A Hot Summer of Revolutionary Violence

Political Violence May Just Be Beginning

Many readers may recall I began my first Substack columns by writing about the New Left idol Saul Alinsky. His book, “Rules for Radicals” became a best seller for New Left activists who were interested in generating political disorder and anarchy in the 1970’s.

Alinsky was the Left’s 1970’s political guru who openly advocated “revolutionary violence.” Now his ghost seems to have risen in LA and in other cities where riots and political violence are unfolding.

As it turns out, I personally know something about sparking riots. I once led them. I’d like to give you insights into the world of so-called “revolutionary” violence.

It’s clear that political violence is in the air. The arrests of illegal aliens with criminal records by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents has sparked violence in Los Angeles

Now, apparently the protests have morphed from LA to the streets of New York, Chicago, Dallas, Boston, Philadelphia, Tampa and San Francisco, even Omaha. Anger, violence and hate have oozed from the demonstrators.

LA Mayor Karen Bass, who has claimed, along with other prominent Democrats, that the protesters were peaceful, finally relented last night and imposed a nighttime curfew on the city.

Will the violent pro-immigration protests subside? Or are we facing a hot summer of revolutionary violence?

I believe that in the wake of Donald Trump’s decision to arrest illegal aliens accused of crimes, a new radical alliance is emerging before our very eyes.

It appears many single-issue Leftist and self-styled radical groups are beginning to morph into a new larger and more militant movement.

What I’m seeing is giving me a serious case of déjà vu. I’ve seen this movie before. And as for my fellow protesters, it didn’t work out very well. It gave Richard Nixon a landslide victory.

As for my own past, for years, I shared an apartment with Chicago 8 defendant Rennie Davis and served as a leader in the MayDay Collective which in 1971 launched massive anti-Vietnam War civil disobedience in Washington, D.C.

In our apartment, I was surrounded by many self-styled “revolutionary” leaders who would stop by our apartment. I became friends with Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, pacifist activist leader Dave Dellinger, Communist Party leader Abe Bloom and members of the “Trotskyite” Socialist Workers Party.

I am no longer a radical activist. I consider myself a moderate conservative.

But the increasing pace of political violence over the last few years has become personal for me again.

Since October 7 antisemitic political violence in the United States has been increasing. I’m Jewish, so I’m closely paying attention.

Last year, Keffiyeh-masked demonstrators held rallies in Washington, D.C. and at Democratic National Convention in Chicago. But thankfully, they failed to spark mass disorder and violence.

Yet if you closely looked at the speakers at both rallies, it marked the beginning of a new, emerging coalition between anti-Israel groups and marginalized, anti-imperialist organizers, pro-immigration groups, women’s groups, militant black activists, breakaway union chapters, as well as out-and-out socialist and Marxist organizations.

The new radical coalition is ugly. For example, they espoused visceral hate towards Biden and Harris as “Genocide Joe” and “Killer Kamala.”

But then their sloganeering began inching towards actual violence.

Over the last six months, we’ve witnessed the Passover firebombing of the home of Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor, the point-blank murder of a young couple leaving a Jewish event in the nation’s capital, and the burning of Boulder’s Jews who peacefully called for the release of Hamas’ hostages.

Now our attention has shifted away from antisemitic and anti-Israel violence. We’re onto riots in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Boulder, Colorado is a faint memory.

Conservative David Horowitz, who recently passed away, would not be surprised by the rise in political violence.

Horowitz, who was the founding co-editor of the New Left magazine Ramparts understood the malleability of political protests. He noted that the specific grievance at hand was not really important. Political radicalization was the goal.

He observed, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is the ‘Revolution.’”

Now, I’ll return about my own personal experiences on the subject.

I was asked to be the author of the May Day Collective’s protest “manual” on how to shut down Washington, D.C. in 1971. May Day was Rennie Davis’ brainchild, which envisioned shutting down the nation’s capital through massive civil disobedience.

Our slogan was, “If the Government doesn’t shut down the War, we’ll shut down the government.” It was a compelling call, and thousands descended on the city that May. They stopped traffic as well as deployed other street tactics to sow disruption in the nation’s capital. Thousands were arrested.

