The Long Sixties: “Lefty” Hooligan, “What’s Left?”, September 2023

The Sixties, henceforth designated the Long Sixties, are a touchstone for me. I make a lot of “coming late to the party” as I became aware of politics only in 1968 at age 16. And so I return to this period of my life obsessively in my writing. This piece treats the historical period as crucially intertwined with the history of the United States. To understand what I’m hoping to accomplish, consider that from one perspective the Vietnam War (1946-1975) was a war for national liberation—part of the decolonization wave of Africa, Asia and Latin America—that saw the defeat of first France and then the United States, and inspired similar armed struggles around the globe. But from another perspective America’s initial involvement in the Vietnam War—when the US first shipped military aid to the French colonial administration in 1950 and Eisenhower first sent military advisors to train the South Vietnamese Army in 1955—was crucial to the historical impact of the Long Sixties through the numerous movements I detail below. Because so much happened in these two decades, I’m necessarily selective about what I’m including in this synopsis. Instead of my regular column, I’m fashioning this as a type of “CliffsNotes,” a shorthand attempt to summarize the Long Sixties every time I drop the term. Expect this to be periodically updated in future installments as I expound and expand on it.

THE LONG SIXTIES: 1955-1975:
Contours Of U.S. History:

Colonial origins, continental expansion (Manifest Destiny) with displacement of the native population, and hemispheric hegemony (Monroe Doctrine). Capitalist individualism and entrepreneurialism alongside Black plantation slavery, Civil War, failed Reconstruction, codification of Jim Crow racial segregation reinforced by white supremacist terrorism. Beginnings of empire and imperialist interventionism, robber baron capitalism mythologizing laissez-faire while creating monopoly, US entry onto international stage with first World War. Assumption of two-camp capitalist/socialist global division around 1917 Russian Revolution, economic crisis in world capitalism, Great Depression, beginning of US welfare state with FDR/New Deal. Second World War between fascist Axis powers and US/USSR allies of convenience, US supersedes British imperial reach. Post-war consolidation of American corporate state and Pax Americana.

Elements Of The Long Sixties:

• American Way Of Life: American Liberalism’s welfare state, as constructed by Franklin D. Roosevelt (New Deal), Harry Truman (Square Deal), John F. Kennedy (New Frontier), and Lyndon Johnson (Great Society), integrated with the team cooperation, bureaucratic management, and multinational scope of Monopoly Capitalism. The individual subsumed to the organization. This required worker-management cooperation to guarantee labor peace through a liberal corporatist consensus. The American Way of Life defined a time of suburbanization, consumerism, material surplus and affluence; “the world’s highest standard of living.”

• The Cold War: The post-second World War division of the world into two contending power blocs, the US-dominated “Free World” and the USSR-dominated “Communist bloc.” Instead of direct military conflicts between the two superpowers, proxy or brush wars were fought indirectly between their spheres of influence, often in nations on the periphery (Korea, Vietnam). Anti-imperialist wars of national liberation often relied on asymmetrical guerrilla warfare to achieve decolonization, national self-determination and putative socialism. The rise of China (PRC) and the Third World further fractured and complicated the Cold War internationally. A bipartisan Cold War consensus about the means and ends of American foreign policy against the Soviet threat was considered to have prevailed domestically

• Rock Music/Youth Culture: The cross-pollination of rhythm-and-blues and gospel music from American Black culture with country/western music to create rock-and-roll, a cross fertilization of ethnic and regional styles that included the trend toward inter-racial bands. Rock Music/Youth Culture emphasized the importance of youth trends, tastes, and consumption and spread almost immediately to Britain, then to Western Europe, and finally to the rest of the world. A number of distinct rock-and-roll sub genres emerged by the late 1960s (blues rock, folk rock, country rock, psychedelic rock, jazz/rock fusion, progressive rock, heavy metal, etc). Dovetailing with the Beat Generation’s nihilism, youthful rebellion became social discontent that, when combined with quasi-sacramental drug use and liberated sexuality, formed the “turn on, tune in, drop out” freethinking communalist Hippie Counterculture/Youth Movement. Large, multi-day music festivals and intentional communities were hallmarks of the movement. The collective organizing, urban cooperatives and back-to-the-land rural communes of the San Francisco Diggers, Merry Pranksters, Good Earth, Hog Farm, White Panther Party, UATW-MF, etc. attempted to establish a practical alternative society on the ground and had decidedly anarchistic sensibilities.

