Free State MD : The New Left: American Socialists & Communists

The New Left: American Socialists & Communists

Source:The Antiwar Movement- I believe that's Mario Salvo in the photo (but don't quote me on that) who was one of the organizers of Students For a Democratic Society, in the 1960s. (But don't quote me on that either)

"The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, feminism, gay rights, abortion-rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms.[1] Some see the New Left as an oppositional reaction to earlier Marxist and labor union movements for social justice that focused on dialectical materialism and social class, while others who used the term see the movement as a continuation and revitalization of traditional leftist goals.[2][3][4]

Some who self-identified as "New Left"[5] rejected involvement with the labor movement and Marxism's historical theory of class struggle,[6] although others gravitated to their own takes on established forms of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, such as the New Communist movement (which drew from Maoism) in the United States or the K-Gruppen (de) in the German-speaking world. In the United States, the movement was associated with the anti-war college-campus protest movements, including the Free Speech Movement."

"The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The word 'hippie' came from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into New York City's Greenwich Village and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. The origins of the terms hip and hep are uncertain, though by the 1940s both had become part of African American jive slang and meant "currently fashionable; fully up-to-date".[56][57][58][59] The Beats adopted the term hip, and early hippies inherited the language and countercultural values of the Beat Generation and mimicked some of the current values of the British Mod scene. Hippies created their own communities, listened to psychedelic rock, embraced the sexual revolution, and some used drugs such as cannabis, LSD, and psilocybin mushrooms to explore altered states of consciousness.

The Yippies, who were seen as an offshoot of the hippie movements parodying as a political party, came to national attention during their celebration of the 1968 spring equinox, when some 3,000 of them took over Grand Central Terminal in New York, resulting in 61 arrests. The Yippies, especially their leaders Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, became notorious for their theatrics, such as trying to levitate the Pentagon at the October 1967 war protest, and such slogans as "Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball!" Their stated intention to protest the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, including nominating their own candidate, "Lyndon Pigasus Pig" (an actual pig), was also widely publicized in the media at this time.[60] In Cambridge, hippies congregated each Sunday for a large "be-in" at Cambridge Park with swarms of drummers and those beginning the Women's Movement. In the United States the hippie movement started to be seen as part of the "New Left" which was associated with anti-war college campus protest movements."

"The organization that really came to symbolize the core of the New Left in the United States was the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). By 1962, the SDS had emerged as the most important of the new campus radical groups; soon it would be regarded as virtually synonymous with the "New Left".[61] In 1962, Tom Hayden wrote its founding document, the Port Huron Statement,[62] which issued a call for "participatory democracy" based on non-violent civil disobedience. This was the idea that individual citizens could help make 'those social decisions determining the quality and direction' of their lives.[50] The SDS marshaled antiwar, pro-civil rights and free speech concerns on campuses, and brought together liberals and more revolutionary leftists.

A demonstrator offers a flower to military police at an anti-Vietnam War protest in Arlington, Virginia, 21 October 1967

The SDS became the leading organization of the anti-war movement on college campuses during the Vietnam War. As the war escalated the membership of the SDS also increased greatly as more people were willing to scrutinise political decisions in moral terms.[63]:170 During the course of the war, the people became increasingly militant. As opposition to the war grew stronger, the SDS became a nationally prominent political organization, with opposing the war an overriding concern that overshadowed many of the original issues that had inspired SDS. In 1967, the old statement in Port Huron was abandoned for a new call for action,[63]:172 which would inevitably lead to the destruction of the SDS.

In 1968 and 1969, as its radicalism reached a fever pitch, the SDS began to split under the strain of internal dissension and increasing turn towards Maoism.[64] Along with adherents known as the New Communist Movement, some extremist illegal factions also emerged, such as the Weather Underground organization.

The SDS suffered the difficulty of wanting to change the world while 'freeing life in the here and now.' This caused confusion between short-term and long-term goals. The sudden growth due to the successful rallies against the Vietnam War meant there were more people wanting action to end the Vietnam war, whereas the original New Left had wanted to focus on critical reflection.[65] In the end, it was the anti-war sentiment that dominated the SDS."

The reason why we have terms like New-Left in America, is because the Old-Left or Center-Left in America, wasn't left-wing enough for the Baby Boom leftists in America and in some cases some members of the Silent Generation in the 1960s.

The Left in America pre-1965 or so were Progressive Democrats and in some cases Progressive Republicans. Not Socialists and certainly not Communists (at least in the Democratic Party) and you had these young leftists who grew up hearing about how awful socialism and communism was (thanks to the Cold War) and read about socialism and communism themselves, saw what they saw as the weaknesses of capitalism and liberal democracy and decided that they wanted something radically different.

