Reed's Reviews > The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective

Spanning decades, this book documents the cat and mouse game between Anarchists fighting against a top-down hierarchal society in the late 1800 - early 1900s and the burgeoning surveillance state desperate to end the political violence. This book dumps tons of information in a genuinely entertaining way... teaching the reader about an inflection point in human history and showing how the fallout dictates life today.

Anarchism in this period meant something more pure and idealistic than most people would think today. It stood for a societal structure built around mutual aid- cooperation, people and communities specializing and helping each other, no state control over the people. It was pushing against the command and control capitalist structure that was dominating society post industrial revolution. The stockyards, railroad and steel companies, helmed by billionaires at the expense of the masses was a sign of the complete failure of society to structure itself in a way that aligns with any sense of humanity. People were forced to work in inhumane conditions for long hours, 6 days a week for pennies while the tycoons profited without lifting a finger. These barrons worked with the state, exemplified by the Pinkertons (a private army) and national guard, to rail against unions and worker protections. It was under these horrible conditions that the likes of Emma Goldman and Alex Berkman rose to prominence.

These revolutionary figures came of age in a period of political violence, where world leaders were getting murdererd by the dozens (a stretch where 3 out of 7 US presidents were assassinated!!). Inspired by the assassination of a czar in Russia who did not live up to his revolutionary promises and a series of violent acts against striking labor unions, notably the Haymarket Riot, these young intellectuals moved to NYC and joined the good fight.

This politically tumultuous period also coincided with the creation and dissemination of dynamite-a world-alerting invention that spurred industrialization and murder at a scale previously impossible. It broke the state-owned monopoly on violence. Anyone with a vendetta could blow up an apartment, church, police station etc. Dynamite was revolutionary! It allowed for crosscountry railroad, the development of subway systems. It changed the world of construction and industry... and also led to terrorism. The story of Alfred Nobel is fascinating. He made a killing off dynamite but was always linked to its dangerous and evil uses- never the industrious ones. Papers wrongly published his obituary before he was dead and he was painted in a bad light. He used his fortune to develop the noble prizes (funding in perpetuity) including the peace prize!

Anarchists, radicalized by robber barons leveraging the state to suppress worker rights and unions, turned to violence to advocate for their cause. The author argues that these were the first instances of terrorism - violence against innocent civilians to advance a political agenda- in history!

Police forces around the world quickly realized that they needed a new, more advanced form of policing to fight this new wave of crime. Brute force and reactive policing wont stop these bombs from going off. Beginning with the Bertillion method in France, the world sprang forward into the surveillance age. For the first time in history police forces were collecting data and using scientific approaches to crime fighting. They used fingerprints, photographs and sophisticated collating and filing systems to log and ID criminals.

Arthur Woods, a former professor and progressive thinker, spearheaded these advancements in the NYPD. He developed undercover units that infiltrated anarchist and Italian terror groups, he wiretapped phones and he partnered with a young detective named Faurot to create the ID burearu. One notable story shows how a young detective embedded himself with an Italian terror group who were planning to blow up St. Patricks cathedral. This is the early early stages of what we now think of as the surveillance state. J Edgar Hoover pushed this even further creating this type of criminal log at the national level.

This is a tale of tragic irony. People like Peter Kropotkin (one of the grandfathers of anarchist thinking), Berkman and Goldman were fighting for a decentralized non-hierarchal society that valued humanity and aid over profits. They either outright promoted violence or at least tacitly condoned it (Berkman tried to assassinate a tycoon, Berkman and to a lesser extent Goldman basically supported the man that killed president McKinley) in the name of their cause. This led to a new, more oppressive form of policing that would turn their worst nightmares into a reality. People were surveilled and controlled at the national level. This new system directly resulted in Berkman and Goldman being deported back to Russia. It is not hard to draw a line from these thinkers directly to the patriot act and Snowden.

This violence combined with suppression from the state (jailing protestors, the Espionage act allowing all publications to be seized by the post office, deportation), resulted in the end of anarchism as a legitimate alternative form of structure. And it isnt crazy to think this movement could've changed the world! Factories were new! They just invented phones!

Really interesting book.