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The 1960s social revolution stems not from Paris in 1968 but from the American Civil Rights movement which was organised originally by Communists, as Harry Truman pointed out.
Communism has played a crucial role in American history in every decade since 1920, except the 1950s, and you ain't heard nothing yet!
Think of the Soviet spies. Think of the Weather Underground that anticipated today's Woke movement with its talk of white skin privilege. They went into bombing public buildings, but then realised that running kindergartens not terrorism was the way to win power.
But although political correctness was a Leninist phrase revived by George HW Bush as a weapon against the left (it made a noise but it turned out that it fired blanks) the new sort of liberalism, influenced by the ideas of heretical Frankfurt School of Marxism and academics who sought refuge in the USA from Hitler, is more important than the old hard left, as it was back in the 1960s and 1970s.
Harry Truman issued the orders desegregating the US civil service and military. He included a civil rights program in his 1948 platform, which induced the "Dixiecrats" to walk out of the Democratic convention and ultimately run Strom Thurmond as head of the States Rights party.
ReplyDeleteThurmond did explicitly tie civil rights demands to Communism; I'd be interested to see any sources showing that Truman did.
(One could argue that Communism led to the integration of the US military: the manpower needs of the Korean War led the Armed Forces to be a lot less choosy about who went in which unit. But I doubt this was what Kim Il Sung invaded the south to effect.)
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/hidden-from-history-communists-and-civil-rights/
DeleteTruman's support for 'civil rights' won him the 1948 election. https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_truman.html
DeleteThe key part played by Communism in fighting racial discrimination in the USA, South Africa etc is well documented. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123771194
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