This page is for people who share that New-Left outlook and features a lot of New-Leftists (Socialists and Communists) on this page.

"Thomas Carl Hartmann[1] (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio personality, author, former psychotherapist, businessman, and progressive political commentator.[2] Hartmann has been hosting a nationally syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, since 2003 and hosted a nightly television show, The Big Picture, between 2010 and September 2017."

"Bernard Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician and activist who has served as the junior United States senator from Vermont since 2007 and as U.S. Representative for the state's at-large congressional district from 1991 to 2007. He is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history, although he has a close relationship with the Democratic Party, having caucused with House and Senate Democrats for most of his congressional career.[1] Sanders unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States in 2016 and 2020, finishing in second place in both campaigns. Before his election to Congress, he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

Often considered one of the most popular politicians in America, Sanders self-identifies as a democratic socialist and has been credited with influencing a leftward shift in the Democratic Party since his 2016 presidential campaign. An advocate of social democratic and progressive policies, he is known for his opposition to economic inequality and neoliberalism. On domestic policy, he supports labor rights, universal and single-payer healthcare, paid parental leave, tuition-free tertiary education, and an ambitious Green New Deal to create jobs addressing climate change. On foreign policy, he supports reducing military spending, pursuing more diplomacy and international cooperation, and putting greater emphasis on labor rights and environmental concerns when negotiating international trade agreements. Sanders supports workplace democracy, and has praised elements of the Nordic model. Some commentators have described his politics as aligned with the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and left-wing populism."

"Avram Noam Chomsky[a] (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian,[b][c] social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics",[d] Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

Born to Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, and in 1957 emerged as a significant figure in linguistics with his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which played a major role in remodeling the study of language. From 1958 to 1959 Chomsky was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B. F. Skinner."

"The Young Turks (TYT) is an American liberal[7] and progressive news and opinion show on YouTube that additionally appears on selected television channels. TYT serves as the flagship program of the TYT Network, a multi-channel network of associated web series focusing on news and current events. TYT covers politics, lifestyle, pop culture, science, sport and other social topics.[8][9] The program was created by Cenk Uygur, Ben Mankiewicz, and Dave Koller. Currently co-hosted by Uygur, Ana Kasparian, and John Iadarola,[10] it is also often accompanied by various other in-studio contributors. The program presents an anti-establishment stance and provides commentary on topics of varying news genres. The Young Turks began as a radio program that premiered on February 14, 2002, on Sirius Satellite Radio; it was later carried on Air America, before launching a web series component in 2005 on YouTube. In 2018, Regional News Network offered it initially on WMCN, its New Jersey broadcast television station.

In addition to being carried on the TYT Network and YouTube, it is also currently available on Amazon Prime Direct, iTunes, Hulu, Roku, on Pluto TV through a 24-hour feed and on social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.[11][12] It has spawned two spin-off television series, one that aired on Current TV[13] from 2011 to 2013 and a second that debuted on Fusion in 2016 as a limited-run program developed to cover the 2016 United States presidential election. The Young Turks also served as the subject of a documentary, entitled Mad as Hell, which was released in 2014.[14] The network also has a linear channel on YouTube TV.[11] Throughout its existence, TYT has relied on small grassroots financial contributions from its viewership to sustain itself as an independent news organisation.[15] In 2017, TYT sought to expand its media network and hire more staff through various venture capital fundraising efforts that raised $20 million."

The Young Turks

"The Real News Network (TRNN) is a nonprofit news organization. TRNN was launched in 2007 in Toronto, founded by Paul Jay and Mishuk Munier. The Real News also has offices in Baltimore since 2014.[1]

The Real News Network uses internet broadcasting, and is also available on Xfinity video on demand[citation needed] and Roku."

"The Alyona Show was a current affairs television program hosted by Alyona Minkovski that aired on RT from 2009 to 2012. The show featured in-depth analysis of news stories and also frequently criticizes the mainstream media, national politics in the United States, and the U.S. financial industry.[1]

The show's final edition aired on July 30, 2012, after which Minkovski left RT to join HuffPost Live."

The Alyona Show

"George Stanley McGovern (July 19, 1922 – October 21, 2012) was an American historian and politician who was a U.S. representative, U.S. senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 presidential election.

McGovern grew up in Mitchell, South Dakota, where he was a renowned debater. He volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Forces upon the country's entry into World War II and as a B-24 Liberator pilot flew 35 missions over German-occupied Europe from a base in Italy. Among the medals bestowed upon him was a Distinguished Flying Cross for making a hazardous emergency landing of his badly damaged plane and saving his crew. After the war he earned degrees from Dakota Wesleyan University and Northwestern University, culminating in a PhD, and was a history professor. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1956 and re-elected in 1958. After a failed bid for the U.S. Senate in 1960, he was a successful candidate in 1962...

