You Say You Want a Revolution !?! Part 2
Personal revolution and the limits of liberal protest.
“The only way to support a revolution is to make your own,” proclaimed Abbie Hoffman, one of the loudest voices of the 1960s counterculture movement. The New Left began in the early 1960s with clean cut kids singing folk songs, lending a hand in the Civil Rights struggle, and attending “teach-ins” to learn about America’s increasing military involvement in Vietnam. Through the dark alchemy of psychedelic drugs, rock and roll, urban riots, high profile assassinations, and the perpetual meat grinder that was the Vietnam War, the New Left had mutated profoundly by the summer of 1968. The countercultural space had widened far enough for more flamboyant and provocative figures like the shaggy-haired Abbie Hoffman to take center stage in the protest movement. From raining fake dollar bills on the floor of the Wall Street Stock Exchange to attempting to levitate the Pentagon with his mind to becoming one of the notorious Chicago Seven charged with inciting riots during the 1968 Democratic Convention, Abbie Hoffman reached the pinnacle of counter-cultural fame and mainstream infamy. Protest was now performance. Revolution was personal, an exploration and expression of individual identity, rather than surrendering the self to a regimented, hierarchical mass movement. Whatever you might say about Abbie Hoffman, he made his own revolution and changed the course of American liberalism in the process.
With the chaotic ascension of Donald Trump back to the presidency, the ideological heirs of Abbie Hoffman and the New Left have been stirred once again by the revolutionary spirit of 1968. Political action organizations like the 50501 Movement are mobilizing protests all over the country, organizing demonstrations filled with all the trappings of 1960s resistance: mass marches, provocative signs, boycotts against complicit companies and clever chants (Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Elon Musk has got to go!). Liberal activists across America are once again making the revolution their own and making their voices heard. For all the encouraging signs of resistance, unwelcome questions remain unanswered. Who is their audience and is anyone listening?
For many of the protestors, their primary target audience is the Democratic Party, the elected officials that they voted for and entrusted with preserving democracy and thwarting the agenda of Donald Trump. The response from most Democratic members of Congress has been underwhelming, even in the eyes of the supporters who knocked on doors and donated generously on their behalf. A recent Quinnipiac poll showing a dismal 21% approval rating for Congressional Democrats reflects frustration at leaders like Hakeem Jeffries who claimed that as the minority party the Democrats have “no leverage” to stop the dismantling of the administrative state by Donald Trump and unelected “First Buddy” Elon Musk. Even the most passionate voices of Democratic resistance like Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy are grappling with the chilling realization that “right now, there is a distinct possibility that we do not have a free and fair election in 2028.” Murphy’s vocal sober realism about the threat of Trump’s Second American Revolution positions him as an outlier in the Democratic Party. Most Democrats remain outwardly confident in the courts’ ability to slow Trump’s advances and hopeful that the inevitable failure of Trump’s reckless economic policies bode well for a Democratic landslide in the 2026 mid-terms and the 2028 general election. Oblivious to the revolutionary moment at hand, Democratic politicians are seeking safety in the institutions they have been entrusted to save and seeking protection from the citizens they were elected to protect.
