Sorry if this is being confusing, and I hope I'm not being too frustrating. I had to read a couple times to figure out where we're getting signals crossed, so please be patient with me as well.
I follow you on NION, ANSWER, VAIW, and today's antiwar groups being directly descended from New Left groups like SDS. I also follow on the part about the National Alliance being connected with ANSWER today. The part I'm wondering about is relating today's National Alliance to the Alliance group that was part of SDS in the 60s, because it looks to me like these are two different groups, even though as you point out the National Alliance is now linked to today's offshoots of SDS through the antiwar movement. The quote in Post 38 describes the 1960s Alliance as related to the RYM faction of SDS:
The Revolutionary Youth Movement, which had always been a loose group united in their oppositon to PL-WSA, split up into the two groups it had been more or less composed of - RYM I, which would become the Weathermen, and RYM II, which included members of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union and other groups. In a month or two, the rift between RYM I and RYM II became permanent, after which RYM II itself began breaking up into different groups. They went on to form the Democratic Socialists of America, provisionally named "The Alliance".
Now this is why I'm seeing the 1960s Alliance and today's National Alliance as two different groups. RYM was not a white supremacist group like today's National Alliance group. They were a faction of SDS which supported the Black Panthers (which was the source of their conflict with the PLP faction of SDS--see Review of Alan Adelson's SDS for a summary of the split within SDS over the Black Panthers). Here's a link briefly describing RYM:
Revolutionary Youth Movement II
Revolutionary Youth Movement was the section of Students for a Democratic Society which opposed the Progressive Labor Party. It eventually split. Revolutionary Youth Movement I became the Weather Underground Organization. Revolutionary Youth Movement II became the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), and the Revolutionary Union. Leaders of Revolutionary Youth Movement II include Bob Avakian, C. Clark Kissinger, and Michael Klonsky.
So RYM was part of this development, which occurred back around 1969 within the anti-PLP faction of SDS. The National Alliance that's involved with ANSWER today emerged in 1974 out of a faction of a group called the National Youth Alliance:
The National Alliance has its roots in the Youth for Wallace campaign, established by Willis Carto, the anti-Semitic founder of Liberty Lobby, in support of the 1968 presidential bid of Alabama Governor George Wallace. After Wallace's defeat, Carto renamed his organization the National Youth Alliance and attempted to recruit college students to his increasingly radical cause. In 1970, William Pierce, who had been an associate of George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party, left the National Socialist White People's Party, the successor to the ANP, to join the National Youth Alliance. In addition to Pierce, the National Youth Alliance attracted several former ANP activists, and they ultimately led the organization away from Carto's influence.
By 1974, the organization had split into separate factions, and Pierce's wing became known as the National Alliance. Since then, Pierce has run the group and edited its magazine, National Vanguard (originally titled Attack!), as well as an internal newsletter, National Alliance Bulletin (formerly called Action). He is also in charge of the group's "American Dissident Voices" weekly radio address, and controls other businesses associated with the NA: National Vanguard Books, Resistance Records and Cymophane Records.
So that's why I'm seeing the two "Alliances" as being two different groups. I hope that helps explain what I meant better. Thanks for your patience with my nitpicking over fine details of obscure radical groups :-)
bump for tomorrow.