The world is burning down before our eyes. But we shouldn’t give up hope—we should instead join activism.
Paul Lauter is a very important person for activists to learn from because he was there during the 1960s when a lot of great activism happened. The most serious and effective ’60s activism is mostly unknown apart from those who were directly involved. But fortunately for us, Lauter played a crucial role in that activism and can tell us all about it.
I was honored/thrilled to interview Lauter. See below my interview with him, which I edited for flow, organized by topic, and added hyperlinks to.
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1960s Activism
1) What are the most exciting projects that you’re currently working on?
Nothing that “exciting” by comparison to the 1960s.
The Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee (VPCC) has done a bunch of programs about events 50 years ago—they just did one on the Pentagon Papers.
I’m working right now on a webinar for the VPCC that will compare Vietnam and Afghanistan and that will focus not on the ways that the US and its allies departed in chaos and tragedy, but instead on how “we” got into the “big muddy”—and on how Biden’s criticism of the attempt “to remake a country through the endless military deployments of US forces” has enraged many in the US establishment.
I’m also active on the magazine Radical Teacher, and a few of us are trying to get the board to agree to have an issue on “Teaching (About) Socialism”. RT is a real draw for me.
My partner Doris and I just finished an article for a new collection called Gray Love—Nan Bauer-Maglin is the editor, and Rutgers University Press will probably publish the collection in 2022.
And I’ve been thinking through a short book (for a series) on working-class “literature”, but whether I will ever manage to get beyond the chapter on “Herman and Alice” (Melville and Cary) remains to be seen.
2) What are the most exciting projects that you know of that others are working on?
I’m amazed by what Black Lives Matter (and all sorts of related groups) are doing—even here in suburban Leonia. The extent to which the resistance to white supremacy has penetrated even white communities heartens me.
And I’m excited by the emerging movement that questions—in response to events in Afghanistan—the whole rationale for American military adventures. It seems to me that Biden has opened up opportunities to question the received military wisdom that’s shaped American foreign policy for a century and more.
It remains to be seen of course how far that will go—and I think it will depend on how active and coherent the peace movement will be—but the possibilities are exciting and energizing.
3) What are the main ideas in your 2020 book Our Sixties? Noam Chomsky made this comment about the book: “A gripping portrayal of a dramatic era from the unique perspective of a keen observer, astute analyst, and direct participant in all its complex stages. In the author’s words, ‘a book about the transformation of minds, my own and many others,’ and of the country, with rich lessons for those taking up the struggle today.”
Noam has always been generous.
I wanted to show how a “Movement” actually worked. And to do that I wanted to focus on the experiences (plural) of one participant—me—and on how activism in one domain (antiwar work, for example) led to and inspired activism in other domains (civil rights, for example).
I was fortunately—and in some ways uniquely—situated to tell some of that tale because I had for complicated personal and political reasons played some small part in most of the 1960s’ radical activities: civil rights, peace, feminism, radical education, the G.I. antiwar movement, and the like.
I thought—I still think—that there’s a lot to be learned from the Movement (more than one might learn from a left party, which we obviously don’t have). In my book’s last chapter, I talk a bit about these lessons and what it means to resist “illegitimate authority” (Chomsky’s phrase). But I also talk about what it means for a movement to teach and learn, which are critical things for progressive change.
I always thought about what the Movement might mean for the work that I continued to happily do inside and outside classrooms—what we taught, how we thought about how we taught, what “objectivity” actually supported.
So I haven’t written a “guidebook”—like Marty Oppenheimer’s and George Lakey’s 1965 book about nonviolent direct action.
There are places in the book where I know that some of my friends and I would part company, but that’s not a problem, since I was never a friend to sectarianism.
Tom Hayden’s idea was that the Democrats would respond to pressure from the Movement. That had been the case under FDR regarding issues like unemployment insurance and what would become Social Security. And that had also been the case under LBJ regarding the activist civil rights movement. Those two administrations responded to the intense activity that the movements for radical change had generated.
And I saw that happen in the early 1960s in—for example—the relationship between actions like the Selma-to-Montgomery marches and the Voting Rights Act.
And it seems to me that this is happening today. Mainstream political parties pretty much go along as they’ve done—just like a traditional business—until social movements’ actions jolt them. And then they try to find ways to respond to challenges that had always been there but had been ignored—or at least hadn’t been responded to.
The Movement challenged mainstream politics, and my book gives one person’s report on how that was done.
4) What was exciting about 1960s activism?
The Movement was fun—it was always a blast!
It was always interesting and always productive!
It was an aspiring model for a new society.
We thought we could bring about change—and we did. We expected to lose battles—and we did. We nudged the society in positive directions.
And we reexamined what we’d been taught—for example, about academic “objectivity” being the proper pedagogical stance, about whose writing constituted literature or art, about who mattered, and about how what we did in the classroom and the street helped to determine who mattered.
So we were always teaching and learning. And—for me—that was exciting!
We started in 1970 a new publishing and educational organization, for instance, and we called it The Feminist Press. How wonderful that was. It wasn’t SNCC or SDS, but it lasted and thrived and did very good work and made a difference.
