Curated playlist
Political ideologies
- NationalismThe English word nationalism dates only to around 1798. The loyalties it names stirred in people long before.
- AnarchismAnarchism began as an insult until Pierre-Joseph Proudhon used it as praise.
- IslamismIslamism first meant nothing more than the religion of Islam. The English word appeared in 1696, then nearly vanished.
- RepublicanismRepublicanism began when Romans expelled their kings in the 6th century BCE.
- Social democracyOtto von Bismarck built the first modern welfare state to defeat the socialists. His welfare plans began in 1883.
- WhiggismWhiggism, a political philosophy, was born in the chaos of England's civil wars.
- LGBTQ movementsIn 1897, a Berlin doctor formed a committee to fight a law against sex between men.
- Anarcho-primitivismAnarcho-primitivism once filled the pages of a journal in Eugene, Oregon, that called itself an "anti-civilization journal of theory and action." That journal, Green Anarchy, first appeared in 2000 as a 16-page newsprint tabloid. It later…
- CommunismCommunism first took power in one of Europe's poorest countries. Marx had expected it to rise in advanced economies.
- Critical theoryCritical theory has a motto of sorts, and Marx wrote it. The line reads: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." The school of thought that took up that challenge holds that…