Fredy Perlman

Fredy Perlman studied at Columbia University, University of Belgrade Faculty of Law and University of California, Los Angeles. The recorded working language is English. Employment is recorded with Western Michigan University. Works named in the authority record are Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, Letters of Insurgents, Plunder and The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism.

• Name — Fredy Perlman • Born — August 20, 1934 • Birthplace — Brno, Czechoslovakia • Died — 26 July 1985 • Place of death — Detroit, Michigan, U.S. • Education — Columbia University (MA) University of Belgrade (PhD) • Occupation — Author, publisher and activist • Known for — Against His-Story, Against Leviathan (1983) People

Perlman was born August 20, 1934, in Brno, Czechoslovakia, to Henry and Martha Perlman. His family immigrated first to Cochabamba, Bolivia to escape the Holocaust and later to the United States. Perlman received a master's degree from Columbia University and a PhD from University of Belgrade. He married Lorraine Nybakken in January 1958.

His best-known work, Against His-Story, Against Leviathan (1983) rewrites the history of humanity as a struggle of free people resisting being turned into "zeks" (a Soviet term for forced labour that Perlman borrowed from The Gulag Archipelago) by Leviathans (a term used by Thomas Hobbes for the sovereign nation-state). The book influenced the anarcho-primitivist author John Zerzan. Philosopher John P. Clark states that Against His-Story, Against Leviathan! describes Perlman's critique of what he saw as "the millennia-long history of the assault of the technological megamachine on humanity and the Earth." Clark also notes the book discusses "anarchistic spiritual movements" such as the Yellow Turban movement in ancient China and the Brethren of the Free Spirit in medieval Europe.

Perlman died on July 26, 1985, while undergoing heart surgery in Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital. He was survived by his wife and a brother.