QUESTION: How much student unrest is Communist directed?
ANSWER: There are Communists of course in many demonstrations and campus upheavals. They admit it. You can see them, you can point them out. That does not necessarily mean that all demonstrations are Communist controlled and inspired.
It simply means that over a period of time the Communists in the United States have done a very effective job of propagandizing. They have helped to create a climate wherein students will take to violent actions. It doesn't mean that a Communist has to be in a riot to direct it.
Besides, Communists don't like to be in violent demonstrations, not leadership Communists. They would rather have other people go out and do it.
QUESTION: What is the relationship between traditional Communism and the New Left?
ANSWER: The rise of the young Communist groups is a result of a concerted membership drive by the elder Communists to enlist those desiring to be "different." Rebellion against parents and social mores, a belief that Communism may hold the answers to the future, a nonfunctional democratic left that has left the field open to the Communists, a McCarthy backlash, the civil-rights struggle, antagonism with our present involvement in Vietnam — all these helped to drive young students toward the Communist left.
The rise of China and Cuba as Communist powers also caused a number of young people to feel that Communism is the wave of the future, and, of course, they want to make sure they will be on the winning team.
Although the New Left has come to identify itself more and more with the precepts and ideology of the elders of Communism, it still holds some hostility for its forebears. The youthful New Left had been filled with hostility toward the adult world. The New Left has been losing its "newness" and has become more and more a mere radical outcropping of the Old Left. C. Wright Mills was replaced by Mao, and the prospect of free men acting rationally to change society became infused with and was then replaced by the concept of revolution and armed conflict. Not only did the ideology begin to change, but the very nature of the groups involved also changed. No longer do we see the anarchistic approach of the young radicals to individual social problems. All this has been replaced by a controlled logic that strongly resembles the editorials in the Chinese Communist weekly, The Peking Review.
QUESTION: We hear a lot about the generation gap. But if we look at student leaders, many of them are 30 or older. Why are the ones who dictate New Left policies over thirty?
ANSWER: Certainly for the left, revolutionary left, the generation gap means nothing. Any number of so-called leaders of the New Left would have to be discounted if age were the only criterion because almost all of them are over 30. Many of them are much older. Yet, they have the respect, toleration and possess the leadership ability that the younger people follow.
Younger people do look to older individuals for knowledge, for authority in any number of situations.
Of course, Communists take on many different appearances. I was with the Progressive Labor Party in 1965. Beginning that year, an order went out in the Progressive Labor movement that every leader, if not every member of the organization, had to cut his hair and shave and begin to wear coats and ties.
If you go onto a campus today where Progressive Labor has strength, you look at them, and you begin to think, "Look at those nice fraternity boys standing there!" Well, in some cases, these are the people with bombs.
QUESTION: Why is the "New Left" so successful in attracting young people?
ANSWER: The New Left and the Communist Left act. We somewhat later decry their actions and condemn their fervor. The New Left is vital; we are passive. The New Left is concerned with changing society; we seem only concerned with basking in the rewards of our free enterprise system. The New Left is out to destroy not only our heritage of freedom and democracy, but possibly the whole of our country. We seem only willing to play coffee-cup politics.
So who is really to blame for the seriousness of this very real threat to our freedom?
The Communists? No! We are.
I know full well that this is not the kind of talk that people want to hear. I realize that it would be much better (and easier) to assure everyone that the New Left and the Communists are really only a figment of our imagination and that the anticommunist student groups are a vital force on our college campuses. It would be easier to say this, but it just wouldn't be true.
QUESTION: What type of student is drawn into various dissident groups — and also into Communist organizations?
ANSWER: It is the young student who feels frustrated, alienated, and angry with the university, the system, and the apparent dichotomy between the theory and reality of our democratic scheme. He is usually fair game for young Communists.
Young Communists want to capture these rebels and use their anger for various left-wing programs. Berkeley is a case in point, where the young Communists tried to capture the rebels, once they "revolted" against the university. It's obviously more exciting, self-fulfilling and politically active to be marching around the block with a sign demanding "something" rather than sitting in the fraternity house and watching "Peyton Place."
The great appeal of the Cuban Revolution for the generation of the New Left was similar in many respects to the appeal the Russian Revolution held for the generation of my parents. Of course, those older and wiser knew of the pitfalls of Communism and revolution. They knew all about the purges, the splits, the faded hopes. For us, however, the past held few lessons. At the time of the Cuban Revolution, we were not concerned with the past.