The sense that you could make a difference pervaded everything that we did—and that was terrifically exciting!
5) How do you respond to my friend’s comment that the 1960s were “not fun and games”? My friend elaborated: “It was anything but fun. I can think of more pleasant things than witnessing the horrors that were taking place, seeing friends whose lives were destroyed, being maced and gassed, sampling jails around the country, escaping a likely prison sentence by sheer accident, and so on.”
That’s all true. The ’60s weren’t fun and games. We were serious about change—and still are.
Often enough we faced tear gas, billy clubs, jail time, and—for some—even death. But the activity was well worth it because we had goals in life apart from accumulating wealth and power.
There was a joy in the activity that’s hard to describe—I’ve called it “fun” because it was so inspirational and so fulfilling.
6) People should read your 2020 book. In addition, which films can they watch to learn about 1960s activism and about what it was like to be there during the 1960s?
The book briefly discusses a course that I taught on the ’60s—and provides the course’s syllabus, which includes a number of films.
My undergraduate students (mostly born after the ’60s) got a lot out of that course, even if they didn’t share my love for Dr. Strangelove.
VPCC also lists various films that I think are very useful for getting a handle on the antiwar movement, including Connie Field’s terrific The Whistleblower of My Lai.
7) Why didn’t your students like Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece?
They didn’t dislike the film, but they didn’t seem to share my total enjoyment of it—or my hilarity over the famous line “Mein Führer, I can walk!”.
Nuclear holocaust isn’t part of their awareness—my generation experienced “Duck and cover”, whereas they didn’t. And they also haven’t been subjected to strontium-90 arguments or to the idea of a sane nuclear policy.
8) What do you think about the 2020 film The Trial of the Chicago 7? How accurate was it?
I think that Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8 is more accurate than the more recent film. Chicago 7 is probably better cinematically, and is maybe better as fiction, but if you want historical and personal accuracy then Chicago 8 is it.
9) What things do we take for granted now that could not be taken for granted prior to 1960s activism?
That white supremacy exists and needs to be ended.
The significance of Black and female artistic production, literary and otherwise.
American political leadership’s deep and repeated stupidity.
The idea that democracy is not a given but must be maintained and upheld—struggled for against those who might prefer some sort of autocracy.
Where to stop?
10) To what extent—and in what way—did 1960s activism change/transform/civilize America?
That’s a whole book. But think about Stonewall, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and the whole idea that you can challenge the power of fossil fuel interests.
People point to the deep divisions that of course exist in American society. But those who pushed for significant change in the 1960s—on sexuality, race, the environment, and other things—were a small minority, whereas we’re a majority today on most of these issues.
11) How would you characterize Chomsky’s role in the 1960s and Chomsky’s importance in the 1960s?
His importance increased as the years went on.
He keeps people’s minds on reality rather than imaginary revolutions. He models a vital approach to activism—fact-based, no bullshit, put your mind to it. He’s an intellectual’s activist, and an activist’s intellectual.
I think the main thing he does is to implicitly put a demand on you: live up to what your mind can do; don’t let others make your decisions; think; and don’t let your responsibilities slide.
Chomsky’s and Louis Kampf’s students and colleagues also played many good roles.
12) Why was Paul Potter such a great person?
See pp. 70–72 in my book.
He had a personal charisma—this is from Dickie Magidoff today (13 July 2021):
Today I am remembering Paul Potter who passed away 27 years ago today. I for one would love to have his wisdom on some of our themes of the day...he had such a broad consciousness, and struggled more than most to refine and advance our categories of thought. I far from always agreed with him, but he made me think so much more deeply about my own categories and thought processes.
Even more I loved the man and the experiences and memories we shared.
Paul Potter, ¡presente!
13) Which great people from 1960s activism aren’t well known who ought to be well known?
14) What do you think about the idea that the people who matter most are the activist organizers whose names nobody will ever know?
Yes and no. Some “leaders” get to be well-known, of course.
Ella Baker said: “Strong people don’t need strong leaders.” But a movement needs leaders as well as the ordinary folks who are willing to put themselves on the line when necessary.
A strong movement brings forward people who make significant contributions—some of these people return to ordinary life, some become organizers, and some make powerful interventions.
15) What the heck happened to 1960s activism? I feel bad that the momentum was lost.
It was and it wasn’t. Part of my take is that the antiwar effort absorbed—around 1970—a huge amount of time and energy that could have been used to create change, especially when we realized that the war wouldn’t end as long as Nixon ruled.
And don’t underplay the murder of significant leaders.
And then there was our own sectarianism (RCP, Weather Underground, and so on) and division.
The 2021 film about the Chicago Panthers—Judas and the Black Messiah—suggests that we were too naive, and recent important books about COINTELPRO suggest the same. Many of us were naive in failing to imagine that we—in addition to the Vietnamese—were under attack by our government. Silly us.
And we have evidence that the FBI was attacking left groups in 2011, so the exposure of COINTELPRO didn’t put an end to attacks.
But think of the differences today from 1961, both politically and culturally, despite the Trumpists’ reactionary politics.
16) Was 1960s activism a brief fire that burned brightly, but then died?
No.
17) How can that fire be achieved again?
