Destructive Generation
I’m reading the book Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties by David Horowitz and Peter Collier. It’s a chilling document, especially because—unlike in 1989, when the book was first written—it’s become more and more clear that the left’s long Gramscian march through our institutions has been largely successful.
The book’s first chapter—the story of Fay Stender, with which I was previously unfamiliar—is a tale of such sadness it’s almost unbearable. Stender was an idealistic leftist lawyer who defended, and had affairs with, black prisoners such as Huey Newton and George Jackson, and was later shot by another black con after her supposed “betrayal” of Jackson.
Stender’s life trajectory wasn’t just sad, of course. It was offensive and outrageous and anger-provoking, and not just for what was done to her but for her own role in it. But it was also sad. It was sad that Stender was so naive in the first place as to dedicate her life to defending a group of socipathic con men who happened to talk a good line of racial victimization, sad that she deceived herself so greatly in her perverted idealism. It was sad that, when she finally realized who and what they really were, it was too late to save herself (or others) from their revenge although she tried her best. Sad (although ultimately good, if it’s truth you’re after) that she lost her illusions even before her former buddies managed to get her, and sad that, prior to their destroying her physically, she had realized her life’s work was a sham and a betrayal of the principles she had thought she was defending. Sad and ironic that, at the trial of the man who had shot her five times and left her in horrific unremitting pain and paralyzed from the waist down as well as handicapped in the use of her arms, his defense (unsuccessful, at least) was based on the sorts of arguments she had formerly used to defend other black activist criminals.
You might say that Stender got what she deserved, but I see her as a changer and I see her story as tragic despite (or perhaps because of?) her own role in her destruction and the destruction of others.
Oakland in the 1960s and 1970s was the epicenter of white radical leftism’s embrace of black criminals. The trial of Stender’s shooter—where most of the radical lawyers who had previously defended people like her would-be murderer were now rooting for the prosecution—was a sort of watershed. Having read Horowitz and Collier’s account, I now think of it as similar, at least on a local level, to the shock waves sent through the American left by Khrushchev’s revelations about Stalin’s crimes. Those on the left had to make a decision about Communism itself, and a lot of people quit the party as a result. The ones who stayed were the hard core who were able to compromise with any evil for the Cause. I think a similar thing happened to some of Stender’s colleages; many left the fold, and the ones who stayed were the ones to whom 2+2 made 5.
Stender killed herself at the age of 48, about a year after she’d been shot. Friends say she did it because she was overwhelmed by pain and her handicaps, but I believe that equally unbearable to her may have been her realization about the uses to which she’d put her life, and the depth of her regret about the choices she made.
Stender was no shrinking violet in the heyday of her activist years. She romanticized the black prisoners she lawyered and loved, and felt more comfortable with them than with more conventional society. Her tale is a cautionary one for our times as well; the phenomenon has hardly died out with the 60s:
John Irwin, a former prisoner at Soledad who had served his time and after his release obtained a degree in sociology and became a leader of the Prisoners Union, was called into the Soledad Brothers case…Fay wanted him to listen to tape recordings made of the prisoner witnesses who would testify against [George] Jackson and suggest ways of discrediting them. During his time at the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee offices, Irwin was taken aback by the ease with which Fay and her associates accepted a sentimental and, to his way of thinking, benighted view of prisoners simply as victims of social circumstances, and of prison simply as an early warning system of the fascist state toward which all American social institutions were heading. “I don’t think Fay ever understood the commitment to criminality that many of the persons she dealt with had. Fay really had a strong belief that the prisoners were going to be in the vanguard of the social revolution.” Irwin was disturbed by the romantic acceptance of violent solutions and by what he was as a kind of sexual romanticism: “It was mostly woman who were doing the organizing. They had each picked their favorite Soledad Brother and were kind of oo-ing and ah-ing over them, like teenagers with movie stars. I couldn’t believe it.”
