Excellent piece. This madness is a result of efforts of the 60s radicals-- SDS (if you can believe it, Students for a Democratic Society) and the violent Wearhermen. These people are mostly retired, so their apprentices have taken over. Just a point of clarification: the participants of those 60s rallies and protests were students against the war in Nam. Most were not radicalized, wanting to take down the government or destroy the country. Today's protesters aren't just students. They are the Wall St. Idiots, BLM, anarchists, Soros paid agitators, LGBT+ agitators. Many do not even know what they are protesting or even where Gaza is. They are not dangerous, except to Jews. They are just accelerants to the fire and are unlikely to cause permanent damage to the Republic. "You don't need a Weatherman to see which way the wind blows." Bob Dylan
Make no mistake, these misguided youth are very dangerous. Ask Andy Ngo, Portland OR journalist now in the UK who has been following the mob violence in the Pacific Northwest since before the riots and Autonomous Zones of 2020.
These jerks are cowards. They are dangerous when they are urged on by the mob. Of course there are exceptions. Best advice is to avoid the demonstrations.
These 60's radicals may be retired, but they made their wealth in the capitalist society they despise and are now providing the funding and support to the current movement in an attempt to feel young again.
The protests were against the draft, not the war. After Nixon terminated the draft, the war continued for another two years -- during which there were exactly ZERO protests or marches.
Never underestimate the self-centered nature, the aura of entitlement, and the overt narcissism of the left. They want to censor you, oppress you, and seize every one of your assets. Maybe the liberal Jewish community will wake up. (But frankly, I doubt it.)
Well written. I suggest that we refuse to comply. Drag them off the highways and bridges. Spurn their colleges and universities, mock them relentlessly and stand up to them boldly. They only win if we let them.
Benjamin, given your thoughtful engagement with this period, I will guess that you are probably familiar with Paul Berman's essay, A Tale of Two Utopias. Berman highlighted two distinct strands on the radical Left, each seeking revolutionary change but in very different ways.
On one side were the dreamers: the Flower Children, the communitarian idealists like the Diggers, the zany anarchists like Abby Hoffman and Wavy Gravy, the psychedelic/mystical vanguard with folks like R.D. Laing, Ram Dass and Timothy Leary, and the whole universe of musicians and psychedelic music from Strawberry Fields to the Starship.
On the other side, were the angry, humorless revolutionaries who wanted to tear down "the System," people like the Weathermen, the Black Power movement, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and various and sundry grouplets descended from the Old Left: doctrinaire Marxists, Trotskyites, and their ilk.
Most of us who were on the dreamers' side of the divide generally kept a distance from the revolutionaries, and that distance became absolute once it became clear to us that their agenda included robbery, kidnapping and assassination. Opposition to the war in Viet-Nam initially united all of us, but the homicidal craziness and cruelty of the revolutionaries convinced the rest of us to cut our losses and go make our way in the world.
It's ironic that the descendants of these crazies are the ones who stayed the course and made the long march through the institutions. My main quibble with your telling of the tale is that you've left the dreamers out of the story. Also in France among the "huitards" there were also those whose banner proclaimed "L'Imagination au Pouvoir!" We never dreamed that the humorless minority who took notes at meetings and always voted as a block would ever manage to clone themselves in sufficient numbers to take over the entire university system.
If the kids occupying the campuses these days were inspired by the events of '68, and history is repeating itself, then we've certainly reached a grand finale of pure farce.
I'm a great admirer of Berman's and have read Two Utopias. I have to say that I would have agreed with you (and him) before Oct. 7, but at the moment, it's hard for me to have any sympathy for any school of the left. It seems the "decent left" is either dead or impotent. However, I may well feel differently if, God willing, the decent left rises again or the left in general returns to its senses. Thanks for your thoughtful response. It's much appreciated.
I also admired Berman and read much of his work. First thing by him that I read was an amazing essay about the migration of nihilism from the literary to the political realm in 19th century Russia. That was in The New Republic when Marty Peretz was still at the helm trying to salvage some type of conversation among the the "decent left" before he was driven off the stage by the indecent hard left. The last pieces by Berman that I read were a couple of disappointing essays on Tablet. He appeared to be flailing against a phantasmagorical threat from the Right on behalf on a no longer existent constituency of the liberal left. In the current reconfigured landscape, tragically, he seems to have been left high and dry, a man without a country.
I think that's exactly right. He's a minority of one now. Sadly, I get the impression that this is terribly uncomfortable for him. There are thinkers like John Gray who are men without a party and couldn't care less, but I get the impression that Berman very much wants to be part of a movement. Still, he's an extraordinary writer and thinker, so I hope he keeps going nonetheless.
