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Repressing radical protest, tolerating reactionary violence: The U.S. double standard in historical context

By Barry Murdaco (Posted Aug 03, 2021)

Empire, Human Rights, Race, State RepressionUnited StatesCommentaryAnti-Protest, Black Lives Matter, Featured, Lafayette Square, U.S. Capitol riot 2021

The repression of Black Lives Matter protests over the summer of 2020 stands in contrast to the response to the Capitol Riot on January 6. In typical disingenuous fashion, conservatives attempt to draw a false equivalency between the Capitol Riot and BLM protests. While the Capitol Riot was a singular event characterized by its violence and insurrectionary quality, BLM protests were a multiplicity of events, over 7,000 with the vast majority (more than 95 percent) non-violent, according to Erica Chenoweth and Jeremy Pressman.1 To the extent there was violence it was mostly directed at protestors, like in Lafayette Square in June 2020, or NYPD officers running people over with SUVs, and thousands arrested (at least 8,500 according to Chenoweth and Pressman). The Capitol Riot left five people dead, including a police officer, and hundreds injured. However, aside from seeing—in real time—Trump supporters storming the Capitol, what stands out most was the impotent response from the Capitol Police against the throng of rabid “Trumpites,” at least until they breached the Capitol, and in some instances, police were caught on video opening barriers for the insurrectionists and posing for pictures. Imagine the carnage unleashed against BLM protestors if they attempted what the mostly white, middle-class Trump supporters did on that day!

So far, at least 66 off-duty or retired police and military officials are among the 535 arrested.2 There is still yet to be a full investigation of the coordination between fascist militias, police, military, intelligence officials, and Republican Party members. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley (who marched with Trump after the violent clearing of Lafayette Square in June 2020) referred to this as Trump’s “Reichstag moment.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claims, in a recent interview, that a difference of 60 seconds could have ended in a “martial state,” and called it “an all-out attempted coup.” Despite occurring only six months ago, at the time of this writing, most liberals have moved on. Most media hardly write or report anything about this event after January, and if they do, they downplay the significance of it. In this essay, I would like to examine the reasons for the different reactions to radical and reactionary protests and situate them in a larger historical context. I argue the capitalist state will tolerate reactionary violence to a large extent since it represents no threat to capitalist property relations while severely repressing any movement that even remotely resembles a socialist movement (as BLM cannot truly be called a socialist movement due to its reliance on identity politics framing).

Many decry the double standard in how the state responds to radical and reactionary protests, but how can it be explained? The massive nation-wide crackdown on BLM protests was not only authorized by Trump but occurred in many Democrat-controlled cities. Undoubtedly, racism plays a role in this double standard among law enforcement who are often recruited from the most reactionary segments of society, but how does that explain the actions of identity-obsessed Democrats, who engage in spectacles like Nancy Pelosi kneeling in kente cloth? Like most events in American politics the class dimensions are obscured. Simply put, BLM protests alarmed the ruling class fearful of a large, multiethnic working-class movement, even if many BLM organizers frame their movement though the lens of identity politics, although activists, like Cori Bush, now Representative from Missouri, also express a commitment to democratic socialist politics. Several prominent black politicians and public figures, like Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, principal author of the discredited “1619 Project,” and activists connected to the Democratic Party, like Raymond Winans, even denounced white people participating in BLM protests, branding them as “outside agitators.” Despite the reliance on identity politics among middle-class liberals there is strong support for socialism among the youth who are confronted with extreme social inequality, debt, and stagnant wages, further exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, thus creating the conditions for a potential explosion of social conflict the likes of which have not been seen for decades in the U.S. This also explains the reluctance of liberals and many “leftists” from treating the Capitol Riot seriously as it could trigger wide-spread protests if the true threat to what remains of democratic forms of government were revealed.

This double standard supports the Marxist view of the state. Marx never articulated a fully developed theory of the state (his most important insights are found in the Eighteenth Brumaire), although beginning with Engels many theorists have tried to fill this gap.3 These theories range from the Leninist view that the state is part of the superstructure that derives from the economic base of society, thus epiphenomenal, and wholly subordinate to the interests of the ruling class.4 Other theorists, like Gramsci, Poulantzas, and Thomas argue the state ultimately serves the interests of capital, but is somewhat autonomous from the capitalist class, whose short-term thinking would be too unstable (a polite way of saying too stupid and shallow) to ensure the relatively smooth operation of capitalist society, or what Thomas calls “alien politics,” since the state is to some extent alienated from civil society.5 From either Marxist perspective, it is not surprising the state would act decisively to suppress protests that evince a socialist political persuasion, while downplaying reactionary protests that pose no threat to capital’s monopoly of power, or who might even serve as the shock troops for crushing radical protests should they continue to grow in strength.

