Anti-imperialist Struggle Research Articles

Revolutionary Tongues: Esperanto, Marxist Linguistics, and Anti-imperial Struggles in East Asia, 1930s–1940s

This article examines how Esperanto coalesced with leftist and anticolonial thinking in East Asia during the 1930s and early 1940s. It aims to complicate understandings of language, including planned languages, as a neutral and apolitical medium and to contribute to a growing body of Anglophone scholarly work on Esperanto by turning to the history of East Asian Esperantists. Examining the linguistic theories by Esperantist and Latinization activist Ye Laishi (Ĵelezo, 1911–1994) and the Esperanto writings of Hong Hyŏng-ui (1911–1968) and An U-saeng (1907–1991), the article argues that Esperanto provided the means for anticolonial activists to facilitate a transnational network of antiwar activism across and beyond East Asian and remain invested in internationalism amidst a time of nationalism and fascism

A Time to Kill: Third World Assassinations and the Anxiety of Domination

The decades between 1960s and 1980s were punctuated by intense anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles, the rise of Third World internationalism (both in terms of formal and informal connections), the articulation of viable economic alternatives to those imposed by the West, but also a massive wave of counterrevolution with bloody coups, assassinations, and interventions. Symbolically, the long 1960s started with Patrice Lumumba's assassination and ended in 1980 with Walter Rodney's assassination, and the defeat of the NIEO (New International Economic Order). While numerous analyses have engaged with these assassinations as historical events, this article seeks to provide a theoretical engagement with the phenomenon of Third World assassinations. The author's engagement with this phenomenon aims to broaden the idea, put forth by Quynh Pham and Himadeep Muppidi, of the “anxiety of domination.” Drawing on Edward Said, James Baldwin, and Eqbal Ahmad, the article seeks to situate theoretically Third World assassinations within a larger paradigm of colonial/imperial anxiety: these acts of annihilation happened not simply because these individuals were on the opposite ideological divide but because their political vision exceeded the grasp of domination and intelligibility of imperial/colonial power and challenged in fundamental ways the imperially sanctioned “epistemic conformity.”

The Archive as a Battlefield for the Future: Anti-colonial Struggles and Insurgent Temporality

Anti-fascist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial struggles of the twentieth century provide important intellectual and political resources as we collectively seek to forge alternative futures in the face of our depleted political present. Setting out with this analytical and political concern, this article is interested in the question of what it means to visit the archive of past struggles and past insurgencies. It argues for a critical historical method that foregrounds the agency of the insurgents themselves—the agency of women, slaves, foreigners, the poor and the peasants—as the subjects of an insurgent universality (Tomba 2019). The article explores the international brigades fighting the fascists during the Spanish Civil War, the peasants gathered to affirm the Second Havana Declaration, and the audience that comprised Thomas Sankara's speech in Harlem. The artifacts of insurgency, the authors suggest, are embodied expressions of collective struggles written not by one but by a multiplicity. They are the artifacts of a collective political subjectivity united in their insurgent claim to disrupt the temporal and spatial delimitations of politics in modernity—enacting an insurgent universality. The archive of insurgent universality is our future for it provides compelling ways to think, write, and act politically toward the present.

“This Is Our Revolution Too”: LGBTQ Rights Activism and the National Question in Northern Ireland

Existing research frames ethnonationalism as homophobic, in which the queer is positioned outside of the boundaries of the ethnic nation. Less well understood is how LGBTQ activism engages with ethnonationalism, particularly in relation to questions of national self-determination. The limited research on this issue frames LGBTQ activist movements as groups that reject divisive ethnonationalisms by forging alternative cosmopolitan and transnational expressions of sexual identity. By exploring a single case-study, Northern Ireland, this article draws attention to how LGBTQ movements can be sites of conflict over questions of national self-determination, particularly when sexual liberation is wedded to anti-imperialist struggles. The paper concludes by reaffirming Horowitz’s model of ethnic seepage, in which the dominant ethnonational cleavages infuse all issues in divided societies. The article uses a wide range of primary data, including interviews and archival documents, to analyze LGBTQ activism in Northern Ireland during the period of ethnonationalist conflict in the 1970s and 1980s.