Stender lived long enough to understand that “commitment to criminality,” up close and very very personal. Whether or not she changed in the political sense of rejecting leftism itself I don’t know. Perhaps not, but perhaps if she’d lived a while longer she would have come to that conclusion, too (as did Horowitz himself). As it was, though, she made a symbolic gesture that is very telling: not long before she killed herself, she burned everything she’d written in connection with her work, including the manuscript of the book she had edited (and had cleansed of its more inflammatory and incriminating passages) for George Jackson, Soledad Brother.
That book is still for sale at Amazon, of course, praised by the usual suspects:
“The power of George Jackson’s personal story remains painfully relevant to our nation today, with its persisten racism, its hellish prisons, its unjust judicial system, and the poles of wealth and poverty that are at the root of all that. I hope the younger generation, black and white, will read Soledad Brother.” ””Howard Zinn, author, A People’s History of the United States
The left never rests, does it?
[NOTE: Romanticizing sociopathic criminals seems to be a hazard for some women, although it’s not always as political as it was with Stender.
By the way, although I was a liberal for the entirety of my 20th-century existence, I never support the idea that racial discrimination either explained or justified criminality. Stender’s cause was not mine.]
[ Shakes head in disbelief, although after all this time, I quite believe it all. But I shake my weary head in disbelief nonetheless. What I have trouble believing is that presumably intelligent and educated [contradiction? no-o-o . . . but . . .] humans — in this instance these cooing and ahhing wymyn of the left — are *that* far gone. But they are. And I evidently need to snap out of it. ]
I bought the book for a dollar at a used book store several years ago- a very good investment.
Collier and Horowitz write about the murder of Betty Van Patter. Betty Van Patter was a bookkeeper with radical political leanings whom the Black Panthers hired to do their books, at the recommendation of David Horowitz. Betty Van Patter had worked with Horowitz at Ramparts, the defunct radical magazine.
Betty Van Patter had discovered irregularities in the Black Panthers’ books. After informing the Black Panthers about those irregularities, she disappeared and was discovered dead in the Bay a month later. In addition to the obvious connection, it is of note that Elaine Brown and other Black Panthers have turned exceedingly hostile when one mentions Betty Van Patter to them.
As David Horowitz had recommended Betty Van Patter for the bookkeeping job with the Panthers, he felt some responsibility for her death. From the beginning, he suspected Panther complicity in Betty Van Patter’s death, a conclusion which Betty’s daughter Tamara Baltar didn’t reach until after she and her brothers were able to pay a private investigator to look into the case.
The death of Betty Van Patter was the turning point for David Horowitz- the turning point from left wing radical to Reagan supporter.
A recently published book on the Black Panthers,Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, has this to say about David Horowitz.
IOW, David Horowitz’s opinions on the Panthers should be dismissed because David is against the Panthers. This line of reasoning is similar to what lefties said about Sozhenitsyn: as he is “anti-Soviet,” his charges against the USSR should be dismissed. As if spending 8 or so years in the Gulag is not a justifiable reason for being anti-Soviet. Similarly, David Horowitz has very good reasons for being agin’ the Panthers- the murder of Betty Van Patter.
It is also of note that this book on the Panthers has NOTHING to say about the death of Betty Van Patter.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/david-weir/open-letter-to-dean-neil-henry-by-david-weir/
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_5016590
If I recall correctly, the chapter you just read is the hardest-hitting in the book. The next chapter, though…well, I expect you’ll have a lot to say about it. Think of it as a trip down memory lane with some old friends.
And the Clintons are the prime example of the whole 60s ethos.
Hillary must be defeated.
I lived in the Bay Area in those days and followed the stories in real time. And although I, too, was a liberal in those days, I never thought of the Black Panthers as anything other than psychopaths.
Interestingly, one of my law school professors managed to teach the Fay Stender case in class, in a very dramatic fashion.
The past determines the future. Without knowledge of the facts it is impossible for the American people to decide what should be their present policy.