There are many historical examples when the state has crushed potential revolutionary situations while treating reactionaries with a light touch. One notable example was the early days of the Weimar Republic in 1919 when the Ebert government crushed the “Spartacist Uprising” in Berlin and allowed the proto-fascist paramilitary Freikorps to murder Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Later that year, Freikorps also crushed the Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich, which afterwards became a hotbed of reactionary activity. When Adolf Hitler staged the “Beer Hall Putsch” in Munich in 1923 he was given the proverbial slap on the wrist, serving less than a year in prison which afforded him the time to write Mein Kampf, before emerging as a celebrity to the right-wing hordes of Germany. It was not until the Great Depression, however, that the Nazi’s became the dominant force in German politics.

These events are impossible to understand apart from the context of the Russian Revolution and the fear of communism it sent up the spines of the ruling classes of the world. The U.S. was hardly exempt. Documentation of the repression of socialists during this time can be revealed through analyzing several landmark free speech cases that came before the Supreme Court, and the events surrounding these cases. Despite the sacrosanct importance of free speech in American constitutionalism, the actual record of the courts in protecting speech is fairly poor. Although these cases are usually studied for their importance in jurisprudence, they also reveal the government’s egregious treatment of socialists and other radicals. This double standard runs deep through American history and demonstrates a pattern of forcefully suppressing radical protest, through legal and extralegal means, while tolerating and downplaying reactionary violence that continues to this day. Although fear of communist revolution is nowhere near what it was in the early twentieth century, one disturbing parallel is the extreme social inequality that existed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the era of the robber barons. According to Piketty and Saez, since the 1990s the U.S. has again reached Gilded Age levels of income and wealth polarization which has continued to grow.6 As Michael Hudson points out, Piketty’s analysis actually underplays the extent to which the U.S economy has become a giant debt pyramid funneling wealth to the top.7 Stagnant incomes for the bottom 50 percent and resulting debt peonage has resurrected socialism in the U.S., as seen in the Occupy movement and the popularity of Bernie Sanders, and the ruling elites have noticed and quickly crushed these movements. The ruling class’ “solution” for extreme inequality are mass incarceration and pervasive police violence and will crush any movement that oppose these responses, as they did over the summer of 2020.

By locating both the severe repression of BLM protests and weak response to the Capitol Riot in the larger historical context of repression of socialist movements, and tolerance of reactionary violence, I am hoping to create what Walter Benjamin called Erfahrung (integrated experience).8 Integrated experience is a collective, communal memory or experience, an experience that is historically grounded and transmitted through tradition, or what people used to simply call “wisdom.” This type of experience is contrasted with Erlebnisse (isolated experience), an individualized, fragmented form of experience disconnected from historical context, sometimes celebrated as “immediate experience,” here manifested in the tendency to downplay the significance of the Capitol Riot and ignorance of the larger history of the repression of socialism. Benjamin wrote the capacity for Erfahrung had severely atrophied due to the conditions of modern capitalist production, and traumatic shocks of urban life, particularly after the first World War. The irony is not only were socialists repressed during this period, but so is the capacity to experience these events in a way that can be integrated into a larger historical context.

Schenck, Abrams, and Gitlow

Repression of socialists in this period was not merely limited to the legal system as extrajudicial killings were common. One of the worst perpetrators of this kind of violence was the American Legion (founded in 1919), often working in conjunction with law enforcement, for example the Centralia Massacre of 1919, which resulted in several deaths including the lynching of one member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) by a mob. The American Legion’s Commander Alvin Owsley later said in 1923:

If ever needed, The American Legion stands ready to protect our country’s institutions and ideals as the Fascisti dealt with the destructionists who menaced Italy! … The American Legion is fighting every element that threatens our democratic government—Soviets, anarchists, IWW, revolutionary socialists and every other red … Do not forget that the Fascisti are to Italy what The American Legion is to the United States.9

