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eyeopening.
It
was not Communism within ninety miles of the main–
land but the naked operation of imperialism which impressed the
students. Here was a revolution that was unexpected by the Old
Left, and sometimes, it seems, unwelcomed. Yet only the Old Left
seemed able to understand the revolution and the behavior of the
United States.
So, for example, The Fair Play for Cuba Committee, begun as
a left-liberal coalition, quickly evolved into a Trotskyist organization
in 1961. For the Trotskyists were quick to seize upon what was
new about Cuba, and to suggest a number of good reasons for the
reactionary role of the Cuban Communist Party in the early days
of the Revolution. Further, they offered a more revolutionary alterna–
tive to the American Communist Party. The Trotskyists recruited
one small part of the first "generations" of the New Left, just as the
Communists through their DuBois Clubs would gain a foothold in
the Movement somewhat later, and as Progressive Labor would when
it almost gained control of SDS during the past year. Thus, despite
the distaste young radicals felt for the sects of the Old Left, their
organizations played, though only peripherally, a formative role in
the development of the Movement. After 1962, the Cuban revolu–
tion began to be seen as only one part of a larger uprising against
American power, a peasant-based transformation of world society
which began in China, which swept into Algeria, and then returned
to Indochina. The Cuban phenomenon was no longer special, and
the momentary success of the Trotskyists waned. But the lessons
they taught were clear nonetheless: Old Left politics, based on the
Popular Front, could distort, if not virtually paralyse, a revolutionary
movement.
Energy for the Movement came from another direction too.
Early in 1960 a demonstration in San Francisco conducted by stu–
dents opfX>sing the House Un-American Activities Committee turned
into a minor police riot. HUAC then put together a film which
doctored the events to suggest that the Communists had plotted to
disrupt the committee. The film was immediately controversial,
making the rounds of campuses and church basements across the
country. The effect was striking. Students had to confront, for the
first time in their lives, an official lie; then, the U-2, the CIA revela–
tions and countless other admissions of subterfuge and misstatement.
