Last Sunday on The Newsroom Aaron Sorkin’s anchor-hero Will McAvoy offered up a whirlwind tour of the history of Students for Democratic Society, the Yippies, and the Vietnam antiwar movement that managed to get pretty much everything completely wrong in the service of an analogy that made no sense. Here’s my take, because when else am I going to get a chance like this?
• • •
“Back in 1968 when Rennie Davis and Hayden and their guys organized the SDS,
SDS was put together in 1960, not 1968. Its organizational roots stretch back as far as 1905. And although Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden would both become important figures in the group in the early sixties and after, neither participated in its founding meetings.
it was specifically to end the Vietnam war
Nope. SDS was a broad-based, multi-issue organization from the beginning. It addressed itself to concerns ranging from nuclear testing to civil rights to campus parietal rules. The 1962 Port Huron Statement, SDS’s immensely influential (and just plain immense) manifesto, mentions Vietnam just once, in the context of a discussion of the membership policies of the United Nations.
but that movement got eaten by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and the Yippies.
Again, no. The collapse of SDS had almost nothing to do with the rise of the Yippies, and everything to do with government repression, sectarian infighting, and revolutionary overreach. And though SDS died with the sixties, the American seventies would see the ascendancy of other transformative social movements around issues like feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, Native American rights, and so on. Many of those movements had direct links to the New Left.
It’s also worth noting that Tom Hayden and the Yippies were allies for a big chunk of the period under discussion, as demonstrated by this film footage of Hayden speaking alongside Hoffman at a Yippie press conference.
It was impossible to define what the Yippies were protesting.
Ridiculous. The Yippies staged plenty of specific, targeted actions, and participated in plenty more, as we’ll see in a moment. Yes, they were a sprawling, inchoate group. Yes, they offered a vague, unformed vision of the revolution they were trying to achieve. But they also organized focused campaigns.
They were about giving the finger to anyone over thirty,
Abbie Hoffman was well past thirty by 1968. And when Jerry Rubin turned thirty that summer, he wrote that he “was reborn in Berkeley in 1964 in the Free Speech movement. When we say ‘Don’t trust anyone over 30,’ we’re talking about the second birth. … When people 40 years old come up to me and say, ‘Well, I guess I can’t be part of your movement,’ I say, ‘What do you mean? You could have been born yesterday. Age exists in your head.’ Bertrand Russell is our leader. He’s 90 years old.”
generically hating the American establishment,
Sure, the Yippies hated the American establishment. You know why? For starters, the American establishment was trying to put them (and Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis) in prison.
dropping out, getting high.
There was a lot of that going around in those days, or so I’ve heard. Still is, in some circles.
That’s how the progressive movement would be painted for the next forty years.
Attacks on left activists as dirty hippies didn’t begin with Abbie Hoffman. In 1966 Ronald Reagan used hippie-bashing to win the governorship of California, and he wasn’t remotely the only politician beating that gong. The 1960s saw a huge generational cultural upheaval that was inextricably bound up with a youth activist movement in the public mind — neither the Yippies nor anyone else had the power to change that, even if they’d wanted to.
People passing out daisies to soldiers and trying to levitate the Pentagon.
Funny you should mention that. Because the attempt to levitate the Pentagon occurred at a 1967 demonstration against the war, an action that Tom Hayden has described as one of the most potent of the Vietnam War era. Yes, Jerry Rubin was the point person on that demo, but he was recruited for the position by David Dellinger, who was hardly a Yippie. (And if you think this photo actually harmed the antiwar movement, well God, Jed, I don’t even want to know you.)
The Pentagon’s a really big building. You can’t levitate it.
This part is true.
The sixties radicals and the Tea Party are roughly the same, with one big exception. Even at the height of 1968 the Democrats wouldn’t have nominated Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin for any office, and no candidate would have sought their endorsement.
Okay, a few things. First, 1968 wasn’t “the height” of anything in terms of Democratic Party radicalism. That year the Dems nominated their sitting vice president at a convention that saw epidemic police violence against protesters, violence that was essentially ignored by the conventioneers. The party’s presidential nominee, Hubert Humphrey, never came out against the war in Vietnam, and only called for a ceasefire weeks before the general election.
So no, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin weren’t getting any love from the Democratic Party that year. But neither were Hayden and Davis, or any other figures in the New Left. (By the eighties, however, both Hoffman and Hayden were involved in mainstream left-liberal political activity.)
Can you imagine Humphrey or Kennedy standing for a photo op with Bernardine Dohrn or Allen Ginsberg?”
No, but I can’t quite figure out why we’re talking about them, either.
