Whatever Became Of What’s-His-Name, The Radical? Reflections on Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin, and Abbie Hoffman by Louis Proyect
As a veteran of the American Trotskyist movement, I have a somewhat ambivalent attitude toward the Chicago 7 (originally the Chicago 8 until Black Panther Bobby Seale’s case was separated from the others). In the late 1960s, there were very sharp differences over strategy and tactics in the antiwar movement pitting the mass demonstration approach of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) against the Debordian spectacle politics of Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and their allies in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Now, forty years after the event, my feelings remain ambivalent even if I no longer have any identification with the SWP. For what they are worth, here are my impressions of the political and personal trajectories of some of the defendants in the Chicago 7 trial, most of whom were my contemporaries.
Perhaps nothing illustrated the self-defeating approach of three of the defendants — Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Dave Dellinger (who was twenty years older than Hoffman and Rubin) — than their role at an April 5th, 1969, protest in New York, when the antiwar movement had begun to recruit active duty GIs to the cause. The coalition had invited Dellinger to speak about the Chicago defendants.
During the march, a group of “Crazies,” an obscure confrontationist split-off from Rubin and Hoffman’s Yippies that some suspected of being agents provocateurs, carried the butchered heads of pigs on a spike with which they taunted cops along the parade route. The march itself was so massive that the Crazies were hardly noticed, except by the cops.
The march terminated with a rally, including a contingent of active-duty GIs at the front of the speakers stand. You have to remember that these soldiers were risking victimization just for being there. During Dellinger’s speech, he invited Rubin and Hoffman to the stage and turned over the microphone to them even though the coalition had voted against having them speak. Keep in mind that Rubin and Hoffman had developed an extremely hostile attitude toward mass protests that they thought lacked “balls.” Both of them had a macho attitude toward politics that would soon be rendered obsolete by the women’s liberation movement. When they debated SWP leader Fred Halstead at SWP headquarters in New York over directions for the antiwar movement, they were accompanied by several women wearing what amounted to Playboy Bunny outfits.
As soon as Rubin and Hoffman took the mike, they began to urge the Crazies and the crowd to attack the few cops that were lined up nearby. The GIs were positioned between the Crazies and the cops and were in danger of being caught up in any violence that ensued. Fortunately, Rubin and Hoffman’s harangues fell on deaf ears.
I soldiered on in the Socialist Workers Party until 1978 when I was effectively purged from this sect. I am not sure that my efforts were of all that much use in changing American society, but feel somewhat vindicated for having withstood the kind of pressures that would eventually disorient Jerry Rubin and Rennie Davis, a former SDS leader who shared Hoffman and Rubin’s politics but without their flamboyance.
Even as the war in Vietnam still raged, Rennie Davis became an acolyte of Guru Maharaj Ji, the 16-year-old leader of the Divine Light Mission. In November 1973, the Mission organized “Millennium ‘73,” a three-day event at the Houston Astrodome, which they advertised as “the most significant event in human history.” For those still consumed with the need to push for an end to the war in Vietnam, it promised “a thousand years of peace for people who want peace.” In other words, peace could come to the world when individuals found inner peace.
full: http://www.swans.com/library/art14/lproy45.html _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
