R wrote:
>the period of the 1960s and 70s was an embryonic period for today's far
>right. barry goldwater looks almost liberal today. during that period,
>militants, liberals, lefties, etc, were constantly being "warned" by the
>powers that be about "backlash." reagan was a product of that backlash.
>and so is shrub. we're living in that backlash.
-"World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 contributed -mightily to the advent of fascism..."
- Samantha Power in yesterday's NYT Book Review
-So let's not be successfully radical, since it'll just provoke a -backlash. Better to mutter complaints from the sidelines. -Doug
For those of us who see neither the "Days of Rage" nor the Bolsheviks as a shining success for the left, the message is don't tolerate stupidity labelled as "leftism."
Real success-- such as the labor organizing of the 1930s and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s led to increasing progressive strength. A stronger labor movement helped pass the New Deal; the Civil Rights movement helped build power for the Great Society.
Idiocy such as the "Yanks Aren't Coming" slogan by the US Communist Party in support of the Bolsheviks short-lived alliance with Hitler and their "no strike pledge" helped weaken the left wing of the labor movement and the idiocy of the Henry Wallace campaign just generally fed the backlash and idolation of the left that weakened the progressive movement.
The meltdown of SDS in sectarian factions and the general post-1968 unstrategic militancy at the expense of strategy also weakened the progressive movement and set the stage first for Nixon's election and then for the rise of Reaganism.
So no, it's unsuccessful radicalism that is the real problem.
Nathan Newman