This is the common repetitive story that happens over and over and over when the issue at hand is an ideology that makes its way by using people without their full knowledge, but with their full complicity
Its WHY i recommended certain books/people. that way you would know it as a common thing. Its the evidence left behind at the crime scene that identifies the perpetrator by the marks left behind.
Its easier to read history forward, than backwards – and see how things got passed down to the next set of people taking up the baton in the relay race. like following a tree from its trunk to its various branches… picking a tip of a twig at the top and working back has a lot of having to go backwards and forwards rejiggering everything till you work down to the trunk…
Horowitz can be a bit wacky though (he runs frontpage)
LOST ILLUSION
http://www.fredautley.com/pdffiles/book18.pdf
1948–About the author’s personal life in Russia during the 1920’s and 30’s.
The Dream We Lost
http://www.fredautley.com/pdffiles/book06.pdf
1940–The first thorough analysis of Soviet communism by an expert who lived in Moscow during the late 1920’s and 30’s. It was widely read by the (non-Marxist) American intelligentsia and established Freda Utley as one of the nation’s premier experts on communism.
THE CHINA STORY – The book was a milestone in showing how 3rd World gains by the communists were helped and facilitated in Washington.
ODYSSEY OF A LIBERAL —1970 [I haven’t read this yet]
http://www.fredautley.com/pdffiles/book05.pdf
The left never rests, does it?
It is because of them that it is not possible to live or have a world in peace, as they define peace as having no opposition. To that kind of mind, War is a chance to win, peace is just the other guy waiting to be attacked (while both prepare – which more time is beneficial)
given references and symbolism, and free choice of such, you might notice that they would rather rule in a hell of their own making than serve in a heaven.
“Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”
Its fueled by a paranoia that constantly says “if you don’t control it, someone else will control it, and it wont be you, and ipso facto, your the one controlled – seize power”
and at its foundation is a materialist view of the universe.
ie. its just matter and energy with no purpose, no good or bad, nothing but random matter acting on other matter. It is what it is, and there is nothing after your gone, so rules are made up to try to wrestle others to another will.
“There are no moral phenomena at all, only moral interpretations of phenomena.”
under such a thing, anything is possible, and pragmatism in meeting reality tends to have it all converge on a variant of the same thing (call the funnel expediency).
Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. – Joseph Stalin
Mao derived it differently…
Nietzsche points this line of thinking in there are only two kinds of morality, master and slave…
if you know the roots and trunk, you know the derivations that come from a plethora of such stuff…
ergo, why the left wants to destroy the culture… and all cultures… so that it can redefine morality, and so define the limits of society and who is on top and who is on the bottom… racists are those who want to hold on to their culture – it has little to do with skin color other than culture and color used to align, and social confusion over a group of terms with no real definition you can pin down.
the joke of it is that the left uses the case of winning to define the qualities it thinks it has from the texts, and not the other way around… (always inverted).
For these strong-willed men, the ‘good’ is the noble, strong and powerful, while the ‘bad’ is the weak, cowardly, timid and petty. The essence of master morality is nobility. Other qualities that are often valued in master moralities are open-mindedness, courage, truthfulness, trust and an accurate sense of self-worth.
in cargo cult fashion, they do not cultivate those qualities to be that way, and so be masters… they collude in weak, cowardly, and petty ways, and if they win, they claim to be open minded, courageous, truthful as an act (not a definition), etc…
a wacky modern philosophical form of trial by combat…
and even odder on odd, if you read slave mentality, its how they think…
As master morality originates in the strong, slave morality originates in the weak. Because slave morality is a reaction to oppression, it villainizes its oppressors. Slave morality is the inverse of master morality. As such, it is characterized by pessimism and cynicism. Slave morality is created in opposition to what master morality values as ‘good’. Slave morality does not aim at exerting one’s will by strength but by careful subversion. It does not seek to transcend the masters, but to make them slaves as well.
just remember:
you cant change a pickle into a cucumber…
“The left never rests, does it?”