Role of Society in National Consciousness

The role of society in national consciousness is very important. Society influences the interest, organization and status of a nation. Stability, support and partnership of society play an important role in building national consciousness. It establishes the nation's identity and self-respect and promotes prosperity and equality. The emergence of national consciousness in the nineteenth century was actually the result of the British rule. The changes made by the British rule in the political, economic and social fields, which resulted in the exploitation of the Indian society, it is true that the rise and development of nationalism in India is more as compared to other countries. It happened with difficulty. Contemporary modern educated intellectuals like Raja Rammohan Roy, Keshavchandra Sen, Ishwarbandra Vidyasagar, Swami Vivekananda Environt, Sir Syed Ahmed etc. tried to eradicate the evils prevalent in the society and became strong critics of the British policy. And by influencing the Indian public with his thoughts and actions, he awakened a sense of self-confidence in them. In the year 1883-54, postal system was established in Marath, railway lines were laid, all the cities were connected by telegraph system, connecting one province to another, there was an opportunity to establish contact with the people living in remote places. This was the beginning of Indian nationalism. Became the main reason for the rise. A sense of solidarity emerged among Indians during the anti-imperialist struggle. The presented research paper investigates these facts.

Imperialism still exists: a book to discuss its functioning and the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America

Imperialism still exists: a book to discuss its functioning and the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America

Love, Suffering and the Fight for Freedom: the “New Woman” Image in Nie Er’s Vocal Music

The article is devoted to the “new woman” image in the vocal music of the Chinese composer Nie Er, the founder of Chinese proletarian music. The heyday of his work was in the 1930s, when a large-scale anti-Japanese anti-imperialist struggle took place in China. Nie Er, an active supporter of national salvation, translated national liberation ideas and the spirit of struggle into mass patriotic and lyrical songs. This also applies to songs dedicated to the fate of Chinese women. From simple peasants to educated teachers, the women in Er’s songs, even suffering from injustice and oppression, nevertheless fi nd strength to fi ght for freedom and a better future. The article includes a detailed analysis of the “Song of Mei Niang” from Tian Han’s play “Song of Youth”.

Tomar naam, amar naam, Vietnam Vietnam! Folk styles and solidarity in the Bengali new wave cinema

ABSTRACT The Bengali new wave cinema of the 1960s and 1970s addressed historically important world events through an aesthetic inspired by Marxism and long-standing anti-colonial traditions dating to the middle nineteenth century. At the same time, an aesthetic derived from folk and artistic traditions was embraced as a cultural style in the middle twentieth century by local Marxist progressive theatre and writers’ associations. In 1968, the Bengali film director Ritwik Ghatak published a short speculation for the Bengal Youth Festival explaining the scenario for “A Film I want to make about Vietnam.” The film was not made, but the imagined detail is very much in the style of the Bengali new wave. Also important—and made, so we can see it—is Satyajit Ray’s short film “on” Vietnam, Two: A Film Fable (1964). The two films express, in different ways, the enthusiasm among Bengali intellectuals for Vietnam at the time when revolutionary youth solidarity with the anti-imperialist struggle was strong. What were Ghatak and Ray thinking with these films “on” Vietnam? Can they tell us anything of the times, the engaged role of film, the director as intellectual agitator, the politics of solidarity from afar? By evaluating the reception of historically focussed film from the perspective of the Bengali New Wave, I show how that cinema’s fascination with Vietnam evokes both much older folk traditions, yet now leads to a more worrying contemporary coda with the adaptation in 2019 of the old slogan by the Hindutva right to include Jai Ram.

The DPRK and Cuba in the Initial Period of Bilateral Relations (1960–1965): The Limits of “Socialist Solidarity”

In this article, drawing on recently declassified archive sources from the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang, the author aims to refute the traditional view of North Korean-Cuban relations as historically close and equal, based on socialist solidarity and a common struggle against imperialism. In it, she argues that for North Korea, its “unbreakable friendship” with Cuba was motivated by more than just a desire to help the “brotherly country” in its anti-imperialist struggle. Exploring the early phase of bilateral relations, the author looks behind the propaganda façade of internationalism and socialist solidarity to examine the pragmatic motives behind North Korean desire to establish strong relations with the new socialist Cuba. She argues that North Korea originally sought to adopt the same senior partner role to Cuba that the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries had with respect to North Korea itself, promoting a North Korean political and ideological model in Cuba and contrasting it with both the Soviet and Chinese models. North Korea used the growing Sino-Soviet rift to discredit both the Soviet Union and China, while simultaneously promoting itself and its model as an alternative to the two quarrelling socialist giants. The study of archival sources provides a more detailed insight into the early phase of North Korean-Cuban relations and contributes to an understanding of North Korean foreign policy and its characteristic features still in place today.

