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DAVID RIESMAN
litical activism among the newly awakened and the newly rich who
suddenly have discovered the uses of literacy. The situation allows
new converts to the dangers of domestic Communism to practice their
skills of intimidation locally, heckling at SANE meetings, expunging a
text book that mentions the United Nations, or setting students to spy
on their professors at the local Teachers College. Meanwhile, they watch
the political horizon in search of a national leader comparable to Mc–
Carthy, scanning Senators Goldwater and Thurmond, hopeful about
General Walker, but not yet solidified behind a single national leader.*
But they have found a national-and a nationalist cause-in an anti–
Communism whose belligerent frenzy and incomprehension is often
vaguely reminiscent of the extravagances of Frenchmen in Algeria or of
Japanese militarists before Pearl Harbor. Since this country has never
been seriously hurt by war, except for the one it fought with itself (and
which we are now turning in to a nostalgic celebration), and since most
Americans have been in my opinion grossly mis-educated about the
world during the Cold War years, the radical Right can always insist
that the Administration is following a policy that is insufficiently bel–
ligerent, insufficiently tough and dynamic. In fact, Kennedy shared,
during his campaign, the Right Wing picture of America as being
pushed around by Khrushchev and Castro, and as suffering defeat
after defeat in the Cold War, a tendentious picture that ignores the
troubles of the Communists in the Congo and elsewhere and that pro–
ceeds from tacit premises of omnipotence or total rather than limited
containment. The real chance of the Right Wing will come, it would
seem, with the underlining of this picture through further changes in
the world balance of power and in the unaligned countries that can
be interpreted as defeats for us and victories for a monolithic Com–
munism. While it may in general be true that the masses never prefer
a policy that requires war and sacrifice, it is possible today that, if the
fear of Communism and nuclear war becomes sufficiently intense, many
Americans will leap eagerly to short-cuts that promise to get things
over with.
Or they will hunt for scapegoats- and it may well be that Castro
has become such a scapegoat, who can be ostracized and bullied
be-
• This is a perennial problem of the Right Wing and perhaps of all extremist
groups. The authoritarianism, suspiciousness, and even mild paranoia that drive
people into the Right Wing also drive them into suspicion of each other. Hitler's
accomplishment lay in part in bringing to his banner the gifted Goebbels and
Goering and later Speer, whereas the American Right Wing has not yet been
able to unite behind a team with such diversified abilities.