"Fellow Nazis’ gated compounds in the Midwest?" What the heck are you talking about? From what I am seeing most of the anti-semitism is emerging from the Ivy League and other elitist schools, not the freedom loving citizens of the Midwest!
Good point. I didn't get that either. The hard left is living in their gated compounds on the coasts. Martha's Vineyard, Marin County, NYC, DC, San Francisco, LA.
It was intended rhetorically. Nazi groups often retreat to gated compounds in the Midwest, I presume because it's simply easier for them to isolate themselves there. I did not intend to impugn the Midwest as a region or its people. It's hardly their fault that Nazis go there. My apologies if it came off that way.
Where is this strong conservative counter revolution of which you speak. I am not seeing it anywhere in the West. Perhaps a rumbling underground among the peasants but so far the Left and the Vichyites on the traditional Right have contained it quite easily.
Diaspora Jews MUST take a lesson from their brothers in Israel. When in danger FIGHT and HURT your enemies. You will not change their attitudes but you will change their behavior.
"All of this was probably inevitable. Radical movements always compound their radicalism and the world always resists them because that is the nature of the world. In the end, their compounded radicalism results in compounded and enraging failure. Indeed, despite their best efforts, the ‘68ers have succeeded in only partial conquest of elite institutions. A strong conservative movement parries them at every turn. They know that to impose a totalitarian regime on a nation with a 250-year history of political and social liberty is all but impossible. The only recourse is vengeance through apocalyptic violence. If they can’t have the country, no one else can either. They feel compelled towards a seppuku, a glorious suicide, a mass self-immolation, and they intend to take everyone else down with them."
Am I the only one who sees the irony in the fact that so many of these "68's" are the very same people against whom the current crop of malcontents are "protesting"?
This analysis, while persuasive, may underestimate the influence of imported passions only loosely related to 1968. American Jews and their publications were such central participants then, that it can't really be the same Movement now that they've been dealt out. Muslims went from 0.49% of the US population in 1970 to 2.23% in 2020, from a million then to 8 million now, and today's student Movement seems to reflect their priorities.
This is as succinct, on-target of a diagnosis of the cultural moment as I think I've ever read. You're absolutely right, it's been a long time coming. (I was on campus in the early 70's.) It will be a long fight but the good fight. What are next steps in this "difficult and extended struggle?" Literally? for those of us that want to "be human in an inhuman world"?
I remember when SDS took over the president's office at Columbia in May, 1968. It was going to have historical consequences that the president didn't have the small amount of moral courage which he would have needed to have them thrown out. I don't deceive myself that it would have crushed the New Left, but it would have been significant.
The guy who was photographed with his feet up on the President's desk was the valedictorian of the graduating class at my high school in Newark, NJ, one year ahead of me. He was also a world class violinist and the youngest poet ever to be admitted to whatever the national academy of poets was called back then. We were not a dumb bunch of talentless dopes; we aspired to create a better world than the one we saw around us. We just had no idea how easily the Nazgul could infiltrate and subvert idealistic movements.
I don't begin to compare them with the pro Hamas useful idiot/children who are demonstrating today. Having been born in 1952, I remember the aspiration you refer to.
During my hippie years in CA we all dismissed Reagan as a B-Movie actor who was picked by the Establishment to pretend to be a politician. We mocked his apparent indifference to ecology and his cutbacks to the welfare system. Today, when I listen to one of his speeches, it makes me wonder how I managed to live in CA for so many years and have absolutely no idea who he was. But the progressive leftist bubble I lived in successfully prevented me from recognizing that he was one of America's great champions and a foremost defender of freedom on the world stage. I try to remind myself of that when I watch the idiots demonstrating for Palestine on the campus of Columbia.
I don't think the already relegated white supremicists in Jesusland want anything to do with the urban lefties. I guess the author means they, and their poisonous ideas should be equally shunned. Ok. But we have a lot of alienated, maleducated people to deal with. (Our children) And an increasingly disaffected, shrinking middle class. And a third world invasion. And a crooked and broke government and Deep State. The author uses the rhetoric of his adversary by advising "Smash the regime." An understandable sentiment, but not consonant with a "long and difficult struggle", which counsels perseverence. Long time coming. Lot of ruin in a nation. Reality slowly intrudes.
Exactly right, I just posted on linked in that after the 1968 disaster, this is the coup de grace for universities. Doubtful they will recover.
On a related subject, I am wondering if all the Jewish liberals are starting to see the light.
