New Left

From RationalWiki
(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
(Major groups)
(Major groups)
Line 18: Line 18:
 
The Yippies, led by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Ruben, blended New Left and anarchist rhetoric with entertaining Sixties counterculture performance.  The more sober SDS sprang more clearly from, and in partial opposition to, the "Old Left."  The SDS emerged as a college group affiliated with the "League for Industrial Democracy," which was associated with organized labor and had existed in one form or other since 1905.  Some SDS leaders were so-called 'red diaper' babies, or children of radicals from the Old Left.  Others were children of privilege with roots in Christian pacifism.  In 1962, SDS put out the first real statement of "New Left" Principles, the "[http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/huron.html Port Huron Statement]."  It put forward a "new" vision of what socialism and politics could be about, focused on "relationships" and calling for an end to racial inequality and imperialism.<ref>It should be noted that it explicitly was ''not'' holding up the USSR as a model; instead, it denounced the USSR early on as well.</ref>  SDS went through successive stages of radicalization.  At the time of the "Port Huron Statement" SDS was liberal-reformist and put forth a program for civil rights, against poverty, and removing Dixiecrat influence from the [[Democratic Party]].  Later, inspired by the Black Panthers and the [[Berkeley Free Speech Movement|Berkeley free speech movement]], as well as protest against the Vietnam War, SDS became more militant and switched its focus from reform to resistance and [[direct action]].  Finally, by 1969 the SDS leadership was in the hands of competing Maoist factions and infighting split the organization between factions aligned with the Progressive Labor Party (PL, a remnant of the Old Left), and anti-PL Maoists who went on to form the Weather Underground, Revolutionary Youth Movement, Revolutionary Union and other groups.  SDS ceased to be influential after their fractious 1969 convention.
 
The Yippies, led by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Ruben, blended New Left and anarchist rhetoric with entertaining Sixties counterculture performance.  The more sober SDS sprang more clearly from, and in partial opposition to, the "Old Left."  The SDS emerged as a college group affiliated with the "League for Industrial Democracy," which was associated with organized labor and had existed in one form or other since 1905.  Some SDS leaders were so-called 'red diaper' babies, or children of radicals from the Old Left.  Others were children of privilege with roots in Christian pacifism.  In 1962, SDS put out the first real statement of "New Left" Principles, the "[http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/huron.html Port Huron Statement]."  It put forward a "new" vision of what socialism and politics could be about, focused on "relationships" and calling for an end to racial inequality and imperialism.<ref>It should be noted that it explicitly was ''not'' holding up the USSR as a model; instead, it denounced the USSR early on as well.</ref>  SDS went through successive stages of radicalization.  At the time of the "Port Huron Statement" SDS was liberal-reformist and put forth a program for civil rights, against poverty, and removing Dixiecrat influence from the [[Democratic Party]].  Later, inspired by the Black Panthers and the [[Berkeley Free Speech Movement|Berkeley free speech movement]], as well as protest against the Vietnam War, SDS became more militant and switched its focus from reform to resistance and [[direct action]].  Finally, by 1969 the SDS leadership was in the hands of competing Maoist factions and infighting split the organization between factions aligned with the Progressive Labor Party (PL, a remnant of the Old Left), and anti-PL Maoists who went on to form the Weather Underground, Revolutionary Youth Movement, Revolutionary Union and other groups.  SDS ceased to be influential after their fractious 1969 convention.
  
