yet her book exudes ambivalent admiration for people who sacrificed all in the name of the communist dream. ... Read More Keywords: Ecoterrorism; Mao, Zedong,; Communism; Portugal; Capital punishment; Death row inmates; African American prisoners; Jackson, George,; African American radicals; Black power; Black nationalism; Africa, Ramona; Political activists; Rafanelli, Leda, PubDate: 2017-10-30T00:00:00-05:00
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