Later, I was the chief civil disobedience instructor for mass protests in Miami Beach to coincide with the Republican National Convention that was renominating Richard Nixon. I was arrested by Miami police and shared a prison cell with New Left poet Allen Ginsberg

These were heady days. And both Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern were surging as new national political leaders who could end the war. The revolution was on.

Well, not exactly.

As it turns out, our May Day protests fizzled. It enraged most of D.C.’s very liberal federal workers who were blocked from getting to their offices. While they were sympathetic, they also were mad as hell as they sat stalled in traffic for hours. We, of course, being committed revolutionaries, were oblivious.

In Miami, we also made headlines, but there was little widespread support. We disrupted traffic, but life went on in America.

And George McGovern, who ran his presidential campaign mainly on his opposition to the Vietnam War only carried two states: ultraliberal Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. He even lost his home state of South Dakota. The final electoral landslide report card was 520 electoral votes for Nixon, 17 for McGovern.

Today, the Democratic Party seems to want to defend the rising violence toward police. They seem to think it’s good anti-Trump “politics.”

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsome and LA Mayor Karen Bass are embracing and defending the rioters. So are other major Democratic leaders such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and current House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries.

This of course, is the definition of political suicide.

Probably few Democrats really understand who their fellow travelers at ground zero in LA are — as well as in other big cities.

Let’s look at LA.

One of the prominent groups outside the LAPD police lines is the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

On its website, the PSL says it’s Marxist and “exists to carry out the struggle for socialism inside the United States, the center of world capitalism and imperialism. The PSL stands in solidarity with working-class and oppressed people around the world who are resisting capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination.”

A second prominent supporter outside the federal facilities in LA is called Union del Barrio. Many of their supporters have waved the Mexican flag outside the police lines.

As they see it, ”we have an essential role to fulfill as the historical Rearguard (Retaguardia) of the revolutionary process for liberation and socialism that is already taking place throughout Nuestra América. When we struggle locally we must also identify ourselves with and actively defend the socialist revolution of Nuestra América that is currently on the march in the South.”

Then there’s another group in LA, called “Unity of Fields.” They posted a video on X showing a man wearing a Hamas armband and a People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) headband while waving a Mexican flag as Waymo self-driving cars were set on fire.

For the record, the PFLP was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. Department of State in October 1997 and October 2001.

Apple also has banned Unity of Fields from all iPhones and IOS devices because they understand it’s allied with Middle East terrorist organizations.

It doesn’t matter.

But IMHO, now, the Democratic Party’s association with these groups can be double suicide.

Like the protests in DC in the 1970’s, there may be sympathy for a protester’s issues. But burning cars (including Waymos) in Los Angeles, attacking local police and blocking LA’s major Highway 101 as well as burning businesses will not generate sympathy. Citizens are coming face-to-face with real violence.

And generally speaking, people don’t like violence.

So, what did old, New Left strategists have to say about sparking disorder in Western societies?

It turns out, a lot.

As noted, the political giant was Saul Alinsky’s and his book, “Rules for Radicals.”

Here are a few of his salient instructions that can give us a peek into what we might anticipate from the rise of new Leftwing political activists.

Alinsky explained how radical activists can and must create political chaos in modern Western societies.

His first main observation is that truth really doesn’t matter. Alinsky openly counseled his minions, “To begin with, he (the revolutionary) does not have a fixed truth - truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.” (italics is in original)

Just as distressing, Alinsky’s revolutionary radicals have a particularly nasty point of view about ethics. "The rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war, the end justifies almost any means,” Alinsky wrote in his book. “Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times.”

“Generally, success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics,” Alinsky counseled. He told activists, “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.”

Alinsky further argues that morality of using certain tactics shouldn’t be a primary factor. “The morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or victory,” he wrote. “In short, ethics are determined by whether one is losing or winning."

Another Alinsky lesson is that if change doesn’t come quickly, violent escalation can be an acceptable next step.

As for the use of real weapons?

“If weapons are needed, then are appropriate weapons available,” he suggests without qualms.

For now, place close attention to our summer. It may be the summer of revolutionary violence.