Description
Book SynopsisHow and why do so many radicals betray the cause? What implications does it have for left politics? Were the ex-radicals right to become conservatives? This book, the first of its kind, answers these and more questions. -- .
Table of ContentsIntroduction: a road well travelled
From radical to renegade
Structure and argument of the book
A note on terms and sources
Part I: Worlds turned upside down
Introduction to part I
1. Turncoats and collaborationists: early twentieth century renegades
The New York intellectuals and the anti-Stalinist left
2. ‘Turn on, tune in, drop out’…drop back in: ‘60s ex-radicals
Twenty-first century fox: Christopher Hitchens
Conclusion to part I
Part II: The experience of defeat
Introduction to part II
3. WWI: a defeat borne of nationalist bloodshed
Mother of all defeats: the tragedy of the Russian revolution and the rise of Stalinism
The post-war political and economic contexts
4. 1960s radicals and political defeat: a lost cause?
Christopher Hitchens: defeat post-poned?
5. The full force of the law: defeat by state repression?
State repression in the 1960s and 1970s
Conclusion to part II
Part III: Flawed radicals
Introduction to part III
6. Flawed early twentieth century radicals: Mussolini, Parvus, and co.
‘The god that failed’, and other disillusionments
7. Overstated radicals
Flawed ‘60s radicals: gulags, radical stuntmen, and other maladies
Left Thatcherite: the flawed radicalism of Christopher Hitchens
8. For thirty pieces of silver?
Mussolini: mercenary for imperialism
Parvus, the ‘Marxist millionaire’
The New York intellectuals: cold warriors for cash?
From Yippie to Yuppie: Jerry Rubin and other ‘60s sell-outs
Christopher Hitchens: Oedipal child returns to the establishment?
Conclusion to part III
Part IV: The renegade ‘mentality’
Introduction to part IV
9. Psychohistory
Marxism, structuralism, and psychohistory
The mentality of early twentieth century renegades: Mussolini, Parvus and others
Adventurers to the end? Pankhurst Walsh, Stephensen, and Mosley
10. Arthur Koestler, the twentieth century ‘sceptic’, and other cold war pilgrims
From radicalism to fadism: Rubin, Cleaver and fellow ‘60s searchers
‘Hypocritchens’
Conclusion to part IV
Conclusion
References