At the same time, many civil rights groups came to align themselves with the New Left as well.  The most obvious was the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panthers.  SNCC began in 1960 to coordinate civil rights marches in the south, and radicalized in the middle of the decade under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael; in a famous speech Carmichael renounced non-violence and popularized the slogan of "black power".<ref>[http://courses.washington.edu/spcmu/carmichael/transcript.htm Read a transcript here]</ref>  Reflecting its change of direction, SNCC changed its name in 1969 to the Student National Coordinating Committee.  The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in 1966 in Oakland, [[California]] and engaged in militant protest against police brutality in black communities, often carrying firearms.<ref>The Black Panthers' protest style was deliberately militant but not violent, more for shock value; a typical protest had them marching with shotguns dressed in matching leather jackets and berets, chanting "The revolution has come. Off the pig! It's time to pick up the gun.  Off the pig!"  In a supreme irony, California's strongest [[gun control]] law at the time was signed by then-governor [[Ronald Reagan]] specifically to disarm the Panthers and stop them from carrying firearms in public.  The Panthers held a protest while the California legislature was debating this law, in which they held a press conference denouncing the "racist California legislature"'s attempt to violate the [[Second Amendment]] rights of blacks, and then marched into the California capital building carrying shotguns - legal at the time.</ref>  The Black Panthers made the mobilization of the lumpen proletariat of the ghettoes their mission and evoked a sentimental socialism contrary to the Marxist tradition.<ref>Rebecca N. Hill.  2008.  '''Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-Lyncing and labor Defense in U.S. Radical History'''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pp. 268-269.</ref>
+
At the same time, many civil rights groups came to align themselves with the New Left as well.  The most obvious was the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panthers.  SNCC began in 1960 to coordinate civil rights marches in the south, and radicalized in the middle of the decade under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael; in a famous speech Carmichael renounced non-violence and popularized the slogan of "black power".<ref>[http://courses.washington.edu/spcmu/carmichael/transcript.htm Read a transcript here]</ref>  Reflecting its change of direction, SNCC changed its name in 1969 to the Student National Coordinating Committee.  The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in 1966 in Oakland, [[California]] and engaged in militant protest against police brutality in black communities, often carrying firearms.<ref>The Black Panthers' protest style was deliberately militant but not violent, more for shock value; a typical protest had them marching with shotguns dressed in matching leather jackets and berets, chanting "The revolution has come. Off the pig! It's time to pick up the gun.  Off the pig!"  In a supreme irony, California's strongest [[gun control]] law at the time was signed by then-governor [[Ronald Reagan]] specifically to disarm the Panthers and stop them from carrying firearms in public.  The Panthers held a protest while the California legislature was debating this law, in which they held a press conference denouncing the "racist California legislature"'s attempt to violate the [[Second Amendment]] rights of blacks, and then marched into the California capital building carrying shotguns - legal at the time.</ref>  The Black Panthers made the mobilization of the lumpen proletariat of the ghettoes their mission and evoked a sentimental socialism contrary to the Marxist tradition.<ref>Rebecca N. Hill.  2008.  '''Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-Lyncing and labor Defense in U.S. Radical History'''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pp. 268-269.</ref> The militancy of the Black Panthers in Oakland further radicalized the white student left at nearby Berkeley, who came to see the Panthers as something of a vanguard they wanted to imitate.  Many members of SDS went into "the ghetto" to try to help with organizing the poor, particularly the white poor,<ref>As most members of SDS were white, they felt they lacked the authenticity and experience to try to organize non-whites.</ref> to help push for greater social justice and racial integration.
 
+
The militancy of the Black Panthers in Oakland further radicalized the white student left at nearby Berkeley, who came to see the Panthers as something of a vanguard they wanted to imitate.  Many members of SDS went into "the ghetto" to try to help with organizing the poor, particularly the white poor,<ref>As most members of SDS were white, they felt they lacked the authenticity and experience to try to organize non-whites.</ref> to help push for greater social justice and racial integration.
+
  
 
In its rejection of conventional Soviet-style Marxism, the New Left had engagement with a wider variety of ideologies, some of which were completely non-socialist or at best vaguely utopian.  As already noted, then-trendy philosophers ranging from Marcuse to the existentialists had a broad effect influencing both the New Left and the forms it took (counterculture, student-led protest, Black Power).  There has long been debate as to whether [[Yippie]]s and [[Hippy|Hippies]] can be considered part of the New Left.  Many outsiders consider them both part of the general anarchism that the New Left fostered, but most of the members of SDS and other groups denounced both the Yippies and Hippies as unserious jokers.  It has also been debated whether the liberal "Wisconsin school" of academic [[historical revisionism]] (William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko) is properly considered part of the New Left, although they have been labeled as such.  For another example, the early [[libertarian]]s grouped around [[Murray Rothbard]] and Karl Hess initially conceived of libertarianism as an alliance between the New Left and the [[paleoconservatism|Old Right]].<ref>Karl Hess soon went full-on New Left, dropping out of society, joining the Black Panthers, SDS, and IWW, leading antiwar [[direct action]]s, starting an ambitious community self-sufficiency project in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of [[Washington, D.C.]], and eventually embracing a "back to the land" philosophy and moving to [[West Virginia]].</ref>
 
