THE AUTHOR, WHO DIED 125 YEARS AGO TODAY, DEFENDED THE CREATIVE FREE INDIVIDUAL AGAINST ALL FORMS OF SOCIETAL TYRANNY ~ Maurice Schuhmann ~ On November 30, 1900, the Irish author, poet and playwright Oscar Wilde (b.1854) passed away in exile in Paris. His grave in the prestigious Père Lachaise Cemetery, where the Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno as well as Karl Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue and his wife Laura also rest, has, like the grave of Doors frontman Jim Morrison, become a kind of pilgrimage site for fans. Wilde was forced into exile in 1897, immediately after his release from Reading prison. The reasons were social, legal, and personal, making life in England practically impossible. He died completely impoverished in a run-down hotel in Paris’s 6th arrondissement. Prior to that, he had been sentenced to two years of hard labour – the maximum punishment at the time for homosexuality, “the love that dare not speak its name.” He processed his time in prison in two works: De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol. While the former is a very personal, essentially apolitical text, the latter contains a political dimension. His ballad is a poetic, socially critical indictment of the penal system and an expression of human solidarity, making it relevant to anarchist critiques of incarceration. The phrase “the love that dare not speak its name,” which he used in his famous courtroom speech and which did not serve to exonerate him, was shortly thereafter taken up by the German-Scottish anarchist John Henry Mackay. Writing under the pseudonym Sagitta, Mackay published his Books of the Nameless Love, initiating a tradition of homoerotic literature in Germany (from a contemporary perspective, Mackay’s works must be critically assessed, as they include, among other content, paedophilic passages). Photo: Jim Linwood on Flickr CC-BY-2.0 Oscar Wilde was, at heart, an anarchist because he defended the free, creative individual against all forms of societal tyranny. This is essentially what Emma Goldman stated in her essay The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. She referred to his text The Soul of Man under Socialism, seeing in it a consistent defense of anarchist individualism. It is therefore hardly surprising that Goldman – heavily influenced at the time by Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Stirner – translated this text into German using Stirnerian and Nietzschean vocabulary. This translation continues to be reissued in the German-speaking world today and shapes the interpretation referenced by Emma Goldman. In The Soul of Man under Socialism, Wilde argues that true individual freedom is only possible in a society that prioritises creativity, self-realisation, and voluntary cooperation over property and coercion. He criticises both capitalism and charitable philanthropy, as both perpetuate rather than eliminate poverty. The state appears to him as the central force of oppression, preventing the individual from realising their artistic and moral potential. Wilde therefore does not conceive of socialism as state control, but as a system that provides all people with leisure and freedom to engage creatively. Such liberation from property constraints and poverty, in his view, would lead to greater individuality, increased happiness, and a truly humane society. The words that precede this work – “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at.” – are likely the most frequently quoted lines from Wilde’s entire oeuvre and continue to fascinate not only anarchists. On the anniversary of his death, it is once again a good occasion to revisit his works from an anarchist perspective – and not just The Picture of Dorian Gray. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Top photo: William Murphy CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 The post Echoes of Oscar Wilde appeared first on Freedom News.

THE INTERNATIONALIST MILITANT AND EDUCATOR WAS ALSO A PIONEER OF LGBT+ ORGANISING ~ Cristina Sykes ~ Tino Brugos, a committed trade unionist, educator and internationalist whose activism spanned more than four decades of social struggles in Spain and beyond, died on 10 November 2025 in his native Cantabria. He was 67. Born in Santander to a working-class family, Brugos became a history teacher and long-time syndicalist militant. Colleagues describe him as a figure of rare coherence and generosity, a union organiser who “brought people together, listened, and worked with rigour, tenderness and a sense of humour”. Brugos was central to defending public education, secular schooling and equality in the classroom, transmitting to generations of students a critical understanding of the world and a belief that social transformation was possible. He played a key role in the Inter-syndicalist Confederation, later becoming its head of union action, and was known for his democratic instincts and ability to hold diverse movements together. An early pioneer of LGBT+ organising in Asturias, he helped open spaces where visibility still carried personal risk. He was also active in feminist, ecological and labour struggles, seeing them as inseparable fronts of the same fight for collective emancipation. Brugos’s internationalism was equally deep. He participated in solidarity campaigns with Kurdistan, Palestine and the Western Sahara, and travelled repeatedly as an observer to support human-rights defenders. In 2023 he was expelled from Turkey for his work accompanying the Kurdish movement—an episode fellow activists cite as emblematic of his commitment. Anticapitalistas Asturies remembered him as “a revolutionary encyclopaedia” whose homeland “was anywhere an oppressive regime was doing the oppressing”. He was also active in antifascist memory work with La Comuna and other groups documenting Francoist repression, viewing historical memory as a living tool for present struggles. The CGT union, which had been collaborating with Brugos on recent working groups, noted his tireless dedication to anti-militarist organising, opposition to NATO and solidarity with peoples resisting war and occupation. Brugos had recently retired from teaching but remained active until days before his death. Friends and comrades across the left have expressed profound loss. “Your loss is enormous for the movement in Asturies, the Spanish state and internationally”, wrote Anticapitalistas. For the Confederación Intersindical, his legacy is a mandate to continue “the defence of public services, critical education, equality of rights, democratic memory and solidarity between peoples”. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Verified machine edit The post Tino Brugos (1958–2025) appeared first on Freedom News.