Do any of PJM’s readers recall or know about Ramparts Magazine? A writer for @Issue, an Online Magazine of Business and Design, writes that “today Ramparts is little known, except by those over 55 and serious magazine history buffs, but in its day it rocked the editorial world with its explosive investigative reporting, entertaining style and sophisticated design. More than a fringe periodical put out by young radicals, it was a political force to be reckoned with and a launchpad for some of the top journalists working today.” Well said, but why the sudden attention and the sudden new hype?
The reason is the recent publication of a book by Peter Richardson, A Bomb In Every Issue: How the Short Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America. The title alone gives the magazine perhaps more clout than it really had. Despite the new attention paid to it, and the reviewer in The New York Times Book Review arguing that it was “a slick, muckraking magazine that was the most freewheeling thing on most American newsstands during the second half of the 1960s ,” the book does not appear to be on any best seller lists, it is not easily found in bookstores, and its number is quite high on Amazon, which indicates it probably is not selling that well.
Yet, it is certainly true that Ramparts was the only left-wing magazine of its day, and perhaps the only one to ever achieve such heights, that had a circulation in 1968 of 250,000. Reading about Vietnam on its pages, Martin Luther King Jr. was so upset that against the advice of his own advisors in the civil rights movement, he began to speak out publicly in opposition to the Vietnam War. That act alone was proof enough of the magazine’s reach and influence.
Its other major scoop was the revelation that the CIA had, as Sol Stern recalls, secretly penetrated and financed the National Student Association. His story soon led to a virtual avalanche of mainstream reporting when Tom Wicker, the New York Times Washington DC bureau chief, assigned a team of top notch reporters who had both access and unlimited funds, to flesh out the story with how the Agency was funding scores of other front groups, labor unions, cultural journals and book publishers.
In San Francisco, the cheerleading crowd is doing its best to remember the magazine that was published in that city, and whose top resident journalist today, Robert Scheer, was once its co-editor. They have held forums and celebrations, remembering vividly those good old days when they dominated the mainstream culture and pushed others in their direction.
But the two most important articles about the real and very negative influence on our politics and culture that the magazine had comes from former editors. The first is the one by Stern,who took an editorial job with Ramparts in 1965, and along with Scheer and the San Franciso whirlwind character Warren Hinckle, became the triumverate that put the magazine on the map. The second is by Peter Collier, who along with David Horowitz, pulled off a palace coup that led to Scheer’s ouster in 1969-70 that put Collier and Horowitz on the top rung in place of Scheer and the already departed Hinckle, who had left in1969.
Both former editors, who are now important conservative intellectuals, make a similar analysis about the very negative effects on our culture and polity that Ramparts had. The first is that the magazine tred a thin line between journalism and a vehicle for radical activism. One of the first Collier-Horowitz issues featured a front page photo of a Bank of America branch burning to the ground, after radical students in California had torched it. Their cover logo stated its destruction “may have done more for saving the environment than all the teach-ins put together.” Another cover featured four hands- those of the magazine’s editors-burning their draft cards. Both were a clear call for radical action and not reportage. As Stern writes, “I don’t know if burning our draft cards advanced the antiwar cause, but it surely added to Ramparts’ media luster.”
It was quite early that the magazine’s cache in the radical movement got to the editors’ heads. Hinckle sent ten top writers and other friends to Chicago to cover the planned action at the 1968 Democratic convention. But instead of staying in Grant Park and the streets with the movement, they ensconsed themselves at the posh Ambassador East Hotel and held court in the expensive Pump Room restaurant, more fun than fleeing tear gas and billy clubs. When it came time to write their story, they moved to the equally famous Algonquin in New York. As Stern notes, they had no special inside scoops. The one they could have run with they chose to ignore. That was their inside knowledge that Tom Hayden, the guru of the New Left, planned in advance for a “violent confrontation with the ‘war machine,’” in order to in their eyes expose the fascist core of the supposed democratic American political structure.
