Deconstructing Settler Socialism

The early history of anarchic ideas that set my mind ablaze once felt remote. It can be hard to intimately relate with endlessly retold stories of 19th century euro-beards as an anarchist who's lived her entire life west of the Mississippi River. Parisian barricades, London exile committees, Spanish revolutionary unions, Russian nihilist assassins make for fascinating reading but are all rather far from home. In most general histories of radical movements covering this early period, the region popularly remembered as the "Wild West" is entirely absent. At best it appears as a peripheral subject necessitating deliberate search.

Digging ever-deeper into the story of my home, I've come to realize the danger posed by this omission when contemplating radical history. During the 19th century these lands were violently transformed from the sovereign domain of dozens of indigenous peoples into "western North America" via the genocidal process of settler-colonialism. Much as I might hope otherwise, white radicals played a tragically intimate role in this process from the jump. The histories of anarchism and communism, of socialism, feminism, and syndicalism have long roots in these lands; but those who tilled the soil were far from spotless heroes.