This week's images will come from American social movements between World War I and World War II.
When does political violence turn into sheer criminality? This is the question at the center of the brilliant German film The Baader Meinhof Complex. Chronicling the history of the Red Army Faction, director Uli Edel creates a fast-paced political thriller that avoids cliche or moralizing. Edel keeps ideology to a minimum, making little attempt to explain the tangled mess of 60s revolutionary theory the German radicals spout. While modern-day radicals might cringe at this, in important ways it doesn't matter what ideology revolutionary movement espouse. Rather, in a post 9/11 world, the sheer ability of people, particularly the bourgeoisie of the world's richest nations, to turn to extremism is a riveting question.
My favorite scene in the film is when the RAF leaders go to Jordan to train in guerrilla tactics from Palestinian militants. It's a total disaster. While the Germans look up to the Middle Eastern radicals in similar ways that white radicals in the United States worshiped African-American revolutionaries, they also don't take their training very seriously. The Germans couldn't stand the gender segregation of Muslim societies while the Muslims were outraged at the nudity and open sexuality of the Germans. When accosted, Baader screams out, "Revolution and fucking are the same thing." I suppose in the minds of white 60s radicals this might have been true, but it also seems that maybe they weren't taking revolution seriously.
Of course, this isn't quite true. It's very hard to argue that the Red Army Faction didn't take their activities seriously. But it's also clear that revolution meant something very different to them than it did to the Vietnamese, Palestinians, Algerians, African-Americans, and other people of color whose revolution was heavily nationalistic. For them, revolution was the survival (or creation) of their imagined state. But for whites, revolution was less central to physical survival. Rather, their rebellion was much more cultural and spiritual. The RAF was disgusted by 50s conformity in much the same way as young people in France and the United States. Their radicalism was also tinged by the German state's forgetting of the Nazi past and the lingering fascism within their government. These were things worth rebelling against, but it also allowed for a sense of play that could not exist in South Africa or Laos. For these kids, fucking was part of the revolution, not because their parents didn't have sex, but because of the shame attached to it.
As we now know, free sex did not mean gender equality. The extreme misogyny of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements helped spawn the women's movement. To Edel's credit, he explores this side of the RAF as well, through the hyper-masculinity and sexism of Baader, a man known to fits of rage and the use of the most vulgar anti-woman epithets. Again, this gets to the brilliance of this film. Rather than engage in deification like the vastly inferior Che, promote the revolutionary movement itself like The Battle of Algiers, or romanticize the 60s like any number of films, Edel presents the RAF without judgment or moralizing. The action-movie oriented style of the film helps a lot because it doesn't allow time for pointless scenes laying everything out for the audience, allowing supposed "moral" voices to enter the dialogue, or other Hollywood tricks. I'm sure Edel disapproves of much of the RAF's history, but to the greatest extent possible, he produces a pseudo-documentary film tracing their history.
The RAF became infamous for their violence. What made them different from other leftist organizations of the time. In his wonderful book Bringing the War Home, Jeremy Varon notes that what made RAF hyper-violent and the American radicals known as the Weathermen less violent was nothing inherent in their nature, but the bomb-making explosion that killed a few Weathermen before they could launch their attacks. These extremist left groups romanticized violence and RAF radicals used it in spades.
But what were they using it for? One might argue that their early attacks had some semblance of social justice around them, though it's dubious. But after the 1st generation of RAF, including Baader and Meinhof, were jailed in the early 1970s, the group turned its energy to getting its members released. In the German Autumn of 1977, RAF members kidnapped a banker and demanded the prisoners release and then worked with Middle Eastern terrorist to hijack a plane. When the hijacking failed, 3 of the imprisoned RAF leaders died (probably by committing suicide, though this is disputed) and the banker was shot.
What good was any of this? At what point does revolutionary violence turn into pointless criminality? When the remnants of the Black Panthers and Weatherman robbed a Brinks armed truck in 1981, killing a guard, what were they trying to do? Particularly in 1981, when any claims to being the vanguard of a revolution were dubious at best. I've thought a lot about revolutionary violence over the years, trying to figure out what is appropriate and what is not. When does the Palestinian freedom movement turn to terrorism, or is that an appropriate tactic? Given the increased inability of the United States to govern itself and the slow collapse of the nation's political institutions, one wonders about the potential rise of political violence in the United States in coming years. Of course, violence has largely been rejected by the left, but certainly not by the right. What was the killing of George Tiller if not political terrorism? Or the killings of the Knoxville Unitarians by the lunatic who hated them for their pro-gay rights positions? How do progressives respond to this?