It is tempting to think the only difference between a fascist and neofascist is that neofascists do not overtly praise fascism anymore, but the behavior is the same, including the alliances between law enforcement and militia groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in suppressing BLM protests. Other incidents, like the Ludlow Massacre of striking miners in 1914 was covered in detail by Upton Sinclair’s book The Brass Check (1919). Overall, the U.S. had the most violent labor struggles of any industrialized country, largely directed at workers by law enforcement and private security forces like the Pinkertons and groups like the American Legion.10

Schenck v. United States (1919) stemmed from an event after the U.S. declared war in 1917, when socialists Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer dropped leaflets urging soldiers to resist the draft (the first draft since the Civil War), but advised only using peaceful means.11 Their leaflet which bore the headline “Long Live the Constitution of the United States,” proclaimed the Constitution as “one of the greatest bulwarks of political liberty…born after a long, stubborn battle between king-rule and democracy,” argued the draft was unconstitutional according to the thirteenth amendment’s prohibition against involuntary servitude, however their  patriotic appeal to the Constitution did not win them any favors. Schenck, who was General Secretary of the Socialist Party in Philadelphia, along with Baer, both members of the Executive Committee, were charged with conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act, the first major legislation to punish disloyalty since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. The law was intended to suppress dissent against the war, and prohibits “any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the Constitution, the form of government of the U.S., the flag, or the uniform of the military.12 The law was further strengthened by amendments passed the following year, known as the Sedition Act. Although the more severe Sedition Act was repealed in 1921, the former law is still in effect, and ruthlessly imposed by the Obama administration’s “war on whistleblowers,” invoking the law more than any other administration combined.13

Crackdown on dissent is not surprising since support for the war was unpopular at first. Woodrow Wilson infamously campaigned on keeping the U.S. out of the war in 1916, although secretly Wilson had already become convinced the U.S. would enter the war. To mobilize public support a massive propaganda campaign, the likes of which had never been seen before, was launched under the Committee on Public Information, also known as the Creel Commission, whose members included the founder of “public relations” Edward Bernays. Despite the unrelenting propaganda of songs like George M. Cohan’s “Over There,” recruit numbers were underwhelming and so a draft was initiated. The disillusionment that set in after the war (which was proclaimed “the war to end all wars”) was so great the U.S. public quickly retreated into isolationism, passed strict immigration quotas in 1924 that would last for over 40 years, and remained walled off to the rest of the world until World War II, and even then, did not join the war until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Defying Wilson, the Senate voted against joining Wilson’s League of Nations. The most influential journalist in the U.S. and co-founder of The New Republic, Walter Lippmann, wrote the dismally pessimistic book Public Opinion (1922) whose thesis was the public could not be counted upon to deliberate and act rationally and would forever need elites to guide them to wise policy choices, in other words to “manufacture consent.”

Schenck and Baer appealed their conviction on first amendment grounds, but the conviction was unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., one of the most lauded, cited, and influential Justices in the history of the Court, argued their flyer posed a “clear and present danger,” and famously compared this to shouting fire in a movie theater:

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic…. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.14

It is ironic the idea of falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic almost perfectly describes Trump’s actions on January 6 by repeatedly declaring the election was stolen, a claim echoed by many Republicans in Congress, and other prominent figures like Rudy Giuliani. The “shouting fire” metaphor was even invoked by Rep. Jamie Raskin during Trump’s second impeachment. The “clear and present danger” test established by this case became the standard for judging free speech cases until Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) when it was replaced by the more lenient “imminent lawless action” test, in this case overturning a conviction against a member of the KKK (the only case discussed in this article where a conviction is overturned). The latter test stipulated: “Advocacy of force or criminal activity does not receive First Amendment protections if (1) the advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and (2) is likely to incite or produce such action.”15 It can be argued even under this more lenient standard, Trump (and other instigators like Giuliani) would still be liable since there was a strong likelihood of inciting violence given the violent track record of his supporters in Charlottesville and the counter-protests to BLM protests over the summer of 2020.

