May 21, 2012

Wake Up! It’s 1967 All Over Again, Sort of

By Barry Rubin

The easiest way to understand the current situation in the United States is this:

We are in a new version of the 1960s with four significant differences.

1. The radicals aren’t just demonstrating in the universities, they control them.

2. The radicals aren’t being ignored by the mass media, they control them.

3. The president of the United States is the leader of the New Left, sort of like the head of the campus branch of SDS and the Black Student Alliance put together. In comparison, Bill Clinton was the head of the campus Young Democrats.

4. The music’s not nearly as good.

Yet is support for the radical left really higher than in the 1960s? I don’t think so. The movement has just camoflauged itself much better, including convincing millions of people that this is a mainstream liberal one.

About Barry Rubin

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist for PajamasMedia at http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan)