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Is radicalism the culprit?

Reader comment on item: Harvard's Communist Uprising, 50 Years Later

Submitted by John Harvey (United States), Aug 16, 2020 at 12:06

I disagree with Dr. Pipes' reference to Harvard's "sad decline into radicalism." What has gone wrong with the so-called Left is not excessive radicalism but excessive stupidity, in particular a surrender to racial politics.

In the late 1960s many persons , on the left and elsewhere, believed that race would soon ( on a historical scale ) become unimportant, for racism was a bad dream from which we were awakening. Some of those who anticipated the end of racial politics were Marxists who looked forward to the continuation of class politics until the triumph of the proletariat – and some were not.

But something went wrong and it is now standard on the "left" to agree with Adolf Hitler that one's race is, ought to be , and ever will be one of the most important characteristics of a person. How can we – the persons reading these words – help to extract the world from this muddy mess of an ideology?

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Daniel Pipes replies:

For me, radicalism is just a subset of stupidity.

I agree about race; it seemed in the 1960s that this issue had been dealt with. It is shocking to see that it is greater than ever. Shelby Steel is the one who has explained this paradox for me.

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Reader comments (24) on this item

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w/response from Daniel Pipes
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