I don't have any answers to these questions, but a group viewing and discussion of The Baader Meinhof Complex would be a good place to start.
Former Students for a Democratic Society head Tom Hayden reviews former Student for a Democratic Society leader Mark Rudd's autobiography.
Of course, Hayden and Rudd were two very different animals. Hayden led SDS in its early years, was a veteran of the civil rights and free speech movements and, while a leftist, worked within the American system of government. Rudd was a SDS leader at its violent end and was a key player in the creation of the Weathermen. A fugitive, he lived underground for a decade before the FBI dropped most charges against him and most of the other members of the organization. He then went to teach math at a community college in Albuquerque.
Hayden's review is an excellent discussion of violence, social change, and the 1960s. Check it out.
Anna Louise Strong, Seattle communist and major player in the 1919 Seattle General Strike.
90 years ago today, on February 6, 1919, the Seattle General Strike began.
The Pacific Northwest was a hotbed of radicalism in the early 20th century. The large Scandinavian population brought a tradition of socialism with them when they immigrated to the region. The longshoremen that worked the region's ports were among the most radical labor unions in the country. The logging industry became a center of radicalism because the conditions workers lived in were so bad that people turned to the Industrial Workers of the World out of desperation. Although many of those terrible living conditions had been ameliorated during World War I, radical loggers still dominated many lumber camps and mills. Seattle had one of the most respected labor newspapers in the country, the Seattle Union Record, and this publication whipped up support in favor of various radical causes.
The precipitating event for the General Strike was a strike in the Seattle shipyards. In solidarity, the Seattle Central Labor Council called the larger action with the active support of the I.W.W. This became the first and only general strike in U.S. history. For 5 days, Seattle shut down. 25,000 workers joined the 35,000 already on strike. The strike committee worked hard to keep basic services running in the city, though the lack of cooperation from the Seattle city government and the strike's disorganized nature made this very difficult.
The Seattle power structure went nuts. Mayor Ole Hanson, elected the year before with labor's support, armed the police and threatened to declare martial law. Although the strike was entirely peaceful from the workers' side, the threat of police or military violence grew daily. The strike had the rapt attention of the nation. Radicals hoped it was the first step on America's revolutionary road. Politicians and business leaders were mortified that the Russian Revolution had spread to America and called for a crackdown. In response to heavy pressure, the Central Labor Council declared the strike over on February 11, though many workers had already gone back to their jobs as the threats mounted.
Perhaps the worst effect of this was that it made Hanson a national figure for the rest of the year. He took advantage of the Red Scare dominating the country in the immediate post-WWI years to launch his a national political career. He toured the nation, giving speeches about the threat we faced from radicalism. Hanson turned completely on his base of support, and in one of the greatest acts of hypocrisy in American political history, called for the suppression of labor. His stock faded with the end of the Red Scare. He tried to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1920, but the Republicans, wary of the crazy Seattle mayor, went for the bland Warren Harding instead. Awesomely, the Wikipedia site on Hanson claims he ran in 1922, which of course was not a presidential year. Classic.
This is one of the most forgotten about events in American history; even among those who are aware of the major events of American labor history, the General Strike gets short shrift. Perhaps this because nothing came of it, but most of the major American strikes of this period were also failures. It was something of a last gasp of pre-communist leftism in American thought. Because of the success of the Bolshevik Revolution and the outright suppression of the I.W.W. after World War I, many radicals turned to the Communist Party and Soviet leadership. There was something beautiful, if almost completely futile, about pre-communist labor radicalism in America. That almost undefinable something was central to the Seattle General Strike, but it was soon lost. Incidentally, Seattle lost its radical edge during the 1920s. The most prominent labor leader to come out of Seattle during that period was Dave Beck, the Teamster head before Jimmy Hoffa, who cut his teeth opposing the General Strike. Beck, like Hoffa after him, lost his position as Teamster president when he was sentenced to prison for corruption. Beck's rise serves as something of a metaphor for the general fall in labor's power in Seattle after the General Strike's failure.
After his 15 minutes of fame ended, Hanson decided to leave Washington altogether. He ended up founding the town of San Clemente, California. There is a beach club named after him there today.
