Historic anarchists Louise Michel (b. France 1830, d. France 1905) and Emma Goldman (b. Russian Empire 1869, d. Canada 1940) continue, a hundred years on from the heyday of their revolutionary activity, to pop up in unexpected places.
We can’t know whether Emma Goldman would have enjoyed Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 00s pop song ‘If I can’t dance…’, but it seems unlikely. Ellis-Bextor transforms a phrase...
The article highlights a recurring pattern in how radical figures are remembered: their militant politics are softened, their complexities flattened, and their legacies repackaged for mainstream consumption. Goldman and Michel, once feared as violent revolutionaries, are now celebrated in ways that often strip away their anarchist convictions. This sanitization serves multiple purposes—it allows states and institutions to claim their symbolic power while neutralizing their subversive ideas. For ...