Right On In California

( Mr. Ponte, a liberation activist, plays host on a regular telephone-talk show on KPFK-FM, the Pacifica Foundation station in Southern California. This article is abstracted from his series "Quite Rightly So," copyright 1969 by the Los Angeles Image. He is currently writing a book, A New Right Reasoning.)

A COMMON joke in some circles during the early days of President Kenaedy's administration was that one got to Washington by going to Harvard and turning left. Times have changed, and now it seems one can reach the state house and the White House by going to Southern California and turning right-a la Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.

But among the young of the Southern California breeding ground the "right," ideologically and politically, is a fragmented phenomenon, the bits and pieces of which now scatter along a spectrum from fascism to anarchy.

The national convention of the "New Conservative" Young Americans for Freedom held late this past summer in St. Louis revealed symptoms of a deep schizophrenia in the participants. The factions which aired their differences have been privately at odds for a long time, but now their differences have escalated into the same kind of civil war on the Right that split the radical Students for a Democratic Society during the same summer. Nowhere is this Y. A. F. split-a valid reflection of the internal contradiction throughout the American right-wing-more manifest than in Southern California.

Y. A. F. was founded in 1960 by a gathering of young anti-communists and assorted conservatives meeting at William F. Buckley's request at his estate in Sharon, Connecticut. Their resulting document of principles, the "Sharon Statement," upheld free enterprise and tradition as its primary values.

Thus Y. A. F., the newborn child, had two heads, and they would not face the same direction for long. Buckley in his role as godfather to the organization, stressed traditionalist values. Others, rallying to the teachings of economists Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, and Murray Rothbard, stressed free enterprise. Buckley encouraged a faith in "tradition for its own sake" and plugged for anti-communism, Christianity, law and order, and the flag. Others in the organization idealized laissez-faire capitalism, anti-authoritarianism, and extreme individualism.

COMMUNISM, in Buckley's thinking, was a clear and present danger against which all rightists should unite; and in that schema socialism was, in the hands of callow liberals, useful to communism. Unstated but implicit in such thinking was the assumption that communism was the major threat to human freedom, and that some sacrifices of freedom and comfort and safety were necessary to defeat the red menace. That which strengthened America, even if collectivist, could be rationalized as good; that which weakened America, even if fulfilling of individual freedom, was bad. Many Buckleyite conservatives held these beliefs, not necessarily as absolutely, but certainly as rules of thumb.

Some individualist rightists found the emerging Buckley-Y. A. F. mentality immoral. These individualists, who took up the label "Libertarian" rather quickly, disapproved of communism but did so without much concern for American moral superiority; their feelings were based on anti-statism, and they found no logic in supporting fascism to defeat communism because in their eyes the two were the same. As capitalists they resented Bucklcyite opposition to free trade and Bucklcyite eagerness to escalate taxes and foreign interventions. As Libertarians they were repelled by Bucklcyite eagerness to legislate against pornography, abortion, drugs, and subversion; they believed that an individual did not require government to protect his mind or his body from himself.

Beginning in 1961 clusters of Libertarians began breaking away from Buckley. Many saw themselves as American conservatives determined to preserve an individualist, revolutionary American Tradition; most of these saw Buckley as a transplanted European aristocrat whose brand of collectivist capitalism was a kind of feudalism and whose morality began with social norms instead of individual liberty.

Their break from Buckley scattered them, for these were extreme individualists with no convenient enemy like communism to buckle them into a cohesive group. A few, like the Chicago community at the New Individualist Review or the Colorado congregation at Rampart College focused on attacking Buckley as a detractor of real capitalism, the energies of these groups went toward purifying the New Right by reorienting its faith from anti-communism into pro-free enterprise. Two years ago Rampart College pulled up roots and moved to Santa Ana, near the heart of Southern California's infamous Orange County. Since that time it has been a major organizing force for a large capitalistic cult there. The tiny college has had so much influence on Y. A. F. in California that some loyal Buckleyite board members of the National Organization reportedly suggested that mere affiliation with the school should be grounds for expulsion from Y. A. F. This suggestion was quickly dismissed when detractors were reminded what a sizeable percentage of Y. A. F.'s national elite had at one time or another been affiliated with Rampart.

In California, as elsewhere, many disaffected rightists turned to Ayn Rand; whose objectivist teachings elevated capitalism from economics to religion. Rand shares Buckley's fear, if not his paranoia, about communism; but she philosophizes that communism can be defeated only by capitalism-the rational, selfish, non-altruistic, objective relationship of free people in a free enterprise system. Buckley and his followers, she feels, are traitors to capitalism and are the antithesis of all the qualities a capitalist needs; i. e., Buckleyites are irrational, romantic, superstitious, altruistic, and too confused by their worship of "tradition" to be objective.

Many Libertarians have had at least an affection for Miss Rand, but many have rejected her. Some complain that she is romantic rather than logical, that she is at best a "pseudo-philosopher." Others have "spun out" logically; starting with the premise that the best government is the least government, they predictably have become anarchists and are now appalled that Rand defends government as necessary to national defense. Some have abandoned the Right, in name if not in philosophy; many of these have joined with various "hippies" and New Leftists in an attempt to translate their individualism into life-style radicalism.

And because of the configuration of social and personal influences on young people, more Libertarians are discovering themselves within Y. A. F. all the time. One project among some long-time Libertarians is to induce young would-be conservatives to use marijuana; "once they turn on," one explained, "they can never support a dictator again, even if his name is Buckley." Another project is education, a reason that Rampart College sponsors class and home study courses on free enterprise, and that a dozen large newsletters and magazines now circulate Libertarian ideas. The Bucklcyites in Y. A. F., called the "trads," have reacted to this influence since the last National Convention, where a Libertarian caucus gained the support of more than 40 per cent of the delegates present for resolutions calling for an immediate end to the draft and the war and for immediate legalization of marijuana.