Excellent piece. This madness is a result of efforts of the 60s radicals-- SDS (if you can believe it, Students for a Democratic Society) and the violent Wearhermen. These people are mostly retired, so their apprentices have taken over. Just a point of clarification: the participants of those 60s rallies and protests were students against the war in Nam. Most were not radicalized, wanting to take down the government or destroy the country. Today's protesters aren't just students. They are the Wall St. Idiots, BLM, anarchists, Soros paid agitators, LGBT+ agitators. Many do not even know what they are protesting or even where Gaza is. They are not dangerous, except to Jews. They are just accelerants to the fire and are unlikely to cause permanent damage to the Republic. "You don't need a Weatherman to see which way the wind blows." Bob Dylan
Make no mistake, these misguided youth are very dangerous. Ask Andy Ngo, Portland OR journalist now in the UK who has been following the mob violence in the Pacific Northwest since before the riots and Autonomous Zones of 2020.
These jerks are cowards. They are dangerous when they are urged on by the mob. Of course there are exceptions. Best advice is to avoid the demonstrations.
These 60's radicals may be retired, but they made their wealth in the capitalist society they despise and are now providing the funding and support to the current movement in an attempt to feel young again.
The protests were against the draft, not the war. After Nixon terminated the draft, the war continued for another two years -- during which there were exactly ZERO protests or marches.
Never underestimate the self-centered nature, the aura of entitlement, and the overt narcissism of the left. They want to censor you, oppress you, and seize every one of your assets. Maybe the liberal Jewish community will wake up. (But frankly, I doubt it.)
Well written. I suggest that we refuse to comply. Drag them off the highways and bridges. Spurn their colleges and universities, mock them relentlessly and stand up to them boldly. They only win if we let them.
Benjamin, given your thoughtful engagement with this period, I will guess that you are probably familiar with Paul Berman's essay, A Tale of Two Utopias. Berman highlighted two distinct strands on the radical Left, each seeking revolutionary change but in very different ways.
On one side were the dreamers: the Flower Children, the communitarian idealists like the Diggers, the zany anarchists like Abby Hoffman and Wavy Gravy, the psychedelic/mystical vanguard with folks like R.D. Laing, Ram Dass and Timothy Leary, and the whole universe of musicians and psychedelic music from Strawberry Fields to the Starship.
On the other side, were the angry, humorless revolutionaries who wanted to tear down "the System," people like the Weathermen, the Black Power movement, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and various and sundry grouplets descended from the Old Left: doctrinaire Marxists, Trotskyites, and their ilk.
Most of us who were on the dreamers' side of the divide generally kept a distance from the revolutionaries, and that distance became absolute once it became clear to us that their agenda included robbery, kidnapping and assassination. Opposition to the war in Viet-Nam initially united all of us, but the homicidal craziness and cruelty of the revolutionaries convinced the rest of us to cut our losses and go make our way in the world.
It's ironic that the descendants of these crazies are the ones who stayed the course and made the long march through the institutions. My main quibble with your telling of the tale is that you've left the dreamers out of the story. Also in France among the "huitards" there were also those whose banner proclaimed "L'Imagination au Pouvoir!" We never dreamed that the humorless minority who took notes at meetings and always voted as a block would ever manage to clone themselves in sufficient numbers to take over the entire university system.
If the kids occupying the campuses these days were inspired by the events of '68, and history is repeating itself, then we've certainly reached a grand finale of pure farce.
I'm a great admirer of Berman's and have read Two Utopias. I have to say that I would have agreed with you (and him) before Oct. 7, but at the moment, it's hard for me to have any sympathy for any school of the left. It seems the "decent left" is either dead or impotent. However, I may well feel differently if, God willing, the decent left rises again or the left in general returns to its senses. Thanks for your thoughtful response. It's much appreciated.
I also admired Berman and read much of his work. First thing by him that I read was an amazing essay about the migration of nihilism from the literary to the political realm in 19th century Russia. That was in The New Republic when Marty Peretz was still at the helm trying to salvage some type of conversation among the the "decent left" before he was driven off the stage by the indecent hard left. The last pieces by Berman that I read were a couple of disappointing essays on Tablet. He appeared to be flailing against a phantasmagorical threat from the Right on behalf on a no longer existent constituency of the liberal left. In the current reconfigured landscape, tragically, he seems to have been left high and dry, a man without a country.
I think that's exactly right. He's a minority of one now. Sadly, I get the impression that this is terribly uncomfortable for him. There are thinkers like John Gray who are men without a party and couldn't care less, but I get the impression that Berman very much wants to be part of a movement. Still, he's an extraordinary writer and thinker, so I hope he keeps going nonetheless.
"Fellow Nazis’ gated compounds in the Midwest?" What the heck are you talking about? From what I am seeing most of the anti-semitism is emerging from the Ivy League and other elitist schools, not the freedom loving citizens of the Midwest!
