Re: [sixties-l] Re: new ground: The Sixties and the Right

From: monkerud (monkerud@scruznet.com)
Date: 10/03/00

  • Next message: Henriette Cecile Beigh: "Re: [sixties-l] Re: break new ground sixties and rightwing"

    Well put posting Ted! Much more detailed than my simplistic emotional
    description. We scared the hell out of people who had something to lose,
    whatever branch of the elite they came from. Those elites directed the
    media at are largest warts, and as we all know, we had plenty; and they
    rolled out the tanks. The government shot people, Panters, students at Kent
    State, Berkeley, etc., bought off others, jailed still more and "saved" the
    country from us and our wild ideas.
    
    Are we better off today with stronger corporate control? Are we glad that
    the industrial, electronic, weapons interest now have a larger say in
    government? We may have made mistakes and lacked understanding and been
    wildly exuberent and thumbed our nose at the authorities, but the direction
    we were moving in benefits more people.
    
    best, Don Monkerud
    
    
    
    At 10:09 AM -0400 10/3/00, Ted Morgan wrote:
    >I appreciate folks' continuing this constructive thread!  Keep it up, and
    >I hope
    >some of those who've bailed out will rejoin.
    >
    >John raises interesting points about the Right and the 60s.  I think the
    >explanation of the greater Right activity in the early 60s (compared to Left
    >activity) is, as Marty's post suggests, a reflection of the hangover from
    >McCarthy days and the pervasiveness of anti-communist elements in the American
    >mainstream in the 50s. [I remember reading a book as a teen-ager called
    >"You Can
    >Always Trust a Communist (to be a Communist)" put out by the John Birch
    >society
    >--I think I found it on my own, since I certainly didn't get it from my
    >parents;
    >I also remember reading with great interest some Ayn Rand who typically has
    >appeal to those in their teen -early 20s years, I find.]
    >
    >This was part of the mythological overlay or veil that 60s movements broke
    >through.
    >
    >What I think is more interesting and worth probing into is what happened
    >in the
    >late- and post-60s to produce what John labels a "new 'respectable' right,"
    >which also, I think has produced the 60s-revisionist thinking that the
    >"Sixties"
    >were somehow more about the Right's emergence than the Left's.  J. Johnson's
    >comments, I think, are pertinent here.  The Right has often (though not
    >always)
    >functioned as the propaganda hammer for the corporatist center (e.g., Red
    >Scare
    >tactics serve the function of obscuring the American imperial role in the
    >world,
    >a role embraced by the corporate/political elite).  For a number of reasons
    >--the nature of media coverage of 60s movements, the behaviors of various
    >'movement' actors, the threat to long-term corporate profitability (and system
    >viability) posed by the mass mobilizations against the war & for environmental
    >regulation, etc.-- Corporate elites (including a fair number of 'liberals')
    >began a concerted and well-funded effort to "roll back" the level of popular
    >intervention in 'business-as-usual.'  Those sectors of the public who felt
    >particularly alienated by the movements they witnessed in the media (e.g., the
    >urban insurrections, the gun-toting Panthers, the VC-flag carrying
    >militants, to
    >say nothing of hippies who flaunted their alienation from mainstream America,
    >etc.) were effectively mobilized against 60s movements as "anti-American,"
    >"free-loaders," and "spoiled brats."  The effect was to (a) to move the
    >government policy agenda safely back to the center, with considerable pressure
    >to move it further right, thanks to (b) the generation of rightist pressure on
    >the part of working-class, ethnics ("Reagan Democrats") and the old Know
    >Nothing
    >small-business sector effectively mobilized behind the Contract on America.
    >This is, I would suggest, what "legitimized" the Right, and, though there's a
    >lot more I could say on this, I'd argue THIS is the story of 60s movements and
    >what has happened in the U.S. since the 60s.
    >
    >Ted Morgan
    



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