George McGovern

"RT (formerly Russia Today) is a Russian state-controlled[1] international television network funded by the federal tax budget of the Russian government.[15][16] It operates pay television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.

RT is a brand of TV-Novosti, an "autonomous non-profit organization" founded by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti in April 2005.[10][17] During the economic crisis in December 2008, the Russian government, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, included ANO "TV-Novosti" on its list of core organizations of strategic importance to Russia.[18][19][20] RT operates as a multilingual service with channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (since 2010),[21] RT UK (since 2014) and other regional channels also produce local content. RT is the parent company of the Ruptly video agency,[5][6][7] which owns the Redfish video channel and the Maffick digital media company.[8][9]

RT has been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy.[2] Academics, fact-checkers, and news reporters (including some current and former RT reporters) have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation[42] and conspiracy theories.[48] UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached its rules on impartiality, including multiple instances in which RT broadcast "materially misleading" content.[55] RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan compared the channel to the Ministry of Defence and stated that it was "waging an information war, and with the entire Western world".[16][56] In September 2017, RT America was ordered to register as a "foreign agent" with the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.[57] RT has been banned in Ukraine since 2014,[58] and in Latvia[59] and Lithuania[60] since 2020."

"Al Jazeera English (AJE) is a television news channel broadcast to the world by the Al Jazeera Media Network. It is the first English-language news channel to be headquartered in the Middle East.[3] Instead of being run centrally, news management rotates between broadcasting centres in Doha and London."

"Laura Flanders (born 5 December 1961) is an English broadcast journalist living in the United States, who presents the weekly, long-form interview show The Laura Flanders Show.[1][2] Flanders has described herself as a "lefty person."[3] The brothers Alexander, Andrew and Patrick Cockburn—all journalists—are her half uncles. Author Lydia Davis is her half-aunt. Her sister is Stephanie Flanders, a former BBC journalist.[4] Actress Olivia Wilde is her cousin."

"Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic Party and the Kennedy political family, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-continuously-serving senator in United States history. Kennedy was the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and was the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.

After attending Harvard University and receiving his law degree from the University of Virginia, he began his career as an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Kennedy was 30 years old when he first entered the Senate following a November 1962 special election in Massachusetts to fill the vacant seat previously held by his brother John, who had taken office as the president. He was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was later re-elected seven more times. The Chappaquiddick incident in 1969 resulted in the death of his automobile passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne. He pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and later received a two-month suspended sentence. The incident and its aftermath hindered his chances of ever becoming president. His only attempt, in the 1980 election, resulted in a Democratic primary campaign loss to the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter."

EMK

"James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American cult leader, political activist, preacher and faith healer who led the Peoples Temple, a new religious organization which existed between 1955 and 1978. Jones and his inner circle orchestrated a mass murder–suicide in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978.

Jones founded the organization that would become the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, in 1955. Jones distinguished himself with his civil rights activism, founding the Temple as a fully integrated congregation. In 1965, he moved the Temple to California, where the group established its headquarters in San Francisco and became heavily involved in left-wing politics through the 1970s. Jones then left the United States and established Jonestown in Guyana, compelling many of his followers to live there with him.

By 1978, media reports had surfaced of human rights abuses at Jonestown. Deciding to investigate these reports, U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led a delegation to the commune in November of that year. While boarding a return flight with some former Temple members who had wished to leave, Ryan and four others were murdered by gunmen dispatched from Jonestown. Jones then ordered and likely coerced a mass murder-suicide that claimed the lives of 918 commune members, 304 of them children, almost all by drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide."

"Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English-American socio-political critic and public intellectual, who mainly expressed himself as an author, journalist, orator, and columnist. He wrote, co-wrote, edited or co-edited over 30 books, including five of essays on culture, politics, and literature.

Hitchens described himself as an anti-theist, who saw all religions as false, harmful, and authoritarian.[27] He argued for free expression and scientific discovery, and asserted that they were superior to religion as an ethical code of conduct for human civilisation. He also advocated separation of church and state. The dictum "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence" has become known as Hitchens's razor."

"Henry Agard Wallace (October 7, 1888 – November 18, 1965) was an American politician, journalist, farmer and businessman who served as the 33rd vice president of the United States, as well as the 11th U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and the 10th U.S. Secretary of Commerce. He was also the presidential nominee of the left-wing Progressive Party in the 1948 election.