Good point. I didn't get that either. The hard left is living in their gated compounds on the coasts. Martha's Vineyard, Marin County, NYC, DC, San Francisco, LA.
It was intended rhetorically. Nazi groups often retreat to gated compounds in the Midwest, I presume because it's simply easier for them to isolate themselves there. I did not intend to impugn the Midwest as a region or its people. It's hardly their fault that Nazis go there. My apologies if it came off that way.
Where is this strong conservative counter revolution of which you speak. I am not seeing it anywhere in the West. Perhaps a rumbling underground among the peasants but so far the Left and the Vichyites on the traditional Right have contained it quite easily.
Diaspora Jews MUST take a lesson from their brothers in Israel. When in danger FIGHT and HURT your enemies. You will not change their attitudes but you will change their behavior.
"All of this was probably inevitable. Radical movements always compound their radicalism and the world always resists them because that is the nature of the world. In the end, their compounded radicalism results in compounded and enraging failure. Indeed, despite their best efforts, the ‘68ers have succeeded in only partial conquest of elite institutions. A strong conservative movement parries them at every turn. They know that to impose a totalitarian regime on a nation with a 250-year history of political and social liberty is all but impossible. The only recourse is vengeance through apocalyptic violence. If they can’t have the country, no one else can either. They feel compelled towards a seppuku, a glorious suicide, a mass self-immolation, and they intend to take everyone else down with them."
Am I the only one who sees the irony in the fact that so many of these "68's" are the very same people against whom the current crop of malcontents are "protesting"?
This analysis, while persuasive, may underestimate the influence of imported passions only loosely related to 1968. American Jews and their publications were such central participants then, that it can't really be the same Movement now that they've been dealt out. Muslims went from 0.49% of the US population in 1970 to 2.23% in 2020, from a million then to 8 million now, and today's student Movement seems to reflect their priorities.
This is as succinct, on-target of a diagnosis of the cultural moment as I think I've ever read. You're absolutely right, it's been a long time coming. (I was on campus in the early 70's.) It will be a long fight but the good fight. What are next steps in this "difficult and extended struggle?" Literally? for those of us that want to "be human in an inhuman world"?
I remember when SDS took over the president's office at Columbia in May, 1968. It was going to have historical consequences that the president didn't have the small amount of moral courage which he would have needed to have them thrown out. I don't deceive myself that it would have crushed the New Left, but it would have been significant.
The guy who was photographed with his feet up on the President's desk was the valedictorian of the graduating class at my high school in Newark, NJ, one year ahead of me. He was also a world class violinist and the youngest poet ever to be admitted to whatever the national academy of poets was called back then. We were not a dumb bunch of talentless dopes; we aspired to create a better world than the one we saw around us. We just had no idea how easily the Nazgul could infiltrate and subvert idealistic movements.
I don't begin to compare them with the pro Hamas useful idiot/children who are demonstrating today. Having been born in 1952, I remember the aspiration you refer to.
This article is deranged.
Thanks for the exceedingly cogent response. A lot of food for thought there.
This comment is pointless.
Ronald Reagan fought against this in 1968 during his first presidential campaign: Reagan's 1968 Dress Rehearsal by Gene Kopelson
During my hippie years in CA we all dismissed Reagan as a B-Movie actor who was picked by the Establishment to pretend to be a politician. We mocked his apparent indifference to ecology and his cutbacks to the welfare system. Today, when I listen to one of his speeches, it makes me wonder how I managed to live in CA for so many years and have absolutely no idea who he was. But the progressive leftist bubble I lived in successfully prevented me from recognizing that he was one of America's great champions and a foremost defender of freedom on the world stage. I try to remind myself of that when I watch the idiots demonstrating for Palestine on the campus of Columbia.
Hi Sam, Thanks for your kind comments.
Please check out my book, as the Reagan who we know as president was there all along in the 60s!
Gene
I certainly will, Gene. I'll consider it part of my project of seeing what I missed during the 60s while I was wearing my John Lennon glasses!
I don't think the already relegated white supremicists in Jesusland want anything to do with the urban lefties. I guess the author means they, and their poisonous ideas should be equally shunned. Ok. But we have a lot of alienated, maleducated people to deal with. (Our children) And an increasingly disaffected, shrinking middle class. And a third world invasion. And a crooked and broke government and Deep State. The author uses the rhetoric of his adversary by advising "Smash the regime." An understandable sentiment, but not consonant with a "long and difficult struggle", which counsels perseverence. Long time coming. Lot of ruin in a nation. Reality slowly intrudes.
I totally agree with your 1968 article!!