Confession of a ’60s Radical

I returned from my Vietnam tour of riverine duty in 1967. In 1968, with Veteran’s Benefits in hand, I enrolled at USC. Registration was $300. I could barely afford it. It was a seminal year; both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were tragically assassinated. The Soviet Union sent its army into Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring,” a nascent democratic movement, while Students for Democratic Society (SDS), an American-born Marxist movement, was trying to spark a Communist revolution here under cover of protesting the Vietnam War. SDS students disrupted the Democratic Convention in Chicago and organized protests at Columbia University, where Hamilton Hall was occupied to protest Columbia’s ties with our Defense Department (sound familiar?). Marxist-inspired protests erupted across Europe and the United States. At USC, OJ Simpson won the Heisman and The Doors performed “When the Music’s Over” for a small group of undergrads (including myself) in the courtyard behind the USC Student Activities Center. Life was at a boil, but compared to my tour in Vietnam it was a day at the beach.  

That same year, 1968, Chairman Mao kicked off the Cultural Revolution in China. His Red Guards, made up of Communist youth, were let loose on China’s population to eradicate the “Four Olds”: Old customs, old habits, old culture, and old thinking.  In the United States SDS leaders like Jerry Rubin were admonishing students “not to trust anyone over thirty.” Here and in Communist China, the Marxist goal was to alienate old from young, break up families, set the poor against the rich, develop a strident feminist movement that demeaned males, and turn one group against the other. Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao starved and outright murdered tens of millions of their citizens to realize their revolutions. Both failed. Yet hard-core communists today are intent on spreading revolution here in our United States. Unless stopped, they will take your freedom to build their dictatorship. 

When I left Los Angeles to begin my Navy enlistment in early 1965, “Wooly Bully” (Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs), “Downtown” (Petula Clark), “Mrs. Brown You Have a Lovely Daughter” (Herman’s Hermits) and “Crying in the Chapel” (Elvis Presley) were on Billboard’s Top 10. Guys were wearing crew cuts, pompadours and jelly rolls, gals wore poodle skirts, pixies and ponytails. A “joint” was a cheap coffee shop. When I returned in 1968, girls were ”birds.” There was no language police then. Guys could be guys. It seemed the prettiest girls were rebelling by wearing mini-skirts, going braless, and getting stoned. The Rolling Stones were singing “Sympathy for the Devil,” and veterans returning from combat were treated like war criminals. Once I was separated from active duty I did what any red-blooded American lad at a university would do: I let my hair grow long and became a Veteran Against the War. It was the only way to get a date (see urban dictionary for definition of “date”).

It was at first empowering to attend a few rallies, then sit in and listen to SDS plan to occupy this building or block that road, but I became disenchanted. 

It was at first empowering to attend a few rallies, then sit in and listen to SDS plan to occupy this building or block that road, but I became disenchanted. Students, especially younger students, were being used, as Lenin put it, as “useful idiots.” Paid professional organizers directed them to sit-in or march, maybe block a freeway. Attempts by students to alter the message were simply ignored. It became crystal clear that participation in the movement was a dead end. There was then, as there is now, no room for individuals to hold on to beliefs that conflicted with SDS’s Marxist party line. Adults over 30 and everything they worked and fought for were wicked, the United States was corrupt, cops were pigs, and “blue dots” of trippy acid were a dollar a hit. It was fun while it lasted. 

What saw me through? I was never very active in the practice of our religion but my belief in God, my higher power, was and is indelible. I believe in Divine Providence. My soul is a gift from God. My Freedom and the Freedom of every individual is endowed by God and irrevocable. No government can change that. Tragically, seeking empowerment many Americans have turned their backs on God and have sought to define Freedom in terms of sexual mores, while enjoying government largesse. For them, government has replaced God. They give up their Freedom for liberties promised by manipulative politicians who depend on useful idiots to keep them dependent.

Hamas received billions in foreign aid. Rather than build a free and prosperous society, they used the money to spread hatred, sow violence, and pay money to the families of “shahidis” who martyred  themselves.

Now, lies about Israel’s apartheid, genocide and occupation are being used to stir a new Marxist attack against our United States. Columbia’s Hamilton Hall was recently occupied by students, as it was in 1968. The charges are all false. There is no apartheid: Peace-loving Arabs who live in Israel enjoy full citizenship rights and serve in the Knesset. Gays enjoy full civil rights in Israel; not so in the lands of Araby. There is no genocide: Israel dropped leaflets on northern Gaza that directed that population to evacuate. Occupation is a lie: Israel ceded Gaza to the Arabs in 2008. Hamas received billions in foreign aid. Rather than build a free and prosperous society, they used the money to spread hatred, sow violence, and pay money to the families of “shahidis” who martyred  themselves. They have dug their own graves. 

History is repeating itself.

Noel Anenberg is the author of “The Dog Boy,” about life in Boyle Heights after WWII.