Editors' Introduction

This special issue of Radical History Review is devoted to "Radicalisms in Transition." It was planned much before the events of September 11, 2001, when coordinated attacks on U.S. targets took place, destroying structures of great symbolic and strategic significance. Yet those events will inevitably change the ring of this latest issue's title. Perhaps not surprisingly, pervasive feelings of uncertainty and insecurity following the suicide flights have ushered in a new wave of nationalistic fervor in the United States. Alongside calls for unity and solidarity, the U.S. government is using the media to prepare Americans to accept a "new era" in which civil liberties and rights that we had taken for granted will come under scrutiny, be curtailed or eliminated outright--all in the name of democracy and freedom. What historically has been considered a land of immigrants has become a "homeland" in need of defense. In the midst of such a climate, we might easily forget this attack's unimaginably indiscriminate nature and underestimate its global impact. The World Trade Center housed a truly multinational population of workers and institutions; as we write this introduction, citizens of sixty-four countries are believed to have lost their lives in the attacks. Furthermore, no national allegiances bound the terrorists, and they belonged to organizations structured much like transnational corporations. Financial markets around the world are suffering historic losses; no one knows for certain when the process of economic recuperation will begin. And perhaps most worrisome, the political fallout from U.S. attempts to create, by any means necessary, the international coalition that will spearhead "America's New War" remains unclear.

And yet, while the devastation and upheavals created by these acts of violence become evident everywhere, we would like to suggest the importance of remembering, precisely in times like these, that not all forms of radicalism serve the forces of oppression. Indeed, the radicalisms of concern to us in this volume are broadly defined by their resistance to oppression and economic exploitation as well as by their commitment to social justice and human rights. The transitions indicated in the title reference various sociohistorical processes that have impacted the practice of politics during the last twenty-five years or so: changes in political structures, in geopolitical alignments, in the organization of the economy, in ideological commitments, and more generally, in the cultures of politics. Recognizing that no single issue of a journal can offer a panoramic coverage of this topic, we have not attempted to assemble a collection of essays that provide a broad, systematic, topical, and geographical sampling of radical movements around the globe. Instead, we simply hope that this issue of Radical History Review will generate further debate on the status of radical movements and the importance of activism today, encouraging future contributions to our journal on current worldwide trends in radicalism.

As editors, we believe it is important to look back at recent history to provide a context in which to understand the social, economic, and political changes that engendered groups capable of the kind of violence witnessed on September 11, but that also led to many of the movements discussed in this volume. The general outlines of the story will be familiar to many readers. During the 1980s, in the aftermath of the Iranian hostage crisis--an attack on U.S. citizens that also appeared unthinkable at the time--the conservative governments of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom ushered in a backlash against progressive agendas and particularly the social programs that enacted them. Internationally, these conservative governments engaged in foreign policies that supported a wide range of movements and activities broadly defined as "anticommunist," of which funding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan was only one example. As a result, neoliberal views and policies became common sense within international debates. At the same time, in countries like Iran and Chile, as in many other places around the globe, governments with very different ideological commitments and economic agendas reacted strongly against progressive radical...