PURGES have begun in Y. A. F. Recently the whole California board of officers found themselves expelled by the National Office, with no stated reason that made any sense. Two months ago eight past members of the California Y. A. F. elite held a press conference, denouncing the organization and founding their own Student Libertarian Alliance. An ally from the hills of Stanford, past chairman Rod Manis formed a parallel Radical Libertarian Alliance; he, too, had been purged, allegedly for supporting Timothy Leary for California Governor (a seeming triviality, until one remembers that Ronald Reagan is on the adult board of Y. A. F. Advisors). Since summer, about half of the California chapters of Y. A. F. have resigned from the organization.

Who would have thought it five years ago-that the Young Americans for Freedom would have to stipulate that no one could simultaneously be a member of Y. A. F. and SDS? Well, since the last National Convention that has been a rule, and now the organization plans to rule formally on whether an anarchist can belong to Y. A. F. Such is the nature of organizations dedicated to freedom.

The question of anarchy is serious to Y. A. F. "trads" because the Libertarian anarchist position is picking up the support of most young intellectuals on the right. The anarchist appeals are obvious-their view is moral, logically consistent, and wholly defensible; in short, it "makes sense" to individualists.

THE NATIONAL Youth Alliance (NYA) has headquarters in Washington, D. C., but its public emergence occurred at UCLA. Last July 16 NYA kicked off the first of its proposed "Right Power Programs" with a gathering of 500-odd people in that school's Meyerhoff Park. Spokesmen John Hayes, campus leader, and Louis Byers, national organizer of NYA joined David McGinty, head of UCLA's White Student League (WSL) in making the following demands of the university:

The administration must restore law and order to the campus;

UCLA must continue to give credit for ROTC;

Ralph Bunche Hall must be renamed Douglas MacArthur Hall;

The sciences of eugenics, genetics, and ethnology must be added to the curriculum;

The administration must fire any teachers who encourage anarchy or violate the 14th Amendment [as it relates to the taking of property]:

SDS and BSU must be dissolved;

UCLA must terminate the high potential program which has brought so many "thugs" to campus;

Professors who downgrade the white racial contribution to civilization must be fired;

Faculty must re-establish the values of Western Civilization as the basic foundation for all students.

The tone of such far-out rightists is both ominous and self-righteous, like that of the "skinheads," a similar group of disaffected youth in Great Britain. Good Americans, suggest NYA/WSL writings, are the workers and producers in society; intellectuals are not producers, but "softeners" of those solid qualities of strength and conquest at the envisioned heart of "Western Civilization." Those who undermine this culture, NYA/WSL spokesmen feel, must be defeated by any necessary means, including violence.

Little actual violence has occurred thus far, perhaps in part because these militant rightist groups have tiny memberships; on the 30,000 student campus at UCLA, NYA/WSL membership numbers about 15. Their tactic, however, is to mirror the most rabid leftists in dogmatism, pragmatism, and self-righteousness; since they feed off these leftists as a negative mirror image, vanity may yet catalyze an explosion. The consequences could be bloody; WSL's McGinty, for example, is a member of the Iron Cross motorcycle group, and at the rally described above Mike Brown, a leader of the group, served as his bodyguard-reportedly threatening several bystanders in the process. The capacity for violence around these groups is as yet unmeasured and untested.

But the rhetoric that foments clash continues to grow, especially from NYA. The "Right Power Program" is built on four points: "(1) To oppose the use of dangerous drugs and narcotics and to run those who push them off the campus.... (2) To neutralize and overcome Black Power.... (3) To restore law and order to the campuses and to America by stamping out anarchist groups and movements, such as SDS.... (4) To bring peace to America by resisting any attempt to involve us in foreign war...." Behind this action program lurks a set of-at the least-controversial ideas.

Reading the NYA newspaper Attack!. one finds in the group's mentality an awesome witch hunt; the devil is red and black, and recognizably utopian. The witches are trose who teach that "paradise is a place where hominoids with full bellies live in a perpetual rut," devoid of "honor, loyalty, race and Western man's will to conquer or die."

Behind conquest-the proof of superiority and inferiority-is the idea of inherent inequality. "Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free," is the motto of Attack! A pin worn by NYA members bears the symbol of mathematical inequality, an equals sign with a slash mark across it. The teaching of eugenics, NYA authors feel, will help students learn of white supremacy; and that recognition, their reasoning goes, will give whites the will power to assert their superiority.

"Our civilization," writes the editor of Attack!, "is founded and rests on violence. Every civilization is directly descended from a conquest; and if it were not for the constant promise of retaliatory violence from the law, me would live every moment at the utter mercy of criminals and thugs."

"Violence," he continues, "is bad only when it is used in an anti-social way. When it is used to maintain law and order... violence is a positive good." He goes on to reason that if the government won't enforce the law, then the people "not only have the right but the obligation to enforce the law themselves!" This vigilante mentality rejects efforts to work with the courts, as many moderate conservatives are attempting; the courts, NYA declares, "are PACKED with liberal judges" who are assumed to be unwilling or unable to deal with the evil in our society.

NYA is symptomatic of a reactionary element in America, young and old. How much it will be fed by public reaction to radical leftist violence remains to be seen, but the potential is there and it is dangerous.