What was the New Left? This is the question Van Gosse tries to answer is his 2005 book, Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretative History. Gosse opposes the traditional definition of the New Left as a bunch of college kids. He expands that definition to include movements of color, feminism, and the gay rights movement. He also spends a good deal of time exploring the roots of New Left movements, providing a continuum from the Old Left of the early 20th century to the present. While I disagree with some aspects of this definition, Gosse has provided a short, readable overview of the New Left that I recommend to anyone interested in the history of American radicalism and progressive politics.
First, allow me to get my quibble with Gosse out of the way. For me, a core feature of the New Left was a belief in some sort of international revolutionary movement. These movements didn't always start that way of course--the Civil Rights movement or the Free Speech student movement are examples. But I would argue that those earlier movements are precursors to the actual New Left. Civil Rights became Black Power. Members of SDS became Weatherman and a hundred other groups with revolutionary agendas. Many of these movements fractured over the commitment to international revolution. Feminism had its radical and less radical sides, for instance, but ideas of revolution had to be taken seriously by all involved, even their opponents because they were so powerful.
It is in the gay rights movement that the problem lies. Gay rights had very little of that international revolutionary fervor according to Gosse's account. Certainly the gay movement was revolutionary in its own way; its success has transformed the lives of GLBT people around the nation. It is vastly important for understanding U.S. history. But is it rightfully part of the New Left? I am unclear what Gosse's criteria is. In particular, why gay rights and not environmentalism? Both revolutionized America at the same time. Yet environmentalism gets one paragraph in the book. Environmentalism had a more international focus than gay rights, though like gay rights, most early environmentalists did not look to Third World movements as a major inspiration. If you are going to include gay rights, I think environmentalism must be in there as well. However, I would include neither because of their lack of a capital "R" revolutionary agenda.
That out of the way, Rethinking the New Left is a pretty interesting book. Gosse does two things very well. He centers the experiences of people of color, including the Puerto Rican and Asian-American movements at the core of his narrative. He also accurately shows the vast positive effects the New Left had on American society, even as the movement seemed completely defeated by the end of the 1970s.
Traditional narratives of the New Left have focused on the universities, SDS, and the antiwar movement. There is good reason for this, and in fact, Gosse gives those movements short shrift in a slight overcorrection. But those narratives have severely underplayed the importance of minority nationalist movements, particularly non-black minorities. In an excellent chapter on the Native American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Asian-American movements, Gosse presents the great difficulties these people had in mid-20th century America and how even many white liberals basically did not take their concerns seriously, even as they supported the African-American civil rights movement. I came away from this chapter wanting much more. At times, Gosse could have provided it. Certainly something on the ways Native Americans used sympathy from the white New Left to their benefit would be valuable. But most of these movements are still understudied and in fact, I knew relatively little about some of them.
Gosse's focus on the success of the New Left is really valuable. While all of the international revolutionary aspirations failed, the New Left still transformed American life. African-Americans went from having no outlet for political power to having Supreme Court justices, cabinet officials, and dozens of members in Congress. Women underwent the same transition. Casual sexism and racism are still problems, but they are far less acceptable than they once were. Homosexuals went from outright persecution to increasing acceptance within American society. Even many young conservatives are fairly progressive on gay issues.
Perhaps the most remarkable success has occurred for Native Americans. In the 1950s, Native Americans were fighting against official termination of their tribal status. Today, they have reached unprecedented levels of political and economic power in the United States. How did this happen? Between Indian nationalism expressed through the American Indian Movement and other organizations, the fight for tribal sovereignty, liberal white sympathy for Native Americans, and gaming, many, though by no means all, tribal peoples have experienced significant gains in recent decades.
The Native American experience is also a useful mirror for understanding the limitations of the New Left as well. AIM and other nationalist movements made a lot of connections with the revolutionary nationalism of the developing world. In the U.S., this nationalism was violently suppressed by the U.S. government. Indians never could gain complete tribal sovereignty, the elimination of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or white exploitation of their land and people. Thus, on one level they failed. But, as Gosse points out so well, let us not mistake the inability to achieve ultimate goals with complete failure. Rather, both culturally and politically, for men and women, whites and people of color, gay and straight, the New Left radically transformed the United States, shaping the struggles we are still fighting today.