Before Stern left, Scheer and Hinckle, and later Collier and Horowitz, devoted many issues to praise of the Black Panthers and Huey Newton, running a Hayden article in which he extolled the Panthers as America’s “internal Viet Cong,” and his now famous call for creation by white youth of “liberated zones” from which the Revolution would spread, “liberated” areas similar to Ann Arbor,Michigan; Madison, Wisconsin; Berkeley,California and New York City’s Upper West Side.
In his article, Peter Collier vividly portrays the magazine’s accomplishments in one paragraph:
The magazine had stumbled into a historical sweet spot. Vietnam had pried the lid off of America’s long postwar consensus and Ramparts, often confusing wish fulfillment with for fact-checking, was there to publish what came out of Pandora’s Box. Conspiracy theories? We had the assassination franchise and made the country drink the witches’ brew Jim Garrison had whipped up down in New Orleans. Black liberation? The magazine made the Black Panthers into a national phenomenon, a locked and loaded makeover of the civil rights movement. The romance of Third Worldism? Ramparts was an open mic for Castroism and helped author the myth of Saint Che by secretly obtaining and publishing the Guevara diaries. The war itself? In one of those pictures that actually is worth a thousand words, Ramparts made a stipulation when it produced one of its classic covers showing Ho Chi Minh in a sampan posed as George Washington crossing the Delaware.
It is clear enough, thinking about this, that what the magazine did is in fact to popularize so many of the destructive myths that now many who never saw the magazine or even heard of it assume is pure factual truth. Was Ho Chi Minh Vietnam’s George Washington, rather than its Mao and Stalin? Of course not. But today, Ramparts’ claims are Oliver Stone’s and Howard Zinn’s true history of the 1960’s. Was Cuba and Fidel the island’s liberator rather than its Lenin? No, but it is the truth if you ask Danny Glover or Harry Belafonte or Steven Speilberg, etc etc. Scheer, Hinckle, Stern, Collier and Horowitz made these views commonplace.
I remember Ramparts well. It was a time when I was trying to be a leftist when I wasn’t, and when I knew a bunch of SDS scum on my Indiana University campus (one of whom turned out to be a government spy). I soon went back to my rational roots. Ramparts was a well-written magazine, but I have since learned that anyone—no matter how irrational—can learn to write well, and there are publishers for any kind of tripe that will sell.
yeah, i was cool, in grad school, knew everything, and read ramparts.
looking back, i’d say i was a “dumbass”.
today, maybe still an “ass”, but not nearly so dumb.
I think Ramparts started as a religious publication — Catholic? I read it a few times when I was in high school in the mid-sixties, just after it took its hard left turn. One article predicted the death of the oceans within a decade — with Western Civilization holding the smoking gun. Hasn’t happened yet. I used to read National Review, The Nation and The New Republic (TRB from Washington — were those the initials?) also. The National Review had a lot of counteracting to do.
I campaigned for HHH in ’68.
For the record, I read and admired Hugh Wilford’s book, which is cited in my book. (In fact, I mentioned your review of it on my blog two years ago.) But Hugh’s book is more critical of the CIA than you suggest here. Consider its title, which refers to a CIA official’s claim that the agency played the American media like a movie theater organ.
Civil rights: California’s fair housing bill was passed in 1963. Ramparts supported it and criticized the Catholic Church for not doing so. In 1964, that law’s opponents placed an initiative on the state ballot to undo its effects–and to make future fair housing laws unconstitutional. One Republican legislator claimed, “The essence of freedom is the right to discriminate.” That initiative passed but was later ruled unconstitutional.
During this time, Bob Scheer (among others) was protesting discriminatory employment practices at Bay Area hotels and auto dealerships. Yes, Ramparts targeted Cold War liberals, especially as the Vietnam War ground on. But those liberals didn’t bequeath civil rights to minorities while the Ramparts staff held them in contempt. Rather, Ramparts fought for civil rights and challenged LBJ liberals to oppose the Vietnam War and racism more vigorously.
