WHAT'S AN EXTREMIST ?

 (For the Clipper.)

According to the dailies, he's a shallow-pated ignoramus, or a conscienceless devil's dupe, or the devil himself.
The attitude of the dailies is one that has survived from the Dark Ages. It's a case of shooting with the ancient cross-bow in a case where the batteries of the modern world are useless.
The alchemists— the discoverers of the germs of present-day chemistry — were 'devil's dupes.' So were the astrologers, although they begat astronomical science, And even from witchcraft sprang knowledge of drugs and other medical properties of our plants.
The originators were mad— mad, and extremists in their day and generation. St. Albyn the martyr was an extremist.
And the 'Saviour of the World' before him!
Yet, has their extremism done naught ?
Alfred the Great, Brian Boru, Wallace, and Bruce— all were extremists, weren't they?
Thomas A'Beckett was the curly headed darling of the dukes and lords and their ladies, until he changed his fine clothes and high living— practised a bit of socialism. It wasn't his beloved poor who murdered him, was it ?
I've been very sorry that Parson Ball and Wat Tyler's efforts ended so untimely.
You know one can't help feeling that the capitalistic English histories have not done these men justice. But with their sudden extinction (especially Tyler's) perished then the immediate hopes of the workers of those days.
Mayhap the education and consequent betterment of the British masses was postponed for a century or more from this very happening— only one or two men 'extremists'—killed prematurely.
But about Tyler's time John Wycliff — an Oxford professor — expelled for his extreme democratic teachings, did do some good.
The earliest of those monks who sympathised with the wageless slaves of Britain were fanatics indeed . . . . but worked they and their successors on and on, till early in the Tudor days villanage was abolished for ever.
And talking about slaves, Hyndman, amongst others, has pointed out that the 'art of Greece, the jurisprudence of Rome, and the monuments of antiquity' are due to the slave development which followed the break-up of the Roman Commune. Without the freedom of this slave class, the world might still be minus much of the good that exists to-day.
And the 'extremist' of the present, fighting for the wage-slave, recognises the potentialities of this force, intellectually and otherwise, when once it is freed of the painful and degrading yoke it now stumbles under.
The position of the monks of so long ago is exactly the position of the true socialist of to-day.
Wage-slavery is to end as wageless slavery has ended. The man who says this — the man who truly works towards such end— is called a 'madcap ' . . . ' a fool.'
Let us be fools till we die.
Whilst our brothers and our dads and our grand-dads may laugh at us, our children will arise and call us blessed !

... ... ...

No need to go through the whole gamut of extremists.
Nearly every individual who has started any noteworthy reform, brought forth any useful invention, made any new discovery geologically, geographically, scientifically, or any other 'ically,' has been sneered and jeered at as a fanatic by the folk who were his nearest neighbors. A prophet hath no honor save in his own country.
Galileo, Herschell, Darwin, Watt, Arkwright, Hampden, Garibaldi, Kosciusko, Christopher Columbus, were all extremists, and were all voted dangerous by the goat-brained aldermen of their day.
Marx, Engels, Leibnecht, and George are modern extremists. Anyone who tries seriously to get at the practicability of their scientific deductions are extremists ! extremists !
' Their gospel is impossible, we are told— Impossible Idealism.'
Is it?
But the dailies grind out ' Impossible — impossible — impossible ' monotonously on and on. And people won't trouble to think for themselves.
' Impossible, impossible, impossible !' says the printing presses ; as the cantering legs of Tennyson's Northern Farmer's horse said, 'Proputty, proputty, proputty!'
You object to the so-called present day extremists being likened to these great names of history !
Friend or brother comrade, the humble disciples of these great men were all termed extremists in their day.
Would you like another illustration?
That standard-bearer of the ancient Romans; Julius Caesar's crack troops funked— wouldn't budge. But the man with the eagle emblem sprang overboard and started on his own. Others followed. Result — VICTORY ! Who SHOWED THE WAY ? An un-named 'extremist,' wasn't it ?
The so-called 'extremists' of to-day are the standard-bearers of the True Democracy— Socialism !
' PLATYPUS.'

Clipper (Hobart, Tas. : 1893 - 1909), Saturday 21 December 1907, page 6