Today is John Brown's birthday. An important abolitionist, and a man willing to both kill and die for the things he believed in. A man who k1dnapped George Washington's slave holding great-nephew, as well as collaborated with Harriet Tubman and saw slavery as one of the greatest sins a man could commit. He was also a man who viciously beat his children, and killed without reservation those who disagreed with him and actively participated in massacres against men who supported slavery. Abolitionist, warrior, terrorist, mass-murderer, religious zealot. All these words can accurately be applied to John Brown, and it is important to remember peoples' legacies in full, both the good and the bad. But most importantly, in my opinion, he was a man who willingly gave his life to fight the evil institution of slavery this nation was built upon.
"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with bl00d. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."
People who try to paint the Provisional IRA as a right-wing extremist group willfully choose to ignore the Irish Nationalism traditions that gave birth to the Provisionals. Prior to the beginning of the troubles, the IRA pursued a Civil Rights campaign that was explicitly anti-capitalist in nature and attempted to liberate both the Catholic and Protestant working class from the chains of British wage slavery and drew much inspiration from the Civil Rights struggles happening in the US at the time
Did you know some of the seeds of the Russian Revolution were planted all the way back in 1698 when Peter the Great instituted a Beard Tax in an attempt to more fully westernize Russian citizens? He even formed a police force tasked with forcibly shaving men in the street who could not pay the fine for having a beard. These fines were, unsurprisingly, mostly enforced against the peasants and the small working class at the time, with the nobility and land owning upper class mostly exempt