The oldest son of Henry C. Wallace, who served as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1921 to 1924, Henry A. Wallace was born in Adair County, Iowa, in 1888. After graduating from Iowa State University in 1910, he worked as a writer and editor for his family's farm journal, Wallaces' Farmer. He also founded the Hi-Bred Corn Company, a hybrid corn company that eventually became extremely successful. Wallace displayed intellectual curiosity about a wide array of subjects, including statistics and economics, and explored various religious and spiritual movements, including Theosophy. After his father's death in 1924, Wallace drifted away from the Republican Party, and he supported Democratic presidential nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 election."

"Jesse Louis Jackson (né Burns; born October 8, 1941) is an American political activist, Baptist minister, and politician. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as a shadow U.S. Senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997.

He is the founder of the organizations that merged to form Rainbow/PUSH. Former U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. is his eldest son. Jackson hosted Both Sides with Jesse Jackson on CNN from 1992 to 2000."

"At the 1932 Milwaukee Convention, Thomas and his radical pacifist allies in the party joined forces with constructive socialists from Wisconsin and a faction of young Marxist intellectuals called the "Militants" in backing a challenger to National Chairman Morris Hillquit. While Hillquit and his cohort retained control of the organization at this time, this action earned the lasting enmity of Hillquit's New York-based allies of the so-called "Old Guard". The diplomatic party peacemaker Hillquit died of tuberculosis the following year, lessening the stability of his faction.

At the 1934 National Convention of the Socialist Party, Thomas's connection with the Militants deepened when he backed a radical Declaration of Principles authored by his longtime associate from the radical pacifist journal The World Tomorrow, Devere Allen. The Militants swept to majority control of the party's governing National Executive Committee at this gathering, and the Old Guard retreated to their New York fortress and formalized their factional organization as the Committee for the Preservation of the Socialist Party, complete with a shadow Provisional Executive Committee and an office in New York City.

Thomas favored work to establish a broad Farmer–Labor Party upon the model of the Canadian Cooperative Commonwealth Federation,[11] but remained supportive of the Militants and their vision of an "all-inclusive party", which welcomed members of dissident communist organizations (including Lovestoneites and Trotskyists) and worked together with the Communist Party USA in joint Popular Front activities. The party descended into a maelstrom of factionalism in the interval, with the New York Old Guard leaving to establish themselves as the Social Democratic Federation of America, taking with them control of party property, such as the Yiddish-language The Jewish Daily Forward, the English-language New Leader, the Rand School of Social Science, and the party's summer camp in Pennsylvania.

In 1937, Thomas returned from Europe determined to restore order in the Socialist Party. He and his followers in the party teamed up with the Clarity majority of the National Executive Committee and gave the green light to the New York Right Wing to expel the Appeal faction from the organization. These expulsions led to the departure of virtually the whole of the party's youth section, who affiliated to the new Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party. Demoralization set in and the Socialist Party withered, its membership level below that of 1928."

"James Michael Papantonio (born October 24, 1953) is an American torts lawyer, television presenter, radio talk show host, and writer. He has been inducted into the Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame.[1]

A prominent trial lawyer, Papantonio co-hosts Ring of Fire, a nationally syndicated progressive weekly radio program, with Sam Seder, where he is referenced as America's Lawyer.[2][3] In December 2016, Papantonio began hosting a program on RT America called America's Lawyer."

The Ring of Fire

"Democracy Now! is an hour-long left-wing American TV, radio and internet news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman, who also acts as the show's executive producer, and Juan González.[1][2] The show, which airs live each weekday at 8 a.m. Eastern Time, is broadcast on the internet and by over 1,400 radio and television stations worldwide.[3]

The program combines news reporting, interviews, investigative journalism and political commentary, with a focus on peace activism linked to environmental justice and social justice, guided by the ethics of ecofeminism as a philosophy.[not verified in body] It documents social movements, struggles for justice, activism challenging corporate power and operates as a watchdog outfit regarding the effects of American foreign policy.[2] Democracy Now! views as its aim to give activists and the citizenry a platform to debate people from "The Establishment."[2] The show is described as progressive[4] by fans as well as critics, but Goodman rejects that label, calling the program a global newscast that has "people speaking for themselves."[1] Democracy Now! describes its staff as "includ[ing] some of this country's leading progressive journalists."[5]

Democracy Now Productions, the independent media nonprofit organization which produces Democracy Now!,[2] is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers,[6] and foundations such as the Park Foundation,[7] Ford Foundation,[8] Lannan Foundation,[9] and the J.M. Kaplan Fund.[10][11] Democracy Now! does not accept advertisers, corporate underwriting or government funding.[12] The show has become popular on the internet, and from the late 2010s onward, has been involved in pioneering extensive media cooperation in the public sphere across the US."

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