What awkwardly stands out about Schenck is that Holmes interprets what is unequivocally the actions of pacifists as violence. By his reasoning, Holmes would have convicted Tolstoy and Gandhi for inciting violence as well. Although Schenck and Baer broke the law during war (a mitigating circumstance noted by Holmes), the constitutionality of a military draft is a legitimate question. Speaking against forceable military conscription, Daniel Webster said in 1814:

The administration asserts the right to fill the ranks of the regular army by compulsion… Is this, sir, consistent with the character of a free government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No, sir, indeed it is not… Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty?16

The tradition of civil disobedience in the U.S. obligates one to break unjust laws, as Martin Luther King once said (quoting Augustine) “an unjust law is no law at all.” Thousands of “conscientious objectors” were imprisoned for refusing to serve during World War I and other wars like the Vietnam War. This is a moot point now as there is no longer a draft, but even the reasons behind this were clearly strategic since it was done by the Nixon administration in 1973 (who campaigned in 1968 on ending the draft) to undermine the anti-war movement and resistance to the Vietnam War (and quite successful in accomplishing this task). There is nothing really to prevent the government from reinstituting the draft as citizens and immigrants between 18-25, and assigned male at birth, are still obliged to register for the Selective Service System (created in 1917).

Abrams v. United States (1919) involved several Russian immigrants, who in 1918 threw leaflets from a window in New York City denouncing the U.S. sending troops to Russia and the production of weapons to be used against Soviet Russia.17 They were convicted under the Sedition Act. Ostensibly, the U.S. invasion was undertaken against Germany, who had invaded after the Russian Revolution, but the U.S. was also there to support the White Russian forces then engaged in Civil War against the Soviets. This is a chapter of American history that is still rarely discussed, as most people do not know that the U.S. ever invaded Russia and even engaged in military operations against the Bolsheviks. The defendants’ convictions were upheld, including Mollie Steimer, who was deported to the Soviet Union, then fled to Germany after being deported from the Soviet Union, later fled the Nazis, placed in an internment camp in France, before finally settling in Mexico where she died in 1980.18 One of the defendants, Jacob Schwartz, was beaten by police and died from his injuries before he could go to trial (recorded as death from Spanish flu).

This case is famous for Holmes’s dissenting opinion, although it did not stop the rest of the Court from upholding the convictions by a 7-2 majority (with Justice Louis Brandeis being the other dissenter). The conventional wisdom is that Holmes reconsidered his opinions after receiving a strong backlash for his opinion in the Schenck case, however the circumstances of the case are quite different. In Schenck, Holmes stresses that his opinion is influenced by the fact that the U.S. is at war and Schenck and Baer were sabotaging the war effort which will prolong the war (which is how Holmes gets to his convoluted reasoning for arguing Schenck and Baer were inciting violence). The defendants in this case, on the other hand, were concerned with a country the U.S. was not at war with—Soviet Russia–who the U.S. did engage in military operations against despite lacking a formal declaration of war which would mean these operations were illegal (regrettably the idea of any checks and balances on the use of military force now seems an antiquated notion). Czarist Russia had been an ally of the Western powers during the war, and after that government was overthrown, the Bolsheviks had taken Russia out of the war. So, these defendants were essentially convicted for denouncing illegal military operations.

Gitlow v. New York (1925) concerned Benjamin Gitlow, a socialist, who distributed a “Left Wing Manifesto” in 1919 (after the war was over) calling for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism through strikes and “class action of any form.”19 Gitlow was arrested under New York’s Criminal Anarchy Law which punished advocating overthrowing the government by force. According to Oyez:

At his trial, Gitlow argued that since there was no resulting action flowing from the manifesto’s publication, the statute penalized utterances without propensity to incitement of concrete action. The appellate division affirmed his conviction, as did the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in that state.20

His conviction was also upheld by the Supreme Court, again by a 7-2 majority, again with Holmes and Brandeis dissenting. The case against Gitlow was so thin that it could not even meet the standards of the clear and present danger test and regressed to an even earlier formulation the “bad tendency” test that traces its origins to Blackstone’s Commentaries, here expressed in the opinion of the Court: “That a State, in the exercise of its police power, may punish those who abuse this freedom by utterances inimical to the public welfare, tending to corrupt public morals, incite to crime or disturb the public peace, is not open to question.”21 So, beginning with Schenck, it is interesting how each case rests on ever shakier foundations, essentially criminalizing strikes and class action by the working class, with the first, at least, involving an example of someone breaking a law while the country is at war (whether the law was constitutional is debatable); to calling for strikes to denounce military action against a country the U.S. was not at war with; to calling for strikes after the war is over.

