LETTER: THE WHITE REVOLUTION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000100140010-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 19, 1998
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: November 17, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

FOIAb3b
Sanitized - AqArose : Cl
November 17, 1967
CPYRGHT
I arrived on the Berkeley
s t Is fail. I recount them
)eii:f that they are rele-
at is happening now
lyduc ion Center on
the secona day of Stop The
Draft We:, y. I was monitoring
a group .. 50 peo,)le sitting-in
at the doorway, and the police
began to clear the street, and a
sand demonstrators ran past
panic, and then club-car-
cops moved toward us and
lenly I realized that we were
going to be arrested, but
._ten.
The second happened on the
Sproul Hall steps. There 50 Ne-
groes of the Afro-American Stu-
dent Union physically blocked
a scheduled rally by a campus
conservative group. While black
faces glowered at the white audi-
dence from the steps, AASU head
Jim Nabors announced that any
white who opposed this take-
over aad Netter do it in the pri-
vacy of his bathroom, behind
lcc_~ c_ .loor s, or "we are going
_(. blackness all over you,
ba
,vent on to explain that he
:ere in order to urge sup-
one Huey P. Newton,
local Black Panther leader who
recently shot and killed one cop
and wounded another after hav-
g been stopped for a speeding
vi:,iation. Huey Newton's only
_-:me, Mr. Nabors informed us,
that he had been born with
skin.
next heard from Jimmy
the leader of the Black
is Union at San Francisco
2ha week 12 members
.lr.. : Students Union had
si., d themselves by
r ,_kin,, nto the office of the
ca =i- ... -vspaper and beating
up tv, a : .ire editors.
- if you can dig this - an al- buses of inductees from reach-
legedly r i g g e d Homecoming ing their destination. Les? than
Queen election, in which an two weeks ago, at UCLA stu-
Anglo-Saxon coed had defeated a dents threw rocks at police and
Philippine girl. Mr. Garrett stat- smashed every window in the
ed, in what he evidently regarded building where a Dow recruiter
as a moral justification of this was attempting to carry on in-
criminal assault, "what you ter: icws. These examples could
have to realize is that the black be multiplied.
revolution is on the upbeat." On November 10, at a public
Jimmy concluded his remarks forum Berkeley Professor Franz
by calling on non-racist Berkeley Schurmann, a self-proclaimed
students to buy guns for the. "left-liberal-professional," assert-
black revolutionaries : "Blacks ed that professional friends of
can't buy guns in San Francisco. his - respected teachers, law-
Whites can. If you want to help yers, and preachers - were
us, you know what-you can do." talking seriously about terror-
A (white) voice frgm the crowd ism, i.e. such acts as blowing up
asked who he was planning to bridges and war supply depots.
shoot with those guns. Non- I don't know Professor Schur-
plussed, Jimmy replied with only mann's friends, but I can state
a hint of sarcasm in his voice. categorically that some of my
"I wouldn't shoot you. You're my white friends are also talking
friend." Next day Jim Nabors terrorism, and they mean what
predicted that the Huey Newtons they say.
of America were going to "boil Yesterday a fire-bomb was
this nation dry and paint it thrown into the Berkeley draft
black." He wasn't kidding, either. board office early in the morn-
* * ing. I didn't commit that act.
The emotion I felt on those nor do I have any idea who did;
two occasions was exactly the but I understand the desperate
'
same. It wasn
t fear, and it
certainly wasn't hatred - though
I also felt fear and had to stifle
horror that could lead a man to
such an act. Last year as HR-
nLn editors we pontificated
b
t
a
ou
hatred. What I felt was a more' the dead-end of liberal protest.
numbing realization of the sick- This year as Americans we are
ness - the violent sickness - witnessing the dead-end of radi-
of American society. I suggest
that essentially that same emo-
tion is shared by white radicals
cal protest - including sit-ins
and other non-violent civil ris-
obedience. Only now are we liv-
across the country. That emotion, ing through the radical dead-
with the perceptions it embodies, end, and the radical frustration
goes a long way toward explain- is our own.
ing the new mood of anti-war
mood of militant protest is as-
That there is a new mood goes sociated with the emotion spoken
without saying. The sit-in that of earlier: horror of the violence
took place at Brown could not in American society.
have occurred a year or even a What is happening is that
month ago. The march on Wash- white radicals are beginning to
ington has aptly been described come to terms with the im,,ca-
as an assault on the Pentagon. tions of black militancy. Thy an-
In Oakland last October, 10,000 ti-war movement has ever taken
Contin e
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The "issue" that sent these 'students overturned cars and
 CPYRGHT
r.1 r.
its cue frorSahiti ')J Atpprovled
movement, and this is as true
today, when Rap Brown is speak-
fo_ ~,:'egroes, as yesterday
n Y {rtin Luther King
s: ,- ned ,o speak for them.