Ramparts “stood against all [Dr. King] stood for”? True, some black nationalists had little use for Dr. King, and Ramparts helped make some of them famous. But Thomas Merton was praising Dr. King in the magazine well before Bob Scheer, Sol, or Peter joined the magazine. And as I noted in my book and reply to Sol, Dr. King credited the magazine for persuading him to oppose the war publicly. He then gave the text of his famous speech on that topic to Ramparts while the mainstream press raked him. It’s nonsense to say Ramparts stood against everything Dr. King stood for.
No one speaks for Ramparts in its entirety. In fact, its contributors and staff members, especially during its heyday, were more diverse politically than is usually assumed. (Recall, for example, that Brit Hume was a staff writer at one point.) So while I’m always eager to hear what Sol and Peter have to say about their experiences at the magazine, I stand by my description of Ramparts’ legacy.
Finally, I don’t advise anyone to attend any Ramparts celebrations at City Lights, since that event happened months ago. (Actually, it was at Vesuvio, just across the alley from the bookstore.) But I hope to see anyone interested in the magazine’s history at the San Francisco Public Library this Saturday at 11 a.m.
Having been born late ’58, my own political awakening was post Nixon/Watergate. My first recollection of Ramparts was in ’79 as a KSU undergrad – already an artifact of ornamental instruction; proudly displayed on a few radically left english prof’s bookshelfs.
Only through reading David Horowitz have I reflected on the rags existence or influence. But as an amature collector I’m always on the lookout. I’m sure there’s always going to be some boomers willing to pay handsome prices for the giberish espoused.
This shouldn’t really come as much of surprise to you Ron Radash. After all, you have been reminding us all about enduring intellectual arguments regarding the cold war through many of your writings.
Just as the disagreements over vietnam will never end until successive generations die out, an awful lot of the mistakes of the 60′s live on as nostalgia or outright history re-written. Thankfully the cost in human lives pales in comparison to what the Black Book of Communism teaches us – no matter how much idiots insist that I.F.Stone is worthy of attention – or Zinn as well.
Again, much credit to you Ron, as well as folks like Horwitz. Sometimes it seems like obama-bots like Matt Damon are clearly winning, but just look at the Mass election & Scott Brown. Clarity can kick in at crucial moments.
Peter’s point about Ramparts and civil rights would be well taken if he had written a book about a liberal Catholic quarterly called Ramparts. But, as Peter’s book describes so well, that magazine was hijacked by Scheer and Hinckle, with me occasionaly lending a hand. On the issue of race we turned the magazine into a platform for a group of murderous black thugs who mouthed empty revolutionary slogans and hated everything that Thomas Merton and Dr. King stood for.
I now realize that one problem with Peter’s otherwise excellent account of Ramparts’ history is that he insists on seeing the magazine’s extreme leftism through the prism of his own more moderate left/liberal politics. He still doesn’t seem to understand that we weren’t in Chicago in 1968 “to challenge LBJ liberals to oppose the Vietnam War and racism more vigorously.” Rather we were there to support Tom Hayden’s insame crusade to “bring the war home” and smash American liberalism. And it doesn’t work to make Ramparts seem less insanely leftist, by citing the fact that Brit Hume contributed a few unremarkable pieces to the magazine many years before he became a conservative.
I attended UC Santa Cruz in Ramparts’ heyday. My favorite recollection of them is the temporary daily (or maybe semi-daily) newspaper they put out during a strike of the San Francisco newspapers during baseball season, because Warren Hinckle was their sports editor and he was damned good at it.
The absolute tops was his parody of himself and Ramparts in a conspiracy column about the San Franciso Giants being the secret farm club of the National League.
Ramparts was too highbrow for me. The East Village Other (EVO), now there was a publication to get nostalgic about.
