The red-baiting was course omnipresent, but it first appeared in media coverage of SNCC. Ted quotes quite a bit of the media on the SNCC voting campaign in Mississippi. A number of blacks had been murdered during that campaign, but no media & no FBI until two whites were murdered. Some accounts referred to Fannie Lou Hamer as "illiterate" and worse, but I forget the other epithets.
Carrol
P.S. Fannie Lou Hamer was born in 1917. Probably she grew up in the shadow of mustard gas or something.
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Grimes Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 6:22 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] NONSENSE RE THE '60S - was A Note on an old slogan
Whenever reporters interviewed those participating in an action or demonstration, they _never_ were interested in the shared political ideas that moved the demo; they were _only_ interested in the individual motives for being there of the person they were interviewing. Carrol
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Besides the attempt to personalize and refusal to accept the direct protest against state political censorship, quibbling about definitions of freedom of speech, there were another forces at work.
There was an endless and boundless propaganda campaign to demonize obvious protest demands, as communist inspired actions. The effect was to criminalize dissent as traitorous and dangerous acts. In other words demands
for student freedom of speech at a public university was a demand only a communist would make. Of course such communist demands must be supressed because once you let the communist in on freedom of speech, they will take over and take away freedom of speech for all.
I wasn't a marxist or communist at that point, but it was an obvious smear that many were trying to dodge, so as not to give the establishment any legitiment support. So, the answer to the question, `why are you here?' often merged into personal motives. It was a media trick question, since the
person interviewed obviously had the freedom of speech he or she was demanding. When did you stop beating your wife? I didn't understand this joke, until it was explained to me. My own answer to such a question now would be, read the sign asshole.
Once Reagan was governor, he and or his staff were particularly skilled at turning these demands into dubious and suspicious affairs, at least close enough to keep up a political wedge between students and the bulk of the tax
paying public and voters.
There is a video clip of Reagan addressing a meeting of the UCB faculty senate, to get an insight into how this worked. He effectively turned the demand for freedom of speech in the classroom and campus on the faculty. He said, words to the effect, see, the moment you allowed such a thing, you insured chaos would follow.
Somebody will have to go through a PBS Frontline history of FSM to find this
clip. It was from a news clip of the period.
All during Reagan's campaign he vowed to take control of the chaos of public
education that tax payers were paying for... etc. Of course there was no chaos. Public education was beginning to respond to about a decade of student and progressive teachers demands to change the methods, materials, content and ways of the public education system. Remember we were not allowed to study evolution. I had to take home a letter to be signed by my parents to permit the units on evolution in an advanced placement second year biology class. We had no sex, reproduction, and social relationship studies in our social studies classes. We were given soft, socially irrelevant fiction to read. History, government, and social studies in LA secondary education was an irrelevant bore. For example most history books stopped in 1945 with maybe some nonsense about Eisenhower, Korea, and the nuclear age. We were raised in an education system of no content.
Of course by the early 60s the underlying issues were the continued suppression of civil rights, defacto segregation and the building war in Vietnam. These were the very core of what freedom of speech was about, i.e. government wrong doing.
``P.S. These posts are a running monologue on my part. I'm not reading what other shave to say. I don't want to get angry at anyone.'' CC
Fair enough. The sound of one hand clapping.
CG
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