Bernardine Dohrn wasn’t a Yippie, she was an SDSer. Specifically, she was a member of the Weatherman faction, an advocate of violent revolution in the United States. She wasn’t about “giving the finger to anyone over thirty, generically hating the American establishment, dropping out, getting high,” she was about blowing things up and killing people. Ginsberg I can kind of understand the mention of, since he at least participated in the 1967 Pentagon action, but he did so as a middle-aged gay poet, not a young activist.
Lumping in Ginsberg with Hoffman and Rubin makes a kind of weird sense. But lumping those three gleeful pranksters in with Dohrn is just absurd.
And all this quibbling over details may be beside the point anyway, since Sorkin’s underlying argument is so wrong-headed. His claim is that the New Left and the Tea Party both began as reasonable interventions into party politics, that both were hijacked by bizarre radicals, and differ only in that one was absorbed into the GOP while the other was properly shunned by the Democrats.
And that’s about the least useful analysis of either movement that I’ve ever heard.
July 16 Update | Jesse Walker of Reason has put up a fascinating, illuminating post on the Yippies and the 1972 Democratic National Convention which carries the debunk one step further.
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July 11, 2012 at 6:02 pm
Dohrn
Oh, so Dohrn was about “blowing things up and killing people”? Way to go all Aaron Sorkin on the Weathermen.
Sure, the WUO used explosive tactics, but mostly for the spectacle, and purely for property destruction. The only people they ever killed were their own, and that was accidental, in the malfunctioning of a bomb they were putting together (incidentally, that bomb was the only one they ever considered using to end life, and after that they all agreed to never even plan to kill again). But reducing the politics they used the explosions as advertisements of–both leftist ideology and participatorial integrity of action [mobilizing as a force against imperialist war instead of just marching on it and assuming that specter called ‘democracy’ will get our troops home]–to the explosions themselves is absurd.
Also, calling property destruction “violent,” and even qualifying anticapitalist revolution as “violent,” purposelessly marginalizes the most radical and committed factions of the American left, as the milquetoasters always tend to once resistance/revolt becomes hip (much to the detriment of the actual movement). Sure, revolution is always going to be violent, but that means calling it “violent revolution” is a redundancy used just to demonize actual anticapitalism (as opposed to reformist “politix”).
I’d say realizing/recognizing the vast immoralities inherent in the Amerikan empire and refusing to take strong action against it is more violent than blowing up a few offices the WUO worked incredibly hard to make sure were evacuated before each bomb went off, as it props up our system both by not offering it actual resistance/not offering its people an actual alternative, and by giving our empire the semblance of democracy. They’ll let us march around in circles waving signs because that won’t do shit as long as it doesn’t concretely challenge the material interests of the world’s most powerful empire. It even helps them out when we do that, as long as we aren’t creating a culture of revolt in doing so (which “leftist” liberals [a contradiction unto itself] do every time they say the Yippies were fine because they were symbolic, but the WUO wasn’t because it actually had integrity about revolution as more than a buzzword and hobby), because it vents all our radicalism into dead-end reforms that go nowhere, while seeming not to repress revolutionary spirit.
By marginalizing Dohrn, and separating her from the Yippies and SDSers, by saying she’s “different” and not part of that good sixties we retroactively created, you remind me of the weekender protesters for “good capitalism” in the OWS movement, chanting “We are peaceful!” or “They pepper sprayed us, we won!” for the media cameras as the cops move in, handing over those folks that try to unarrest victims of police brutality to the police to try to keep the movement just a spectacle lukewarm enough to be acceptable to the middle class as they watch the news over steak dinners. For those people, it’s all theater; for those who take action (or, as you say, “blow things up and kill people”), it’s actual action.
By the way, I took a class with Tom Hayden on various movements that included SDS. I asked him what he thought of Weathermen, as the history books (similarly marginalizing radicals) claim they were the ones that ripped it apart. He said he completely understood where they were coming from, that the game had changed and the stakes had raised by then, by the time they took over compared to when he was big in SDS, so what they were doing made sense given that context. So it seems even he’s willing to be placed in the same evolutionary category as them.
July 11, 2012 at 6:15 pm
Angus Johnston
Whatever “category” Hayden is willing to be placed in now, he never joined Weather, nor seriously considered doing so. And while I can see why they did what they did, and even empathize with some of their decisions, the fact is that they were wrong — morally wrong, strategically wrong, tactically wrong, politically wrong. What they did didn’t “make sense,” and they have only blind luck and technical incompetence to thank for the fact that they didn’t kill anyone but themselves. (And why can’t we mourn those deaths, by the way? Why can’t we count them as part of the cost of Weather’s mistakes?)