In its rejection of conventional Soviet-style Marxism, the New Left had engagement with a wider variety of ideologies, some of which were completely non-socialist or at best vaguely utopian.  As already noted, then-trendy philosophers ranging from Marcuse to the existentialists had a broad effect influencing both the New Left and the forms it took (counterculture, student-led protest, Black Power).  There has long been debate as to whether [[Yippie]]s and [[Hippy|Hippies]] can be considered part of the New Left.  Many outsiders consider them both part of the general anarchism that the New Left fostered, but most of the members of SDS and other groups denounced both the Yippies and Hippies as unserious jokers.  It has also been debated whether the liberal "Wisconsin school" of academic [[historical revisionism]] (William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko) is properly considered part of the New Left, although they have been labeled as such.  For another example, the early [[libertarian]]s grouped around [[Murray Rothbard]] and Karl Hess initially conceived of libertarianism as an alliance between the New Left and the [[paleoconservatism|Old Right]].<ref>Karl Hess soon went full-on New Left, dropping out of society, joining the Black Panthers, SDS, and IWW, leading antiwar [[direct action]]s, starting an ambitious community self-sufficiency project in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of [[Washington, D.C.]], and eventually embracing a "back to the land" philosophy and moving to [[West Virginia]].</ref>

Revision as of 15:27, 16 February 2012

The New Left[1] was a collection of leftist groups in the US and UK that sprang up in the early 1960s as a reaction to the timidity of liberalism on racial equality and the opposition to the War in Vietnam and against the thoroughly discredited and powerless "Old Left" of the Communist Party USA and its various Trotskyite enemies. Rather than focus on just the material aspects of capitalism, and attempting to work through labor unions to achieve revolution by the masses, the "New Left" focused on the young (particularly college students) in order to cause a full system change all around. The New Left also focused more heavily on the problems of imperialism than did the Old Left.

Contents

Influences

Generational change marked by the predisposition of youth to challenge authority on moral terms was exacerbated by the large numbers of youth entering institutions of higher education.[2] (The rebellion even began to spread to high schools.)[3] There they encountered both older conservative and more recent liberal accounts of history and social science that failed to adequately explain national and world events. The timidity of the liberal response to racial oppression and imperialist violence motivated a search for explanation in the heady post-war fusion of Marxism and Freudianism favored by leftist intellectuals in the West. It also led to a preference for action over reflection. Consider the following rant by Yippe leader Abbie Hoffman:

"Once one has experienced LSD, existential revolution, fought the intellectual game-playing of the individual in society, of one's identity, one realizes that action is the only reality; not only reality but morality as well. It exists in the head. I am the Revolution."[4].

Orthodox Soviet style Marxism-Leninsm held no attraction for Western radicals. The Soviet Union had lost its moral legitimacy in the advanced industrial countries, even among leftists, after the crimes of Stalin had been published, some in the New Left went looking for a more "pure" form of Communism. The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslavakia that put an end to the "Prague Spring" reinforced the alienation from Moscow.

Inspiration, or at least the imagery of mass rebellion, was found in the work of the new, non-Western Communists, like Fidel Castro, Che Guevera, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh.[5]. As great leaders who had thrown off the shackles of Western colonialism, their images would become icons for those who opposed capitalism and Western imperialism in general.[6]

On a more philosophical level, the works of Herbert Marcuse, especially One Dimensional Man, were particularly important. Marcuse criticized the socially alienating effects of modern capitalism incorporating Marxism with Freud and critical theory in a way which the Old Left had not done. He extended this critique also to identifying the same social alienation under Soviet communism, and in the place of the stodgy "industrial proletariat" he championed an oppositional culture led by youth, minorities and the intelligensia. Also influential were Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus; both had been part of the anti-Nazi resistance in France, Camus as an anarchist, while Sartre was considered a "fellow traveler" with the French Communist Party but did not join. Both continued to support leftist causes but turned toward developing the philosophy which would come to be labeled existentialism.

