Communist influence on SDS was limited when the organization was unified. Weatherman was begun as a means to attract youth and was organizing on a cultural basis not a political basis. It did not call for a proletarian revolution but claimed to want to reform our system, stop the War and push Civil Rights, not to establish a dictatorship. Communism was too boring and too foreign to our traditions - hence the claim that there was a “New” Left.
After the split the three factions coming out of it took different approaches. Only RYMII and the PLP seriously made an effort to organized the workers, and RYMII was more concerned with neighborhood organizing eventually leading to the election of one of its dimmer bulbs to the Chicago City Council, Helen Schliller.
Weatherman was basically anarcho-syndicalist and eventually terrorist believing in the Propaganda of the Deed. A tactic commonly used was to get in the faces of the students and challenge their beliefs and knowledge. The members would go into a college lunchroom and start screaming at the diners trying to get a rise out of them and cause trouble. Their philosophy was to organize through Action not spouting the virtues of a Proletarian Revolution or Marxism of any strip. This is what turned them to violence not Maoist theory where terrorism is either marginal or massive.
A fundamental contradiction for the organization in following Mao was that there were no peasants to organize. Mao’s Little Red Book was popular in all of them but was as much a product of Sun Tsu as Mao.
It is of limited interest to me what your sources are saying since I was intimately involved in these events.
You are completely wrong about the media which is not just the news media but all recorded entertainment. Then we had Bob Hope now we have John Leibowitz. Then we had Lucile Ball now Kathy Griffin. Even the novelists were conservative for the most part. Newspapers ran comic strips which varied from Family humor to overt anti-communism, even Christian themes (Peanuts).
Same is true wrt the Democrat Party, my father, a Yellow Dog Democrat, would never be in that party today. This is simply a fact, an unavoidable fact. All but one of the Senators from the South were solidly conservative and anti-Communist. Not only is that the case but the difference in the beliefs of the parties was far smaller than today.
Richard Nixon was not a conservative just an ambitious guy who rode anti-communism to power but he was a liberal in regard to civil rights. There was no clear ideological split in the parties, merely differences around the edges. It was Nothing like today where the differences are clear and irreconcilable. If the difference between periods of history are not clearly understood, progress is not going far. The difference between fifty years ago and now is not even debatable as anyone who has lived through this period will affirm.
“Communist influence on SDS was limited when the organization was unified. Weatherman was begun as a means to attract youth and was organizing on a cultural basis not a political basis. It did not call for a proletarian revolution but claimed to want to reform our system, stop the War and push Civil Rights, not to establish a dictatorship. Communism was too boring and too foreign to our traditions - hence the claim that there was a “New” Left.”
Actually, no, even as early as during the so-called “Free Speech Movement” in 1964, the SDS was composed of Red Diaper Babies and was a Communist movement. And in fact, they protested even when just prior to the movement, university president Clark Kerr affirmed that he’ll even allow avowed Communists to give addresses to students and faculty. The “free speech” they demanded was to have the public university allow for unrestrained access of political activities regardless of the expense on academic work, and we’re seeing the effects of that today. In fact, Betty Aptheker, THE leader of the movement, was the daughter of Herbert Aptheker, and besides which was the wife of the Communist organizer Jack Kurzweil. And as far as the Civil Rights, barring Martin Luther King’s movement, most of the Civil Rights movement was actually an attempt to recruit American Blacks into the Communist party. Heck, Tom Hayden even referred to himself as an anti-anti-Communist, which is a communist in all but name. Even David Horowitz and Ron Radosh can verify all of this, being former leftists/Communists themselves, and people who most certainly were also heavily involved back then.
“After the split the three factions coming out of it took different approaches. Only RYMII and the PLP seriously made an effort to organized the workers, and RYMII was more concerned with neighborhood organizing eventually leading to the election of one of its dimmer bulbs to the Chicago City Council, Helen Schliller.”
Actually, it was Communist even before the split. I’ll even give you the name of the book I learned this in. It’s the Politically Incorrect Guide to the 1960s. Heck, I even gave you names of some of the leaders who made clear in some way or another that they were commies, many of whom dated back to even the Free Speech Movement.
“Weatherman was basically anarcho-syndicalist and eventually terrorist believing in the Propaganda of the Deed. A tactic commonly used was to get in the faces of the students and challenge their beliefs and knowledge. The members would go into a college lunchroom and start screaming at the diners trying to get a rise out of them and cause trouble. Their philosophy was to organize through Action not spouting the virtues of a Proletarian Revolution or Marxism of any strip. This is what turned them to violence not Maoist theory where terrorism is either marginal or massive.”
Actually, it WAS Maoism that was what the Weathermen adhered to. Conservapedia made that much clear, and besides which, Conservapedia also made it VERY clear that they were Communists. Heck, they even specifically stated they wanted their friends in North Vietnam to win.
“A fundamental contradiction for the organization in following Mao was that there were no peasants to organize. Mao’s Little Red Book was popular in all of them but was as much a product of Sun Tsu as Mao.”
Actually, they didn’t need peasants, they just needed to stoke the hatred of any minorities to get the job done, especially when they were essentially considered similar to the peasant class anyways.
“It is of limited interest to me what your sources are saying since I was intimately involved in these events.”
The guys whose sources I gave ALSO were intimately involved in them. And you can also read up on this as well: https://archive.org/details/TheWayTheWindBlewAHistoryOfTheWeatherUnderground Also, just ask David Horowitz, who also lived through that time period just as you did, and clearly changed his tune after witnessing his friend get killed by the Black Panthers.
“You are completely wrong about the media which is not just the news media but all recorded entertainment. Then we had Bob Hope now we have John Leibowitz. Then we had Lucile Ball now Kathy Griffin. Even the novelists were conservative for the most part. Newspapers ran comic strips which varied from Family humor to overt anti-communism, even Christian themes (Peanuts).”
The mainstream media, the news stations, in other words, were definitely far to the left, especially after Walter Lippmann’s so-called “objective journalism” idea came about where he freely admitted its point was to manufacture consent by lying to people through their teeth in his book Public Opinion. Yes, TV series were still very much Conservative by that time, but TV series were generally also fiction, while news media generally were closer to giving actual facts about the world, a role they were all too eager to exploit to push the left onto the unsuspecting masses at the time.
“Same is true wrt the Democrat Party, my father, a Yellow Dog Democrat, would never be in that party today. This is simply a fact, an unavoidable fact. All but one of the Senators from the South were solidly conservative and anti-Communist. Not only is that the case but the difference in the beliefs of the parties was far smaller than today.”
If that was truly the case, please explain why Ronald Reagan, who WAS one of those Blue Dog Democrats, switched parties and made clear that his reason for doing so was because the Communists already heavily infiltrated it?
“Richard Nixon was not a conservative just an ambitious guy who rode anti-communism to power but he was a liberal in regard to civil rights. There was no clear ideological split in the parties, merely differences around the edges. It was Nothing like today where the differences are clear and irreconcilable. If the difference between periods of history are not clearly understood, progress is not going far. The difference between fifty years ago and now is not even debatable as anyone who has lived through this period will affirm.”
I never mentioned Nixon in that post, I mentioned Ronald Reagan, who actually WAS a former democrat until around the time the HUAC investigations came about, and he quit the Democrat Party precisely BECAUSE it was heavily infiltrated by Communists even back then.
Just face it, everything you think you know about the time period, even with your living through it, was a lie, just like how our being told that President Clinton was a great president was a lie even when I lived through it, or that he attempted to stop Osama Bin Laden.