While Weather was tragically and ineffectually play-acting at vanguard politics, other activists of all sorts of stripes were continuing the hard work of making real change. Yes, I’m angry that Weather and PL killed SDS (with a big assist from the FBI). And yes, I repudiate Weather politics.
And frankly, your attempt to out-macho me with your criticism just confirms me in that analysis. The idea that a culture of revolt is only a culture of revolt if it’s building bombs in Greenwich Village is asinine, and an insult to generations of activists. The idea that the only “actual action” is to be found in bloodshed and explosives is, beyond that, an insult to the John Browns and Nat Turners of our history who integrated militant action into a coherent, strategic approach.
If you have no use for the Yippies or SDS, if you have no use for SNCC or Ella Baker or Tom Paine or Frederick Douglass or Woody Guthrie or Ida B. Wells, then to hell with your “revolution.”
July 11, 2012 at 6:51 pm
Dohrn
Action gets the goods. Action means something that actually challenges what it stands up against, instead of reifying our liberal system by merely saying “Well, you’re killing/exploiting people worldwide, and I respectfully and permittedly disagree with that”. Action doesn’t have to be bombs–but I’m fucking tired of armchair organizers on blogs saying bombs are wrong (because they’re just plain wrong!) and demonizing the bombers for making that effort. Action can take the form of the reclamations of foreclosed homes, or the retaking of public space. I don’t get why you conflate what works towards a goal with “machoism,” and what constitutes complaining as “organizing.” You can organize a rally all you want outside Wells Fargo–it won’t save anyone’s home; but if you organize an action at the home, well, then, congrats (as long as you don’t say it’s anarchist robbery that’s morally/strategically/practically/politically wrong, which would be the corollary here to your “analysis” of WUO’s work).
Also, putting in hard/actual work towards revolution shouldn’t be confused with “vanguardism,” a problem in every popular organ of leftism I’ve encountered.
And sure, I respect the Haydens and Hoffmans of the world, as Hayden did build a huge network of politicized people, and Hoffman helped create a culture where resistance was in-your-face and “cool”. However, neither of those will materialize beyond that until they are used as a groundwork for an actual actional force. To extend the example from earlier, that’s what happened with OWS: popularization/politicization were turned towards productive ends in burgeoning direct action networks that grew from their encampments’ ashes. That’s why I’m against the counterproductive attacks on the radical factions that, when it’s time to go all in or fold, lead the charge, normally to the consternation of/marginalization from the people not committed to action.
You somehow group together my support for the Dohrns of the world (via attacking people who attack them as throwaway lines in “definitive histories of the ‘good’ sixties as an affirmation of reformism”) with my inferred lack of support for anything that helped lead up to the WUO. That’s crazy talk.
PS I do actually have problems with the yippies for playing too much into the capitalist media and thus affirming the system they made a hobby of resisting, but overall I still see them as part of a useful grouping of groups. And also, fuck Tom Paine.
July 11, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Angus Johnston
First, stop putting words and ideas in my mouth, and stop pretending I’ve said things I haven’t said.
Second, you say “action gets the goods,” but Weather achieved nothing, and they achieved nothing for reasons that were obvious in advance to many of their activist contemporaries. A defense of political violence on the grounds of effectiveness can never be a defense of Weather.
As for the other folks I inferred you oppose, it was based on this: “realizing/recognizing the vast immoralities inherent in the Amerikan empire and refusing to take strong action against it … props up our system both by not offering it actual resistance/not offering its people an actual alternative, and by giving our empire the semblance of democracy.” You can’t have it both ways.
Finally, “fuck Tom Paine”? Seriously? You do realize that the guy was an anti-slavery, pro-feminist, anti-monarchy, pro-civil liberties, pro-public education supporter of strong government assistance to the poor, right? If you can’t find something to like in him, you’re seriously not trying.
July 11, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Dohrn
I think most of what the WUO failed to accomplish was because the left turned too harshly on them. They were never trying, remember, to lead an actual revolution themselves, so they can’t be blamed for not leading one (and anyway, blaming a group for not taking down the biggest empire in the world would seem a bit silly). They were merely trying to create the feeling that this type of action was acceptable, that the accepted members of the empire were able to turn against it and join the oppressed in struggle, to better enable groups like the Panthers and Brown Berets to rise up in real and more threatening ways. I think their failures, then, are not so much their own doing–if we keep that purpose, instead of other purposes that have been pinned on them, in mind–as much as the FBI and the moderate left working against them in propaganda wars.
