American Insurgents
Richard Seymour
Haymarket Books
<p>All empires spin self-serving myths, and in the US the most potent of these is that America is a force for democracy around the world. Yet there is a tradition of American anti-imperialism that exposes this misleading mythology. <em>American Insurgents</em> is a surprising, revelatory history of anti-imperialism in the United States since the American Revolution. It charts the movements against empire from the Indian Wars and the expansionism of the slave South to the Anti-Imperialist League of Mark Twain and Jane Addams. Seymour crafts a lively and transparent explanation of why some of these movements succeeded and others failed. The result is a vital perspective for those organizing antiwar resistance today.</p>Review<p>“<em>American Insurgents</em> presents an indispensable history of anti-imperialist movements in the United States. . . . Seymour shatters a whole host of standard misconceptions about resistance to overseas adventures, refuting the common portrait of a US public apathetic to the crimes of its government in foreign lands. . . . The book is illuminated by the courageous and inspiring voices of US anti-imperialists, from Frederick Douglass to Muhammad Ali to current opponents of recent US wars in the Middle East.”<br>—Michael Schwartz, author, <em>War Without End</em><br></p><p>“In these times of international rebellion, [Richard Seymour] has given us a tool with which to build a movement for a more just world, both within and beyond our borders.”<br>—Camilo Mejía, author, <em>Road to ar-Ramadi</em><br></p><p>“In the tradition of Howard Zinn's <em>A People’s History of the United States</em> and Joe Allen’s <em>Vietnam</em>, Richard Seymour shows that US imperialism has generated significant domestic opposition rooted in grassroots movements for racial, economic, and social justice.”<br>—Michael Letwin, founding member, New York City Labor Against the War and Labor for Palestine<br></p>About the Author<p>Richard Seymour is a socialist writer and columnist and runs the blog Lenin's Tomb. He is the author of <em>The Liberal Defense of Murder</em> (Verso, 2008), and <em>The Meaning of David Cameron</em> (Zero Books, 2010). He has contributed to <em>Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq and the Left </em>, (NYU Press, 2008) and <em>The Ashgate Research Companion to Political Violence</em> (Ashgate, forthcoming). His articles have appeared in <em>The Guardian</em>, <em>The New Statesman</em>, <em>Radical Philosophy</em> and <em>Historical Materialism</em>. Originally from Northern Ireland, he now resides in London, where he is studying for a PhD at the London School of Economics.<br></p>