Raw Footage of a Lecture by Professor Howard Zinn on "The New Student Radicalism" (Part 2)

It's suspended between the authority of their parents and that authority will which will descend on them like a hammer the moment they leave the university. The authority of the job of the place and society of the rules and regulations of the demands of success. And so. But here you are you. The student is loose. Left the family behind. Not get entrenched anywhere else. Student is homeless. And maybe this is a good vantage point. From which to take chances. And so students take a chance. I guess also it matters that students read. This. Must be some connection between what students do in these. Surges of what is called radicalism and the fact that they do read and they do learn things.

About themselves about the country about other countries about social movements new ideas come to them. And maybe there's something else. Maybe the just at that point where this illusion enters their lives. That is all through high school. There is a world of illusion created. I don't really know what kind of high school he went to but I just guessed from talking to a lot of people who go through high schools and all sorts of illusions are created now maybe it's not a high school. Maybe it's the hometown newspaper. Maybe it's the mother and father but somehow by the time students get to college there are all sorts of illusions created about. Life politics the nation. What. About the marker say and maybe in college for the first time students begin to penetrate that. Maybe for the first time the world comes in upon them strangely enough even though they're

cloistered behind the walls in some way the world comes in on them and they begin to question. And I suppose then there's the spirit of adventure. Which young people have. Some older people have. But which seems to be particularly true at the college age. Now there's a history of student movements and radical student movements in this country. In 1905 Jack London and Upton Sinclair form the intercollegiate socialist society. Which I don't know how it compares with STDs but it did have Jack London and Sinclair and a lot of people joined in the main purpose was to talk to discuss socialism.

There was no Soviet Russia in existence there was no socialist or. Supposedly socialist country in a while but that was the socialist idea and there was Eugene Debs around and the I.W.W. was formally in that year and so they talked about socialism. Then along came World War One it seems to me that was have a special effect on student movement. I don't want to be too tight in drawing this deterministic line from water movement but seems to me there must be some connection. World War 1 had an effect. I think of Randall Bourne. A remarkable. Young man a study that Columbia University just before World War One under Charles Beard John Dewey James Harvey Robinson. And who watched world war one developed and was troubled. As many others were

by what he thought was hypocrisy the pious talk about making the world safe for democracy. And also the swiftness and the sheepishness with which the population fell in line. And he wrote. In an essay of his which is worth reading. Called the St.. So the moment war is declared the mass of the people through some spiritual all Kimmie become convinced that they have willed and executed the deed themselves. They then. With the exception of a few malcontents proceed to allow themselves to be regimented coerced arranged in all the environments of their lives and turned into a solid manufactory of destruction toward whatever other people may have in the appointed scheme of things come within the range of

the governments the sapper of ation. There are too many who joined him. It cost about 900 people put in jail during World War 1 for protesting war. There was. Problem of what to do about people who criticize the war Debs was put in jail for making a speech out in Ohio. In which he said something about. The master class always stalks the law and the servant class always fights it. And there were draft age people in the audience as there are here now as I uttered these words during a war and he was picked up and sentenced to 10 years in jail where he was kept by the liberal Woodrow Wilson and when he was released by Warren Harding. This is a strange country. The war

ended and then with the millions of corpses in fresh graves and people looked around and the world did not seem to be a better place. After all that and the Oxford Movement began Oxford University petitions we will not fight. Well things student strikes for peace. We will not fight things comparable I suppose to burning the draft cards here. Incidentally some young Cullison it seems to me developed it. I don't know if it's a system but he react he didn't burn his draft card. I won't give you his name. Here's what he did when he got his draft notice he sent a letter back. He was a philosophy major at Michigan State sent a letter back to the draft board when he got to know this was one

sentence which said. I do not recognize your existence. He never heard from them again. They were worried. I became a student movement of the 30s. And well there was the Depression and there was the rise of Hitler and now the Soviet Union was a growing force. The Japanese invaded. In 1031 and again in 1937 Hitler was on the march and Miscellany was making war in Ethiopia in the Civil War was going on in Spain and student movement developed in the United States around all these issues around the Spanish Civil War around stopping Hitler and the Leni

around the depression they were to the left of the New Deal asking him to do a new deal to do more things at home than it was doing. It was I think at that time a certain amount of Communist activity and influence Marxist influence in the student movement. This was a story along most of the people as always in any movement most of them were not communists and most of them were the marxists but they were communists and Marxists. I mention this these past movements because I want to make a point which I think it's important of course all the points I make I think are important but this I want to make this point about the student movement and the young radicals today. And that is they are very different from the. Radicals of the 30s

Jager who doesn't understand us. He's still living in another world in another era. He really he doesn't understand. Maybe he always lived in another era. But. Just today I was having lunch with a visitor from the Netherlands an economist who described himself to me as a conservative economist and he said to me said one thing I can understand he said the minute anybody starts protesting in this country somebody starts looking for communists. He said just this is something about America that we in Europe just just don't understand. Well that's our country. I try to tell them.

