It sounds to me that the 60s situation is alot like today, with there being many anti-war movements, with a few groups being better at giving themselves credit that doesn't belong to them.
Looks like the communist dust bunnies are trying to lift themselves out of the dustbin of history today! Chuck0
As someone who worked in the back office (mimeograph machine, publicity, logitics) in DC helping organize some national antiwar marches on Washington in the early 1970s, it is certainly my memory (backed by files and notes) that the two major national coalitions were under the broad auspices of the SWP and the CP. The CP coalition (PCPJ for one event) also included groups such as the War Resisters League and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The SWP coalition was almost exclusively a collection of their many front groups...
It was the CP and SWP that largely provided the national infrastructure for the large national demonstrations.
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What was the driving force behind the Vietnam-era protests and demostrations? The US government of course. My memory from Berkeley beginning in Jan `66 follows Chuck0's impression: a lot of different groups, none of which or all of which could claim leadership at some point or other. On the other hand, the national scene was different since local groups had to cooperate and meet in other cities to form planning coalitions. So essentially both Chuck0 and Chip B's impressions correspond.
Here in Berkeley student, community, and ad hoc coalitions, and groups with interchangeable leaderships, organizers, titles and histories would move from event to event or form their own `organization' on a temporary basis. They would organize a rally or two, get speakers, and set-up events, get busted or escape the tear gas and rocks in the great after glow, and move on. There was no movement in the formal sense of the word. It used to drive the FBI and national security types crazy because there was no hard core leadership to bust. It didn't matter how many phone taps, id photos, surveillance operatives and agents infiltrated what activities or meetings. After awhile the local cops didn't even bother to disguise themselves, because nobody cared. If the event was planned and required permits, the local cops were called so they could hear first hand the plans from the current organizing committees.
There were always enough commies around to name as leaders or provocateurs by whoever wanted to make an issue out of it. Some did and some didn't. All this current squabbling between groups, sounds very familiar. I ignored it back then. Many of the older crew had been part of some commie group or other and had been part of other demostrations and events going back at least to the fifties civil rights movements in the South, anti-nuke and anti-HUAC events. According to the street wisdom of the period there were supposed to be more FBI agents in the official CP and SWP than there were diehard members.
In any case, here, there was always a sectarian flea market and newspaper hand out running something like a comic sideshow to main events. Out of fairness, I should also mention the Nation of Islam, Jehovah Witnesses, Hari Krishnas, and assorted Jesus freaks were also hawking their wares---so theoretically they could all claim organizing credit too.
After I had been to a few of demos, it was pretty clear nobody was in charge and the traditional commie groups just showed up like everybody else. After about `67 the local cops ignored the commie angle and reserved their serious efforts for the Panthers. But the FBI and feds continued to believe all these anti-war events and black power rallies were somehow communist inspired---and their assignment was to locate the leaders and find or fabricate the links to communist fronts---like anybody with a Che Guevara poster and a Redbook---it was laughable, even if occasionally fatal. The FBI focus, and hence the later historical focus on the CP, SWP, SDS and the Black Panthers misses the point. It was a movable feast of committees floating on sea of anger.
The reason there is such a circus of re-writes of 60s movement histories is precisely because there was no centrally lead movement, so in retrospect just about anybody could claim credit and probably find FBI files to certify their authentic histories.
More to the point of current events, I automatically assume that many of the Middle East quasi-underground politico-religious groups and movements across the spectrum share a similar horizontal distribution, making the so-called War On Terrorism as absurd as COINTELPRO, although vastly more lethal and destructive of unsuspecting masses---masses probably soon to become much more committed and political.
However, I don't buy the idea that somehow the Islamic fundamentalists movements learned from the western Left. For one thing in the US, horizontally distributed leftist and activist groups in the past evolved out of local conditions and issues and were not intentionally built up as loosely linked networks to frustrate police repression---although it certainly worked out that way. While the targets of protest were central and well focused, the organizations, ad hoc coalitions, leadership and supporters were not.
Here, such a loose and evolving network can't accurately be called a tactic adopted by devious and cunning central organizers and planners i.e, it wasn't a conspiracy or a plot. And by extension, the same sort of assertions probably don't fit the Moslem world either---but I don't know that for sure. It's one of those judgments that has to be made directly on the ground. What seems clear to me is that whatever abstract similiaries between the western Left and the Isalmic fundamentalists groups are, they are the artifacts of being ignored by their respective ruling elites and established political parties.
What I would assume is that the US and Israel have become self-sustaining targets of opportunity about which to motivate and focus a huge variety of local groups with every conceivable agenda. What makes any particular collection turn into a militant cadre is probably not just their ideology but also an artifact of their focus on a fully militarized enemy, and working under brutal police state conditions.
The US international military police state working with many other police states in the world is assured of a long and happy life going after the few dozen million hard core activists in the Islamic world of billions.
Go get'm George.
Chuck Grimes