• Civil Rights Movement: Starting with Brown vs Board of Education, the NAACP, and desegregation the rise of Black protest, nonviolent civil disobedience and various tactics (marches, boycotts, sit-ins, etc) through ML King, SCLC, SNCC and CORE. The move away from moderate incrementalism and nonviolent civil disobedience led to the Black Power Movement as enunciated by Stokely Carmichael and embodied by the Black Panther Party (BPP) for Self Defense. Both revolutionary Black nationalist and socialist, the BPP was influenced by one of the legacies of slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction—Black Nationalism—specifically Marcus Garvey (Back to Africa) and the Nation of Islam (Black separatism) both of which emphasized cultural and economic autonomy. The BPP monitored the Oakland Police with armed patrols and ran a Free Breakfast for Children Program. In turn, Black Power led to Brown Power (Brown Berets, Young Lords Party), Yellow Power (Red Guard, I Wor Kuen), and Red Power (American Indian Movement). The Black Student Union and Third World Liberation Front at San Francisco State College led a successful 3-month-long strike demanding ethnic studies in 1968, and AIM occupied the island of Alcatraz for nearly 19 months (1969-1971).

• New Left: Students for a Democratic Society, founded in 1962, and the sit-in occupation at UC Berkeley in 1964-65 known as the Free Speech Movement represented an ever-widening student rebellion that consciously set itself apart from the party-oriented/class-oriented Old Left of the Socialist Party (social democratic), Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist), and Socialist Workers Party (Trotskyist). The New Left’s sit-ins, teach-ins, occupations, demonstrations and strikes in colleges and universities across the country cross-pollinated with the Hippie Counterculture and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, sometimes producing hybrids like the Yippies. SDS continued with university and community/neighborhood organizing, shifting to anti-draft/anti-war work as the 60s went on. The attempt by the anti-revisionist Maoist Progressive Labor Party-Worker/Student Alliance to take over SDS led to sectarianism, factional infighting and splintering, and eventual dissolution. An ever-increasingly fractious landscape of multiplying groupuscules known as the New Communist Movement roughly polarized between a clandestine armed struggle tendency [Weatherman/Weather Underground Organization, May 19th Communist Organization, Black Liberation Army, Symbionese Liberation Army, et al] and a vanguard party-building tendency [October League/Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist), Revolutionary Union/Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, Organization for Revolutionary Unity, League of Revolutionary Struggle, Communist Workers Party, Sojourner Truth Organization, Venceremos Organization, ad nauseam] The NCM’s ideological hodgepodge of anti-revisionism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, support for Cuba, Vietnam, national liberation struggles generally and various Third World ideologies, Maoism, Stalinism, Hoxhaism, etc., never congealed into a single coherent organization. Its endless wrangling over the “correct line,” macho posturing, overt homophobia, and support for genocidal Third World movements (Khmer Rouge, Shining Path) were notable negatives. A notable positive was the turn to rank-and-file labor organizing (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, Miners for Democracy, Teamsters for a Democratic Union, etc) emphasized in the Long Seventies (1965-1981). Other tendencies survived the collapse of SDS with a revival of anarchism, a Gramscian/socialist-feminist New American Movement etc. And the NCM was paralleled by a bewildering proliferation of Trotskyist groupuscules (International Socialists, Revolutionary Socialist League, Freedom Socialist Party, etc,) [Precursor Revolutionary Labor Movements: The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) with its emphasis on direct action and use of free speech fights. The Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO, later Congress of Industrial Organizations) with its stress on collective bargaining and use of the sit-down tactic. Both deployed various labor actions (strikes, boycotts, slowdowns, sabotage, etc) culminating in the all-encompassing General Strike.]

