radicalism — Bunk History

The Young Lords in New York, 1969-1976.

How New York City’s Radical Social Movements Gave Rise to Hip-Hop

The revolutionary history behind one of America’s main musical exports.

by Dean Van Nguyen via Literary Hub on May 6, 2025

Sen. Joe McCarthy confers with Roy Cohn during a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

A Not-So-Hostile Takeover

Long before the rise of Trump, the American conservative mainstream enjoyed a complex partnership with the Far Right.

by Gillis J. Harp via Commonweal on October 4, 2024

Untitled (Strike), Dox Thrash, c. 1940.

Hard Times

The radical art of the Depression years.

by Rachel Himes via The Nation on November 27, 2023

A researcher holds a magnifying glass to an archival photograph.

Looking for a Lineage in the Lusk Archive

The records of a New York surveillance committee from the time of the First Red Scare document a radical world—and its demise.

by Ben Nadler, Oksana Mironova via Jewish Currents on July 18, 2023

Jonathan Big next to cover of "King: A Life."

Restoring the Real, Radical Martin Luther King Jr. in “King: A Life”

A new biography of King emerges at a "critical juncture" for his legacy.

by Jonathan Eig, Steve Nathans-Kelly via Chicago Review of Books on May 23, 2023

Collage of various Republican faces and symbols.

The Long Unraveling of the Republican Party

Three books explore a history of fractious extremism that predates Donald Trump.

by Kim Phillips-Fein via The Atlantic on September 6, 2022

Meir Kahane

Is Kahane More Mainstream than American Jews will Admit?

A new biography explores the American roots of Meir Kahane's far-right ideology — and how the U.S. Jewish establishment embraced his beliefs.

by Hadas Binyamini via +972 Magazine on December 30, 2021

Young Lords Party demonstration

The Revolution That Wasn’t

Do we give the activist groups of the 1960s more credit than they deserve?

by Michael Kazin via The New Republic on July 30, 2021

Newt Gingrich and applauding Republicans

My Front Row Seat to the Radicalization of the Republican Party

As a political reporter, I've seen four Republican revolutions — Reagan’s, Gingrich’s, the Tea Party’s and Trump’s — each of which took the party farther right.

by Jackie Calmes via Los Angeles Times on June 13, 2021

Congresswomen Omar, Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez, and Tlaib.

The Radical Roots of ‘the Squad’

How Mickey Leland and the Congressional Black Caucus paved the way for today's progressive politics.

by Benjamin Talton via Made By History on August 28, 2019

A Most Violent Year

The world that 1968 ushered in is a far cry from the one activists imagined.

by Alan Wolfe via The New Republic on May 18, 2018

White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' clash with counter-protesters at the Unite the Right rally August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, VA.

The Vietnam War and White Power

A conversation with the author of "Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America."

by Kathleen Belew, Sean Illing via Vox on April 13, 2018

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at podium giving "I Have A Dream" speech.

Martin Luther King Jr. Had a Much More Radical Message than a Dream of Racial Brotherhood

King Jr., remembered today for his non-violent resistance, was a radical reformer who called for fundamental redistribution of economic power and resources.

by Paul Harvey via The Conversation on March 30, 2018

Street Fighting Woman

A new biography of Lucy Parsons makes it clear that the activist deserves attention apart from her more well-known husband.

by Eric Foner via New York Review of Books on December 21, 2017

Young men show a reporter how to make molotov cocktails in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in July 1966. (Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Getty Images)

One of America's Smartest Magazines Published a Molotov Cocktail How-To in 1967

A riot represents people making history.

by Nina Renata Aron via Timeline on September 23, 2017

Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau: A Radical for All Seasons

The surprising persistence of Henry David Thoreau.

by Jedediah Britton-Purdy via The Nation on June 1, 2017

Race and the American Creed

Recovering black radicalism.

by Aziz Rana via n+1 on December 7, 2015

Martin Luther King, Jr. being arrested in Montgomery, 1958.

