2 février

1779 -- US: Anthony Benezet refuses to pay taxes to support Revolutionary War.

1851 -- Mexico: José Guadalupe Posada lives (1851-1913). Engraver & illustrator.

1859 -- Havelock Ellis, American sex reformer, lives.

1872 -- Russia: Peter Kropotkin leaves during this month (I don't have exact date — ed.) to travel to Switzerland. Upon arriving in Zurich Peter immediately joined the local chapter of the International. He was given socialist literature unavailable in Russia. After reading numerous works on socialism, Peter continued his vigorous study of the subject by traveling throughout Switzerland to question various socialist leaders. At this time, he began to attend the worker's meetings of the International (rather than the leader's meetings). In March, a friend suggests that Peter visit the centers of the Jura Federation in Neuchatel.

1894 -- Román Delgado lives, El Ferrol (Galice, Spain) (1894-1952). Spanish anarchosyndicalist, emigrated to Cuba, but expelled in 1915, he went to America & joined the Magoniste group in San Antonio, Texass.

1902 -- Argentinian anarchist Mika Etchebehere (1902-1992, née Michèle Feldman) lives. Militant Marxist & anarchist. Fought in the Spanish Revolution with the P.O.U.M. & also with Cipriano Mera.

1905 -- Russian-born Joan Rivers/Phyllis Diller wanna-be & American writer whose work fronts her philosophy of objectivism (moralizing autocrats), Ayn Rand lives, St. Petersburg. Wrote a pot-boiler, The Fountainhead, extolling greed & individual acts without conscience. Important film critic & so-called defender of the individual against the state & collectivism who slavishly adopted the missionary position before that august governmental body, HUAC (investigating Hollywood actor-communists plotting to take over the world), as a voluntary & friendly witness. Here she delivered her most damning evidence, that a WWII film is communist propaganda because it shows Russian children smiling. Her testimony was the longest of any witness called, which inspired the TV series "Babylon I-LXIX." A science fiction writer & the L. Ron Hubbard of her day, she spent much of the '50s appearing on talk shows. (See 6 March for her enlightened defense of genocide.)

1926 -- France: Jules Leroux (1860-1926) dies. Militant anarchist cooperativist.

1931 -- Argentinean anarchist Paulino Scarfo dies in a shoot out with police.

1938 -- England: During this month Emma Goldman plans a spring benefit for the SIA; feels more confident about its prospects when more individuals agree to serve as sponsors, including art critic Sir Herbert Read, Laurence Housman, Havelock Ellis, John Cowper Powys, George Orwell, & Rebecca West, among others.

1939 -- Soledad Gustavo (Teresa Mañe) dies, in Perpignan. Mother of Federica Montseny.

1939 -- England: This month Emma Goldman is frantic with worry until she receives firm news of the whereabouts of anarchists who have escaped from Catalonia after the collapse of the resistance in Spain. Most find sanctuary in France but face harsh conditions in internment camps; others reach Paris without permits.

1948 -- Radio broadcast of Antonin Artaud's "Pour En Finir Avec le Judgement de Dieu" is cancelled. A heretic's scatological tirade at the extreme of the linguistic lunatic fringe, it was perhaps Artaud's electronic revenge against his incarcerators — an invective broadcast from the end of the mind.

1950 -- Spain: Manuel Sabate (Sabater) Llopart is garrotted in Barcelona prison. An anarchist militant, he was accused of having secretly crossed the frontier to take part in the Resistance. One of the main reasons for his harsh sentence of death is that he is the brother of Francisco Sabate, a famous & legendary member of the anarchist action groups.

1970 -- England: Philosopher/activist Bertrand Russell dies in Penryndeudraeth, Merioneth, three years short of 100. His War Crimes Tribunal was instrumental in providing a world forum which could not be ignored (even by US media), revealing US lies & atrocities perpetrated during the Vietnam War years.

1972 -- Tribute for the anarchist poet/author Kenneth Patchen held at City Lights Poets Theater.