Daffodils and the Hole in the Skyline

Gurstein recalls the Sep 11 suicide attack in New York City, the recent suicide bombings in the Moscow subway, and the failed attempt of Emma Goldman--the most notorious anarchist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century--together with her comrade Alexander Berkman to assassinate Henry Clay Frick in retaliation for the murder and injury of workers during the Homestead strike at Frick's steel plant, had given much thought to what she called "the psychology of political violence." She often delivered a speech on that subject, where she praised "resistance to tyranny" as "man's highest ideal" and tried to counter the public's image of anarchists as bomb-throwing lunatics by explaining their resort to violence as a last resort. The young Berkman and Goldman naively imagined that Frick's assassination would inspire class revolt by American workers.