I like those other folks because I see them as precursors to revolutionary (or at least actional) struggle; I don’t see that as contradictory to not believing in reformism as a viable solution. Revolution won’t just “happen” one day, people need to build the base from it–it needs a base to be built from; there would be no Weather without SDS. Furthermore, SDS et al weren’t just groups for rallying, they participated in many direct actions, for example, against segregation. I’m hating on the groups who are less direct than SDS in getting involved, and think of themselves as the evolutionary end of their own strain of politics (instead of building for the bigger actions/movements), especially when they do so within the system. And I’m also hating on the groups that, once their time is past, once something more radical grows out of them, try to sabotage any work the new group is doing (this happens retroactively as well, through simplistic historicization [though I initially assumed, wrongfully, that you were against radical action rather than just against its implementation in occasionally clunky ways by Weather, so I partially agree in that they weren’t perfect, but I still completely disagree in your characterization of them as completely wrong, counterproductive, wannabe-killahs, machoistic bomb-hurlers, and so on]).
And I hate Paine for non-political reasons; we got drunk one night and he peed EVERYWHERE!
July 11, 2012 at 9:11 pm
Angus Johnston
That’s the best reason I’ve ever heard to hate on Tom Paine. Glad we were able to find some common ground.
July 12, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Sara T
I wasn’t sure whether I liked this program or not, and decided to give it a few more chances. That all ended with the episode you discussed here. The series started out with an equal opportunity bashing that I found refreshing. And I liked the idea of weaving real people and real news stories into the storylines.
But it was this quote that made me get up and leave the room before my head exploded:
“Can you imagine Humphrey or Kennedy standing for a photo op with Bernardine Dohrn or Allen Ginsberg?”
No, but I can imagine our current president doing that. Because he did. His presidential campaign was launched in Bernardine Dohrn’s home!!!
I can get nasty, name-calling conservative-bashing just about anywhere on TV, newspapers, and online. I don’t need to set aside an hour a week to get even more of it.
July 14, 2012 at 3:22 pm
kempthead
Two small quibbles about this thoroughgoing factual rebuttal to Newsroom’s fatuous attempt at analysis.
You attribute the SDS collapse to “government repression, sectarian infighting, and revolutionary overreach.” As a reporter for the Boston Globe, I covered SDS from 1968 through 1970. I don’t think government suppression played much of a role in its demise. Weather-indulgence, revolutionary overreach, and tone-deafness to political strategies that might move (as opposed to repulse) the American public were sufficient.
I also worked on Eugene McCarthy’s campaign up to and including Chicago. Our delegates certainly didn’t ignore the demonstrators, nor did McGovern’s. Witness Connecticut Senator Abe Ribicoff (a McGovern supporter) denouncing “Gestapo tactics” by the Chicago Police from the convention podium, while delegates cheered ecstatically and Mayor Daley shouted racist epithets (viz.: Ribicoff’s Wikipedia entry). McCarthy showed political courage by going into Grant Park and speaking to the protesters. He stayed in Chicago an extra day while using his campaign to ferry youthful supporters out of Chicago and harm’s way. He said explicitly he wanted to assure them “safe passage.” It’s hard to imagine a contemporary politician doing either of those things.
July 16, 2012 at 9:44 am
Jesse Walker
Allen Ginsberg participated in the Chicago 1968 protests too, and in the Yippie anthology Blacklisted News the Yipsters claim him as one of their own.
July 16, 2012 at 12:10 pm
Angus Johnston
Kempthead, most of what we now know about the government’s role in undermining SDS and the larger movement wasn’t revealed until later, with the COINTELPRO disclosures. A lot of that stuff is still murky, particularly when you get down to questions about how mistrust and paranoia fomented by government acts may have shaped activists’ worldview, but it’s clear that there were significant effects.
I was just re-watching the Weather Underground documentary the other day, as it happens, and one thing that leaped out at me in light of this issue was how much the Weather folks say that the police killing of Fred Hampton influenced their sense of what was possible — and what was worth risking — in an above-ground movement.
As for the Chicago convention, your added detail is welcome, but I don’t think it changes the big picture much. Yes, there were sympathizers within, and yes that Daley/Ribicoff exchange was important (to my mind it’s one of the signature moments of the sixties), but the majority perspective of the DNC, and of the party itself, was decidedly hostile to the protesters.
July 16, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Eric Kirk
It’s not the first time Sorkin messed up left history. In West Wing, Toby, I think, attributed The Permanent Revolution to Mao.
May 16, 2015 at 5:06 pm
Derrick Louise
Good analysis; I like Sorkin generally but that little piece of fake news commentary was total tripe.