A Study of New Left Extremism: A Morality for Violence

If you asked the man on the street to evaluate student militancy on campuses today, he would be likely to reply, “Oh, that’s gone. We haven’t had any student uprisings for a long time.” Then he would probably add, “And I’m glad that problem is over.”

Yes, student extremism, much of it attributable to New Leftist-type persons and organizations, especially the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), has changed considerably. Since the 1969–70 academic year, campus violence has appreciably declined. Very seldom does the press report an incident reminiscent of the militancy of a scant twenty-four months ago. The era of campus revolution seems to have ended.

But we must not allow first impressions to be all controlling. There is indeed a quieting of campus militancy. Universities are no longer suffering mass demonstrations, bombings, building seizures. But this does not mean that youthful extremism, hatred of democratic institutions, and the belief that violence is the best way to bring about societal change have suddenly disappeared. Many New Leftists still spell America with a “k”—Amerika—meaning that they still see this country as a totalitarian fascist enemy that must be destroyed.

The militancy has not evaporated; rather, it has changed in form, tactics, and direction. Beginning in 1970, New Left extremism started leaving the campuses and streets and dropping underground, there to continue its assault on the system by means of guerrilla warfare.

Today, the violent New Left, spearheaded by the Weatherman (extremist wing of the former SDS), is operating largely underground, where adherents are using aliases, disguises, and false identities (obtained from false birth certificates, car registrations, passports, Social Security cards), moving clandestinely from one location to another, maintaining hide-outs and “safe-houses.” In this underground, which stretches from coast to coast, local and federal criminal fugitives are given sanctuary and underground “railways” provide escape routes. Bomb factories have been set up in which homemade bombs are put together (often according to instructions in widely circulated how-to-do-it manuals on explosives), stored, and on occasion deployed in guerrilla attacks against selected Establishment targets, such as military installations, government buildings, banks, and police stations. Except for these occasional acts of terrorism, the underground structure is largely invisible to the ordinary citizen.

Then there are a large number of aboveground sympathizers, many of them respected in their communities, who provide services to the underground. These sympathizers may be lawyers, doctors, parents, students, teachers; they provide, among other things, funds, medical and legal aid, and overall guidance. They serve as mail drops, provide hide-outs, furnish equipment (such as cars), and secure aboveground documents (such as birth certificates and car registrations) for use underground. By refusing to cooperate with the FBI and local authorities, these sympathizers give valuable protection to the underground.

What this adds up to is a sizable core in the nation today of the New Left-type extremists and their supporters, determined to use violence if necessary to destroy our basic institutions.

What motivates these extremist young people, many of whom come from affluent homes and are well educated? What has brought about their hatred of this nation? their desire to destroy its institutions? their belief that violence is justified? their alienation from democratic values? Why have many of them categorically rejected their families and the institutions—school, home, church—of their early years? Many of them have shut themselves off completely from contact with their parents, relatives, and former friends, and live almost completely in the radical youth culture.

These are difficult questions to answer. Yet if we look closely, we will find, at least in general outline, an inner motivating principle, what might be called a “morality of revolutionary radicalism,” a code of “ethics” that not only sanctions and justifies violent actions against society but also may on occasion, by creating personal feelings of “guilt,” encourage or trigger unlawful acts.

Not long ago, for example, a New Left extremist explained why he was involved in the bombing of a campus ROTC building. “I hate this nation,” he said. “I hate this government. I consider the ROTC building a symbol of the system. Therefore, I felt deep down inside me a moral obligation to destroy what I hated. Otherwise, I would have felt guilty.”

If we are to understand this dangerous—and contagious—phenomenon of New Left extremism and its appeal to certain segments of today’s young people, we must know more about the strange “morality” that provides a false spiritual underpinning and motivation for violence. What are some aspects of the New Leftist “morality of revolutionary radicalism”?