A movement doesn’t “start”, like a race—it grows, like weed. I see it out there growing and growing.
18) What are the biggest misconceptions about 1960s activism?
Your question about a “brief fire” illustrates a misconception.
The Movement succeeded—from my point of view—in a significant number of ways. My book has—to give one example among many—a chapter called “A Man in the Women’s Movement”. Does anyone think that #MeToo would exist without Kate Millett? And there are many other instances where today’s changes are rooted in the activities of the 1960s.
Tom Hayden was right to see that the antiwar movement represented positive change and would bring about that positive change.
We haven’t brought about peace or equality, but we also don’t have George Wallaces or the efforts to assault school children integrating schools, as in Little Rock. We do have January 6th, but many of the people who participated in that are being prosecuted, whereas few of the racists active in the ’60s and before really were.
19) To what extent has everything been bad since the 1960s? Some people feel like the 1960s were exciting/intellectual/cool and then everything since has been boring/dumb/lame.
I don’t see it that way.
The ’60s offered—or at least seemed to offer—the chance to make constructive change and even radical change.
The ’60s were sometimes crazy.
And the ’60s were often exciting, but excitement doesn’t seem to me to be a useful way to measure activism. Sex is exciting, but usually organizing is long and hard. We should look at what’s been organized in the intervening years rather than focusing on excitement.
The Antiwar Movement
1) In what year did the antiwar movement take off? Chomsky made this shocking comment: “When I got started in this, if I could talk to three neighbors in a living room I’d consider it a good evening. I was giving talks on the Boston Common where we had to be protected by the police to prevent us from being murdered. And that was going on until 1966, and Boston is a liberal city incidentally, and this was with the support of the media”.
I think the peace movement had deep roots in peace churches—like the Quakers and Mennonites—and in pacifist organizations like the War Resisters League and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
There were also women’s groups like Women Strike for Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
And there were groups—like the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy—that raised questions about nuclear warfare.
But pacifist ideas only began to spread when nonviolence emerged in the civil rights movement.
And then SDS’s first march on Washington in 1965 brought antiwar ideas into the open—especially on campuses. I don’t think that event’s power has been sufficiently recognized—especially because that event helped to activate young people across the nation.
2) Who did they need to be protected from, and what motivated the people who they needed to be protected from?
Most Americans thought of antiwar protestors as weirdos or worse and in effect said—even if they weren’t especially pro-war—“my country, right or wrong”. They reacted—even if they didn’t attack us—with scorn or hostility. And that could easily translate into violence—especially when agitators fomented something.
Dr. Johnson said in 1775: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” And one needs to understand how we all internalized the idea that our political leadership was upright and moral and that our country was—if not above criticism—on the whole to be admired.
It takes a lot to begin to question popular norms—an important step for me was leafleting for SANE at showings of On the Beach in Amherst. It was like coming out as gay, and it had something of the same dynamic—including the hostility.
3) How much pro-war activism ever happened in the 1960s, and what motivated it?
There was pro-war activism—Chomsky was right about the earlier days.
But it didn’t need to take dramatic form—like a march or demo—to be noticed. A young person could just join ROTC or the Marines or wave a flag at some annual event on Decoration Day. I would put it this way: you didn’t need much pro-war activism because you had Lyndon Johnson.
4) Why did the antiwar movement take off, and why did it take off when it did?
I think some critical successes outside the antiwar movement laid the groundwork for the antiwar movement—the civil rights movement’s successes, the prominence and power of ideas about nonviolence, and the direct actions that an increasing number of young people were taking part in.
People began to raise questions about what we would eventually call “illegitimate authority” in one domain: civil rights. And then it didn’t take much (though it had to be fostered) to raise questions in other domains like foreign policy and male supremacy.
Success builds on success—a critical lesson for today.
5) Did the antiwar movement take off in an exponential manner, so that there was nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, and then suddenly a big blaze?
I don’t think that “suddenly” is accurate. There were deep roots—and a gradual emergence that gained momentum over time.
The best model might be the sit-in movement where there had been efforts and training—for example, in Nashville—along those lines, but it spread like wildfire once it began. And in that case there was strong support from an organization that had been established: SNCC.
And I think that SDS played a similar role after the 1965 Washington demo.
6) Why did the antiwar movement take so long to take off, and how much damage had the Vietnam War done before the antiwar movement took off?
It took the Marines landing in 1965 to bring wide attention to the US’s military activity in Vietnam. I suspect that most people until that point thought of Vietnam as a microbrewery rather than a country far off in Asia.
Why do you say that the antiwar movement took “so long” to take off? Very few people in the early ’60s had heard of Vietnam, let alone knew that “we” were running a war there. It took a long while for people to learn about what was going down. It wasn’t a long time between the first large-scale antiwar action in 1965 and the situation in 1968 where large numbers of Americans had turned against the war.
Think of the time between Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown—now that’s a “long” time!
7) How would you compare the activism against the Iraq War to the activism against the Vietnam War? In the former case, didn’t activism start before anybody had even been killed?
Activism against the “forever wars” in the Middle East had the advantage that people remembered opposition to the Vietnam War.
