Okay, this might be
slightly off-topic to the thread, since it's more focused on a small political party than wide-spread ideology, but it fits enough and I can't get this subject out of my head since a good friend of mine brought it to my attention. Plus, what I talk about happened WAY back, so the "past is a different country" element will make it suitably wacky to the man of today.
Here's the setting. 1930ish, in rural middle-of-nowhere parts of Iowa and Wisconsin. There's demand for something that isn't the Republican "big business helps everyone" ideal and the Democratic rural farming-type ideal. Thus, you start to see some more radical and progressive ideas pop up in politics. Eventually FDR would define progressivism going forward, but a bit before that you have some really, really kooky characters.
Best I can tell, there was this short lived movement/party called the Modern Seventy-Sixers, headed by a Lester P. Barlow. Now, Barlow is quite the screwball but this thread is about ideology, and not ideologues. If I ever get the chance, I'll divulge more about him. (he claimed to have built a death ray, have knowledge of biological weapons, and was an inventor who liked to
design bombs, which he used against federal Mexican troops during the
Mexican Revolution for some reason)
View attachment 135611
The movement and Barlow himself, politically, weren't
that special. They were contemporary of FDR (who Barlow hated, funny enough) and were left-leaning-but-still-not-really-socialist progressives. However, their methodology was what makes me so interested in them.
View attachment 135614
It's somewhat hard to find any information on the Modern 76ers directly, but you can find them mentioned by others, usually described with the word "dangerous."[
1, page 161]
I somewhat lied describing them as a political movement, they acted more like Barlow's personal paramilitary army from what I've read. He is
directly quoted as saying "We are going to clean this country, or blow it up." [same source, page 167]
While small, and existing for like five seconds, they were committed to fighting "reactionaries" by any means necessary. This apparently included guerilla warfare against their own country.
View attachment 135617
This is what gets me. The fact that their actual political beliefs were so milquetoast, but they acted like a social democrat Freikorps, and to top it all off, they were being headed by a cartoonish mad scientist? Tell me that isn't wacky. I'm almost sad they didn't last that long.