1919 was a critical year in American history (the same year Luxemburg is murdered) as it was the beginning of the first Red Scare resulting from the Russian Revolution. This year saw several significant strikes including: the Seattle General Strike (Feb. 6–11); the May Day riots in Cleveland (May 1); the Boston Police Strike (Sep. 9); the Steel Strike of 1919 (Sep. 22–Jan.8); and the Coal Strike of 1919 (Nov. 1–Dec. 10). Several anarchist bombings attributed to the followers of Luigi Galleani, also occurred in 1919, the first being in late April when dynamite bombs were mailed to several prominent officials including Attorney General Palmer and John Rockefeller. Then, on June 2, 1919, anarchists detonated nine bombs in eight cities almost simultaneously. The government responded with the “Palmer Raids” from November to January which saw thousands arrested and hundreds deported. On September 16, 1920, a bomb was detonated on Wall St. that killed 40 people and injured hundreds. Another important event in 1919 was known as “Red Summer,” in which a series of white supremacist terrorist acts and race riots occurred throughout the year (and after) but particularly intense during the summer. The escalation of this violence is attributed to many factors including the economic recession following World War I, and the “great migration” of African Americans to Northern cities like Chicago. Many of the perpetrators of violence, including lynching, acted with impunity, provoking a public outcry at the lack of response on the part of state and federal authorities, thus illustrating the double standard as socialists were being thrown in jail and deported at the same time for handing out leaflets.

Debs and Other Notable Cases

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list. Other notable cases were: Patterson v. Colorado (1907) when the Court upheld contempt charges against newspaper editor and former Colorado Senator Thomas M. Patterson who published articles and a cartoon implying the Colorado Supreme Court was beholden to the public utility trust; Frohwerk v. United States (1919) unanimously upheld the conviction against Jacob Frohwerk, a socialist, who criticized the war as a “mistake” on behalf of the “great trusts,” but did not explicitly advocate draft resistance; Debs v. United States (1919) also unanimously upheld the conviction against Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs. He was arrested for giving a speech outside a prison for socialists convicted under the Sedition Act.22 Debs did not explicitly advocate resistance to the draft, and warned listeners he had to be careful of what he said. Douglas C. Dow writes: “According to Holmes, Debs’s warning that he had to be careful with his words meant that the audience was free to infer an underlying meaning,” showing the extent the Court was willing to twist his words to uphold a conviction.23 This led to his fifth and most memorable Presidential campaign as he ran from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, garnering almost one million votes, or 3.4 percent of the popular vote (his second strongest showing after the 1912 election where he won 6 percent of the vote). Wilson was particularly vindictive against Debs and refused to pardon him, despite several calls to, even from his own advisors. His sentence was eventually commuted (not pardoned) by President Harding, Christmas Day 1921 and he died in 1926.

Two other Supreme Court cases upheld convictions against socialists who founded political parties: Whitney v.California (1927) and Dennis v. United States (1951). Whitney also stemmed from an incident in 1919 but was not tried until 1927. This case involved the conviction of Charlotte Anita Whitney, one of the founders of the Communist Labor Party of California, who was prosecuted under the California Criminal Syndicalism Act for organizing a group that sought to effect political and economic changes through the unlawful acts of violence.24 Whitney denied this was what the group was organized for. Her conviction was also upheld unanimously (including former President William Howard Taft, now Chief Justice of the Court), also using the bad tendency test. Holmes and Brandeis wrote concurring opinions, disagreeing with the use of the bad tendency test, but concurred that the record showed evidence of a criminal conspiracy (ironically, despite concurring Brandeis’s opinion is considered one of the important defenses of free speech). The second case, Dennis v. United States (1951) originates during the second Red Scare, more commonly known as “McCarthyism.” This case involved eleven leaders of the Communist Party of the United States who were convicted under the Smith Act: “to knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government;” even though they had called for socialist reforms.25 In a 6-2 decision their convictions were also upheld, this time using the clear and present danger test.

After the McCarthy era, the threat of communism, though never fully vanishing, subsided until the 1960s when a new wave of political violence was directed against “black radicals” the names of which should be familiar to everyone: King, X, Evers, Hampton, the list goes on. These radicals, as was the entire civil rights movement, were often denounced by the FBI as being influenced by outside agitators, in this case the Soviet Union, and at least some commentators have even depicted BLM as being influenced by Putin, the Democrats new favorite boogey man and apparent source of all social conflict in the U.S. Another tactic was learned from the Creel Commission: intense efforts to propagandize the population, the results of which has created a simple-minded understanding of socialism in the U.S. that persists to this day. With the collapse of the Soviet Union many believed socialism was obsolete, leading to Francis Fukuyama’s “middle-class fiction” we have reached the end of history. Marxist professors were called “academic dinosaurs,” and there is a very noticeable gap in the academy as being radical increasingly meant adopting identity politics. This has led to embarrassing moments like the Democratic Socialists of America cancelling Adolph Reed Jr. for being a “class reductionist.” The revival of socialism in the Sanders campaigns and BLM is recent, barely more than five years old at this point, though still, frankly, yet to materialize any substantial political gains other than “changing the conversation.”

