The Jewish community in Britain has been characterised by its high degree of conformity. This study seeks to extend the parameters of Jewish life by including those hitherto excluded from the historical narrative so that the community can more effectively be viewed as a paradigm for understanding the challenges facing minority communities in their encounter with mainstream society. It sets Jewish involvement within the wider historical, social, economic, political and cultural context, in which it developed, focusing upon political radicalism in Manchester, 1889-1939, and Jewish participation in radical socialism, anarchism, bundism and communism. Nonconformity is here defined in terms of a distancing from both external pressures (e.g. social conformity with the wider community) and internal pressures (e.g. religious beliefs and concerns about communal image). Through the prism of Manchester the chapters will highlight debates surrounding the makeup and impact of pre-First World War involvement; the disproportionate involvement of Jews in radicalism; the nature of Jewish allegiance to communism as an ideological conversion or a convergence of interest and the impact of involvement on Jewish identity, described as ‘Jewish communists’ or ‘communist Jews’.The thesis draws upon new information from the radical Yiddish and English press, revealing the importance of English and foreign influences on pre-war radicalism. Its use of oral testimonies at the Manchester Jewish Museum and elsewhere has revealed in the post-war period, a layering of motivation, commitment and identity. Written chronologically, the periodization of this study enables connections and differences to be drawn. It shows significant discontinuity in involvement and influence between pre and post-First World War radical activity, unlike in London. In Manchester those drawn to communism post-war were almost entirely from an English-born generation. They were more representative of the communist Jew, whose communist identity superseded but did not eradicate their Jewish identity. The thesis shows that conversion to communism was not due to any inherent ethnic characteristics. From 1920-1932 it was a response to the same social and economic factors which influenced non-Jews to communism, but encased in a cultural and historical context. From 1933 that process of conversion continued but was greatly boosted by the desire to fight fascism. The communist led fight against fascism and provision of a popular youth club acted as an attraction to youngsters, who were subsequently influenced in differing degrees or not at all by Marxism. This resulted in different levels of commitment and identification, some of which continued after the war, resulting in the formation of a subculture of Marxist and secular left-wing Jews, who are still seen as nonconformists by the mainstream Jewish community.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the high point of class struggle in the twentieth-century. For the first time in world history, a social movement predicated on the overcoming of class exploitation succeeded in gaining state power. In the days and weeks following October 1917 insurrection, a self-declared Marxist government set about the task of constructing a socialist society. However the Russian Revolution was more than the mass political mobilisation of class resentments. In addition to proletarians and peasants, the Bolsheviks also mobilised national minorities, for whom October represented the opportunity to put an end to centuries of national oppression. The Bolshevik promise, therefore, entailed not just class solidarity, but national self-determination and internationalism as well. In the very moment of revolution, however, these sentiments were put to the test as mass outbreaks of antisemitic pogroms spread across the vast regions of the former Pale of Settlement. The pogroms posed fundamental questions for the Bolshevik project, since they revealed the nature and extent of working class and peasant attachments to antisemitic and racialised forms of consciousness. This dissertation has two broad aims: first, it sets out to offer the most comprehensive analysis to date of the explosive articulation between antisemitism and the revolutionary process. It reveals, for example, the extent to which class struggle and anti-bourgeois discourse could overlap with antisemitic representations of Jewishness, often with devastating consequences. Second, it offers the most comprehensive analysis to date of the Soviet government attempt to arrest this articulation between antisemitism and revolutionary politics. Contrary to existing understandings, the dissertation argues that the ‘Bolshevik’ campaign against antisemitism was led not the Party leadership, as is often assumed, but by a small grouping of non-Bolshevik Jewish socialists who worked in the Party and Soviet government throughout 1918 and 1919. Having brought into focus an almost entirely overlooked moment in the history of Jewish experiences of, and responses to, antisemitism, the dissertation concludes by reflecting on how this reframing of the Russian Revolution might offer insights for anti-racists and socialists engaged in struggles for social justice today.

Some contemporary anarchist scholarship has rejected the Enlightenment-inspired reliance on reason that was supposedly central to classical anarchist thought and expanded the anarchist critique to address issues ignored by their classical predecessors. In making reason the object of critique, some contemporary anarchists expanded the anarchist framework to include critiques of domination residing outside the traditional power centers of the state, the capitalist firm, and the church thereby shedding light on the authoritarian tendencies inherent in the intellect itself. Though contemporary anarchist scholarship has sought to apply this anti-authoritarian ethos to the realms of epistemology and ontology (by employing Michel Foucault’s analysis of power and other postfoundational thinkers), their own framework of analysis is glaringly susceptible to what Habermas called a “performative contradiction.” In questioning the authority of aspects of even our own intellect (and the epistemological and ontological presuppositions that accompany it) we call into question even the authority of our own argumentation. I answer this “contradiction” by interrogating two intellectual traditions. Firstly, I question a key postfoundational anarchist premise. Namely, I assess whether an understanding of classical anarchist thinkers as quintessential children of the Enlightenment is justified. Secondly, I offer an alternative path to reconciliation between the anti-authoritarian values of the anarchists and the anti-metaphysical values of the postfoundationalists (that I think mirrors anarchist anti-authoritarian concerns) by suggesting we are better served to think of an anti-authoritarianism of the intellect by employing three key twentieth century thinkers: Richard Rorty, Paul Feyerabend, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. I do so while anchoring Rorty’s, Feyerabend’s, and Wittgenstein’s philosophies in the 19th century anti-metaphysical thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and the philosophical anarchism of Max Stirner.

