Vietnam and the NEw Left Reading Quiz

New Left

This movement caused children of affluence (white college students) to reject values of their society. It rejected mainstream intellectual and political ideas that shaped liberalism for most of the 1900s. Did not see USSR as a model or see the working class as the main agent for social change. This movement spoke of powerlessness in the face of bureaucratic institutions and desire for authenticity that affluence can't provide, instead of economic equality which was language of New Deal liberals. Inspired by American revolution (citizen participation), abolitionists (promises/values vs reality) and Black freedom movement (sitins catalyzed white student activism).

SDS Students for a Democratic Society

The most influential critique of all arose in 1962 from this organization, an offshoot of the socialist League for Industrial

Democracy. Meeting at Port Huron, Michigan, some sixty college students adopted a document that captured the mood and summarized the beliefs of this generation of student protesters.

Port Huron Statement

Meeting at Port Huron, Michigan, in 1962, some sixty college students adopted a document that captured the mood and summarized the beliefs of this generation of student protesters.

It devoted four-fifths of its text to criticism of institutions like political parties, corporations, unions, and the military-industrial complex. But what made the document the guiding spirit of a new radicalism was the remainder, which offered a new vision of social change. Freedom for the New Left meant participatory democracy.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Passed in response to north vietnam patrol boats' "aggression" for firing on American spy ship in 1964 off the coast of Vietnam. it authorized LBJ to take any necessary measure to repel armed attack in Vietnam. The nearest the US ever came to a formal declaration of war, it was passed without any discussion of strategy in Vietnam.

Counterculture

generational rebellion in the 1960s. millions of young people rejected the values of their elders. flamboyant rejection of respectable norms in clothing, language, sex, and drugs. Rallying cry was "liberation." The vietnam war destroyed young people's belief in authority.

The 60's

convergence of society's most excluded members demanding full access to all its benefits, with children of middle class rejecting social mainstream. The black movement and white New Left shared basic assumptions: that the evils to be corrected were deeply embedded in social institutions and that only direct confrontation could persuade Americans of the urgency of far-reaching change.

Pivotal books in the 60's

James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time gave angry voice to the black revolution. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring exposed the environmental costs of economic growth. Michael Harrington's The Other America revealed the persistence of poverty amid plenty. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs, criticized urban renewal, the removal of the poor from city centers, and the destruction of neighborhoods to

build highways.

UC Berkeley

in 1964 Cal imposed a rule that banned political groups from using a central area of campus to spread ideas. students responded by creating free speech movement. Mario Savio, a student leader, said to throw your bodies against the machines cuz the university is like a factory and that freedom expression is the dignity of what humans are. program moved from repeal of new rule to criticizing the whole school, saying the education geared students for corporate jobs. university gave in on the speech ban early in 1965

Dominican Republic

in 1963 noncommunist Juan Bosch was overthrown. in 1965, some military men tried to restore Bosch to power but failed. LBJ feared they would become another Cuba so he sent 22000 US troops. It enraged latin americans but it was successful, and bolstered LBJ's passion in Vietnam.

Antiwar Movement

Political leadership devoted to the war, young activists lost all confidence in its system. fighting fell to the poor as college students were exempt. MLK said war was bad use of violence and wasted resources. opposite of participatory democracy because government officials secretly planned and initiated it and no citizen input. intervening in vietnam was obsessive anticommunism. young men burned draft cards and fled to canada

Bob Dylan

massive redefinition of freedom as a rejection of all authority. "Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command," Bob Dylan's song "The Times They Are A-Changin"' bluntly informed mainstream America. To be sure, the counterculture in some ways represented not rebellion but the fulfillment of the consumer marketplace. It extended into every realm of life the definition of freedom as the right to individual choice.

Vietnam

war revealed the danger that Walter Lippmann had warned of at the outset of the Cold War - viewing the entire world and every local situation within it through the either-or lens of

an anticommunist crusade. After the French defeat, they financed the creation of a pro-American South Vietnamese government, in violation of the Geneva Accords of 1954 that had promised elections to unify Vietnam. By the 1960s, the US was committed to the survival of this corrupt regime.

Ngo Dinh Diem

Despite the dispatch of increased American

aid and numerous military advisers, South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem lost control of the countryside to the communist-led Viet Cong. Diem resisted American advice to broaden his government's base of support. In October 1963, after large Buddhist demonstrations against his regime, the United States approved a military coup that led to Diem's death. When Kennedy was assassinated the fol-

lowing month, there were 17,000 American military advisers in South Vietnam. Shortly before his death, according to the

notes of a White House meeting, Kennedy questioned "the wisdom of involvement in Vietnam." But he took no action to end the American presence.

Personal Liberation

But there was far more to the counterculture than new consumer styles. To young dissenters, personal liberation

represented a spirit of creative experimentation, where friendship and pleasure eclipsed the single-minded pursuit of wealth. It meant a release from bureaucratized education and work, repressive rules of personal behavior, and, above all, a militarized state that, in the name of freedom, rained

destruction on a faraway people.

People's Temple

More sinister was the emergence of religious cults based on single-minded devotion to a charismatic leader. The one with the most tragic outcome was the People's Temple, founded by Jim Jones, whose religious outlook combined intense

spiritual commitment with strong criticism of racism. He attracted a racially mixed community of devout followers, whom he led from Indianapolis to San Francisco and finally to Guyana. There, in 1978 over 900 men, women, and children perished in a mass suicide/murder ordered by Jones.