1. First of all, there is a deeply held belief that this nation is a modern-day “Babylon” (a word used in New Left literature), characterized by slavery, fear, exploitation, and repression. In the eyes of these extremists, there is no freedom of any kind in this country. Its institutions—economic, political, social, religious—are permeated with evil. Democratic government and Judeo-Christian values are here mere delusions.

2. The way to meet this evil (“Babylon”) is not simply reform or change but total destruction of existing institutions and values. “In death-directed Amerika,” reads a message written by a group of radical bombers, “there is only one way to a life of love and freedom: to attack and destroy the forces of death and exploitation and to build a just society—revolution.”

Central to New Leftist ethics is a firm belief in violent destruction as the way to meet societal problems. “We have to start tearing down this country,” said a Weatherman leader. “We have to have a revolution in this country that’s going to overthrow—like bombs, like guns, like firebombs, by anything and everything.”

3. Although the New Left extremist occasionally speaks of “hope,” “freedom,” a “better world,” these words refer to a time so distant, so far away, so generalized, that they have no immediate meaning or relevance. It almost seems as if the extremist is not interested in the future, or in what kind of society should replace the one he seeks to destroy, for the New Left has produced no blue print for a society of the future.

4. In their destructive zeal, these extremists seem either not to realize or not to care that through the violence they advocate, people might be injured, the rights of others violated, injustice committed. Their fanatic devotion to their cause overrides reason, compassion, and common sense. A leaflet circulated at an SDS meeting put it this way: “Until the student is willing to destroy TOTALLY and JOYFULLY those repressive structures—to attack and destroy the bourgeois social order—his student movement will always be just that—never truly revolutionary.… The buildings are yours for the burning, for until they are destroyed, along with civilization and its DEATH, YOU will not live.”

5. For the extremist, the rationale or justification for violence is that it is defensive, selective, and demanded in the name of justice. A “moral obligation” drove a New Leftist to participate in a campus bombing without any sense of guilt. This young man—typical of many in the movement—felt what he calls a “moral” compunction to obliterate through violence what he regarded as evil. How did he justify his position? To his mind, this violence was defensive (“Wasn’t the government as an evil and demonic institution already perpetrating violence?”), selective (“I could have done all kinds of other damage, but I selected this ROTC building as a symbol of the evil society I hated”), and demanded in the name of justice (“Just to hate the government is simply not enough; I must take some action to carry out my ideas in the interests of revolutionary justice, for otherwise, I would be a traitor to the cause”).

By this reasoning, violence comes to be seen as constructive, creative, the agent of freedom and justice. The extremist finds sanction for acts of violence (that he is serving a good and noble cause—a sanction that conveniently allows him to forget about possible consequences). He also finds encouragement—almost a “moral” imperative—to carry out a violent revolutionary act if he feels hesitant or reluctant. In other words, here is an inverse morality that justifies crime!

6. The New Left morality is highly elitist, discriminatory, and one-dimensional. “Justice” becomes what the New Leftist says it is. It is not universal, common to all, to be dispensed under uniform rules and regulations. Rather, the New Left selectively and arbitrarily creates its own martyrs or “victims” of injustice (usually selected from the ideological spectrum of the New Left, the Black Panther party, or similar groups), yet at the same time seems indifferent to the injustice suffered by other members of society. The extremist’s “causes” are carefully chosen. His sympathies (and hates) are programmed; they can be turned off and on at will. We must never be hasty in criticizing a person’s concern for justice; but when this “concern” is selectively applied only to certain groups or individuals chosen on ideological grounds, and never to the causes of people with different convictions, the professed concern becomes suspect.

7. The New Left morality is expressed in bitter, polemical terms that choke off reason, respect for the other person, and rational dialogue. All too often these young people feel they are the sole custodians of virtue, knowledge, and truth. They pour out a continuous stream of vituperation—often laced with obscenity—against the “enemy.” What chance is there for honest debate, the identification of error, and a meeting of minds?