Crushing the Imperial(ist) Eagles: Nationalism, Ideological Instruction, and Adventure in the Bulgarian Comics about Spartacus – the 1980s and Beyond

Daga (the Bulgarian word for “rainbow”) was a Bulgarian comic magazine launched in 1979 and regularly published until 1992. Its remarkably westernized aesthetic greatly impacted an entire generation of readers. Included in its variety of stories (history, sci-fi, literary classics) is an action-packed account of Spartacus’ exploits. For ten consecutive issues (1979–1983), the story spanned the hero’s life from a more fanciful narrative of his early years in Thrace to the better-documented events in Italy and his death. The paper explores the plotline, characterization, and visual aspects of “Spartak” to reveal the eponymous hero’s significance for young Bulgarian readers in the 1980s. Drawing on the cultural and historical context, I argue that Spartacus was well suited to serve as a role model and a national hero by embodying the proletarian anti-imperialist struggle and also, notably, because of his supposed place of birth near the river Strimon in modern-day Bulgaria. I also look at examples of contemporary comics, including a new graphic novel based on Daga’s story published in 2020, and consider the transmutations of the hero to suit the post-communist (and anti-communist) ideological agenda, characterized by a departure from the proletarian image of Spartacus in favor of more conservative, aristocratic features.

Mining Manchuria's Colonial Past

AbstractThe rise of nationalism in China in recent decades has grown in part out of a state-sponsored patriotic education project centered on the production of narratives involving the century-long history of China's subjection to foreign imperialism. In the northeast, the regional history of Russian and Japanese colonialism during the first half of the twentieth century has provided abundant materials for this collective commemoration of China's anti-imperialist struggles. A network of commemorative projects undertaken at local, regional, and national levels of the PRC state since the 1980s, including oral histories, monuments, museums, gazetteers, and party histories, has reframed the history of the northeast borderland in terms that legitimize post-Mao nationalist and market reform ideology. This study brings attention to another dimension of these commemorative projects, the translation and republication of Chinese and Japanese historical accounts originally produced in northern Manchuria during the 1920s and 1930s. I argue that the diverse representations of the borderland's history that are included in these accounts, while originally embedded in the colonial institutional contexts of Manchuria, acquired new significance in post-Mao reimaginings of the region's place in defining nationalism and negotiating Sino-Russian relations.

Beyond the borders. Ahmed Hassan Mattar and his activism between Africa and South America

The biography of Ahmed Hassan Mattar expressed the multiple identity lines assumed by those revolutionary cadres of the first decades of the 20th century, who emerged in a colonial and neocolonial world and developed their political activity in different settings and distant spheres of their own culture. The story of A. H. Mattar is, therefore, that of a militant and journalist of Sudanese origin who developed his political work in Africa, especially in Morocco, together with Abd el-Krim, the warlord of the Rif, as well as in European countries such as France and Germany, once incorporated into the Communist International. However, it would be in South America, in countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, where he would stand out not only in anti-imperialist struggles but also as a chronicler and community leader of communities of Arab origin, even producing original empirical and statistical research. In sum, Mattar’s course can be seen as that of an activist who understood the social reality of a certain time and who assumed politics as a commitment to fight against colonialism and imperialism.

The Red and the Black: The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic ed. by David Featherstone and Christian Høgsbjerg