Major groups

The most salient American groups in this time period were the Yippies, the "Students for a Democratic Society", or SDS, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party. Their British counterparts coalesced around the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or CND, which is still in business[7], but could also be recognized in everything from the Trotskyist organizers of Militant Tendency to the urban guerrillas of the Angry Brigade.[8]

The Yippies, led by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Ruben, blended New Left and anarchist rhetoric with entertaining Sixties counterculture performance. The more sober SDS sprang more clearly from, and in partial opposition to, the "Old Left." The SDS emerged as a college group affiliated with the "League for Industrial Democracy," which was associated with organized labor and had existed in one form or other since 1905. Some SDS leaders were so-called 'red diaper' babies, or children of radicals from the Old Left. Others were children of privilege with roots in Christian pacifism. In 1962, SDS put out the first real statement of "New Left" Principles, the "Port Huron Statement." It put forward a "new" vision of what socialism and politics could be about, focused on "relationships" and calling for an end to racial inequality and imperialism.[9] SDS went through successive stages of radicalization. At the time of the "Port Huron Statement" SDS was liberal-reformist and put forth a program for civil rights, against poverty, and removing Dixiecrat influence from the Democratic Party. Later, inspired by the Black Panthers and the Berkeley free speech movement, as well as protest against the Vietnam War, SDS became more militant and switched its focus from reform to resistance and direct action. Finally, by 1969 the SDS leadership was in the hands of competing Maoist factions and infighting split the organization between factions aligned with the Progressive Labor Party (PL, a remnant of the Old Left), and anti-PL Maoists who went on to form the Weather Underground, Revolutionary Youth Movement, Revolutionary Union and other groups. SDS ceased to be influential after their fractious 1969 convention.

At the same time, many civil rights groups came to align themselves with the New Left as well. The most obvious was the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panthers. SNCC began in 1960 to coordinate civil rights marches in the south, and radicalized in the middle of the decade under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael; in a famous speech Carmichael renounced non-violence and popularized the slogan of "black power".[10] Reflecting its change of direction, SNCC changed its name in 1969 to the Student National Coordinating Committee. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in 1966 in Oakland, California and engaged in militant protest against police brutality in black communities, often carrying firearms.[11] The Black Panthers made the mobilization of the lumpen proletariat of the ghettoes their mission and evoked a sentimental socialism contrary to the Marxist tradition.[12] The militancy of the Black Panthers in Oakland further radicalized the white student left at nearby Berkeley, who came to see the Panthers as something of a vanguard they wanted to imitate. Many members of SDS went into "the ghetto" to try to help with organizing the poor, particularly the white poor,[13] to help push for greater social justice and racial integration.

In its rejection of conventional Soviet-style Marxism, the New Left had engagement with a wider variety of ideologies, some of which were completely non-socialist or at best vaguely utopian. As already noted, then-trendy philosophers ranging from Marcuse to the existentialists had a broad effect influencing both the New Left and the forms it took (counterculture, student-led protest, Black Power). There has long been debate as to whether Yippies and Hippies can be considered part of the New Left. Many outsiders consider them both part of the general anarchism that the New Left fostered, but most of the members of SDS and other groups denounced both the Yippies and Hippies as unserious jokers. It has also been debated whether the liberal "Wisconsin school" of academic historical revisionism (William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko) is properly considered part of the New Left, although they have been labeled as such. For another example, the early libertarians grouped around Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess initially conceived of libertarianism as an alliance between the New Left and the Old Right.[14]

Some other groups within the New Left proved to be a breeding ground for political cultism. The best known of these was the National Caucus of Labor Committees, led by Lyn Marcus.

Vietnam War

SDS and other groups had long opposed the war, and so used it as the foundation of their critique of "establishment" politics. Most of the members of the New Left struggled to find any traction with the larger American and British publics until public opinion as a whole turned against the Vietnam War following the Tet offensive. SDS led a march on Washington to try to bring show the government how serious the American people were about it. Presumably some found some of the tactics of SDS unsettling, particularly waving placards extolling the virtues of Ho Chi Minh, the face of the enemy during the war. Many times during protests, members of SDS would be attacked by counter-protesters, often construction workers.

This led many members of the group to "clean up" in 1968 in order to campaign for Eugene McCarthy as the anti-war candidate in the Democratic primary. When back-door deals and the repression of the Chicago Daly machine kept student activists from actually participating in the convention, many members of SDS and other groups camped out in the nearby parks. When it was announced that Hubert Humphrey was the nominee, many in the parks rioted.

Weathermen

The failure of the "Get Clean for Gene" campaign led some (including Bill Ayers) to believe that nothing short of revolutionary violence would change the US system. This group of SDS members went full-Maoist, and adopted three propositions:

  1. The primacy of confronting national chauvinism and racism among working class whites.
  2. The urgency of preparing for militant, armed struggle now.
  3. The necessity of building revolutionary collectives that demand total, wholehearted commitment of the individual to struggle against everything that interferes with the revolutionary struggle.[15]

The Weathermen are best known today for several terroristic acts, including bombing government buildings. However, for the Weathermen, the most important action was the "Days of Rage" in Chicago, where the Weathermen hoped to start the revolution through direct action. They expected thousands of newly-minted guerrillas to show up, and by destroying the police stations and the symbols of capitalism in the city to inspire leftists across the country to rise up in general rebellion against the racist, imperialist, capitalist system. Instead, roughly 300-400 students showed up, but they gave it a go anyway.

