It was inevitable that the American Marxists would go down the road of justifying the current premediated chaos on college campuses by claiming it is no different than the marches, demonstrations, and unrest on college campuses during the 1960s. This absurd comparison is nothing more than a juvenile attempt to wrap Marxism, virulent anti-Americanism, support for Islamic terrorism, and malicious antisemitism in the flags of the Civil Rights and Vietnam War movements.
The impetus behind the Civil Rights and Vietnam War movements, before they were hijacked by the radical Marxists, was a desire to make certain the nation lived up to its ideals not to transform it into an oppressive one-party socialist oligarchy and a society fraught with renewed racism, corruption, and duplicity.
America in 1960 was a nation still plagued by institutional racism and segregation. In the late 1950s, the reality of racial discrimination and Jim Crow laws began to garner national attention with the embryonic Civil Rights Movement in the South. Led by charismatic and articulate black pastors, the movement was rooted in Judeo-Christian teachings and morality.
Thus, it had a profound moral impact on the vast majority of younger Americans who soon understood that if the United States were to achieve the noble sentiments of its founding documents, in particular the Declaration of Independence, institutionalized racial discrimination had to be permanently dismantled.
Nothing exemplifies the moral appeal of the Civil Rights movement more than the gathering of nearly 250,000 to hear Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech in August of 1963. A speech steeped in Judeo-Christian morality and the ideals of the American founding.
During the early 1960s, the political class chose to pursue a war on behalf of South Vietnam against an invading Communist North Vietnam. The unspoken goal was not to defeat the North Vietnamese but to achieve a stalemate. Despite deploying 3.4 million military personnel to Vietnam over ten years, the war was lost, resulting in over 210,000 American casualties (incl. 58,200 killed).
1.9 million draftees served in Vietnam during the war). Being drafted into a military willing to waste lives for no discernable purpose raised legitimate moral concerns about America’s involvement in the war.
On October 15, 1969, five years after the expansion of the war in Vietnam, over two million gold star families, students, working men and women, and middle aged and older voters in cities throughout the country marched in opposition to the war and, as of 1969, the death of 49,000 American soldiers and 2 million Vietnamese civilians. They called for America to either win the war or end it.
The overt antisemitism combined with hostility toward Israel now rampant throughout college campuses and the Democrat Party was nonexistent during the 1960s. In 1967 and 1973 Israel was involved in two major wars initiated by the Arabs (including Palestinians.) Israel convincingly won both wars and captured vast stretches of territory. There were no marches or demonstrations or premeditated and organized turmoil in support of the Arabs and their determination to “drive the Jews into the sea.”
During the 1967 “Six-Day War” Americans supported Israel by a margin of ten to one (support for Israel 45%, the Arab states 4%.) In the 1973 “Yom Kippur War” 48% of Americans supported Israel while only 7% supported the Arab states.
In a March 2024 poll, 75% of Democrats disapproved of Israel’s military actions in Gaza despite the unfathomable atrocities committed by Hamas in an invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023. Preferring instead a ceasefire which would prevent Israel from defeating Hamas.
Lastly, the United States in the 1960’s was a far different country than it is today:
- During the 1960s the vast majority of Americans believed the United States was an exceptional country and were extremely proud to be Americans. By 2023 only 39% were extremely proud to be Americans.
- Seventy-years ago just 15% of Americans wanted the country to go more in the direction of socialism; in 2019 43% of Americans believed socialism would be good for the country (young adults–50%)
- This was also a far more religious nation with the vast majority of its population steeped in an attendant sense of national and individual moral responsibility. In 1965, 70% of Americans said religion was “very important” to them, by 2024 that number had fallen to 45%. In 1962, nearly 50% of Americans attended religious services on a weekly basis, in 2021 just 29%.
However, the marches, demonstrations, and unrest of the 1960s do have one thing in common with the current chaos not only in America’s colleges but throughout the nation. That decade planted the seeds for the Marxists to overwhelmingly dominate America’s institutions.
During the latter part of the 1960s, the Civil Rights and, in particular, the Vietnam War movements were gradually hijacked by militant Marxists who fomented turmoil, violence, and division in the name of these movements. They did so as a means of access to the societal mainstream and to infiltrate the education establishment, the media, the entertainment complex, and the Democrat Party.
Once they gained a foothold in America’s institutions, the Marxists continuously advanced their influence by promoting myriad causes they could cloak in the mantle of the Civil Rights or Vietnam war movements as a means of manipulating and recruiting impressionable permanent adolescents seeking “meaning in their lives.” Among the causes is that of the “oppressed” Palestinians and more recently, transgenderism.
The comparisons with the 1960s are absurd, as the dire future facing the United States in 2024 is a direct outgrowth not of the Civil Rights or Vietnam War movements but the machinations and insidiousness of the American Marxist movement over the past five decades.
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