If anybody doubts that the
:rood of the ghettoes is indeed,
.evolutionary or at least rebel-
3~s, don't just chew a pencil
in. reflection. Go down to the
?rovidence ghetto, observe, and
Usk questions. Better yet, ask
your token Negro. friend what
he thinks. You may be sur-
prised.)
My own interpretation of white
anti-war militance is that it is
not so much a reaction to the
failure of past protest, as is cus-
tomarily claimed, but rather that
it is a subconscious attempt to
preempt the violent rhetoric of
the blacks.
Whi t es today are beginning to
recognize that in The Fire Next
Time James Baldwin was mak-
ing a sound prediction, not mere-
,y indulging in idle talk, And
next time is now. Perhaps in the
context of the 1960's the true
conservatives are the white rev-
olutionaries who want to tear
down the racist institutions of
society before the black racists
tear down society itself or, what
is far more likely, bring holo-
caust to the Negro community
: the attempt.
What does Stokely Carmichael
ba~c to do with the war against
Vietnam? Anybody who has been
listening with half an ear knows
that the Snick militants have
answerer. -,hat question for them-
selves. According to Mr. Car-
michael, the name of the game
is imperialism, and imperialism
is what oppresses the Negroes in
America and the Vietnamese in
Vietnam alike.
To put the matter crudely -
':;ch is the way the black revo-
ries think - the colored
i;,_ of the world are rising
the color-less nations.
.:e colored peoples of Asia
a - :',frica are the have-nots, and
color-less peoples of Europe
an America are the haves, the
struggle is against capitalism as
well as colonialism. In Vietnam
and Watts and Bolivia and New-
ark and South Africa and De-
troit the story is somehow the
same: white imperialism versus
colored liberation.
L. course this is a myth, but
like all myths it contains a
measure of truth, and it is a
proven fact that this particular
myth makes white radicals.
FierpReteases:ijCIA-RtP7 0fl449 00At31QAt4
fantasy was dramatized at the
Chicago New Politics Confer-
ence, where the white majority
swallowed a list of strident
black-power resolutions to pre-
vent a black walk-out. I suggest
the coming white anti-war re-
sistance can best be understood
as an attempt to stave off a
national black walk-out and the
resultant black apocalypse.
I believe that violent resistance
to the suppression of the Vietna-
mese people is in part an attempt
to say that there exist white
Americans who understand the
plight of the Negro and are will-
ing to act to end that suppres-
siofi.
More personally: as matters
now stand I cannot communicate
with Jim Nabors or Jimmy Gar-
rett - far less with the Huey P.
Newtons of America. If violence
is the only language they under-
stand, then so be it. I will learn
that language. Moreover, though
I speak contemptuously of the
"fantasy" white imperialism, I
know in my heart that there is
more truth in that fantasy than
I would care to admit.
I say all this because Ameri-
cans will be in a muddle if they
fail to recognize the coming re-
sistance for what it is : -a revolu-
tionary resistance based on the
conviction that Vietnam and the
.Dominican Republic are not
simply horrible mistakes in
American diplomacy, but that
the contradictions in American
society are being projected in a
cruel, absurd international dia-
lectic. Cruel because innocent
Vietnamese and Americans are
being killed, absurd because the,
killing serves no purpose.
What is needed is, in the
quaintly dated jargon of SDS,
"basic structural change." As I
see it the main difference be-
tween that euphemism and H.
Rap Brown's more candid "burn
America down" is that the white
revolutionaries visualize a society
free of racial hatreds, not a race-
proud black nation founded ona racist demonology.
