The Proletariat in Search of a Class, by Gaither Stewart

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Originally published Feb. 3, 2020
October 16, 2022

The super-indoctrinated, Trump-voting American working class, dulled by the mass media and the “American dream”, has changed very little since the crushing of the great textile strikes that swept the United States in the 1920s. Not an iota of class-consciousness has it absorbed. (Nor has it been explained and offered to all wage earners in sufficient doses.) For also the middle classes, crushed by an ever more desperate, an “end of times” form of capitalism, has not yet grasped that they too are now part of the American proletariat. In that respect it seems that the old, often criticized word proletariat is still quite adequate.

Introduction to Gaither Stewart’s Trails of Memory: A Century of Nazism, by Rowan Wolf

Image by Anthony Crider via Flickr

Sent to Dandelion Salad by Gaither Stewart

by Rowan Wolf
November 30, 2021

I did not realize until I read Trails of Memory – A Century of Nazism how much that time and political movement has harmonics in this time. I am in the U.S., where decades of effort on the part of one of the major political parties – Republicans – moved them, and perhaps the nation, deeper and deeper to the right. At the same time, the efforts of capitalists continued to break the bonds of community and the treads of continuity, while the broader efforts of Republicans created a more jaded and less informed public. I did know from my studies of white nationalism that it was an ideology that actively spanned continents and was not just contained to North America. Likewise, this movement towards right-wing populism is not confined to the United States, and it is not the only nation experiencing the awful allure of strongman leaders with dreams of dictatorial rule.

Aspects of Russian Communism and Why Communism in the West Would Be Different, by Gaither Stewart

Image by J Duval via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
June 17, 2020

“A civilization reveals itself as fruitful by its ability to incite others to imitate it: when it no longer dazzles them it is reduced to a mere collection of odds and ends and vestiges of former worldly greatness. The successive attempts of Napoleon and Hitler to create a world empire failed, as the United States of North America has failed in our time because any initial attraction they might have exerted on the conquered transformed into resistance and hate as a result of their genocidal policies or military occupation and/or exploitation of the resources of the conquered lands instead of gradual absorption and acceptance of different peoples and the furthering of local cultures.” (Paraphrased from Cioran’s Histoire et Utopie)

When The Revolution Comes by Gaither Stewart

Image by Giorgia Colletti via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Previously published August 8, 2011
April 21, 2020

The Historical Gastonia Textile Mill Strikes Are Not Forgotten

When in the early part of this millennium I was writing a rather surrealistic novel, ASHEVILLE, about the town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina where I started out my life, I ran into the story of the Asheville-based self-professed Communist writer, Olive Tilford Dargan, of whom I had never heard before. Visiting then her gravesite in the little known Green Hills Cemetery in West Asheville and researching her and her activities I fell into a gossamer review of early 19th century labor struggles in the good old U.S. South.

The Proletariat In Search Of A Class, by Gaither Stewart

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
February 3, 2020

The super-indoctrinated, Trump-voting American working class, dulled by the mass media and the “American dream”, has changed very little since the crushing of the great textile strikes that swept the United States in the 1920s. Not an iota of class-consciousness has it absorbed. (Nor has it been explained and offered to all wage earners in sufficient doses.) For also the middle classes, crushed by an ever more desperate, an “end of times” form of capitalism, has not yet grasped that they too are now part of the American proletariat. In that respect it seems that the old, often criticized word proletariat is still quite adequate.

The Gehlen Org + The Powers of Love and War by Gaither Stewart

Image by eks-i zîbâ via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
January 3, 2020

In February 2019 Germany opened a brand new intelligence complex in the city of Berlin. The new headquarters of the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst or Federal Intelligence Service) occupies a huge space—by the way, much as STASI or State Security Service once did in East Berlin the former German Democratic Republic—and supposedly employs a total of over six thousand persons. The move from its former secret location in the Munich suburb of Pullach reflects both the centralization in Berlin of federal institutions that after World War Two were widely dispersed throughout Germany and importantly, European Union-NATO leader Germany’s efforts to get away from the nation’s Nazi past. The new BND location in Germany’s capital city seems also a giant step away from the former obsessive secrecy of its location in Munich, hidden away in that obscure suburb and operating under a cover name and, above all, until the late 1950s an affiliate of the CIA. The move to Berlin can be interpreted as the BND’s declaration of sovereignty.