But the thing that's different about this generation the way I see it you know I said there were communists Surtees and there was more marxist influence much more marxist influence in the 30s. It seems to me to be. That many young radicals in the 30s now are not talking about most of the students but talking about sort of the radical edge of the student movement in the 30s. Had rather rigid loyalties to systems or nations or ideologies to Marxism or to the communist party or to the Socialist Party or to the Socialist Workers Party or to the socialist labor party. Well you know that whole mainlines of splinter left groups that existed and fought one another. Where they felt something particular fealty to the Soviet Union as the beacon light of socialism and many of them

quoted Lincoln Steffens who had come back after the Bolshevik Revolution so I have seen the future and it works. But there were there was this kind of rigid compartmentalization of loyalty to a dogmatist system to country at that. You don't finest today. Or except for very rare cases for the tiniest minority and even there it is very hard to defy. But among the student rather the radicals that I have met and seen in action and civil rights in the Vietnam teach ins or the kids of STDs this kind of rigid adherence to a doctrine or a country or a party or a group doesn't doesn't really exist. And I think the reason for this is that the young

people of today. Have lived through a lot you know vicariously for themselves. They've seen you know all sorts of thing and they've seen Stalinism unmasked in the Soviet Union by first shot himself. They've seen communism develop in a multifarious way and they've seen communism become no longer some monolithic thing centered in one particular place but something very gated in the hard to define and in conflict with itself very often. And they've seen dissident movements arise even within Communist States and communist groups break off. And they've also seen a movement towards independence and towards freedom develop in many many countries in the world which was part socialist part something which couldn't be defined in old terms. This is a

new world a much more complicated world. It's not the world of the 1930s. And so they can't have the kind of rigid loyalties that there existed at that time. And what what is interesting to me about the young student radicals of today is that they don't have allusions about any system or any country. They don't have allusions about the Soviet Union and they don't have illusions about the United States and they don't have illusions about China and they don't have illusions about France. They don't trust anyone. I think they're right in the sense that the best expression of their mood is that which Joseph Heller wrote about in Catch 22. When you're sorry on the bombardier a mad American soldier really mad and mad because he didn't want to

die. And that's the height of madness in a war. I decided didn't want to fly any more missions and he started uttering obviously unpatriotic things. And his friend Clevenger who was Harvard man and patriotic and clean cut and all the things that you know you should be. Cloven just said to me you're sorry and he says you ought to stop talking like that you're giving aid and comfort to the enemy. You're sorry and so the enemy. So the way I see it the enemy is whoever wants to get me killed. No matter which side he is on something something. But. You see the student radicals of today have watched the Russians commit aggression against Hungary. They've watched the Chinese invade to death they watch the

nonviolent Indians take Gore and fight the Chinese over the border territory. They've watched the goings on in the Soviet Union and China and in Eastern Europe and all of these things and they're aware of that now they're aware the communists want to support revolution in the world but they're also aware of other things. They're also on the other side. They're aware that the CIA over through a government in Guatemala. And they're aware that the United States secretly stealthily conspired to invade Cuba. If you want to I mean all they have to do is pick up Look magazine and read sarin Stone's account of Kennedy in the Bay of Pigs and the fantastic thing about it. Is the the

absolutely honest Macchiavelli NSA that's involved in that whole thing and that is the science that says. Kennedy hoped to fool the world and the American people and the terrible thing is it didn't work. Well this this is all above board. We know now that all nations lie. We shouldn't hesitate to face that fact. All nations live. All nations practise deception and all nations use force. Now was a time when we could get away with easy phrases and this phrase was repeated to this generation for a long time. And I guess to a lot of generations in the West something like this the difference between us and them that is the difference between the communist world or the free world is this communist world. Believes that any means are justified to achieve their ends.

But we don't. Well. There's no means more extreme and more horrible than war. And no major nation. Is shy when it comes to making war. East West North South. All of it. And what we are doing in Vietnam. Your bomb just bomb you just drop bombs whoever happens to be there. One of the reasons Congress doesn't declare war it doesn't know who to declare war. You know that really. Because if we were to declare war we would have to say we're declaring war on Vietnam but we're dropping. I spent some time dropping bombs in World War Two I know how accurate bombs are. I

know how pinpoint bombing works and. Who is caught underneath what we drop grenades down tunnels. Where with women and children are crouching we did know they were there but we just you know we dropped the grenades down and then they come out or they don't come out so they cannot mutilate. I know this is war and I know what the rejoinder is I mean where have you been fella. Don't be so innocent this is war. But the point is if we are willing to engage in this then we can all longest know. All we can say the ends are great. This is what we can say we can say they are and are beautiful. But we can't say that. We will not use any means to achieve these and I think this is what the young student radicals of today know and they understand. And so the attitude is and seems to me is a healthy attitude.

Call the shots as you see them no matter who gets angry. After all it's time that we station some people on the moon just so they can take an objective view of the world. And if we can get to the moon physically we can station ourselves on the moon ideologically. And take a look at this world and watch the behavior of nations and watch the behavior of the different ideologies and the different peoples and just call our shots as we see them. Somebody has got to do it and seems to me the great thing that these young new student radicals have done is to begin to suggest to us that this is a function of the citizen and a democracy. Thank you. I was.