• The Women’s Liberation Movement had its roots in Women’s Suffrage, with the goal of complete social equality for women, ending the patriarchy, and ultimately abolishing all sexual and social hierarchies in a realization of full human intersectionality. Feminist organizations included NOW (liberal), New American Movement (socialist), Bread and Roses (anarchist), and Redstockings (radical). Because homosexuality was illegal until recently, the Gay Liberation Movement relied on secret social clubs—Mattachine Society for gay men, Daughters of Bilitis for lesbian women—to organize. The San Francisco Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in 1966 and the New York Stonewall Riot in 1969 propelled the Movement into the public eye.

• Ecology Movement: The first pictures of the whole earth from space inspired both Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog and the environmental movement, which celebrated the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Environmental organizations range from liberal (Sierra Club) to radical (Earth First!). Without the planet there were no sixties, long or otherwise.

• GI/Veterans Movement: Whereas Black Americans constituted just 12% of the population, they occupied 31% of the ground combat positions in Vietnam and suffered 24% of the casualties. Martin Luther King called Vietnam a white man’s war but a Black man’s fight. It was also a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight, in that high school grads had to go off to fight in Vietnam while the children of the educated got college deferments. After the Tet Offensive the US was losing the war although few citizens realized it and almost none admitted it. There were nearly a half million American troops in-country by 1967. Drug use among the troops—from marijuana to heroin—was rampant, as was racial unrest. What followed was the near-collapse of the US Military with murder, riot, beatings, arson and mass refusal to deploy or follow orders. Troop casualties rose annually, reaching nearly 17,000 in 1968, at which time Nixon’s combined strategy of Vietnamization and expanding the air war across Southeast Asia went into effect. A growing number of US military bases in this country and abroad were host to anti-war GI coffee houses off base where propaganda and organizing was available. And veterans were returning to the burgeoning mass Anti-Vietnam War Movement in the streets spearheading creative protests like Operation Dewey Canyon III in 1971 where Vietnam Veterans Against the War threw back their medals, awards, ribbons and commendations onto the US Capitol building. Early anti-conscription, civil disobedience and anti-war organizing came from traditional peace groups (Quakers, War Resisters League) and took hold among students facing the draft. The Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party formed the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (New Mobe) in 1966 and organized ever larger national marches and rallies, a mass demonstration strategy demanding “immediate withdrawal” as opposed to “negotiated peace.” Replaced by the SWP-dominated National Peace Action Coalition after acrimonious splits in 1970, other anti-war organizations and strategies arose (MayDay Tribe with mass civil disobedience, People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice with a “People’s Peace Treaty”). Divisiveness weakened the anti-war movement, causing a lull in protests and demonstrations. The largest protest against the Vietnam War occurred on April 24, 1971 in Washington, DC where upwards of half a million participated, with another 150,000 marching in San Francisco, CA. The National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against The Vietnam War reached its peak on August 29, 1970 with a march of 30,000 in East Los Angeles.

 

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Deep denial: “What’s Left?” October 2012, MRR #353

I am mildly surprised whenever circumstances conspire to emphasize something that I’m writing in these columns. In this case, it was current events, and the surprise was not pleasant. When neo-nazi Wade Michael Page killed six worshippers and wounded three others at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, on August 5, 2012, this terrible event underscored something I mentioned two columns ago, and that I wanted to return to now. Page offed himself after a cop he injured wounded him, so we’ll never know if he mistook the Sikhs for Muslims in his twisted, racist mind. But the addled logic of folks like Page is what I want to focus on in the following paragraphs.

