Methodology

The Long Insurgency studies how the radical left has sought to change American life. We focus on Marxist traditions: how their ideas developed, who carried them, and what people did with them. The research follows those ideas through books and classrooms, political movements, and the work of institutions.

We use radical left for people and movements seeking fundamental changes to capitalism or the distribution of social and political power from a left-wing standpoint. The term gives the project a broad boundary. Within it, each account explains the beliefs and aims of the people involved.

Our standpoint is critical. That shapes our questions, but the sources must support our answers. Disagreements, abandoned plans, and failed efforts belong in the history, along with evidence that challenges an explanation we are testing.

What belongs in the investigation

The research begins with the Institute for Social Research and follows connections that the evidence supports. Other routes into American life remain open to investigation. Choosing a starting point does not settle where an idea began or which source mattered most.

We distinguish a tradition from the subjects it addresses. A work about education, race, or the environment might draw on several schools of thought. Its subject alone tells us little about its politics. We ask which arguments the author adopted, which they changed, and where they disagreed with others.

Labels help us follow ideas across people and periods. We explain how we use them and whether they come from the participants, a scholar, or our own reading of the evidence. Their meanings can shift. A label that fits one book may tell us less about a later career, and people in the same organization can disagree.

Political goals need the same attention. What did people hope to change? How did they expect to achieve it? We separate a long-term aim from an immediate campaign and examine the money, access, and support available to carry it out. Where an immediate reform forms part of a wider revolutionary strategy, we explain that connection through the participants' arguments and actions.

The sources we use

We work from books, letters, institutional records, video, and audio. Recorded lectures, speeches, interviews, broadcasts, and podcasts can help establish what people said and how they presented their work. Scholarly studies supply context and competing accounts. Each source has to support the particular claim made from it.

For written material, we check the passage in context and record the edition and page. For recordings, we check the speaker and source, distinguish the event date from the upload date, and cite timestamps. We also examine editing and the surrounding discussion. A recording establishes that someone made a statement; whether the statement is true is a separate question.

Transcripts help us find passages. We check quoted words against the recording and flag unclear speech. Translations identify the edition used or explain how a research translation was checked. Search tools and AI assistants help locate material, but their summaries cannot replace the source.

Our own explanation stays separate from quoted words. We credit sources and use bounded excerpts. Publishing a recording, clip, or image requires a recorded basis for its use and an accessible alternative where needed. Citing a source does not grant permission to reproduce it.

How we trace influence

Influence takes more work to establish than contact. Suppose a student attended a thinker's course. That record establishes attendance. To explain what the student took from the course, we need evidence in their writing, teaching, or other work. Their later work can help us judge which ideas they took up and what they made of them.

We also follow ideas through institutions. A proposed policy establishes an intention. A decision can show adoption. Explaining its effects requires evidence of what followed and consideration of other causes. Membership, employment, funding, and agreement each describe a different relationship.

When sources conflict, the account explains the disagreement. Where the evidence supports only part of a claim, we narrow it. A central conclusion that depends on missing evidence needs more research before publication.

Why we call it insurgency

The title draws in part on language used by people and movements we study to describe their own work.^[1] We pay particular attention when they speak of insurgency, subversion, uprising, or revolution. Those words can help explain the changes they seek and how they expect to bring them about.

We examine that language alongside their activities. What do they want to overturn or replace? How do they describe the existing order? What role do they assign to education, organizing, or work within institutions? We follow how those arguments develop and how people use them to recruit supporters, guide action, and explain their purpose to wider audiences.

Political language changes with its setting. A writer may adapt a military concept, use a revolutionary term in a broader sense, or give familiar language a new meaning. We explain the meaning needed to understand the argument. Formal definitions can help where they clarify the account; they need not govern every comparison.

When the sources establish an aim to overthrow or replace the existing system, we say so plainly. We also examine disagreements over what should replace it and how that change should happen. The account follows the particular people and movements for which we have evidence.

Interpretation and judgment

Ideas and movements rarely fit neat categories. We look for patterns across the record and explain why we think a connection matters. A comparison can illuminate part of a story even when the cases differ. Similar approaches may develop without common leadership or a single plan.

Our assessments make that reasoning visible. We show the evidence behind an interpretation, consider other explanations, and explain how confident we are. We distinguish a participant's stated aim from our judgment about the wider role their work played. Where the record supports a conclusion about deliberate infiltration or coordinated action, the account identifies what supports that judgment.

How we present the work

Analysis pieces explain a development or argument through connected, sourced research. Dossiers provide the fuller history of a person, organization, or other subject. These are our formal research formats. Reading pathways connect those accounts so readers can follow a wider story.

Editorial articles give us room for a different kind of writing: shorter observations, opinion, commentary on a video clip, or an idea still being explored. They can be more conversational and open-ended. We identify editorial writing so readers can distinguish it from the formal research. Within it, we make clear where we are offering a judgment or exploring a possibility. Factual claims and quotations still need support.

Timelines and relationship maps accompany the formal research, with sources for their dates and connections.

Review and revision

Before publication, an independent reviewer checks the proposed account and its supporting evidence. Known gaps become research tasks that record what we checked and where to look next. An unsuccessful search can leave a question open; it does not establish that an event never happened.

New evidence can change an account. Corrections go through review, and material changes to a finding should explain what changed and why. An open question can remain part of the account, with an explanation of what is known and what further evidence could resolve it.