Gladio: The Story of a Secret Army by Gaither Stewart

Image by Giampaolo Macorig via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
December 27, 2019

Albert Camus in his essay “L’Exil d’Hélène” discusses contemporary disregard for the Greek value of limits. Camus writes that only the artist by his nature recognizes his limits, limits which the historic spirit disregards. The very idea of a super-secret organization like Gladio to remake the world in its own image reflects that same disregard for the Greek values that Camus so cherished.

Landslide… To Totalitarianism by Gaither Stewart

Image by Steven via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
December 16, 2019

I find surprising the detailed manner in which history repeats itself. The result of the landslide described here seems to have been replicated in the USA of our times in ways that all of us witness each day. The Germany of say 1939 seems like the blueprint for the US role in the world of today.

Dirty Hands by Gaither Stewart

Image by Gordon Joly via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
October 27, 2019

“You should therefore know that there are two ways to fight: one while abiding by the rules, the other by using force. The first approach is unique to Man; the second is that of beasts. But because in many cases the first method will not suffice, one must be prepared to resort to force. This is why a ruler needs to know how to conduct himself: in the manner of a beast as well as that of man.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

Words Unspoken by Gaither Stewart

Image by Cassowary Colorizations via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
August 7, 2019

Editor’s Note:

Historical fiction is a special and important genre. It can bring history to life, but more importantly it can allow us to put ourselves in the lives of those of another time, another context. There is a strong tendency in the United States toward historical amnesia. This is perhaps one of the biggest character flaws of the country. Floating in a constant now there is a complex, but highly malleable, context that disappears in the moment. This can drain the richness from our lives, set us on paths both personally and societally destructive, and perhaps most importantly, totally erode the concept of free will replacing it with faux will.

Yellow Vests, Class Struggle and Spontaneous Revolution by Gaither Stewart

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by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
January 18, 2019

In What Is To Be Done of 1902 Lenin opposed revolutionary spontaneity because it “strips away the disciplined nature of the Marxists idea of revolution, leaving it arbitrary and ineffective.” True to himself, Lenin then returned to opposition to spontaneous revolution after WWI during the German Revolution of 1918-19 when in a spontaneous uprising against the post-WWI system Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacist League failed in an attempt to overturn German capitalism.

War and Betrayal: Change and Transformation by Gaither Stewart

Image by Cassowary Colorizations via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
January 11, 2019

I have wondered if the German Field-Marshal Friedrich Paulus after his defeat and capture by Russians at Stalingrad in February 1943 really changed when as a prisoner of war in Soviet Russia he joined the National Committee For A Free Germany and the anti-Fascist Union of German Officers. Were his words sincere when he broadcast anti-fascist messages to Germany over Radio Moskau? Did he betray his entire background, his military career and the homeland he had fought for in order to save his life? Was he a traitor to Germany, to his beloved wife and to himself?

No Man’s Land by Gaither Stewart

Image by Bo Nielsen via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
January 4, 2019

Get out your atlas. You will likely need it when you read farther here about the intriguing but little known story in a lesser known part of Alpine Europe: Italy’s northern territory of Alto Adige, better known as South Tyrol. I used an atlas for geographical details about the borderlands with which this article deals and where I have spent long periods. For it’s the details—often geographical—that will confound you every time. Such details make you aware that military planners of national strategy never spend enough time with their atlases. Over much of my lifetime I have passed through these border territories countless times, from north to south, south to north and yet I still discover new things about them.

Definitions: The Proletariat by Gaither Stewart

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Previously published Sept. 12, 2008
August 20, 2018

“Suppose that some great disaster were to sweep ten million families out to sea and leave ‘em on a desert island to starve and rot. That would be … an act of God, maybe. But suppose a manner of government that humans have set up and directed, drives ten million families into the pit of poverty and starvation? That’s no act of God. That’s our fool selves actin’ like lunatics. What humans have set up they can take down…. Whoever says we’ve got to have a capitalist government when we want a workers’ government, is givin’ the lie to the great founders of these United States….”

(A Stone Came Rolling, Olive Tilford Dargan)

Definitions: The Bourgeoisie by Gaither Stewart

Image by Pedro Ribeiro Simões via Flickr

by Gaither Stewart
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rome, Italy
Previously published Oct. 12, 2008
August 15, 2018

“We are not fighting against men or a kind of politics but against the class which produces those politics and those men.” (from Dirty Hands, a political play by Jean Paul Sartre, first performed in Paris on April 2, 1948.)