We didn’t have that in the 1960s when the dominant image of war for most young people was WWII when we took on the Nazis and the “Japs”. Hard to beat that.
People largely knew by the Iraq War that you couldn’t trust American leaders—and people were proved right when the accusations against Saddam of building weapons of mass destruction collapsed.
8) To what extent was the 1960s antiwar movement based on moral opposition to aggression, vs. moral opposition to what was being done to the Vietnamese, vs. concern about wasted money, vs. concern for American soldiers?
Antiwar activism grew slowly before 1965, and more slowly in some places than in others. People (mainly Vietnamese) were being killed long before activism really developed in the US.
The Movement was based on all of these things. And other things—like self-interest, since men didn’t want to be drafted.
The Backlash
1) To what extent did the 1960s scare elites?
I don’t really know. But certainly there’s been opposition to change from those who want to—more or less—preserve the existing system.
2) To what extent has the entire neoliberal period (1970s to today) been a backlash against the 1960s and to what extent is that backlash actually conscious?
I don’t see it as “backlash”. Privilege—white privilege, male privilege, and so on—fights to preserve privilege. And fights particularly against any movement that questions privilege. People capitalism privileges will fight to preserve what the current system provides for them.
Neoliberalism is just one way to carry out that struggle—you turn “the market” into a semi-religious icon, put profit before people, privatize public resources, and so on.
The 1960s was a historical arena of struggle, but it wasn’t wildly different from earlier struggles (like under FDR). And it wasn’t that different from today’s struggles to preserve public schools from privatization (charters), to challenge health-care corporations’ and drug companies’ power, and so on. So I don’t see it as a matter of backlash, but as an ongoing struggle against privilege and illegitimate authority.
3) To what extent has that backlash involved efforts to indoctrinate people so that people view 1960s activism in a certain way, or to disappear 1960s activism from people’s consciousness?
There’s always a tension—a real conflict between marginalized people and people with more power.
People in the 1960s’ movements for change began to gain more power than we initially had and—not surprisingly—there was pushback. And there still is pushback.
It isn’t an effort to make people forget the ’60s—most people don’t remember that time at all. It’s instead an effort to get people to think that nothing can be done to accomplish change—that the status quo is just the way things are. That was Margaret Thatcher’s whole mantra.
Neoliberalism is mainly an effort to elevate “the market” to a position of religious-like authority, to mask other sources (like economic democracy) of authority and decision-making, and to make privatization the First Commandment.
So it wasn’t that elites were “scared” so much as they used new technologies to seek profit and power in new ways—especially when you could use technology to marginalize people.
One big slogan in SDS during the ’60s was: “Let the People Decide”. That’s not what the powerful thought then, or think right now.
Lessons
1) What were 1960s activism’s biggest successes and biggest failures/blunders/errors?
People began in the ’60s to bring into question the power of “illegitimate authority”—white supremacy, male supremacy, and the like.
And began to throw off the shackles of anti-gay hatred.
And began to try to bring nonviolence forward as a primary mode of change.
We also brought a majority of Americans to oppose—or at least to question—the war. And that was no small accomplishment—especially when you consider where antiwar activism started.
The biggest blunder was that we came to suppose that America was on course toward revolution—and that revolutionary tactics were therefore in order. That led to sectarian clashes. And that also made people ignore police tactics like infiltration and repression, since there was no need to worry if the revolution was around the corner.
Much as it might feel good, you can’t let rage direct yourself or your organization.
2) In what ways was 1960s activism suicidal?
Sometimes dangerous—think Freedom Rides or the Edmund Pettus Bridge—but almost never suicidal.
3) What lessons from 1960s activism can we apply today?
My book has a whole chapter on important lessons for today. One lesson is to always question what’s taken for granted.
See also my other responses in this interview.
4) What’s the difference between “feel good” tactics and “do good” tactics? Apparently the Vietnamese hated it when US activists smashed windows.
The Vietnamese were right. It may feel good to march down Main Street smashing car windows, but it’s not useful.
5) What are some examples today of “feel good” tactics and “do good” tactics? What can activists read on the topic of smart tactics, smart messaging, and smart slogans?
On “feel good” tactics, breaking windows is very harmful. But of course you always have to ask in each case whether activists broke windows or whether cops and agitators did it.
Look at January 6th—those events have on the whole damaged the right and exposed various right-wing and fascist organizations to police measures and public scrutiny.
I never thought that the Weather Underground’s “Days of Rage” were useful. But those violent actions did demonstrate that at least some young people were beyond the edge of rage against the powers that were, which increased the pressure on elites to end the war and to end segregation.
On “do good” tactics, I could fill a page with bibliography, but see Marty Oppenheimer’s and George Lakey’s quite useful book about nonviolent direct action.
6) Should one be nervous about “messaging”? Isn’t “messaging” propaganda, by its very essence?
I don’t have any problem with “messaging”—as long as it speaks truth.
It can be propaganda, which is why presidents have carefully cultivated press secretaries.
7) What did the 1960s teach us about effective messaging? I recently published a piece about climate communication, and it turns out that the things that get people to take action on climate are maybe the exact opposite of what you might expect would be effective, whereas the things that you might expect would be effective don’t work and can even make things worse.
