Revolutionary v reactionary decentralism: “What’s Left?” October 2020

I was seven when I lived in San Bernardino in 1959. Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. Dictator Juan Batista fled Cuba as revolutionary hero Fidel Castro entered Havana. China suppressed an uprising in Tibet, forcing the Dalai Lama to escape to India. Alaska and Hawaii joined the union. San Bernardino was suburban, often hot, and almost always smoggy. Only when Santa Ana winds scoured the basin of smog blown in from Los Angeles did I clearly see the surrounding, magnificent mountain ranges. There were more and more days growing up when I couldn’t see the mountains at all from my neighborhood, which was home to the first MacDonald’s in the nation.

I watched Disney’s 1959 series The Swamp Fox on our family’s tiny black and white TV.  Filmed in color, the series depicted the exploits of Francis Marion as played by a young Leslie Nielsen. A commissioned officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, Marion ably led the irregular militiamen of the 2nd South Carolina Regiment as they ruthlessly terrorized fellow American Loyalists and engaged in asymmetric warfare against British Army regulars known as Redcoats. He avoided direct frontal assaults against larger bodies of troops, instead confusing his enemies in the field with swift surprise attacks and equally sudden withdrawals. Considered one of the fathers of modern guerrilla warfare, Marion successfully used irregular methods and maneuver tactics to outwit his opponents. He has been credited in the birth of the US Army Special Forces known as the Green Berets.

The populist myth: “What’s Left?” February 2020 (MRR #441)

When the axe entered the forest, the trees said: “The handle is one of us.”

—Turkish proverb

I remember a brief carefree idyll when I was fourteen. I lived with my family in Ventura, California, went to Balboa Junior High, and had teenager jobs the occasional evening, weekend or summer. But I spent all my spare time at the beach swimming, surfing and skateboarding. When I enrolled in Buena High School the head gym teacher, Mason Parrish, put all the incoming sophomores through a battery of athletic tests to determine in which sports we might excel. Parrish coached the football team, and was in the process of building Buena’s swim and water polo teams to win multiple national awards, compete in the 1968-72 Olympic trials, and field numerous Junior Olympic Champions. I was a natural in the water, so Coach Parrish recruited me immediately for swimming and water polo.

Parrish was an old school, conservative high school gym coach who began and ended every game with a Christian prayer. He required loyalty from his athletes in school and expected us to practice routines, lift weights, and train regularly outside of class on our own time. All I wanted was to have fun, swim, and go to the beach. Parrish started me in a few swimming competitions and played me in a couple of water polo games. But when he realized I lacked the dedication and drive to give him the full commitment he demanded, he benched me for the duration of the semester. Parrish was openly disappointed, my gung-ho teammates disdained me, and I still had to show up for team practice and events. I was developing, maturing and acquiring new, formative interests in my adolescent life. But my love for swimming was irreparably damaged.

pt. 3: Jewish socialism vs Jewish nationalism: “What’s Left?” November 2019 (MRR #438)

LA’s Exposition Park, the northeastern meadows across from USC, were jammed with anti-Vietnam war protestors. The police estimated our numbers at between eight and ten thousand. The rally organizers said we had over twenty-five thousand in attendance.

It was October 15, 1969, the nationwide Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. I’d never seen so many people in one place for one purpose. I was elated. I’d declared myself an anarchist pacifist in 1968 under threat of eventually being drafted. That day I was a revolutionary anarchist who’d traveled with friends from Ventura to participate in the protest.

I couldn’t hear the speeches in the huge crowd. Instead, I perused the two-score-plus literature tables that bordered the rally, noting the alphabet soup of Leftist organizations present. There were political parties (SP, SLP, CP, SWP, SL, PLP), front groups (WPC, ASFC, FPCC), New Left (SDS), civil rights (SCLC, SNCC, CORE), Black Power (BPP), feminist (NOW), labor (IWW, UE, UFW), religious (AFSC, CW, UUA), countercultural (YIPpie!, HAFC) and many others. I couldn’t get along with two-thirds of them personally and disagreed politically with nine-tenths of what they stood for, but on that day I embraced them all. They were my people. They were the Left.