To repeat what I wrote two columns ago, neo-nazis are fond of asserting that: “The extermination of six million Jews during the second World War is the greatest myth of the twentieth century. Adolf Hitler never ordered the Final Solution, the Nazi regime never constructed extermination camps with gas chambers, and the German people had nothing to do with any mass murder of Jews. This is a lie against Hitler, a canard against National Socialism, and a defamation against the German nation, all of whom are victims of the victorious Allies and their Jewish/Zionist overlords. The Jews are responsible for this excretory myth, this abominable lie, and therefore the Jews deserve to be utterly annihilated.”

(Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews, reissued in 1985 in a revised and definitive 3 volume edition by Holmes & Meir, is the authoritative, primary source study of the Nazi Final Solution.)

Let’s concentrate on unpacking the contorted argument that simultaneously denies and calls for the Holocaust by understanding the essential structure of its self-justifying logic. Party A did not commit certain crimes against party B, despite all evidence to the contrary. The crimes in question were invented by party B to discredit and destroy party A. Therefore, party B deserves to have similar crimes committed against it as punishment for those lies.

This kind of logic is not confined to the irrational, ultra-racist members of extreme rightwing fringe groups. I heard a similar statement when I was 17, living in Ventura, California, and subject to the Vietnam War draft. I was a zealous anarcho at the time, although I’d recently lost faith in my original pacifism even as I continued to apply for a Conscientious Objector status to military service. I was at a meeting of Ventura’s Action Committee for Peace and Social Justice in a rickety shack off Ventura Avenue, in those days virtually a rural road. The meeting had ended, and the shack’s occupant, an 80-year-old Wobbly named Ed who had served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, was holding forth on his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. Specifically, he was detailing how, in the regions of the Republic under control of the anarchist CNT labor union, often in cooperation with the socialist UGT labor union, Spain’s workers and peasants ran the farms, factories and businesses, villages, towns and cities, creating a truly libertarian society governed through direct democracy from the bottom up. I and a handful of equally young, starry-eyed, neophyte leftists hung on his every word.

“Your arsehole anarchist comrades tried to wreck the Republic and insured Franco’s victory,” Bernie growled in response. A 76-year-old CP member who had also fought in the International Brigades, he made sure Ed’s version of events did not go uncontested. “They were a bunch of uncontrollables, pistoleros, criminals, and bandits who sabotaged Republican rule every chance they got, hindered both the war effort and the economy by insisting on pushing through their brand of revolution, and committed atrocities that alienated the Spanish middle classes and the international community. They slaughtered priests and raped nuns, giving Franco’s forces unearned sympathy and valuable propaganda weapons.”

“Those bullshit lies were fabricated by the Spanish CP to give them an excuse to suppress Spain’s genuine social revolution,” Ed shot back. “If anything, Spanish workers and peasants were remarkably restrained, considering that the Catholic Church worked hand in glove with Spain’s bloody landowners and industrialists and the reactionary Spanish state to subjugate, repress, brutalize and murder Spain’s working people for centuries. Anarchists killing priests and raping nuns is nothing but a Stalinist fiction, echoed by the fascists, but if anybody deserved to be put up against a wall and shot it was those damned ‘black beetles’.”

Notice the pattern? Spanish anarchists did not slaughter the Catholic clergy during the Spanish civil war, although Spanish priests and nuns amply earned such treatment for their collaboration in crimes against Spain’s workers and peasants. Blame for the so-called myth is laid at the feet of the Spanish Communist Party in this case, but it’s a minor variation on the theme I’ve presented. Well, recently, I purchased The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain by Paul Preston (2012, Norton). The book, at 700 pages, is a monument to detailed historical research in primary source materials. Preston’s conclusions are inescapable. Franco’s atrocities during and after the Civil War amounted to nothing less than a holocaust, “a carefully planned operation to eliminate … ‘those who do not think as we do’,” a mass murder of Spaniards unprecedented in Spanish history. But there were also acts of violence and terror in the Republican zone, “hot-blooded and reactive,” among them the spontaneous but frequent slaughter of Catholic clergy in anarchist dominated regions of the Republic.

