Gone Bung: Athur Desmond’s Poetry and the Financial Chaos of 1890s Sydney
Conference Contribution ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
In the twenty-first century Arthur Desmond is better known among scholars of terrorism than scholars of Australian literature. As “Ragnar Redbeard,” Desmond produced one of the foundational texts of social Darwinism and white nationalism, Might is Right, or Survival of the Fittest, first published in 1896, shortly after his arrival in Chicago from Australia. Might is Right has inspired all manner of radicals, ranging from anarchists and libertarians through to Satanists and fascists. What is frequently lost in accounts of Desmond’s influence is his place in Australian literary history as part of the activist community which sprung up around McNamara’s bookshop in Sydney in the 1890s. This paper reinserts Desmond into a cultural milieu which included Henry Lawson, Jack Lang, Billy Hughes, and Alfred Deakin, and examines the ways in which his incendiary verse and prose contributed to the radicalisation of Australian nationalism while sowing chaos in Sydney’s banking industry.
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Australian Literary Convention 2024: Chaos and Order
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1
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Sydney, Australia
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Australian Literary Convention
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Sydney, Australia
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