I don’t know much about “messaging”.
But one major reason we do demos is to broadcast a message. SDS’s first antiwar march in Washington was so important because it sent the message that lots of people—especially young people—didn’t buy the war.
8) What were some effective/ineffective 1960s slogans, and why were they effective/ineffective?
“One man, one vote”—speaks to the essence of democracy and (though sexist) is still a great slogan.
“Part of the way with LBJ”—an SDS comedy.
“Bring the troops home now”—I think that this was very effective because it expressed exactly what almost all Americans wanted.
But I have to say that “Never again” is the best slogan that I know—even if it’s been badly appropriated—since it really grabs people.
“Girls say YES to boys who say NO”—this was ineffective because it was sexist in its essence.
“Off the pigs!”—this turned on people in the Black community (and beyond) who hated the cops for good reason, but it turned off many others and overrode the very positive and very productive aspects of the Panthers’ programs.
9) Would “It’s pro-soldier to be anti-war” have been a good slogan, and was it used?
I don’t recall it ever being used. “Bring the troops home now” was.
10) What are the issues with today’s slogans, such as “Black Lives Matter” and “defund the police”? These two slogans require constant clarification, so that might indicate that they’re bad slogans.
Two very different cases.
“Black Lives Matter” was and remains an important slogan. It answers a main question in education and in politics: “Who and what matters?”
“Defund the police” was ill-considered and should have been—and was—questioned from the get-go. The slogan is misleading.
11) In what instances did 1960s activists harm their cause by pushing for unrealistic objectives? There’s a potential example of this today regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, since the activists pushing for a one-state solution might be helping the Israeli expansionists’ objectives, since a two-state solution is the only thing that threatens the ongoing Greater Israel project.
What was “unrealistic”? American withdrawal from Vietnam? That initially seemed unrealistic and there were those who promoted half-measures, but it turned out to be fully possible. And integration seemed unrealistic regarding busses and regarding lunch counters.
Don’t you have to hitch your wagon to the stars? You have to view things outside received wisdom’s confines—that’s what a movement does.
Think of AOC’s 2018 run for Congress. Unrealistic.
But you do have to seriously investigate what’s possible—and see reality, not what you would like to see.
12) In the 1960s, in what instances did activists (and politically progressive people in general) help bring about horrific outcomes because they didn’t want to take 10 minutes off from activism to vote against the worse of two candidates and then get back to 24/7/365 activism? There’s a huge example of this today, since many people didn’t want to take 10 minutes off from activism to vote against Trump and then get back to 24/7/365 activism or whatever they were doing.
I actually don’t myself know of any persuasive study about whether significant numbers of liberals or leftists stayed away from voting in ’68.
We all know that many liberals and leftists voted for Nader in 2000—especially in Florida—and that this took votes away from Gore and thus threw the election to Bush.
Political scientists say that voting is to some extent a “habit”. One key to Stacey Abrams’s success has been to significantly increase how many people develop that habit.
13) To what extent does the whole Never-Bidenite phenomenon indicate the death of traditional left culture? Never-Bidenites promote the idea that you should stay home and not vote, and that this is an important way to move the Democrats left. But in profound contrast, traditional left culture—going way back—always took for granted three facts. First, politics is activism and the elite emphasis on voting is propaganda. Second, elections can have massive consequences and voting can indeed be an important thing to do. Third, voting is a very small thing and will take up maybe 0.01%—or maybe 0.001%—of the total investment (of time and energy) that you make each year as an activist.
I myself didn’t notice any “Never-Bidenite” phenomenon. One virtue of Trump is that he helped to combat this phenomenon.
I support the idea that at the very least you should vote against the worse candidate and then get back to work. (Sid Lens used to call such voting “lesser-weevilism”—a great ’60s joke.) But I don’t give money to the Dems, except to particular candidates when that seems appropriate or necessary.
Will elections alone bring an end to exploitative capitalism? Of course not.
Can elections bring about important changes? Of course. Elections obviously bring about important changes—look at the Indochina Peace Campaign. Or look at LBJ’s voting rights legislation, even though SCOTUS blocked part of it. Socialists took elections seriously in the early 20th century for a variety of reasons: to gain visibility for their arguments, to recruit adherents, to push the mainstream political parties, and occasionally to gain office.
Mainstream political parties don’t move until/unless social movements push them. Elections are one tool in an ongoing struggle—just don’t think that electing Democrats will transform society, but instead elect Democrats and then push them through activism.
14) How can activists deal with fringe elements or with opportunists? Consider the 2020 George Floyd protests in which “96.3% of 7,305 demonstrations involved no injuries and no property damage”, but in which “arson, vandalism, and looting between May 26 and June 8 were tabulated to have caused $1–2 billion in insured damages nationally—the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history”. I don’t know whether fringe elements did the arson/vandalism/looting or whether opportunists did those things.
First determine who’s doing what—for example, who’s breaking windows?
Make sure to call something out if you think it’s wrong. And make sure to know the difference between trustworthy friends and people you should be cautious about.
We were naive in the ’60s about how cops and provocateurs were harming activist organizations, and I suspect that people are similarly naive today.