Now, let’s move away from history, into the present. As I evolved from anarchism through left communism to my current unaffiliated political perspective, I consistently had beefs with one school of radical thought that claimed the libertarian mantle. Freddy Perlman gave rise to this school’s various currents with his book Against HIStory! Against Leviathan!, an indictment of what John Clark defined as “the millennia-long history of the assault of the technological megamachine on humanity and the Earth,” whose immediate offspring was the Fifth Estate’s critique of technological progress and society. Further bastard progeny came with the direct-action oriented environmentalism of Earth First! as it turned toward anarchism after 1990, the anarcho-primitivism of John Zerzan, the deep ecology of Arne Næss, and a slew of green anarchist and anti-civilization tendencies too numerous to list. The misanthropy and nihilism of many of these folks is proudly on display; they only become cagey when it comes to the issue of mass human die-off.

You see, the ideal, sustainable, hunter-gatherer utopia of anti-civilization and primitivist activists requires a worldwide population of, at most, 100 million people. There are currently 7 billion people on the planet. The anti-civ, primitive solution requires that 690 million people—some 99% of the world’s population—simply disappear. How does that happen, without a massive die-off of humans? The old anarchist conundrum of “how do we get from here to there” raises its ugly head, only now on green steroids. The fact is that few individuals, aside from outright eco-fascists like Pentti Linkola, openly advocate for mass human die-off. “[T]he population levels envisaged by anarcho-primitivists would have to be achieved by mass die-offs or nazi-style death camps,” writes John Moore in A Primitivist Primer. “These are just smear tactics. The commitment of anarcho-primitivists to the abolition of all power relations, including the State with all its administrative and military apparatus, and any kind of party or organisation, means that such orchestrated slaughter remains an impossibility as well as just plain horrendous.”

Now come the twists and turns to this logic. Agriculture is unsustainable, as is technological society based on agriculture. Civilization is bound to collapse, whether we like it or not, and so there is bound to be mass human die off, whether we like it or not. A drastic reduction in the human population is inevitable, whether done voluntarily or not. It would be better if that reduction happened gradually and voluntarily, but it is going to happen one way or another. “What we can do is assist the natural world to bring [civilization] down,” Derrick Jensen has said. “I want civilization brought down and I want it brought down now.”

Which brings us to the book Deep Green Resistance (by Aric McBay, Lierre Keith, and Derrick Jensen, 2011, Seven Stories Press), a discussion of strategy and tactics toward building a resistance movement to bring down civilization through “decisive ecological warfare.” I’ll let the authors speak for themselves through a selection of quotes: “The vast majority of the population will do nothing unless they are led, cajoled, or forced. […] there will be no mass movement, not in time to save this planet, our home. […] Humans aren’t going to do anything in time …[so] those of us who care about the future of the planet have to dismantle the industrial energy infrastructure as rapidly as possible. […] Well-organized underground militants would make coordinated attacks on energy infrastructure around the world […] actions against pipelines, power lines, tankers, and refineries, perhaps using electromagnetic pulses […] We’ll all have to deal with the social consequences as best we can. Besides, rapid collapse is ultimately good for humans—even if there is a die-off—because at least some people survive.”

Again, the harrowing pattern. Mass human die-off as a conscious consequence of primitivism/anti-civilization is a lie, no doubt perpetrated by supporters of agricultural and technologically based civilization. Such civilization is unsustainable, and is going to collapse sooner or later, probably resulting in mass human die-off. But in the meantime, that civilization is criminally destroying the planet and obliterating the natural world. It is therefore our duty to bring down civilization and to hasten, if not initiate, the mass human die-off which is inevitable.

Such is the logic of holocaust denial.