The 60's on 6
More than a channel on SiruisXM and less the tie dyed tees and smell of pachouli oil, the young leftist radicals of today cosplay their way to control of the Democrat Party.
Massive, national movements are rarely pure. There are always some hangers-on that are pulled along with the current. Way back in 1895, Gustave Le Bon noted how certain people and groups that could not achieve notice on their own would attach themselves to popular movements like a parasite and how the leaders of the crowd sometimes had other motives than the crowd but was able to use the momentum of the crowd to propel their personal agenda forward.
Today’s political movements are no different.
The same Frankenstein’s monster of radicalism has been reanimated and walks with the undead in the new millennium. These contemporary forces are using spurious accusations of fascism, oppression, discrimination, etc. to further their aims in manners reminiscent of the protests of the “Free Love” era. As was true in the 1960’s, domestic terrorism against Pigs (the police), the Man (the established cultural mores), capitalist dogs (corporations and Wall Street) and political enemies (conservatives and Republicans) is all the rage.
For Democrats, it is always the 60’s – even if the current crop of radicals were given life by a chest feeding, birthing persyn and had their gender assigned three or four decades too late to join the OG communist domestic terrorists.
America hasn’t seen this level of harsh rhetoric and politically motivated/sanctioned violence since the violent protests and the radicalism of the 1960’s. Many people think of this period as the age of the Civil Rights struggle - and it was – but there was another component active as well. It was also a period during which the desires of anarchists and communists (just anti-capitalists, really) who chose to piggyback on the Civil Rights movement, were expressed – and often violently so. Groups like the Students for a Democratic Society, the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, the Youth International Party and even the ludicrous Symbionese Liberation Army (that kidnapped Patty Hearst) were part of this carnival sideshow of political activism.
Most of this agitation, radicalism and violence had ties to academia, specifically certain colleges and universities, and even today, former radicals (if there is such a thing) like Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Kathy Boudin are still members of that team (all are professors or retired professors). All three of whom were involved in bombings or robberies, Boudin as recently as 1981.
Boudin is a particularly interesting character. Where Ayers and Dohrn were radicalized on their own, Boudin was born into a family with a Muslim mother and a 1/2 Jewish Father, with a long left-wing history, and she was raised in Greenwich Village, New York. She attended kindergarten at the Little Red School House and its high school, the Elisabeth Irwin High School in Manhattan. Although she went to Bryn Mawr College intending to prepare for medical school, her interests quickly turned to politics. 1965, her last year at Bryn Mawr was spent studying in the Soviet Union. She was paid 75 rubles a month by the Soviet government and, according to her résumé, taught on a Soviet collective farm. Her great-uncle was Louis B. Boudin, a Marxist theorist. Her father, Leonard Boudin, grew wealthy as a communist legal defender and member of the National Lawyers Guild, he was the law partner of Victor Rabinowitz, himself counsel for numerous left-wing organizations.
Kathy’s older brother, Michael Boudin, who until 2021 was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Her son, Chesa Boudin, served as DA in San Francisco until he was recalled in 2022. After serving 22 years in federal prison for her role in a bombing that killed two police officers and an armored car guard, Kathy taught at Columbia and was honored in 2013 by the New York University Law School program as its Rose Scheinberg Scholar in Residence. She is presently an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work.
Yeah, that Columbia.
So, it should come as no big surprise that the philosophical children of these figures are the professors of today, inciting an even more violent form of radicalism based on even more absurd and patently false reasons.
The point of this diatribe is that we have seen this all before with one very big and very important difference.
In the 1960’s, the Republican and Democrats were allied against this radicalism as both parties of the era had seen the destructive power of both the authoritarian, socialist Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler and the rise of a dictatorial communist Russia and its pursuit of global territorial ambitions. The shine had come off communism after Walter Duranty’s sycophantic, false reporting was revealed (the revelation of the Holodomor, the Stalin directed famine in Ukraine) and that revelation subsequently earned him the nickname of “Stalin’s Apologist.”
This time, the contemporary radicals are the wholly owned subsidiary of a political party and the former 1960’s radicals form the intellectual leadership of this political party, a party hoping to use radicalism to propel them back to power.
This radical political party is the modern Democrat Party.
Everything old is new again. I started thinking that listening to Barry Soetero's rhetoric back in '08. Having grown up in the Bay Area, I kinda had a front. row seat to the SLA, the Marin county Courthouse shootout, and A San Quentin escape attempt, along with a couple attempts on my father's life from prison gangs
Two of the SLA members were former San Quentin inmates, my father knew them both. One he had on his Parole list. The father of a kid I went to school with was killed in the escape attempt. Two of the corrections officers at the Marin Courthouse were friends of the family. The name Angela Davis, another venerated "professor" is a dirty word in our home and has been as long as I can remember. My father was friends with the judge that was killed.
One of the attempts on my father was at the parole office. It didn't go well for the two who attempted it. a couple weeks later, my father was out of town testifying in LA on a case. he had his best friend staying at our house as a precaution. That afternoon a van pulled into our driveway. My father's friend had I & my brothers go to a back room. He handed me a Remington 870 and told me, "Anyone but me come through this bedroom door, you know what to do. Take the safety off now."
He pulled his .357 and went to answer the door. One of my brothers was on the phone to the police.
Later I heard the guy at the door asked if we wanted to buy some fish. My dad's friend had kept the chain on the door, the pistol behind his back and told the guy the cops were on the way. I guess they stared at each other for awhile, then the guy ran back to the van. they never made the end of the road. Three convicted felons and two with felony warrants were found in the van along with two shotguns, a revolver, and an old 1911. No fish.
Yeah, the '60's and early '70's were idyllic. This shit these days is no different, only the chuckleheads now don't know their history.
Had to chuckle over your illustration of Madison Ave hippies. My street attire today is much the same as when I hung out in SF in the latter 60s; black t-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. Luckily, I was granted a peek behind the curtain and recoiled from the humbug I saw at the controls. They are still at it today from corporate and educational platforms. Once a term held in disdain, they are now, 'The Man'.