Like the devil. The most amazing thing to me about evil – and the left and leftists are evil – is the energy it has. It truly never stops. It works day and night. It never rests. It never laughs. It never goes on vacation. It literally leaves no stone unturned.
It is truly amazing. A think of wonder in itself.
They should not go to hell, but they should have hell on earth like this “sad” woman you reference. She not only brought it on herself, she brought her misery and suffering and radical injustice on millions of other people too. The difference between people like her and people like Hitler and Stalin is how many tanks each one has. That’s all and there is not a shred of difference otherwise.
Oh, but the energy! Even tanks go in for repairs but not a leftist!
The Left will never give up. Even if they are subsumed by the Islamic Jihad and their name changes, they still won’t give up the fight to enslave humanity.
Stender was no shrinking violet in the heyday of her activist years. She romanticized the black prisoners she lawyered and loved, and felt more comfortable with them than with more conventional society. Her tale is a cautionary one for our times as well; the phenomenon has hardly died out with the 60s:
To obtain that, one needs a relatively high level of personal power and strength. The English language apparently doesn’t have the right words to describe the content, other than warrior virtues or martial virtues.
There are extreme cases where serial killers realize that certain people are too risky to try to kill. And there have been extreme cases where violent criminals in a violent riot in a violent penal system, have backed down and began to obey authority, because the authority demonstrated either technical lethality (rubber bullets go through people, it isn’t really non lethal, the same as un sharp katanas) or personal mastery (one CO was said to have slammed a rioter up and down, then intimidated the rest of the mob to go back to their cells).
The only reason why evil seems to have energy is because of their corruption ability. Evil lacks the ability to create, so the only way it can gain war materials is to corrupt existing powers and individuals.
http://news.yahoo.com/holder-remain-u-attorney-general-november-elections-least-144928370.html
My girl knows how to call em.
There are extreme cases where serial killers realize that certain people are too risky to try to kill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_jU3FdnNoc
Walter’s farts are worse than Hussein’s mustard gas!
From what I’ve seen, women start romanticizing sociopathic criminals young, albeit with “safe” fictional targets. That is to say, if you spend some time in the more frivolous corners of the internet, you’ll soon see that there is a huge cadre of young females worldwide who love to romanticize fictional characters like Sherlock‘s James Moriarty (sociopathic mass murderer with not a single sympathetic trait), Hannibal‘s Hannibal Lecter (who is, need I say it, a murderer and a cannibal), and The Avengers‘ Loki (genocidal trickster god who is explicitly compared to Hitler within the movie).
It’s one thing to appreciate these characters as being effective villains played by excellent actors (although I’ve never been able to stomach the idea of watching Hannibal), but a distressingly large number of girls think that, in these cases, evil is sexy. A pretty face and a commanding presence are all that are needed to handwave all of the characters’ more… unfortunate traits.
IMO, these cases (as well as franchises like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, which, from I’ve read about them, hit every warning sign of abusive relationships in existence) prime the pump for women to see real-life criminals and abusers as being attractive, not despite, but BECAUSE OF their sociopathy and abusiveness. It’s a horrible cultural trend with no end in sight.
P.S. This is not to say that boys/men don’t find villainous female characters attractive, but in their cases it’s likely to be a case of sexualization rather than romanticization. Which has its own set of problems, of course, but it doesn’t lend itself to real-world abusive relationships as much as female fetishization of sociopathy does.
Anyone want to compare Destructive Generation and Radical Son? I’ve read (and strongly recommend) the latter, but not the former.
Good analysis, Tara. Re the Fifty Shades phenomenon, I find it distressing that huge numbers of women would apparently love to be the sex slave of a billionaire.
Twenty-one of the twenty-three Amazon reviews of “Soledad Brother” give it 4 or 5 stars. The Left is busy as usual, and the Right too individual to care.