Reviewed by: The Red and the Black: The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic ed. by David Featherstone and Christian Høgsbjerg Natalia Telepneva Featherstone, David and Høgsbjerg, Christian (eds). The Red and the Black: The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic. Racism, Resistance and Social Change. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2021. xvi + 287 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Index. £85.00: $130.00. In this collection of articles, editors David Featherstone and Christian Høgsbjerg set out to contribute to a growing body of literature that investigates the impact of the Russian Revolution on black radicals during the interwar period and beyond. As outlined in the introduction, the ambition of the volume is three-fold: to show how black radicals understood and engaged with ideas generated by the Russian Revolution; to recover the history of physical and ideational connections forged among the black left across the Black Atlantic; and to show how these individuals engaged with the Soviet Union. In a helpful introduction that succinctly outlines the state of the field, the editors argue the collection will challenge the notion that Communism was a solely European phenomenon and reassert the 'missing and erased connections of antiracist politics and resistance' (p. 19). The ideas generated by black left intellectuals in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution constitute an important theme in this volume. Most chapters confirm what we already knew, namely that the events of 1917 had a major impact on black radicals who heralded Bolshevism because, as they saw it, it eliminated ethnic prejudice in the USSR. We learn some important details about how Claude McKay, a Jamaican-American black activist, adopted an 'unsentimental view of anti-imperialist struggle' (p. 68) largely, argues Winston James, due to his complex experiences of white proletarian nationalism in interwar London. Mathieu Renault adds to the portrait of American poet and activist Langston Hughes, who celebrated the impact of socialism in Soviet Central Asia, even though he still saw the region from an 'Orientalist perspective' as a 'massive harem' (p. 92). Cathy Begin draws our attention to the specific timing and the inadequacy of the local left in the USA to explain the appeal of Bolshevism, while Marika Sherwood similarly points to the continuous failure of the Left to take seriously the demands of anticolonial activists in post-war Britain. One wonders, however, whether the volume could shed have further light on exactly how these activists and movements, as the editors posit in the introduction, shaped 'Communist practices and ideas' (p. 16). For example, Olga Panova's excellent chapter argues that Soviet literary critics by and large toed the official line in their responses to African American literature. These chapters recover the diversity and originality of these important ideas, but their larger impact is left somewhat obscure. Another theme is black radicals' relationship with the Soviet Union and the Comintern. A number of authors address the developments in the aftermath [End Page 772] of the Sixth World Congress in 1928 — the peak of Soviet support for black liberation. Nigel Westmaas adds important details about the pre-war history of racialism in Guyana; Holger Weiss describes the activities of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers based in Hamburg; and Sandra Pujals describes the work of the Comintern's Caribbean Bureau in the 1930s. The story is a fairly familiar one, as many black radicals who admired and/or worked for the Comintern became disillusioned with the organization by the mid 1930s. Pujals's chapter probably goes the furthest in explaining why the Comintern's project in the Caribbean failed, as it ran up against divergent conceptions of race and local resistance to centrally-imposed bureaucratic structure. A number of chapters reconstruct the 'erased' connections of anticolonial politics across the Atlantic, but several leave the reader wanting to learn more about how these functioned in practice. For example, we learn about the existence of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers, but little in terms of how the organization operated to, say, spread the radical messages across the Atlantic. Besides, Africa occupies little room in the volume. As the editors explain in the introduction, such a 'silence' exists because these conversations between Bolshevism and...

Mészáros and Chávez: "The Point from Which to Move the World Today"

István Mészáros was a global thinker strongly committed to anti-imperialist struggles. In this respect, he allied himself with those fighting for socialist transformation in the Philippines, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil, and elsewhere. He argued that in the descending phase of capitalism there was a "downward equalization of the rate of exploitation," by which he meant a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, enforced by a global system of monopolistic competition.

Mahatma and Mahamana: Agreement within Differences

Mahatma Gandhi and Mahamana Malaviya were the two giants of the Indian public life, leading the national movement in their own ways, largely together, and at times through different paths. By the time Gandhi came back to India in January 1915, having proven himself as a Satyagrahi and crusader against oppression, Malaviya had established himself as a leading light of the national movement, a great patriot who was also committed to the cause of Sanatanism and Hindu unity. Both knew about the activities of each other with Malaviya vocally supporting Gandhi’s Satyagraha in South Africa, his struggle for securing equal rights for Asian immigrants and putting in a combined endeavour in fighting the laws related to indentured labour. From 1916 onwards began a long journey of camaraderie that spanned beyond the temporary hiccups reflected at times in the differences of methods to be followed in the anti-imperialist struggle. Gandhi was enamoured by Malaviya’s ascetically simple life, his patriotism, his devotion to swadeshi, his will to mitigate the evils of untouchability and his ability to mobilise funds for the cause that lay close to his heart, while Malaviya showed strong faith in Gandhi’s selfless struggle to achieve Swaraj, his desire to unify people, his emphasis on indigenous handicraft industries, and leading the movement for eradication of untouchability. Notwithstanding the temporary strains owing mainly to Malaviya’s non-conformism to the idea of boycott in the non-cooperation movement or his disenchantment with Congress’s position of neutrality on Communal Award, they continued to share an extremely warm relationship.

The centrality of Africa in Lenin’s theory of imperialism

ABSTRACT Lenin’s Marxist theories have aided both African anti-imperialist struggles and the study of African political economy. Recently, however, some scholars have reinvigorated the postcolonial critique of Marxism as a Eurocentric doctrine, one that misunderstands and marginalises Africa and its peoples. Following Cedric Robinson, several analysts mention Lenin alongside Marx and Engels as a founder of Eurocentric Marxism. This article, by contrast, argues that Lenin displayed a deep concern for Africa, one that was fundamentally non-Eurocentric. Lenin researched Africa extensively in his Notebooks on imperialism. Upon the basis of this research, Lenin placed Africa at the centre of his analysis in Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism. It is impossible to understand the insights of Lenin’s theory of imperialism without appreciating Africa’s centrality within it. Although Lenin displayed the racist views of Africa that dominated his era, these were marginal in his thought. Lenin militantly opposed colonialism and supported African independence.

