What really happened to Left Radicals in America?

[Rafiq]

Compare the Communists in the 20's all the way to the seventy's.

How come right now in America, that "Red Spirit" is gone?

Communism isn't a problem for the Right-Wingers in America anymore... Why?

Do they see us as a dead cause?

I think I have a theory.


Perhaps, that during those times, in the 20's to the 70's, the American authority had a hard-line stance on Communists. They tortured, beat, hunted, and sometimes killed suspected Communists.

We all know Communism will always be a threat to the Capitalists, in fact, it is their biggest threat.

I think it has to do with the rise of technology.

The Advance in Technology, boosted the Propaganda greatly.


Think about it, if CNN always talked about the Communist threat, or the "Communist Traitors" or "Godless Murderers".

And if in school, all of our teachers talk about "Communists should be jailed" and "Communists are traitors".

Don't you think the amount of Communists will rise? People would get curious!

So what they did now, is...


On the News, when they talk about Communism, they dismiss it as a silly and threatening Idealogical Joke. They refer to it occuasionally, only when talking about the Cuban, North Korean, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, or Chinese Government.

But they leave it at that. So viewers will get the Idea it's not important.


In school, you see it in the textbooks, Communism gets a few pages of Horseshit, but of what?

They would say "Communism is this, no questions, no doubt, without being up for discussion, this is what communism is, and if you're a moderate you'll go along with that."

So implemented in the student is "That's what Communism is.. Case Closed".



Imagine if the text book said:

"Stay on high alert, watch out, do not trust any citizen, for they may be a Communist. Communism was a viciously horrible Idea founded by Karl Marx, a a mass murdering Godless monster who wanted to destroy our American way of life. You need to take arms and defend this nation against the Communist threat! Stop the Reds!"

If that's what it said, the student would care.
Just like how they care about the Terrorists, because it scares them, it attacks their emotion.


Now if it said:

"Communism is a dead Ideaologie founded by Karl Marx (BORING) that states that the government should dictate everything (YAWN). Communism is currently dead in almost every country except China, Cuba and a few other ones". Next chapter.

The student wouldn't care, and would move on. Because it's just another boring lesson at school.




So basically, we gain from Vicious Anti-Communist propaganda, it gives us attention, it makes people look into it.

So, in a way, Glenn Beck is an advantage for us.

[Rakhmetov]

Many of them were sunshine leftists who joined the bandwagon during the popular civil rights/anti-war movements then went back to licking the fascist jackboot when the Vietnam War ended. :confused:

[Rafiq]

Once you understand how the system works in America, how the Propaganda is implemented from Birth to Death, it is horrific.

[Meridian]

What you are saying is not even a theory. It is a collection of observations.

People would think a lot more about communism (or other revolutionary tendencies) if it was displayed as a major issue in popular media and educational contexts.

But it does not necessarily follow that more people would associate themselves as communists. There is a possibility for it, though, as more people could develop the interest to make their own research, which I suppose you implied.

[mikelepore]

The Communist Party in the U.S. destroyed itself by being an uncritical cheerleader of the Soviet Union, belitting the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of religion as "bourgeois abstractions." Such an organization could never recruit the American working class. All it achieved was to make the working class more confused. When capitalist propaganda said that socialism means the end of personal freedom, the "left" said the same thing!

[Magón]

Well I wasn't living here at the time, but there's a guy name Ronald Reagan who kinda fucked everything up more than should have been allowed. Followed by another idiot named George Bush Sr. I'd say those two fucked things up for America after the 70s.

[Ultra-Violence]

The left died in america because it was a fucking joke to begin with!

all it was made of was middle class teenagers with fucking angst against thier parents.

and how the whole fucking punk-rock movement absorbed the anarchist movement didn't help any either

The left in America has always been a joke post WWII

I dont see any way to get it up to speed again when all these fuckers argue is about veganism and riding fucking bikes

my 2cents since i deal with this shit

[syndicat]

in the period from the early 1900s thru the '30s and '40s there were tens of thousands of revolutionaries in the USA. the Socialist Party was diverse, and had middle class social-democrats but it also had a large revolutionary wing. Even some of the electoral political machines, like in L.A., were quite radical. The IWW had maybe a hundred thousand at its height. Then during World War 1 and '20s there was a lot of repression, both by the government and by employers.

Still, in the early '30s there were still thousands of radicals on the ground, in workplaces...members of SP, CP, IWW, and various socialist groups. They played a crucial role as a catalyst in the worker self-organization of the '30s.

But unfortunately the CP became by the late '30s the largest left force, due in no small part to the illusions many radicals had over the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution. after 1935 and the CP's Popular Front turn, they gave up on explicit socialist education and focused on working in the Democratic Party and with the union bureaucrats in the CIO. during World War 2 they opposed the mass wildcat strike wave because of their support for Stalin and the "no strike" pledge. these things led to an increasing gap between the dominant Left group and the rank and file in the unions. this made it easier for the pro-capitalist bureaucrats to push the Left out of the unions. the unions became more conservative and the bureaucracy was consolidated.

in the post war years radicalism had become both discredited (due to its association with repressive Communist regimes) and due to the apparent success of liberal capitalism providing increasing prosperity for much of the working class after World War 2. as the unions became bureaucratic service agencies, and each fought separately with little effort at a class wide program or movement, this tended to encourage a conservative mentality in the working class.