Gramscian march: back in 1970 (that is 44 years ago, folks), Library Journal said this about “Soledad”:
“Jackson gained notoriety shortly before his death in 1970 when his younger brother unsuccessfully tried to free him at gunpoint when Jackson and two others were on trial for killing a guard. Written between 1964 and 1970 while serving time in Soledad Prison for robbery, the letters reveal the brutality and racism faced by prisoners and call for unity among African Americans. This edition contains a new foreword by Jackson’s nephew Jonathan. Soledad Brother remains ‘recommended for most libraries’ (LJ 12/15/70) and is a solid title for Black History Month in February.”
Library Journal is a private, commercial product. A quick visit to its webpage shows its “concern” today about racism, blah blah blah.
They’re out there and they’re everywhere.
Tara wrote:
“…, but a distressingly large number of girls think that, in these cases, evil is sexy.”
“IMO, these cases (as well as franchises like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, … hit every warning sign of abusive relationships in existence) prime the pump for women to see real-life criminals and abusers as being attractive, not despite, but BECAUSE OF their sociopathy and abusiveness. It’s a horrible cultural trend with no end in sight.”
It certainly is “a horrible cultural trend with no end in sight,” but IMHO “Twilight,” “Fifty Shades..” etc are more a reflection of reality than the cause (though there’s surely some of the latter). Ted Bundy and most other serial killers had plenty of groupies decades ago, well before “Twilight” etc.
Most women are attracted to power. The willingness to use violence and brutality confers a kind of power upon a male, albeit an ugly kind. The rise of relativism and the decline of religion has created large numbers of people (both male and female) who are largely or totally amoral. The women in this group ignore the, er “ethical problems” associated with males who readily use violence and brutality to their advantage; they are just attracted to the raw power.
Violent gangs also have their groupies, women who are willing to submit themselves sexually to the entire gang so they can be close to power (they also probably get some drugs and protection out of the deal).
Besides inviting their own abuse, these women also encourage murder, horrific beatings and various other forms of “sociopathy” by sexually rewarding males who do such things. These guys know in advance what kind of payoff they’ll get if they can out-“bad-ass” the other dudes.
Fay Stender’s story was just an earlier instance of this phenomenon, with a layer of lefty racial/revolutionary BS slathered on top.
Gara and Tara:
Poetic expression of the idea here, in a very chilling poem.
Horo still has plenty of Leftist conditioning in him. He hasn’t destroyed all of it. The Left’s destructive training and conditioning programs are still with Leftists, even today when they don’t want to be part of the Left.
Tara, which relationship was abusive in Twilight 1, do you think? And in what way?
Ymarsakar,
I haven’t read Twilight, so I can’t be 100% sure of the accuracy of these statements, but from what I’ve read about it, the male (vampire) love interest sneaks into the girl’s bedroom at night to watch her while she sleeps; he tells her that he’s never wanted to drink anybody’s blood as much as he wants to drink hers; her relationship with him causes her to draw away from her family and friends because she’s keeping his secrets; and he throws her through a glass table, just to name a few things. Here’s an article with what seems to be a good summary:
http://io9.com/5413428/official-twilights-bella–edward-are-in-an-abusive-relationship
I actually liked the first movie, Twilight. But the book was probably not written for the likes of me. It was difficult to read, even in the beginning.
Hence the number of female scum pals who marry prisoners, quite a number of those prisoners being on death row. It’s one thing to stand by your man while he’s in prison, it’s another to use prison as a stand in for E-Harmony.
Call this ‘dating’ phenomenon The Bad Boy Syndrome. Many women fantasize they will be ‘the one’ to reform/change such ‘bad boys’.
“Many women fantasize they will be ‘the one’ to reform/change such ‘bad boys’.”
This is actually one of the beefs I have with Disney. I grew up watching Beauty and the Beast and always liked it, but looking back on it now, it’s worrisome to think of how little girls might draw conclusions about real-world relationships from it. The Beast’s behavior toward Belle is downright abusive, and in the end it’s her kind spirit, love, and determination that “tames” him and saves him. A nice story, but maybe not one that impressionable young kids should watch until they’re old enough to have a serious discussion about it with their parents.