The sectarian tactics of the Comintern's Third Period prevented the Communist Party of Great Britain from articulating an effective response to the rise of fascism during 1933. The CPGB leadership saw the main threat of fascism in Britain coming from the National Government, whose measures were portrayed as leading to the gradual 'fascisation' of British society. This led to the Party leadership ignoring the BUF as politically irrelevant. However, sections of the CPGB rank and file felt differently, linking up with their Labour movement counterparts; organising activity on a mass scale to prevent BUF activity on the streets of Britain. In mid 1934, reflecting pressure from below and the change in Comintern anti-fascist strategy as advocated by Dimitrov, the CPGB leadership changed tack and sanctioned counter-demonstrations to BUF meetings. In October 1934 it offered a united front electoral pact to the Labour Party. In 1935 the CPGB embraced the popular front policy adopted by the Comintern at its Seventh World Congress. The popular front movement was designed to change the 'profascist' foreign policy of the National Government and replace it with a people's government favourable to a military pact with the USSR. This guiding principle lay behind the popular front activity of the CPGB during 1935- 39. By 1939 after six years of hard work the CPGB had little to show for its struggle against fascism. Despite a small increase in membership, and a slight growth in influence amongst the trade unions and intelligentsia, it had failed to bring about a change in British foreign policy favourable to an alliance with the Soviet Union or to emerge as a significant force within the British Labour movement. This failure can be largely ascribed to its pursuit of an antifascist strategy determined mainly by the requirements of Soviet foreign policy and not by the concerns of British workers.

abstract: By way of combining the methodological practices of autoethnography and informal anarchist analysis of social movements, this project establishes anarchist autoethnography as a way of navigating the unavoidable and irreconcilable tensions between academic research and the ethical commitments of anarchists. By way of this method, I explore some of my interventions – as an anarchist – during the Occupy movement in Phoenix, Arizona from October, 2011 through until mid-2012. I explore the internal movement conflicts that arise when certain individuals, factions and political tendencies attempt to homogeneously define the interests of a heterogenous social movement that happens to employ anarchist principles of organization and includes the participation of anarchists. I focus on the conflicts around decision-making processes, the debates about nonviolence, and attitudes towards policing. Beyond analyzing some of my experiences in Occupy Phoenix, and doing so transparently as an anarchist, I additionally explore how the underlying connection between utopianism and the techniques of maintaining urban social orders shape the experience of movements in cities. I find that the moral strategies of left activists very often mirror the dualist ideologies of utopian urban planners, thus reproducing statist ways of seeing. Against the movement managers of the left, who I argue ultimately end up helping to reproduce the social order of cities, I turn at the end towards an exploration of historical Luddism as exemplars of sabotage. In framing anarchism and Luddism as accomplice tendencies that seek to subvert social order so as to preserve autonomy in capitalist states, I carefully distinguish neoluddism as a separate and undesirable approach to questions of technology and techniques of social control. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2020

The Dark Green World. Radical environmentalism in Czech republic after 1989 Arnošt Novák ABSTRACT Since 1970' environmental movement has been an important social actor. However it never has been an homogeneous and monolithic movement, but it has represented conglomerate of different approaches and currents, strategies and tactics which they were often in mutual contradictions too. This thesis focus on czech environmental movement after 1989 and especially on the radical ecologist activities. By using qualitative research it tries to map and to re-construct radical ecologist activites within a framework of international radical environmentalism. The thesis strives to open critical discussion about radical ecology in the czech context.

The thesis titled Antifascist Antifascist action: Ideology and evolution in 1996-2012 aims primarily to chart the historical and ideological development of Antifascist Action (AFA), a radically Czech anti-fascist organization. Thesis also aims to capture the most important moments and changes in the development of this organization since its formation to the present, with emphasis on other sub-questions the thesis places: defining methods of AFA struggle, AFA definition of the current status and the past, searching for causes of development cycles, access explanation for violence or just clarification of terminology. Because of the absence of broader and more complete sources the author came to the study of archival journals, analysis of different anarchist materials and the use of several interviews. In the end the thesis describes the overall history of AFA and creates conclusion that AFA is in its current development dynamic organization, which experienced its period of stagnation and at least two booms that have a direct connection with the development on the far-right scene. It also explains the change in the programm and the strategy of AFA.

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