Marilyn Webb was active in SDS. She tried to give a speech at the counter-inaugural rally in 1969, but men in the crowd shouted her down with sexist and violent comments. Those of us who had helped to organize the rally didn’t recognize the guys who were engaged in this disruption, but we never considered that they might’ve been cops—or provocateurs cops had hired—who wanted to disrupt the rally and to turn off women from the activism.
15) To what extent did drugs harm 1960s activism? Chomsky made this comment: “As for drugs, my impression is that their effect was almost completely negative, simply removing people from meaningful struggle and engagement.”
I generally agree with Noam.
I’ve always preferred Scotch. And people would—at SDS parties—generally provide me and my spouse with Dewar’s when they retreated to the bedroom to smoke weed.
I can’t think of an instance where drugs were helpful, but I can think of instances where drugs were harmful. Sometimes drugs incapacitated people, but the bigger issue was that drugs enabled police action and added useless danger.
It’s absurd that grass is still a banned substance at the Olympics. And it’s a horror that OxyContin has led to so many deaths—and to the Sacklers’ unimaginable wealth.
Michael Pollan had a very interesting and very smart article in the NYT where he discussed how “we” might deal with drugs now that the war on drugs is ending. But the article profoundly disturbed me because it presented the utopian recommendation that the US should somehow model itself on Indigenous societies—that’s the correct vision, but I feel like Jeff Bezos will have a colony on Mars before that ever happens.
Distress, anxiety, and poverty lead to drug abuse (including alcohol abuse). And drug abuse also leads to distress and anxiety—it goes both ways. And it’s true that a more just and equitable society could break that vicious cycle, but it will take massive struggle to achieve that in the US.
16) What does this striking image (of a 1967 antiwar protest in Washington) say about the 1960s?
It’s a nice image. But it’s amazingly white and overwhelmingly male. It represents only a part of the Movement—and a talky, inactive part at that. Nothing wrong with being talky, but action speaks.
17) What’s bad about lack of ethnic diversity in a movement?
Narrowness. My experience, reading, and learning are so limited. I need to learn—especially from people whose experience is different from my own. I don’t necessarily accept others’ conclusions, but I need to think about others’ conclusions.
It’s not that I had to chant “Off the pigs!”—which meant “Kill the cops!”—when I went to meetings with the Baltimore Black Panthers in 1969, but I did have to listen to what they were saying.
Lessons: Serious vs. Silly
1) To what extent were there in the 1960s serious activists (who scared the heck out of the elites) and also silly/insignificant/violent people (who the elites loved because they could be used to attack progressives)?
Who’s a “serious activist”? It’s not all that clear where to draw the line.
2) To what extent do you have that same breakdown today—serious activists (who scare the heck out of the elites) vs. silly/insignificant/violent people (who the elites love because they can be used to attack progressives)?
To divert attention from the real issues, conservatives always find it useful to point to progressives’ silly or violent actions.
3) To what extent does propaganda today try to disappear the serious activists from view and try to emphasize the silly/insignificant/violent people?
The main thing is the message, not the messenger. So propaganda doesn’t try to “disappear the serious activists” so much as it tries to undercut radical messages.
For the public, it’s usually about the message, not the messenger. The guy who had the headgear on January 6th wasn’t the problem for most Americans. The problem was instead the violence and the absurd Big Lie—that’s why ordinary people are turning the insurrectionists in.
4) What were the silly things during the 1960s?
Most of American pop culture.
Unless by “silly” you mean what the yippies did, like the 1969 “in-HOG-uration” ceremony. Chicago 7 illustrates that stuff pretty well.
5) What about Woodstock and flower power and the effort to levitate the Pentagon?
Woodstock—and putting flowers in gun barrels—said something about youthful joy.
It’s true that ’60s culture sometimes distracted people from the politics that we had to do.
But distraction wasn’t the main effect. The main effect was to inspire kids to value their own creations. ’60s culture meant that kids did not have to buy into what they were being sold in classrooms and in the mainstream media. The idea was that the kids—and those they supported—would create new poems and new songs and new clothes. And new politics too.
’60s culture wasn’t a big deal for me personally—I just wasn’t interested in the culture or the music. I was beyond the edge. I turned 30 in 1962. My kids were—by the time Woodstock happened—9 and 10, so I was already a parent.
My hair was long. I wore jeans and boots. I remember that one time little kids ran up to me in the Mexico City airport and pointed at me and yelled in a Mexican accent: “Hippie! Hippie!” I guess that I was a hippie compared to my colleagues. See my book’s chapter about teaching at Smith College. I didn’t get it—at the time—that people in the English department also saw me as a “hippie”.
6) Does power try to make people concentrate on these silly things?
Sure—whenever possible.
That’s Trump in a nutshell.
7) Chomsky made this fascinating comment: “I remember once in the 1960s, there was a demonstration that went from Boston to Washington and TV showed some young woman with a funny hat and strange something or other. There was an independent channel down in Washington—sure enough, showed the very same woman. That’s what they’re looking for. Let’s try to show that it’s silly and insignificant and violent if possible and you get a fringe of that everywhere.” But is Chomsky saying that the media gravitated toward the woman with the funny hat in order to make the activists look bad? Isn’t it instead the case that the media simply gravitate toward what’s stimulating and what’s entertaining and what’s visually interesting, which happened to be the woman in the funny hat in this instance?
