At Crosscut, ex-UW prof Dick Morrill laments the disappearance of the pre-Vietnam, class-struggle-conscious radical left in America and specifically in Seattle.
Morrill offers a sophisticated whatthehellhappened analysis. So do many of the page’s commenters.
Like some of the commenters, I see two reasons why it all occurred:
- The Cold War-era blacklists, purges of labor union leadership, and general scare tactics against anybody or anything more liberal than John Foster Dulles.
- The subsequent New Left’s preppy disdain for working-class squares, which repeated itself in later decades of identity politics, semiotics, and neo-bohemian “alt” culture.
Is there a way out of this recursive trap?
I believe I’ve already seen part of it.
I’ve seen it at the immigrants’-rights protests.
I’ve seen it among the grassroots and netroots groups striving to turn Obamamania from a singular event into a permanent force for progress.
And I hope to see it at the Stewart/Colbert rallies later this month.
