James J. Martin

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James J. Martin (September 18, 1916 – April 4, 2004) was an American historian. He was educated at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Michigan, earning a Ph.D. in history in 1949.

He is best known for his work on the history of American individualist anarchism, Men Against the State, first published in 1953. His 1964 book American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931–1941 is also well known. Fellow Holocaust denier Harry Elmer Barnes called it "unquestionably the most formidable achievement of World War II Revisionism."[1][2]

Teaching career

Martin was a close associate of historian Harry Elmer Barnes. Martin's own views were libertarian and individualist anarchist. He was also an egoist influenced by Max Stirner, and rejected the natural rights views held by some other libertarians.[3] His work was praised by New Left historian William Appleman Williams, libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard, and others.

After a teaching career at Northern Illinois University, San Francisco State College, and Deep Springs College, he took a job teaching at Robert LeFevre's Rampart College, assuming it would be a full-time job. This was not the case as Rampart College was not yet really a college but only a series of workshop/lectures on libertarian political economy. This led to an eventual falling out between Martin and LeFevre[4] when Rampart College went out of business three years after Martin was hired, with Martin charging LeFevre with a breach of his five-year contract.[5]

Ralph Myles Publisher

In 1968 after Rampart College folded and Harry Elmer Barnes had died, Martin founded the small Ralph Myles Publisher in Colorado Springs, at first to publish Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader. Ralph Myles also reprinted Men Against the State, published a new book by Lawrence Dennis, reprinted a history of American anti-militarism by Arthur Ekirch, and brought several World War I revisionist books and a series of classic anarchist writings back into print, most notably No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority by Lysander Spooner and In Quest of Truth and Justice by Harry Elmer Barnes. Martin also was the author of books on anti-war subjects including Revisionist Viewpoints and The Saga of Hog Island, both of them collections of anti-World War II essays, and An American Adventure in Bookburning, a history of censorship in the United States during World War I.

Holocaust denialism late in life

Starting in 1979 Martin began to associate with the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a Holocaust denial group, writing for the IHR journal, The Journal of Historical Review. Brian Doherty notes in Radicals for Capitalism: "Martin, in his attempt to adjust standard historical understandings of war and war guilt, shifted into questioning the veracity of standard anti-German atrocity stories, including the standard details of the Holocaust", calls it an "unfortunate shading over into Hitler apologetics", and that Martin stated as early as 1976 "I don't believe that the evidence of a planned extermination of the entire Jewish population of Europe is holding up."[6] One of his last books was The Man Who Invented Genocide: The Public Career and Consequences of Raphael Lemkin published by IHR in 1984.

Works

  • Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908. Adrian Allen Associates, DeKalb, IL, (1953; online e-book). Republished by Ralph Myles (1970), the Ludwig von Mises Institute (2009), and CreateSpace (2010).
  • American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931–1941. Devin-Adair, New York, 1964.
  • Revisionist Viewpoints: Essays in a Dissident Historical Tradition. Ralph Myles, Colorado Springs, CO, (1971; online e-book).
  • Watershed of Empire: Essays on New Deal Foreign Policy, edited by James J. Martin and Leonard Liggio. Ralph Myles, Colorado Springs, CO, 1976.
  • The Saga of Hog Island and Other Essays in Inconvenient History. Ralph Myles, Colorado Springs, CO, 1977.
  • Beyond Pearl Harbor: Essays on Some Historical Consequences of the Crisis in the Pacific in 1941. Plowshare Press, Little Current, ON, 1981.
  • The Man Who Invented 'Genocide' The Public Career and Consequences of Raphael Lemkin. Institute for Historical Review, Torrance, CA, 1984.
  • An American Adventure in Bookburning: In the Style of 1918. Ralph Myles, Colorado Springs, CO, 1988.

Notes

  1. ↑ American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931–1941, New York: Devin-Adair, 1964, back cover.
  2. ↑ Burris, Charles A. "Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal: An Annotated Bibliographic Guide." LewRockwell.com. April 1, 2007.
  3. ↑ "An Interview with James J. Martin", Reason, January 1976
  4. ↑ Doherty, Brian, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, p. 322. PublicAffairs, 2007
  5. ↑ Riggenbach, Jeff, "James J. Martin, 1916-2004, Antiwar.com, May 18, 2004
  6. ↑ Doherty, p. 635

External links

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