Word: sds
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...proteans, as the authors awkwardly refer to them, steered SDS for four years, eventually fading from prominence when their theories failed to translate into long-term success with projects such as ERAP. A new, non-Jewish psychological type grabbed the reins and evolved into what the authors call the rigid authoritarian rebel": all of the protean's hang-ups, minus his respect for intellectual matters and his adherence to non-violent tactics. Total immersion in anti-war protest became inevitable after the huge U.S. troop deployments of 1965 and intensification of the draft, say Rothman and Lichter...
...authors argue that the Jews who joined Tom Hayden and other gentiles in shaping SDS carried with them an urge to overcome a form of ethnic alienation generally referred to as "marginality." Though that analysis has been used for decades to explain Jews' affinity for progressive politics in this country, as well as in Europe. Rothman and Lichter customize the proposition by divining from their charts and graphs that this particular group of Jews subconsciously strove to destroy the essentially "Christian institutions which helped keep them on the "margin" of American society. Compounding this psychological maelstrom, say the authors...
...student leaders. As both fans and critics of the New Left have noted the Jewish tradition of leadership in American and European radical movements, in addition to the Jews' unusual concern for other groups separated from the mainstream, must be prominent elements of any thorough portrait of the early SDS...
...piling the sociological data to new heights. Rothman and Lichter do not add much to these conclusions. Moreover, when the authors take the Jewish theme to its extreme, intertwining it with their SDS caricatures of various "rebel" types, they settle into some dubious armchair psychoanalysis...
...SDS and much of the New Left did disintegrate into an unimaginative revolutionary mindset in the late Sixties. The Rothman-Lichter "authoritarian" model seems fairly appropriate when applied to the post-1967 years and the devolution of the Weathermen. The authors set out to explain what powered a movement, and their effort has the positive effect of prompting curiosity about the variety of factors involved. But the book quickly becomes an indictment and fails because its charges are too often obscure and exaggerated. Regardless of its pathetic demise, the SDS-led New Left deserves serious consideration of its major accomplishment...