Black Rose Books: Video: Dimitrios Roussopoulos: The New Left: Legacy and Continuity

Source:The New Democrat

I think I agree with Dimitrios Roussopoulos on just about everything here. Pre-1960 or so, the Left in America, as least the Center-Left, was made up for Liberals and Progressives, who believed in things like civil liberties, personal freedom and economic freedom and that government should help people in need help themselves so they can live in freedom, as well as help the middle class be able to move up. But they also believed in a strong defense and if anything perhaps more anti-communist than the Right in America. Especially if you look at Liberal Democrats like John Kennedy. And believed in being strong at home both economically and militarily, so other countries like Russia, wouldn’t want to attack you.

But then in the 1960s, you have the Baby Boomers coming of age. Who were much more radical and revolutionary with their own politics. And didn’t think that status-quo or establishment America was good enough for them. And you have the Vietnam War and all of these new leftist radical kids in school, who didn’t like the establishment. If anything hated the establishment and wanted to see it overthrown. And you have all of these movements on campus trying to overthrow the establishment and protest the issues of the day. The Vietnam War, poverty in America, the wealth gap, gays coming out of the closet and starting to want their freedom as Americans.

The New Left, then was a radical Left and even Far-Left and still is today. And I don’t mean that as a criticism, but when you’re talking about Democratic Socialists and even Communists in a country like America, you’re talking about people who are pretty radical. And that is what the New-Left was made up of back then and are still represented by the Tom Hayden’s, Bill Ayers’s, Chris Hedges’s, Thom Hartmann’s and others. And publications like Salon, The Nation, AlterNet, TruthDig, TruthOut and many others today on the New-Left in America. That might be Center-Left and Sweden and perhaps a few other countries, but Far-Left in America.