I recently interviewed the author and wrote a review for the Lansing City Pulse. MSU, just down the road, was in deep with the CIA and Ramparts blew the door off the locker. Read it here:http://mittenlit.com/?p=2727 or read the full article in the Pulse here:
http://www.lansingcitypulse.com/lansing/article-3730-set-it-off.html
The triumvirate over impressionable minds: Ramparts, Evergreen Review, and Mad Magazine.
Betty Van Patter should be mentioned. This endures.
Sol, you know best what your motives were. My focus was on the magazine’s content and reception. But I think you will agree that my book isn’t a love letter to Tom Hayden or the Black Panthers. Ramparts’ calling card was its investigative reporting, which earned it a Polk Award in 1967, largely on the strength of your NSA story. Who else was doing that work then? Or are we better off without it?
My claim in the book is that Warren Hinckle, Dugald Stermer, and Bob Scheer were the center of the magazine during its heyday. Of the three, only Scheer could be described as a radical, and he was enough of a mainstream Democrat to receive 46 percent of the vote in a 1966 congressional primary. I think it’s fair to include Thomas Merton in the discussion if we’re trying to assess the magazine’s overall achievement. Also John Howard Griffin, Don Duncan, Brit Hume, Adam Hochschild, William Greider, Lowell Bergman, Christopher Hitchens, Seymour Hersh, and others I wouldn’t describe as insanely leftist.
Your position is informed by your personal experience, and there’s no gainsaying that. I didn’t work for or even read Ramparts, which peaked when I was eight years old and folded when I was sixteen. But for anyone my age or younger, a review of Ramparts’ contributions and shortcomings can tell us a lot about American media and politics. My goal all along has been to see the magazine steadily and whole, and I hope the book and this discussion help others do the same.
I’m under 50, but remember Ramparts well. My older brother used to bring copies home from UC San Diego every semester and passed them on to me. I was 8 years old at the time. Yes, this was a part of his plan to indoctrinate me into the wonderful new religion (Marxism) that he discovered at college. He even used to buy me comic books that told the story of Marx and his religion in pictures. I remember reading Ramparts with a serious demeanor, but I’m not sure that I understood most of the stories. It was also my introduction to David Horowitz. Ironically, my life took a similar path to David’s: red diaper baby, rabidly liberal university student, to staunch conservative adult.
Sol Stern—
I think you wrote for Ramparts or at least you were a prominent new leftist
Ramaparts had clean graphics and was well laid out. I read it voraciously in its early years but hardly ever after 1971. I was in SDS and in the New Left. Jewish lefty parents
I am on the right now and have been for more than 25 years. I have relatives who are conservative. I hope many more Jews give up their liberal mindset
Yes, in Detroit there were several left wing rags around in the 60.s including Ramparts. They made great reading because, unlike the right wing press, they told the truth. They told us that we should support human rights, equal rights, end the war, clean up our environment and support public health care and education. The right wing press told us to support the war, reduce taxes and never mentioned the environment or human rights. So, over time I wonder which side was on the right side of history? Man, the left had some crazy ideas eh?
http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/#4319429991004699247
NR’s religion editor Will Herberg, a conservative Jew, correctly predicted that ‘aggiornamento’ would soon lead to what we now call ‘the hermeneutic of rupture,’ well before the close of Vatican II. “Under cover of ‘aggiornamento’, a fronde (i.e. a civil war) has been opened up against the Church.” And, after severe criticism of some of NR’s own writings on then-current Church events, he adds, “I will not permit myself to comment on Ramparts, another ‘Catholic’ journal practicing aggiornamento. Anti-clerical snarling and leftist incitement constitute the bulk of the offerings of this sensation-mongering Liberal magazine. And all in the name of aggiornamento!”
The religion editor was not the only person on the NR staff who found the contents of Ramparts distressing. At some point, my mother voiced some rather serious distress over the situation in the Church generally, and something in Ramparts particularly, to my father. I can’t tell from my father’s response whether it was in a letter or a phone conversation, but it clearly made him think that she was in a bad way, and in need of some encouragement. (And dig the hipster vocab. from 1960’s!)