Martin Luther King Was a Law Breaker

On the second anniversary of MLK's assassination, political prisoner Martin Sostre wrote a tribute emphasizing his radical disobedience.

by Austin McCoy, Martin Sostre via Martin Sostre Institute on April 1, 1970

William Sentner address a crowd of union workers at a small arms plant

The Radical Midwest of Bill Sentner

St Louis organizer Bill Sentner led some of the most successful labor battles in Midwestern history by uniting workers across race and gender lines.

by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Jacobin on June 23, 2025

William Buckley stands behind a podium, surrounded by a throng of people, and waves.

The Real Bill Buckley

Even some liberals toasted William F. Buckley Jr. as a patrician gentleman. A long-awaited new biography corrects that record.

by Nicole Hemmer via Democracy Journal on June 17, 2025

Eco-Terrorists Aren't What They Used to Be

Fifty years on, "The Monkey Wrench Gang" remains a problematic text for environmental activists, who are inclined to endorse its violent tendencies.

by John Bicknell via Law & Liberty on June 13, 2025

Jewish activists hold Passover Seder outside ICE headquarters in New York City to demand an end to Israel's war on Gaza.

The Past, Present, and Future of Left Jewish Identity

Jewish-led Palestine solidarity demonstrations are part of a long history of Jewish identity being bound up in leftist politics.

by Benjamin Balthaser, Shane Burley via Jacobin on June 8, 2025

William F. Buckley reclines behind a desk, glasses in hand, a bulletin board of National Review magazine material behind him.

The Conservative Intellectual Who Laid the Groundwork for Trump

The political vision that William F. Buckley helped forge was—and remains today—focused less on adhering to principles and more on ferreting out enemies.

by Jack McCordick via The New Republic on June 3, 2025

Cover of the book Under Cover by John Roy Carlson depicts english language nazi newspapers.

The First Rough Draft of the United States’ Homegrown Nazis

On the renewed relevance of “Under Cover,” Arthur Derounian’s 1943 exposé of the United States’ Nazi underworld.

by Michael Bobelian via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 3, 2025

AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland stands behind a podium speaking into an array of microphones.

When US Labor Backed US Imperialism

After the successful purges of leftists from unions, US labor leaders were enlisted by government officials to join in their global imperialist operations.

by Micah Uetricht, Jeff Schuhrke via Jacobin on May 26, 2025

Sam Francis

He’s a Key Thinker of the Radical Right, But Is He All That?

Where the rediscovery of Sam Francis goes wrong.

by Joshua Tait via The Bulwark on April 11, 2025

Donald Trump at Lancaster Airport on November 3, 2024, in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

This Is America

Donald Trump’s authoritarian second term has led critics to describe him as a fascist in the mold of Adolf Hitler.

by Daniel Bessner via Jacobin on March 27, 2025

Three members of the Wages for Housework campaign running a table and handing out pamphlets.

Home Is Where the Unpaid Labor Is

A new history traces the development and influence of the global Wages for Housework movement from its founding to present day.

by Hannah Rosefield via The New Republic on March 19, 2025

Oil painting of Margaret Fuller by Thomas Hicks, 1848 (National Portrait Gallery) and frontispiece from first edition of Woman in the Nineteenth Century.

The Mind and Heart of Margaret Fuller

Margaret Fuller was a polymathic intellect and writer, simultaneously ahead of her time and deeply enmeshed in the social and political fabric of her era.

by Megan Marshall, Brigitte Bailey, Noelle A. Baker via Library of America on February 27, 2025

Front cover of the 1940 issue Anvil by John C. Rogers showing a muscular man in bold red strokes.

Anvil, the Forgotten Magazine of Heartland Marxism

Anvil's popular vision for a multiracial socialism in the heart of the US could hardly be more urgent today.

by Marc Blanc via Jacobin on February 23, 2025

brought to you by

© Bunk History