Into this state of flux come the young Communists. This Communist Left is now actively at work on many campuses to capture the alienated and frustrated student, and to make him or her a pawn in their particular game. "Pawn" is the correct word, as the Marxists and Leninists will use the rebel for their own ends, while pretending their purpose is only to strike at the evil aspects of American society.
Not only has the rebel been used by the Communists, but he has been misled, if he believes that they have any answers to the problems he seeks to solve.
QUESTION: In surveying the whole field of campus disturbances, ghetto riots and general civil unrest — what is it Communists hope to gain?
ANSWER: When it comes to seizing power against the will of the people, terror and deception are the only means that work. Because through the use of violence, terror and deception, a highly disciplined minority can seize power over a majority. Mao Tse-tung summed up the Communist concept when he said: "Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' "
In 1905 V.I. Lenin, the architect of worldwide Communist revolution, wrote, "Go to the youth: let them arm themselves with whatever weapons they can get — knife, revolver, oil-soaked rags for setting fires. . . some can undertake to assassinate a spy or blow up a police station, others can attack a bank to gain funds for the uprising. Let every squad learn if only by beating up police."
Let's not mince words: The Communists (no matter what Mecca of Communism they relate to) are not exactly friendly used-car dealers. They will use violence and terror. But they have a variety of other means in their arsenal designed to gain the end result of communizing the free world and specifically the United States. They lacquer together their more direct methods with deceit, propaganda, and instigated confusion and anarchy.
The peace marches and rallies (partially organized, financed and dominated by the Communists) are used as a psychological wedge to attempt to influence world opinion against any United States action to withstand Communist aggression. They create the illusion that a majority of Americans are opposed to the United States lending assistance to a country threatened by Communist imperialism.
QUESTION: One wonders how so few left-wing militants are able to cause so much trouble. What do you feel is the role of the college professors and the administrators? Why do the administrators and professors allow such violence on campus?
ANSWER: They are really part of an established kind of bureaucracy within the school system. They are often afraid to confront issues. For an administrator to be confronted by a problem is the worst thing that could happen to him. He'd much rather just sign papers.
QUESTION: Do you feel the press has overplayed the extent of student rebellion on campuses?
ANSWER: Yes. Throughout the country, we have good examples of the majority of students on a campus or a local strong minority standing up to the New Left and the New Left being defeated.
We have just such an example — the University of California, San Diego. The Left Wing in the liberal arts department called for a student strike. But they couldn't get a student strike going down there. They went into classrooms and they shouted and they did everything. But the chemistry students wouldn't go out; the engineering students wouldn't go out; the physics students wouldn't go out. And they formed the majority of the student population of the campus. So it failed. Nobody notices that.
The fact that the majority of the faculty at San Diego State College and at San Jose State College signed petitions opposing violence on the campus, refusing to go out on strike, refusing to support the strike at San Francisco State is ignored by the press.
The press is caught in its own quagmire at this point. It helped initially to promote violence by making people believe that the only thing anybody wanted to see on television was violence. It then came to the point where a New Left leader on a campus would pick up the phone and call the local press. He'd say, "We've got an organization here at this school, and if things aren't changed within twenty-four hours, we intend to blow it up."
And he makes front page news. The point is that he may have three members in his organization, none of whom could even ignite a stick of dynamite, let alone a bomb.
QUESTION: Would you summarize exactly why you broke with the extremists on the left.
ANSWER: I left because of the activities I was involved in, because I felt like I was lying to myself. And mostly, because the realization came to me that, although we kept espousing freedom, although we kept saying that if we took power in the United States we would have real freedom, it was all a fraud!
I had lied to myself about it.
I contended that party members should at least know what we were doing. The organization argued "No." And I decided over a period of time that I was lying to those young people I was trying to bring into the organization. I tried to push through changes within the organization. It was impossible. And I said — I have made a horrible mistake! The only thing that I can do is to leave, to try to bring a few people with me, and to try to start in anew.
When one has been part and parcel of an ideology for many years, with strong beliefs and ties accompanying them, it is not easily challenged or dispensed with.
I then had to make a most difficult decision. Should I leave the movement silently, quietly, as so many others had done before or risk the censure of those who had once been my friends and tell of the personal experience, political truths, and illegal activities that forced me to "split"?
The friends who were no longer friendly, the attempts at personal slander, the chorus that now sang out my name as the most dangerous enemy of all, the attempts to isolate me — all were expected. But the contemptuous and defamatory quality of the attacks was not. The only thing one can say is that the Old and New Left have this in common — they have no scruples when it comes to one who sways from their prescribed faith.