While Democrats have been a willing audience for the liberal protest movement, they have proven unable to do much of anything to prevent the havoc Trump is wreaking on the federal government. What about the Republicans - are they an audience for this rising protest movement? The goal of the 1960s demonstrations was to speak to truth to power. As Democratic politicians are so eager to point out, Republicans have all the power now - in the words of Hakeem Jefferies, ‘they control the House, the Senate and the presidency. It's their government.” The problem for the liberal protestors of today is that they are speaking truth to a very different kind of power than the institutions they opposed in the 1960s. The youth-led New Left protests of the 60s were always premised on the existence of the Big Other, the Establishment, the Man, a collection of rational abstract parental forces serving as the unseen audience for protesters' catchy chants and clever signs. The awkwardness of today’s protests is that Democrats are now the establishment, they are the straight-laced institutionalists, they are the adults in the room trying to reign in the political temper tantrum that is Trump’s Second American Revolution. Donald Trump’s flagrant disregard for tradition, his penchant for spectacle, and his obscene self-promotion resembles the likes Abbie Hoffman and his fellow Chicago 7 agitator Jerry Rubin more than the LBJs, the Robert McNameras, the Hubert Humpheries and the other esteemed statesmen who were the target audience of 1960s protestors. A drug-addled Elon Musk frolicing on the CPAC stage wielding a chainsaw seems more at home with Ken Kesey’s acid-fueled Merry Pranksters than he would with the crew cut wearing Power Elite that called the shots on the battlefields of Vietnam and in the streets of Chicago in 1968. Where once liberal protestors were storming student unions attempting to shut down the university, today they are rallying to reopen government office buildings. Unlike the protestors of the 1960s who wanted to tear down the establishment, the liberal protestors of today are fighting to keep the establishment from being demolished. Speaking truth to power is not so effective when those with all the power have little regard for truth. The chaotic spectacle of street protest is not as an effective tool to preserve law and order as it is to tear down the system. Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s radical reshaping of the federal government is an unwelcome reminder to liberals that Republicans just as much as Democrats can follow Abbie Hoffman’s advice to make a revolution their own.
In a cruel twist of irony, Abbie Hoffman’s self-serving, sensationalistic conception of revolution is now more useful to Trump and MAGA than it is to the Democrats and liberal protestors desperate to keep the administrative state duct-taped together. The triumph of Abbie Hoffman’s New Left individualism over the collectivism of the New Deal Old Left has played a major role in the Democratic Party’s failure to fight poverty, inequality, and ignorance over the past 50 years. If the 50501 Movement and the broader anti-Trump resistance is to become anything more than a hodgepodge collection of revolutionary reenactors, they must project their message beyond the safe spaces inhabited by those who pass their liberal purity tests. They must do away with the New Left fantasy of revolution as a form of self-expression and return to the Old Left reality that meaningful revolution yielding material gains requires a dampening rather than an amplification of the ego. Collective action is impossible when everyone is fighting their own personal revolution. As Republicans begin to brazenly display “Trump 2028” posters, resistance protestors must face the sobering reality that the solidly blue regions of the country currently possess less votes, less guns, and less territory under their control than the Republicans. Trying to keep the revolution “their own” by spitefully shunning former Trump voters is a path to not just political suicide but maybe even literal suicide if institutional decay only continues to accelerate.
“We believe in a government of the people, by the people, for the people—not a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class,” Bernie Sanders declared to a raucous crowd in Iowa City last week. Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy tour through the Red States forges a path forward for the anti-Trump resistance, a blueprint for how to build new alliances rather than just pick at old culture war wounds, a way to fight for causes more transformative and inspiring than just the reinstatement of DEI policies and bloated bureaucracy. Sanders understands that stirring populist unrest in Republican controlled territories is not pandering to the right but positioning the left to capitalize on the inevitable implosion of Donald Trump’s Second Revolution. Unlike the self-righteous liberals who continue the self-defeating practice of canceling Trump voters, Sanders knows that a violent clash between Red America and Blue America is a fight that no one will win. The only winnable fight is between 340 million regular Americans and the 746 individuals who comprise the billionaire class, including Donald Trump and Elon Musk. If we truly want to stop Trump, liberals must stop jealously gatekeeping revolution as “their own” and build a movement broad enough and inspiring enough to topple the billionaire class currently posing a mortal threat to our democracy. Inflation is worsening, the stock market continues to slide, children are once again dying of measles, Trump and Musk’s approval ratings are tanking. Opportunities exist to unite across cultural and geographic divides to stop the billionaires running our country into the ground. The big question now is whether liberals can support a revolution that is not just their own but one that is of, by and for all the people who want to save the United States of America from the forces of oligarchy and tyranny.
I like the question you propose here Jon. The billionaire class must be the common enemy among protests as it is the root of the injustices people are fighting against. I think that aspect is lost amongst Democrats and it's why protests fall on deaf ears. Democrats serve those same people.