That’s a really interesting take, Tara. In movies, the big revelations are that the troubled bad boy turns out to have a heart, and the ordinary girl turns out to be hot. Tells you what men and women are looking for.
They are idealists that believe love can change the world. That’s only true between two lovers, and often difficult barriers rest in the way.
Love, is not so easy a thing as people think it is.
Love is not for changing the world or even for changing the people in a relationship. The proof of the strength of a person’s love is whether the couple can stand together, united, against the entire world. Every single person they know in life, their parents, their children, their relatives, their friends, strangers numbering 6.3 billion in the world, if they all wanted to tear apart the lovers, only the strength of love, nullifying all external authority in place of obedience to each other, would be capable of standing against that Power.
What Eprisoner has is a pale imitation of the real thing.
Until people change themselves to become worthy of the love of their partner in a relationship, their love will not become fully satisfied on a higher level. Without that completion, the power of that relationship is relatively weak and merely an emotion.
The Western civilization composed primarily of the Anglosphere, may find it strange to think this, but often women are looking for an authority figure to follow, either a master, a husband, or for single women, Hussein messiah. And for males they look for someone they can lead, often times other males, or a competent male leader they can learn from until they can lead other males.
Because the West often times doesn’t recognize certain problems, the English speaking sphere has no way of dealing with them other than by ignoring them.
The Beast’s behavior toward Belle is downright abusive
The Japanese call it coodere, the male version of a tsundere.
Without certain words, humans cannot think certain things. That’s how mind control needs linguistics. People cannot be brainwashed if they don’t understand your language.
I presume, based on experience with others of Stender’s type, that being around her would be to, among other things, be bathed in a permanent, vicious, dishonest, vile slosh of hatred and contempt and false accusations toward any who disagreed. Not to mention the society in general.
Years and years of it.
It would take a major change of heart to come to the conclusion one has been unfair all those years and all those times and the entirety ought to be walked back.
In fact, imo, this might be the single biggest factor in preventing leaving the ideology.
And then, trying to convince the folks you’ve treated like dirt, accused of unspeakable crimes and moral failings that you really mean it would likely seem impossible. Which, realistically, it would be.
And they’d be asking, “How come it took gettng shot to convince you?” Everybody else already knew.”
Who would want to face that? Try to answer that question? Look inside for the blackhearted flaw that set you on such an awful path?
It’s not that everybody else already knew, any more than everybody knew what Patty Hearst was put under.
It’s just that normal society, the 68% majority, merely do as they are told and does do what they are told for the most part.
Up against the Left though, that by itself is not enough to counter the Left. It wasn’t until now or just recently, that people began to understand what the Left was doing in America, at the least the top 3% (minority freedom fighters) started to.
People who only know that communists were bad because their parents and their social leadership said it, can never truly understand the viewpoint of others who obey the Left. The motivation, in the end, is the same thing for both sides and they would always refuse to accept that.
As for people who leave the Left, there is always some suspicious that a traitor to one cause will also betray our cause. But like Horo, that suspicion is often times correct, because Leftist conditioning is so deep that even Kremlin KGB agents sometimes took decades to begin recognizing Stalin’s evil. There’s a lot of gates and barriers to go through first. If Stalin was evil, then Lenin must have been good. If Lenin was evil, then that must mean he corrupted Marxist’s ideas. So on and so forth.
Most humans are only as good as their social rules and authority is good. If they are told to be good, they will be. If they are told to be evil, they will be. Much of humanity is thus “neutral” in this sense, and functions much like tools without free will.
There are a lot of fairy tales about women taming bad or repulsive men. The prince turned into a frog, etc. This must be an old theme. The Symbionese Liberation Army was an excellent example, as was the Weathermen. Remember Bill Ayers was only one of the leaders. Some, like his wife, were female.