According to Weatherman estimates, over a million dollars in damage was inflicted, and roughly fifty policemen went to the hospital, with far fewer casualties on the Weatherman side. However, the Weathermen were hit with heavy legal penalties, with 250 arrested and 40 or so with heavy felony charges. The Weathermen considered it a victory, and were certain that it was going to lead to the overthrow of the system shortly.

Impact of the New Left

The New Left contributed its own imagery of popular revolt. What else did it leave? Rather than bringing the Vietnam War to an end sooner the reaction mobilized against it by the powerful conservative and liberal enemies it made helped to divert public attention from the tragedy of the war. However the war dragged on because it never emerged as the primary issue in a U.S. presidential election campaign. Most of the major civil rights victories are attributable to mainstream civil rights groups like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. SNCC provides the exception to the rule. Unfortunately thereafter the mainstream civil rights groups stagnated.

Capitalism itself was never clearly in jeopardy from the critiques of the New Left.

Probably the biggest impact came out of a movement that formed due to the mistakes of the New Left. The second wave of feminism, or "Women's Liberation", was spawned in large part because of the sexism within SDS and SNCC.[16] Despite a great deal of rhetoric concerning "equality", women in these groups found themselves repeatedly denigrated, and forced into domestic roles. This was especially galling in SDS, because many of the most successful ventures (particularly in the community organizing arms) were led and run by women. As women became fed up with being second class even in the revolution, they left and founded their own far more successful movement, which really helped to change the face of American society.

However, many conservatives act as if the New Left somehow managed to take control of the whole country. For instance, this book tries to make the case that US cities are failing because the New Left managed to take control of the public services and unions, and that these things are bankrupting the country today.[17] Another example of this is the "documentary" Generation Zero which purports that old members of the "New Left" secretly engineered the financial crisis to create global socialism. That none of this makes sense doesn't stop people holding the New Left up as current dangers.

The Tea Party -- the right's New Left?

Some [18] have drawn comparisons between the modern-day Tea Party movement and the New Left. Dick Armey, one of the main figures behind the Tea Party, praised the methods of Saul Alinsky, the leading tactician of the New Left. Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, the famous guidebook for left-wing activists and organizers, is now a right-wing bestseller, and has been co-opted by the Tea Party in the form of Rules for Radical Conservatives. The Tea Party, like the New Left, has a penchant for shock value, street theater [19], marches and rallies in order to bring attention to the movement. Anti-science denialism infects both movements -- the New Left feared nuclear power and industry, while many Tea Party supporters harbor a similar distrust of stem cell research, evolution and the idea that global warming is man-made. A few especially radical New Leftists talked about going "back to the land" to escape the corruption of modern society; likewise, radical teabaggers talk about "going Galt" or becoming survivalists to escape from big government. Some[20] have even compared Glenn Beck to Abbie Hoffman.

At their core, however, both believe in the fundamental purity and virtue of individual people, and that evil is introduced from above, by corrupt authority and elites -- Third-World-destroying warmongers and thieving capitalists for the New Left, and socialist bureaucrats and Hollywood elitists for the Tea Party. Both groups dismiss the prior 30 years of liberal (then) or conservative (now) government as failing to meet standards of ideological purity. The New Left thought that Presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson were all corporate sellouts and warmongers who were upholding the decadent capitalist system, while to the Tea Party, Bush, Nixon and even Reagan, the man they once revered as a conservative icon, are nothing more than deficit-spending socialists. Most importantly, both the New Left and the Tea Party viewed "the establishment" as the enemy, wanted to return power to "the people", and start a revolution.

The plunge of ideological movements into an ever-deeper irrationality when they near intellectual exhaustion may be a recurring feature of American political life. The New Left emerged at the moment when American liberalism was sputtering to a halt in the face of the contradictions between a domestic policy of social and economic reform and a foreign policy of aerial bombardment and hawkishness. The Tea Party, meanwhile, has emerged at the moment when growing numbers of Americans realized there was a contradiction between the Christian values espoused by conservatives and the actual practice of a laissez-faire capitalism devoid of concern for human well being -- and indeed, a further contradiction between the hate spewed by today's conservative Christians towards gays, Muslims, and other minorities and what was actually preached by Jesus.