The double standard in how the government represses radical movements and tolerates reactionary violence is still alive today. The right-wing government in Florida has already passed a law criminalizing protests for police brutality (and absolving motorists who run over protestors), with other states likely to follow. Trump continues to call the election stolen, most recently at CPAC, as the Republican Party further morphs into a fascist party under his personal rule, with some calling for his reinstatement as President before the end of the year. Despite the growing fascist threat, feckless Democrats emphasize a message of “unity,” obscuring the complicitly of their Republican “colleagues”, with calls for even more surveillance and funding for the police. As trials begin for those arrested at the Capitol, it is unlikely the ringleaders, including Trump himself, will ever face prosecution or be held accountable. This is a sobering lesson for any socialist movement that challenges the institutions of the United States, who will use any means to defend ruling class interests whether it be dubious prosecutions or enlisting violent reactionary groups, often aligned with law enforcement, to suppress socialist movements.

Notes:

  1. ↩ Erica Chenoweth and Jeremy Pressman, “Black Lives Matter Protesters Were Overwhelmingly Peaceful, Our Research Finds,” Harvard Radcliffe Institute, October 20, 2020, Accessed May 17, 2021
  2. ↩ Clare Hymes, Cassidy McDonald, and Eleanor Watson, “What We Know About the Capitol Riot Arrests,” CBS News, July 16, 2021, Accessed July, 20, 2021
  3. ↩ Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marxists.org (1852); Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, Part III, Ch. II, Marxists.org (1877)
  4. ↩ Vladimir I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, Marxists.org (1918)
  5. ↩ Paul Thomas, Alien Politics: Marxist State Theory Retrieved (New York: Routledge, 1994
  6. ↩ Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 118 (1): 1-39, 2003; Piketty, Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, “Distributional National Accounts: Methods and Estimates for the United States,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133 (2): 553-609, 201
  7. ↩ Michael Hudson, “Piketty vs. the Classical Economic Reformers,” Real-World Economics Review, 69: 122-130, 2014
  8. ↩ Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” in Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969) 155-200
  9. ↩ Alec Campbell, “Where Do All the Soldiers Go? Veterans and the Politics of Demobilization,” in Irregular Armed Forces and Their Role in Politics and State Formation, eds. Anthony W. Pereira and Diane E. Davis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 110
  10. ↩ Philip Taft and Philip Ross, “America Labor Violence: Its Causes, Character, and Outcome,” The History of Violence in America: A Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, eds. Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr (1969) Accessed May 17, 2021
  11. ↩ Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004)
  12. ↩ “The Espionage Act of 1917,” Digital History (2021) Accessed May 14, 2021
  13. ↩ Caitlin Johnstone, “Trump Continues Obama’s War on Whistleblowers, Arrests Another Alleged Intercept Source,” Caitlinjohnstone.com, May 10, 2019 ,Accessed May 14, 2021
  14. ↩ “Schenck v. United States,” Justia, Accessed May 14, 2021
  15. ↩ “Brandenburg v. Ohio,” Justia, Accessed May 14, 2021
  16. ↩ Daniel Webster, “Webster’s Speech Against Conscription,” Wikisource, (1814) Accessed May 14, 2021
  17. ↩ Richard Polenberg, Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, The Supreme Court, and Free Speech (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)
  18. ↩ John Simkin, “Mollie Steimer,” Spartacus Educational (2020) Accessed May 14, 2021
  19. ↩ Eric T. Chester, Free Speech and the Suppression of Dissent during World War I (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2020)
  20. ↩ “Gitlow v. New York,” Oyez, Accessed May 14, 202
  21. ↩ “Gitlow v. New York,” Justia, Accessed May 14, 2021
  22. ↩ Chester, Free Speech
  23. ↩ Douglas C. Dow, “Debs v. United States,” The First Amendment Encyclopedia, 2009 Accessed May 14, 2021
  24. ↩ “Whitney v. California,” Oyez, Accessed May 17, 2021
  25. ↩ “Dennis v. United States,” Justia, Accessed May 15, 2021