Brendan McGeever – författare

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they announced the overthrow of a world scarred by exploitation and domination. In the very moment of revolution, these sentiments were put to the test as antisemitic pogroms swept the former Pale of Settlement. The pogroms posed fundamental questions of the Bolshevik project, revealing the depth of antisemitism within sections of the working class, peasantry and Red Army. Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution offers the first book-length analysis of the Bolshevik response to antisemitism. Contrary to existing understandings, it reveals this campaign to have been led not by the Party leadership, as is often assumed, but by a loosely connected group of radicals who mobilized around a Jewish political subjectivity. By examining pogroms committed by the Red Army, Brendan McGeever also uncovers the explosive overlap between revolutionary politics and antisemitism, and the capacity for class to become racialized in a moment of crisis.

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they announced the overthrow of a world scarred by exploitation and domination. In the very moment of revolution, these sentiments were put to the test as antisemitic pogroms swept the former Pale of Settlement. The pogroms posed fundamental questions of the Bolshevik project, revealing the depth of antisemitism within sections of the working class, peasantry and Red Army. Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution offers the first book-length analysis of the Bolshevik response to antisemitism. Contrary to existing understandings, it reveals this campaign to have been led not by the Party leadership, as is often assumed, but by a loosely connected group of radicals who mobilized around a Jewish political subjectivity. By examining pogroms committed by the Red Army, Brendan McGeever also uncovers the explosive overlap between revolutionary politics and antisemitism, and the capacity for class to become racialized in a moment of crisis.

Britain today is falling apart. One of the most dominant states in world history finds itself confronted with growing demands for nationalist secessionism. Brexit has already secured its break from the European Union while looming Scottish independence promises to undermine the integrity of the British state. Meanwhile, class, gender, regional and generational inequalities are deepening while endemic racism has been re-invigorated. How has it come to this?Britain in fragments traces how the historic pillars sustaining the democratic settlement have begun to crumble. This stability was constructed amid a century of imperial expansion abroad and working-class struggles for justice at home. The post-war welfare state was the apex of this historic arrangement; however, the ground beneath it began to shake as the processes of decolonisation and neoliberalism unfolded.This book traces how successive Labour and Conservative governments have incrementally dismantled the democratic settlement. A bipartisan commitment to neoliberalism has culminated in a historic crisis of representation and legitimacy, opening the door to competing nationalist forces.