If the Tea Party is a modern-day New Left, then judging by history, this has foreboding consequences for the right, and very welcome consequences for the left. In the late '60s, while the left was spinning into such moonbattery and radicalism as the Weather Underground, the LaRouche movement and various corporate-imperialist conspiracy theories, conservative intellectuals like William F. Buckley Jr. and Russell Kirk were offering a sensible-sounding alternative to the crumbling New Deal consensus, while simultaneously purging the right of fringe groups like the John Birch Society and the hardcore white supremacists and anti-Semites. Cue the triumphant election of Ronald Reagan. Today, however, the conservative movement has moved far to the right in the name of ideological purity; tax protesters and assorted denialism and conspiracy theories (including birthers and the militia movement) are all gaining sympathy, while Glenn Beck and Joseph Farah have become trusted names in news and commentary. Liberals, meanwhile, are increasingly dismissive of the rantings of Al Sharpton, the hard greens (while simultaneously seizing from them the banner of environmentalism) and 9/11 conspiracy theorists, while more moderate, center-left leaders are becoming the public face of progressivism. If the Tea Party shoots itself in the foot the way the New Left did, then sane political thought may prevail in the years to come.

Footnotes

  1. Although many groups are off limits to hateful stereotyping, Sixties radicals, hippies, environmentalists and Buddhists are still fair game. Which is their punishment for having developed sense of humor.
  2. Kirkpatrick Sale. 1973. SDS. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0394719654. Pp. 21-22.
  3. John Birmingham, ed., 1970. Our Time Is Now: Notes From the High School Underground. New York: Bantam.
  4. Free (Abbie Hoffman). 1968. Revolution for the Hell of It. New York: Pocket Books. p. 13
  5. n.a. The Cox Commission Report: Crisis At Columbia. 1968. New York: Vintage Books. p.9
  6. Two of those four are still somewhat venerated, despite the fact that all four engaged in ruthless suppression of all possible human rights and often even mass murder.
  7. Tariq Ali. 2005. Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties. London: Verso. p. 132, ISBN 978-1844670291
  8. Gordon Carr. 2010. The Angry Brigade: A History of Britain's First Urban Guerrilla Group. Oakland, CA: PM Press. ISBN 978-1604860498.
  9. It should be noted that it explicitly was not holding up the USSR as a model; instead, it denounced the USSR early on as well.
  10. Read a transcript here
  11. The Black Panthers' protest style was deliberately militant but not violent, more for shock value; a typical protest had them marching with shotguns dressed in matching leather jackets and berets, chanting "The revolution has come. Off the pig! It's time to pick up the gun. Off the pig!" In a supreme irony, California's strongest gun control law at the time was signed by then-governor Ronald Reagan specifically to disarm the Panthers and stop them from carrying firearms in public. The Panthers held a protest while the California legislature was debating this law, in which they held a press conference denouncing the "racist California legislature"'s attempt to violate the Second Amendment rights of blacks, and then marched into the California capital building carrying shotguns - legal at the time.
  12. Rebecca N. Hill. 2008. Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-Lyncing and labor Defense in U.S. Radical History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pp. 268-269.
  13. As most members of SDS were white, they felt they lacked the authenticity and experience to try to organize non-whites.
  14. Karl Hess soon went full-on New Left, dropping out of society, joining the Black Panthers, SDS, and IWW, leading antiwar direct actions, starting an ambitious community self-sufficiency project in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and eventually embracing a "back to the land" philosophy and moving to West Virginia.
  15. Shin'ya Ono, "You Do Need A Weatherman", an account of how one anti-violent member of SDS became a Weatherman
  16. A History of Feminist Activism at Miami University, Oxford
  17. Never mind that these very cities actually end up paying taxes to support the areas that the writer holds up as the productive parts of the country.
  18. David Brooks, "The Wal-Mart Hippies". The New York Times, March 4, 2010.
  19. Compare the people dressed in powdered wigs at Tea Party rallies to the people who nominated a pig for President in 1968 Chicago.
  20. Michael Lind, "Glenn Beck is the new Abbie Hoffman." Salon.com, February 23, 2010.
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support