Hello r/AskHistorians!
I'm Noah Eber-Schmid, assistant professor of political science at Indiana University Bloomington and author of Founding Fanatics: Extremism and the Formation of American Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2025). I'm a political theorist who works on the history of American political thought, popular democracy, and political extremism. My recent work focuses on American political thought and popular politics during the Founding era and the way that democratic actors engaged in forms of extremism to expand and deepen democratic claims to equality and participation.
Since the American Revolution, scholars and citizens have often assumed that dispassionate rationality, reciprocity, and nonviolent tolerance are necessary conditions for the sustained development of democracy. Accordingly, they reject oppositional parties that spurn consensus, terms of mutual respect, and often use force to accomplish their political goals, denouncing extremists as irrational and antidemocratic.
Founding Fanatics is a work of political theory and the history of political thought that questions this understanding, examining how moments of tension, violence, and extremism in the United States have sometimes served the pursuit of political equality. Focused on the American Founding era, it examines case studies of the early memorialization of the Boston Massacre, popular debates over Shays's Rebellion, the thought and practices of the Democratic Societies, and the use of the French Revolution in American political discourse.
I argue that by recognizing the role that democratic extremism has played in the development of American popular democracy, citizens and scholars will better understand how such movements may contribute to the ongoing struggle to deepen and expand political equality and participation.
Happy to answer questions about popular political thought, political extremism, and political practices during the American Founding and more generally in contemporary democratic theory/philosophy. Ask me anything!
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