I commence this commentary upon your latest hang-up, which is this ‘movement’ which is taking place within Holy Mother the Church. You’ve mentioned to me how shook up you are, and … things about joining some eastern rite and all that. (referring to earlier rebels in the Church like Arius as “fatheads”:) Remember, the cool ones have been those who knew that in spite of all that they saw around them, and what was happening within the Church, their first concern was to save their immortal souls; they worked within the Church. … One must be cool in these things and remember that on many occasions Christ has allowed the devil and his armies to turn the Church into chaos and turmoil, and that every time She has come out refreshed, rejuvenated, and as vital as Her Founder intended Her to be. You must remember that these factions, these creeping elements of fungus and disease have always been in the Church, and that every time they have lost in the end. Let them preach that we are to look upon Christ as a ‘buddy’, as you would say, but should that matter when you know that He isn’t? Look to yourself and not to them … So who or what is Ramparts ? (They) purport to represent the Church. Don’t tell me that you’ve fallen prey to the press and have believed them when they say that Ramparts or anyone else speaks for the Church. Let them yell, let them scream; they speak for no-one, and they speak to no-one. All they do is impress. They do not impress Protestants. They do not impress Catholic laymen. They only impress themselves and those like themselves…who are on newspapers and other such tripe… Just remember that all this will pass and the Church will emerge triumphant.
For some of us it is always interesting to see ideological Monday Morning Quarterbacking at work. In this instance this Monday Morning retrospective involves a look back at the Sixties and seems to involve the therapeutic purgings and mea culpas of some of those apparently involved in some of the events of the Sixties.
Ramparts. Ramparts did seem to revive the muckraking tradition, something that is historically significant. Ramparts reported on the role the CIA played in American university life, something that is historically significant. Ramparts seems to capture some of the zeitgeist of its time including the romanticisation of some aspects of Sixties intellectual culture and the increasing “radicalisation” of that culture, something that is historically significant.
What is also historically significant is that some of the actors in this drama now spend so much of their intellectual lives retrospctively arguing about less descriptive matters such as whether Ramparts was “good” or “bad”. Mr. Radosh, Mr. Stern, Mr. Horowitz, and Mr. Collier now apparently true believers in the faith of neoliberalism, like a number of other Sixties intellectuals, apparently think that the movement from anti-Communist Cold War liberalism to the New Left was a bad thing and sometimes seem to suggest that there was little worth in the new Left (what one poster calls SDS “scum”).
One can debate the good or evils of the Sixties and the investigative reporting in Ramparts till the proverbial cows come home. One can debate the merits of liberal anti-communism and New Left liberalism. One can fight and refight intellectual culture wars that have a long pedigree in US history. Some will inevitably use their reading of history to promote one ideological position or another. When these ideological battles begin to manipulate history, however, Houston we have a problem. It is a fact that the CIA played a role in universities in the 1960s just as it is a fact that the US government was involved in the overthrow of Salvador Allende. One can argue that these were “good things” or “bad things”, a kind of theological approach to history. One cannot, however, argue that they never occurred nor can one sweep them under the rug in the name of ideological correctness.
I was asking yourself what is up with that weird gravatar??? I know 5am is early and I’m not looking my top at that hour, but I hope I don’t look just like this! I might possibly however make that face if I’m asked to do 100 pushups. lol
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Regards
Ramakant
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It is interesting to note that many of those that once worked for the magazine went on to hold some top positions in US. media and politics. The founder of Rolling Stone magazine is just one example.
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What is also historically significant is that some of the actors in this drama now spend so much of their intellectual lives retrospctively arguing about less descriptive matters such as whether Ramparts was “good” or “bad”. Mr. Radosh, Mr. Stern, Mr. Horowitz, and Mr. Collier now apparently true believers in the faith of neoliberalism, like a number of other Sixties intellectuals, apparently think that the movement from anti-Communist Cold War liberalism to the New Left was a bad thing and sometimes seem to suggest that there was little worth in the new Left (what one poster calls SDS “scum”).