The mainstream media doesn’t necessarily wish to make activism look bad. Certainly not all of the mainstream media wishes to.
But the media has a story to tell. And the question is whose story will get told and who makes that call—see my book pp. 159–160. The very name “Black Lives Matter” is so important because it draws attention to people who have long been marginalized and long been excluded from historical and literary study—not to speak of their exclusion from government-supported mortgages.
Think about who most reporters are, how most reporters have been educated, the people most reporters report to—the media’s intellectual logic, if not exactly its economic logic. My students often knew—in my experience—more than education reporters about what was happening.
8) Chomsky indicated to me (regarding my idea that the media gravitated toward the woman with the funny hat in order to stimulate/entertain and in order to show something visually interesting) that the media are supposed to be there to inform us, and therefore my critique of the media is harsher than Chomsky’s. What do you think about the point that my critique of the media is harsher than Chomsky’s?
Let’s not worry about whose analysis is harsher.
To what extent does the media’s imperative to entertain undermine the media’s traditional role of informing the public? And should the media lose its special protections if the media fails to perform this traditional function of informing the public? I don’t think there are easy answers to these two questions.
Dick Ohmann suggests in Selling Culture that—in effect—a choice was made at the turn of the 20th century between media sustained by subscribers (like I. F. Stone’s Weekly, Substack, and so on) and media sustained by advertising and/or by interest groups.
Lessons: The “Radical” Brand
1) Elites will try to get the public to dismiss/attack/demonize activists, so what can activists do to make this as difficult as possible? I’ve always felt that you want to give off a “conservative” vibe, since an antiwar protestor in a suit and tie who has a conversative haircut will be a lot harder to get people to dismiss/attack/demonize than an antiwar protestor who has purple hair, lots of facial piercings, and weird clothes.
Clothing is deeply political and you have to think it through to fit the situation. It’s the same with physical deportment (do you look people directly in the eye?), language, and most performances. So there’s no one formula. Who exactly are you talking to and what exactly are you asking of them?
You’ve set up a straw person here—there’s a huge space between the well-dressed suburbanite and the purple-haired Village rebel. Most young people I know today would be impatient with either, though they might favor facial piercings. But on the other hand, our village’s wonderful mayor might feel more comfortable with jackets and dresses.
And things do change. We wore ties and dresses when we demonstrated in 1968 at a big Modern Language Association meeting. But most people would see that as stuffy and out of touch if we did that today.
To show respect, I always wore a jacket and tie to class. And I would probably dress “up” for door-to-door canvassing. But I certainly wouldn’t dress “up” in the context of handing out leaflets at a factory gate, since that would say “management”.
2) Should the term “socialism” be dropped, since people with enough imagination to try to change the whole world ought to be able to have enough imagination to come up with a term that hasn’t been incessantly dragged through the mud? Ellerman gave this comment: “Those who say they seek a new world should at least be able to find a new word.”
It’s true that some people will never get over what they’ve been taught about “socialism”.
But “socialism” isn’t just a word. It’s a concept with an important history—the word has a meaning. There’s no reason to lose that history and to lose that meaning. The question “Why do you scorn socialism?” makes people question how they think and what they think. It’s useful to rehabilitate “socialism” because that makes people confront the ideas contained in the word “socialism”.
You might think that it’s a counterproductive waste of time to bring up “socialism” and to battle with people over its definition and over whether it’s a good thing.
But in my view, there’s no way around it. I don’t think that you can avoid this word as you engage in the process of educating people and helping them think differently. It’s important for movements for change to change negative terms’ valence. “Protestant” was once a term of derision, and gay activists have reapproriated “faggot”.
Like I said, I’m trying with a few others to get Radical Teacher to do an issue on “Teaching (About) Socialism”.
3) Do you think that general terms have a place in political discussion/analysis? There are famously vague “-isms” that people use in political discussions. And even the term “media” is general.
Generalizations are necessary, but you have to use them carefully.
4) Why use terms like “comrade”? These terms arguably convey nothing that you couldn’t convey with normal words. And these terms arguably signal to others that you’re weird/radical/dubious, that you should be dismissed, and that you should be regarded with suspicion.
I can’t think of alternatives to these terms that achieve the same purpose without the baggage.
5) Aren’t terms like “comrade” and so on the verbal equivalent of having purple hair and tons of facial piercings in that these terms add nothing and instead constitute deliberate self-marginalization? I would imagine that power absolutely adores it when people self-marginalize through verbal or other means.
Yes and no.
There was a demo where we marched up Sixth Avenue to Central Park. I very much remember a pudgy woman at that demo. She was naked. Every demo has a “margin” that will often free people up who don’t want—and don’t need—to “go that far”. She established a margin—lots of others stayed just to her right. My naked lady did for some what I apparently did for others when I appeared in a classroom in boots and jeans.
But these displays often put people off—what you call “self-marginalization”. Abbie Hoffman thought that these displays would liberate people, and sometimes that was true.
