New Left Flashcards
C. Wright Mills
Letter to the New Left (1959)
- driving forces of reform + renewal = students not workers
SDS - Port Huron Statement
1962 - Polticial manifesto
‘participatory democracy’ - proactive to counter apathy in American society
DIRECT ACTION (non-violent) bottom-up & influenced by SNCC + CRM
most impt radicalization = Vietnam
Mario Savio
Berkeley Free Speech Movement (1964)
guardian role - students not independent thinkers
over-bureaucratic
Anti-war movement successes
Spread of teach-ins on Vietnam
March on Washington (1965)
SDS growth 3,000 members - 1967 30,000 members
MLK voices opposition: ‘Vietnam syndrome’ - myth
RFK + Eugene McCarthy = anti-war platform (LBJ’s withdrawal - reputation too tarnished by Vietnam?)
personal prerogative of polticians
Anti-war movement - radicalization
from protest to resistance - Fuck the Draft (local to national level)
blockades, occupation of campuses
response to brutal reaction - Oakland Draft resistance protest (violent protest)
change in SDS trajectory - solidarity with Cuba + N. Vietnam
radical critique: war in Vietnam outcome of US imperialist + capitalist system, less critique of state more critique of USA itself.
anti-war coalition becomes divided - Weatherman antagonizes Veterans b/c social inequality, college students - deferment to draft dodge
Watershed year
1968
Tet Offensive - drives public opinion against war - Walter Cronkite ‘only rational way out then is to negotiate, not as victors, but as honourable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy’
Primaries - McCarthy, RFK success, LBJ w/drawal form presidential election
MLK assassinated riots in 125 cities (D.C., Chicago, Baltimore)
Columbia University strike: SDS prominence in action grows to 80,000
RFK assassinated June
November Nixon wins
New Left themes
hierarchical nature + bureaucratic society
alienation of students
limitation of speech
existence of racial injustice
links b/w CRM + student movement
1969: SDS self-destruction
dogmatic split: fragmentation
radical communists block national convention
Revolutionary Youth Movement
Weathermen (The Weather Underground)
Historiographic consensus on New Left
SDS strengths were weaknesses
anti-war movement - total victory cannot have partial successes like CRM
bottom-up - harder to organise - more susceptible to fringe activists
fell apart b/c of its successes: quick rise - lack of focus
h/w legacy: US does not engage in major conflict until 1st Gulf War - media access strictly regulated in military conflict
New Left: centred on lasting effects of wider 60s movements on American society
counterculture changes forms of American protest
main political debates - American values of 70s, 80s, 90s - referendum on 60s
Vietnam syndrome
Anti war = anti troop
President Ronald Reagan suffered too long
