THE NEW RADICALISM: ,ROUND III
Round IV of our series on the New Radicalism will appear
in the Winter
PR,
with pieces by Norm Fruchter, Tom Hayden, Sar–
gent Shriver and others. The discussion was opened in the Spring issue
by Michael Harrington and Nat Hentoff. Different points of view
wiU
be represented in future issues.
Bayard Rustin
The "new radical.ism" can be observed at two levels: as
mood and
as
movement.
Primarily, it is a new mood and style of social action-a hostility
toward the dominant economic and political institutions of the coun–
try
and an impatience with the conventional efforts to transfonn
those institutions. For many of the new radicals, the hostility and
impatience grow out of naked confrontations wit,h power forces repre–
senting the worst in American life. These confrontations are both
effect and cause of the new radicalism.
As
embodied in direct action,
they are sought after and valued in themselves as the most effective
antidote to hypocrisy, which is seen as
the
crippling disease of the
American cultural and social order. On the other hand, to encounter
racist police, their clubs and dogs, is a searing revelation that per–
manently stamps one's perception of his relationship fo society. And,
indeed, it is hard to argue that this raw existential experience does
not reflect a significant aspect of social reality, stripped of its trappings
and its verbiage of consensus.
,
But it is not the total reality. That understood-really under–
stood-I have no difficulty in identifying myself with the mood. The
revelation came to me years ago, and it has been reinforced
with
every jail sentence, with every beating, with every slander, with every
betrayal. And there will be more.
As
an actual social movement, the new radicalism must be sorted
out. Lumping its components together under a phrase. may induce a