6) Is quoting Marx a form of self-marginalization too? I would even argue that quoting Marx needs to be well-justified, since it’s a gift to power to do so, and yet I’ve rarely seen an instance where it actually made sense to quote Marx. Chomsky will often quote Adam Smith and Winston Churchill to make the points that others quote Marx in order to make.
Yes. I agree.
Nobody overseas has a problem if you quote Marx. Here some people have a problem.
7) What do you think about Ellerman’s comment about “revolution”? He gave this comment: “Many radicals seemed to be 99% involved in posturing about revolution—posturing that counts as their ‘badge of Red courage’. It is the telephone-sex theory of radicalism: talking the deal is the deal.”
That’s probably true for some. But I resist these generalizations.
Lessons: The “Dumb Left”
1) There’s something that I call the “Dumb Left”. They’re very dumb and very sectarian. According to these people, workers are good people and capitalists are evil people who shouldn’t be platformed or allied with or associated with. Noam Chomsky wants you to vote against Trump, so therefore: “Chomsky is an old, financially comfortable, out-of-touch liberal.” Noam Chomsky supports keeping troops abroad to protect the Kurds, so therefore: “Chomsky is an old, financially comfortable, out-of-touch liberal.” It’s absolutely nuts. How can people have such a suicidally dumb view of the world?
There are dumb people on the left and on the right, of course.
But so what? People do learn and it’s one major function of the Movement to help teach them—and to help teach us too.
2) What lessons can we learn from the 1960s about the “Dumb Left” and about how to combat dumbness today? SDS was a serious organization. But when SDS broke up, some became loyal Maoists and handed out the Little Red Book at factory gates, while others decided to make the “revolution” happen by breaking windows on Main Street. If you didn’t see the light then you were a sell-out, a comfortable professor, etc. That’s what happens with a “left” with no continuity, no popular base, and no working-class base. Back then, the “Dumb Left” was young and mostly spoiled. And again today the “Dumb Left” is young and mostly spoiled, except these days the “Dumb Left” is also able to waste their time on social media.
That’s what my book is about—at least in part.
But the “dumb left” isn’t necessarily young—some are not so young. And the “dumb left” isn’t necessarily spoiled—some are just angry, and some (like some of my friends from the old SDS) are taken with Hillbilly Elegy.
Hope
1) How big a deal was Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, which brought young people into the world of activism? This campaign was apparently a smashing success, since it totally changed political discussion. The Sanders campaign also massively influenced how the Biden administration took shape, though I’m not sure how to establish how big that influence was.
I think that it was very significant—and that it continues to influence Democratic legislation right now.
2) To what extent do we live in a world of kindling that can ignite just like kindling ignited in the 1960s? I would like to believe that this is true, since the future seems bleak if this isn’t true. You just keep trying to light a spark. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. And then suddenly there’s a fire, suddenly a bigger fire, and suddenly a blaze.
It’s obviously true under particular circumstances. I think that the murder of George Floyd is the closest thing that we have to a recent example of this, but I would argue that you can’t usefully regard as “kindling” the conditions that led to the demonstrations or the anti-racist work all over the country that contributed to BLM’s rise.
I think that the Weather Underground’s “Prairie Fire” theory of change—which they got from Mao’s 1930 essay “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire”—oversimplifies how change happens.
3) What do you think about these four components of activism? Solidarity, finding out what you really think and what your values really are, gaining information (including through information networks), and action. On the last component, there might be no general answer to what the best tactics are, though there might be some core principles.
These are central to activism.
I’m big on solidarity myself.
Activism isn’t necessarily about gaining information—I’ve often found it difficult to determine the accuracy of information derived from activism. I receive—and have myself written—dozens of fundraising letters, and these letters are often calculated not to clarify but instead to motivate.
And in fact, fundraising (like other efforts to promote causes and organizations and candidates) often obscures what’s actually happening on the ground—that’s understandable, since your goal is to advance ideas or candidates, not to point to problems.
But you don’t sufficiently credit how activism provides sustenance—especially for activists who find themselves rowing upstream. I go to demos whenever I can—even if I have to push a walker—because I come away from these demos better charged.
4) What does art have to do with serious activism? I love art, but I think that we should challenge the idea that art has anything to do with serious activism.
Some art does, and some art doesn’t.
Consider Carolyn Forché’s wonderful book, The Angel of History—or Goya.
Not always activism of which I’d approve, but that’s not the issue.
Anyone serious about life and about change needs to also be serious about the power of art to move people and to enlighten them.
5) What is your favorite poetry?
Depends. When and where?
To read to my classes? Ginsberg’s “America”.
At my deceased wife Annie’s memorial I read Donne’s “The Relic”: “A bracelet of bright hair about the bone”.
I did a takeoff on “You Are Old, Father William” for a friend’s 90th.
My book has quotations from Adrienne Rich, W. D. Ehrhart, Dudley Randall, and many others—very sustaining.
Nothing fits everything.
Except maybe “That time of year thou mayest in me behold”.
Or “Success is counted sweetest”.
Or “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!”, which evokes not only Keats but also Charlie Parker.