8. The New Left morality seeks and depends on a scapegoat. This scapegoat is “Amerika,” “the imperialistic United States,” “bourgeois values.” All the weaknesses of society, imaginary or real (and we must admit that our nation does have weaknesses; but they are weaknesses we are trying through democratic processes to overcome), are attributed to this scapegoat, with no attempt to apportion blame or understand historical or other reasons. In this way, the extremists relieve themselves of the responsibility of working out possible alternatives and honestly seeking solutions to the problems they rail against. The simplistic technique of creating a scapegoat blocks them from considering what is good about our society and propagates a pessimistic, defeatist attitude toward life.

9. The morality of the New Left espouses a freedom from personal responsibility that in essence means anarchy. Here lies one of the most potent dangers in this “morality of revolutionary radicalism.” “We are outlaws, we are free!” proclaimed Bernardine Dohrn, a key Weatherman’s leader, in a communiqué from the underground. In this “ethical code,” individual freedom means everyone does just what he wants, making his own judgments (regardless of the rights of others) the exclusive standard for his actions. If he feels an ROTC building or police station should be bombed, he bombs it! He rejects any concept of law unless he makes or interprets the law. In his eyes, his violence is not a crime—though a violent act by a person he doesn’t like is a “crime” without question!

10. In the morality of the New Left, the inherent dignity of man, who is God’s creation, is mocked and despised. These revolutionaries do not trust man to exercise his abilities—his judgment, his understanding of the past, his vision of the future. They look upon him as a piece of matter to be manipulated.

Persons caught up today in New Left extremism—either in the underground or among its aboveground supporters—reflect, in varying degrees, this cruel philosophy we have called the “morality of revolutionary radicalism.” Here arises the impetus for the actions of this small terrorist minority.

What of the future? Bernardine Dohrn, speaking for the hard-core Weatherman, asserts: “We will never go back.” Some of these extremists have been in the underground now for over two years. They have abandoned their families, friends, and former way of life. They have opted for alternative values and standards. Must they be written off as irretrievably lost to our society?

We cannot know, of course. However, we should be optimistic, hoping that many of these young people sooner or later will reconsider and return to assume constructive roles within society.

What can we, as citizens and Christians, do to meet this challenge?

First, we need to know the facts on the dangers involved. To dismiss the extremist as a “romantic,” “a kid gone wrong who’ll soon straighten out,” is to miss the dimensions of the problem.

Many of these New Leftists come from affluent homes and have been favored with the best in our educational system. We need to ask what has gone wrong. Why have they scornfully rejected their democratic heritage? Why do they seek to destroy the society that gave them birth? What is the responsibility of the home? Why this failure of communication? What message is here for all of us? These young people frequently point to what we must agree are failures in our society, such as poverty, discrimination and other forms of injustice, malnutrition, inadequate housing. Their tragedy is that their idealism has soured into a program of vigilante violence. All of us should work to eliminate these ills and create a better society.

Let’s never stop having faith in our young people. We can be proud of the vast majority of them. We must invest time, resources, and above all personal attention in them. They are our most precious asset.

Most important, we must appreciate what Christ can do to change lives—what he has already done in changing the lives of some SDSers, Black Panthers, Weathermen, anarchists, and other extremists. Both clergymen and lay people have been doing tremendous work in bringing the Word of God to these misguided and spiritually hungry young men and women. I have read the testimonies of some whose lives have been turned completely around, who have put aside bombs and taken up Bibles.

Undoubtedly, the current decline of militancy on campuses is due in part to the efforts of dedicated Christians working among the extremists. The excitement of knowing Christ has given many former militants a new adventure of the spirit. They have been transformed from extremist revolutionaries to Christian revolutionaries.

What is a key role of the Church in meeting revolutionary violence? Personal evangelism, carried out with understanding, compassion, and love. Lives changed for Christ lead to a changed society and a changed world.

J. Edgar Hoover has been director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 1924. He received the LL.B. and LL.M. degrees from The George Washington University.

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