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and thus in the dustbin of history. Both fear of and anger about repression
(after Nixon's election in 1968 on a program of "law and order") as well
as dreams of revolution gave the vanguards an opening. For these reasons
among others, we failed to defeat the penetration of totalitarian ideology
and organization in the New Left.
The last time I was together with Madison SDS was at the SDS
National Convention in June 1969, shortly before I began an off-and-on
two-year career as a taxi driver and part-time radical in New York. I can–
not forget seeing members of Harvard SDS-dominated by the Maoist
Progressive Labor Party-and of Columbia SDS-dorninated by the
emergent Weatherman-screaming in unison at one another. The Harvard
chant was "Mao-Mao-Mao Tse-Tung, Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win."
Columbia responded with "Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh, NLF is Gonna Win."
In this age of discourse analysis, perhaps we should add to Marx's old
materialist dictum that you are what you eat the idea that you become
what you chant. I learned that even highly educated people, indeed per–
haps especially highly educated people-including myself-can turn
themselves into poli tical zombies and close off their capacities for political
judgment if they repeat slogans often enough.
After graduation, I drove a taxi in summer 1969 (I think I was getting
lost in the Bronx when American astronauts landed on the moon) and
continued to argue about the SDS faction fight with my friend and apart–
ment mate, Mark Rosenberg. In late August, I returned from a visit home
to see that Mark had invited the New York Weatherman collective to stay
in our apartment following a meeting in Cleveland in which the organiza–
tion made the decision to initiate a move towards building an armed
underground organization. This, of course, is a long story and I mention
it now to say that, faced with the opportunity to join Weatherman, I said
no, though at the time I believed my decision was due as much to fear as
to revulsion at this American totalitarianism. I never regretted saying no.
But for the purposes of this gathering, it is important to note that one rea–
son doing so was so difficult was that so many people in Weatherman were
themselves veterans of 1968 and indeed of the early and middling years of
the New Left. While it was always a fringe phenomenon in numbers,
Weatherman was too closely linked to the spiri t of 1968 to be dismissed as
a repudiation of the 1960s or the New Left. Yes, it turned on parts of 1968,
but the continuities were just as important.
In the New Left we talked a lot about assuming responsibility for our
lives. No one forced me to remain involved in the SDS faction fight or to
be tempted, however briefly, by Weatherman. True, I was only twenty–
two, still in the process of working out my political convictions and eager
to demonstrate that I was as tough as any of the other guys in SDS. But