Like thoughtful black theo-
reticians, white radicals are un-
der no illusions as to what the
consequences of resistance will
be. The resistance will be
crushed. I know that if I resist
the war and the draft effectively,
I will be kicked out of school
into jail: that is a fact I have to
learn to live with.
It is important to realize
from the outset that there is
the war machine. If the war
is to be resisted effectively
property must be damaged and
people (mostly resistors) will be
hurt and maybe killed. To pre-
tend otherwise, to claim that re-
sistance is a constitutionally-
guaranteed right along with free
.speech and assembly, is only to
buttress the argument of those
right-wingers who want to brand
all dissent as treason and sup-
press legitimate free speech and
assembly.
What is successful resistance?
The hope is that the pragmatic
political leaders of our country
can be made to realize that the
cost of military adventure abroad
is militant disruption at home.
The hope is that the cost - in
terms of dissension and disrup-
tion within American society -
will become higher than the
American people are willing to
pay. (The parallel is to the mil-
itant resistance among the
French people to the occupation
of Algeria.) And the further hope
is that once the troops are
brought home and American in-
terventionism moderated, the
race problem in America will
not be found to be insoluable.
Whether these limited hopes
are utopian remains to be seen.
I myself am pessimistic, as are
most thoughtful Americans of
all politicial persuasions. Resist-
ance is born of the knowledge
that the situation is bad and get-
ting worse, and that there ex-
ists no viable alternative mode of
social change.
I have deliberately been blunt
in my comments, in an effort to
offset the soothing implications
of Mr. Kaplan's analysis, ex-
pressed in this newspaper in a
recent letter-to-the-editor. As
usual I am in agreement with
much of what he says, but I_
vehemently reject his suggestion
that the purpose of confronta-
tion-style demonstrations is to
achieve a serious dialogue -
with the Dow and CIA recruit-
ers, with Dr. I effner and Dean
Brennan, or with General Her-
shey and President Johnson.
In my experience just the op-
posite, is true : the anti-war pro-.
testers are largely tired of dia-
logue, and rightly 'suspicious of
those who insist that teach-ins
and sit ns are the alpha ..,,d omega of moral protest. To ,I
that the goal of militant ._..,;t-
ance is mutual understanding
between war-makers and war-
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zYRgHT ae miss tile-~virre
Pascal, don't overlook the pos-
sibility that when We say resist-
ance we mean just what we say:
we want to close down the in-
duction centers, stop the troop
Resistance implies a new con-
be a good citizen of America it
it first necessary to be a good
CIA terrorizes Indonesia, when
American planes bomb Hanoi,
are no less than if the CIA were
staging a coup in Providence or
the bombs exploding in Berkeley.
As a citizen I must do all I can;
resistance is essentially politi-
ion. I believe the anti-war move-
ent will become more and more
nonymous. Who I am, what kind
if parson T
am organizing or carrying out
raft riot there are no person-,
lities, just soldiers or commit-
ed bodies. This is a frightening
a is not to say that I sub-
scribe to Pascal's portrayal of
a person as two selves, one of
which wants to lead a happy life
and one of which wants to be
martyred in the resistance. I am
one person; I am not faced with
the choice of deciding between
two conflicting selves. Things
are desperate, but they are not
as desperate as all that: even
Karl Marx had a wife and fam-
ily. The resistance will be
crushed, but resistors will sur-
vive to eat, breathe, work, make
love, and perhaps to fight an-
other day. The FBI notwith-
standing, Stan Griffith is not go-
ing to vanish into thin air.
All that I have been trying to
say can be summarized in a
paraphrase of Jimmy Garrett:
"The white revolution is on the
upbeat." If you can understand
that, you are in a position to un-
derstand what is going to hap-
pen in America during the com-
ing months. It is as simple (and
as complex) as black-and-white.
Join us if you are so moved;
reach for your shotgun if you
are patriotically offended. But
don't emasculate resistance by
assimilating it to symbolic pro-
test.
Gandhi asked, "What differ-
ence does it make to the dead,
the orphans and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is
wrought under the name of to-
talitarianism or the holy name
of liberty and democracy?" The
anti-war movement now takes
that question to be rhetorical.
The answer is "no difference,"
and so resistance must ha t tai
17 NOV 1967
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000100140010-8