Politics
Caesar's Column is partly based on Donnelly's commitment to agrarian Populism. In 1892, two years after the publication of his novel, Donnelly drafted the platform of the Populist Party, in which he wrote,
- "A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism."
This is the world view of Caesar's Column: a man comes from his rural environment to the heart of a brutal capitalist oligarchy; he sees its corruptions firsthand, and witnesses its destruction.
Donnelly's novel partly concerns the debated question of the alleged anti-Semitism of the Populist movement. Donnelly's villain is an Italian Jew — but his protagonist has a name, Weltstein, that must have suggested a Jewish identity to many readers.
Read more about this topic: Caesar's Column
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are “up to a point.””
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“The will to change begins in the body not in the mind
My politics is in my body, accruing and expanding with every act of resistance and each of my failures.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)