MERIP and Political Economy in Middle East Studies

AbstractThe Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) was founded in 1971 as a project of the American New Left in solidarity with and drawing inspiration from the Beirut-centered Arab New Left and anti-imperialist struggles for national liberation in the Middle East and North Africa. The question of Palestine was a central, but certainly not exclusive, concern. From its origins MERIP was committed to political economy as a key method to understanding the Middle East and North Africa. It highlighted the importance of oil in the regional power structure and to the emergent U.S. empire. Many of its articles featured analyses of the social relationships of class and capital. MERIP was wary of “Arab socialism” and pan-Arab nationalism as official state ideologies. Its analysis of the 1979 Iranian revolution won MERIP and its emphasis on the importance of political economy a respected place in Anglo-American academia. Political economy never disappeared from MERIP's orientation, although its salience declined from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s. The financial crisis of 2008 drew renewed attention to the structure of global capitalism. MERIP's history positioned it to participate in the renewed attention to class, capital, markets with more attention to the racialized and gendered character of these relationships.

VẬN ĐỘNG VÀ TĂNG CƯỜNG MẶT TRẬN NHÂN DÂN THẾ GIỚI ỦNG HỘ VIỆT NAM TẠI MỸ, CÁC NƯỚC TƯ BẢN CHỦ NGHĨA THÔNG QUA ĐỐI NGOẠI NHÂN DÂN GIAI ĐOẠN 1965-1973

The article investigates people's diplomacy of Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) from 1965 to1973, aiming to gain American and Western support and sympathy for the Vietnamese revolution. The resistance war against the US became more difficult and fiercer when the US government deployed more political and diplomatic activities to support its military campaigns in South Vietnam as well as negotiations at the Paris Conference. In addition, the Sino-Soviet split had been growing more tense, causing many difficulties for Vietnam’s anti-imperialist struggle. Therefore, the Labor Party of Vietnam and the Government of the DRV paid great attention to people’s diplomacy aiming to demonstrate Vietnam's position on American War, the legitimacy of the anti-American resistance war, thereby bringing popular pressure to bear on US government to sign the 1973 Paris Peace Accords and withdraw US military troops.

Rastafari and Reggae Music as Tools for Critical Pedagogy in the African Academe

Reggae music emerged in the 1960s, an era of intense anti-colonial and anti-imperialist sentiments and struggles. Having originated in Jamaica, a jurisdiction where Africans had been enslaved, the genre has a tradition of social criticisms, especially the depravity that asymmetrical power relations extend to Africans globally. Through its Rastafari influences, reggae offers an avenue for redemptive philosophies and complex frameworks to waken consciousness and to offer identity, pride and dignity. To decolonise knowledge and conscientise the marginalised on the issues that enslave them, this article analyses four reggae songs by three artists to show how the content of some reggae songs can serve as critical literature for critical pedagogy (CP) in the African academe. CP creates the atmosphere for learners to identify the machinations of dominant forces in education and how to nurture agency for liberation. It promotes an association between education and society, arguing against the annexation of higher education by private capital. The ethos of reggae music, Rastafari and CP converge on the interactions between knowledge, authority and power.

The World in Question

Abstract This essay focuses on two radical gay/homosexual organizations of the early 1970s: Third World Gay Revolution (TWGR)—a small group of radical Black and Latinx activists that spun off from the Gay Liberation Front in 1970—and the Argentine organization Homosexual Liberation Front (FLH), which was active between 1971 and 1976. By analyzing periodicals, bulletins, and other ephemera produced by them, Garrido demonstrates how both groups not only articulated demands related to queer sexualities in relation to those of other oppressed communities but also inscribed their gay struggles in a movement for the liberation of all peoples on a planetary scale within the framework provided by third world anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggles being waged in African, Asian, and Latin American countries at the time. TWGR and the FLH engaged in “dissident forms of cosmopolitanism” (Chela Sandoval) that drew, in part, from the imaginary of a world in dispute—a world in which colonial and (neo)colonial/imperialist powers were being challenged and third worldism as a global emancipatory project led by “the darker nations” (Vijay Prashad) was gaining ground. At the dawn of neoliberal globalization, both organizations advanced a radical political agenda based on values of social justice with a spirit of transnational solidarity that, Garrido argues, may inspire the multidimensional nature of a queer cosmopolitics to come.