Are There Lessons to Be Learned from the Protests of the 1960s?

Adam Nemett has spent the better part of a decade researching the history of student movements, civil disobedience, violent protest, cults, and psychedelic drugs—which makes him my kinda guy. The fruits of his dive into the world of dissent is We Can Save Us All (Unnamed Press), Nemett’s captivating, pre-apocalyptic debut novel set at Princeton in 2021. I sat down with the Charlottesville resident to talk about student activism in the 1960s and today, and how to best oppose Trumpism and the newly emboldened neo Nazi movement.

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Clara Bingham: What was the inspiration for your band of campus revolutionaries in We Can Save Us All?

Adam Nemett: One is autobiographical and one is historical. I went to college [Princeton] from 1999 to 2003. It was that weird, transitional time where we had Columbine in 1999, the stolen Bush election in 2000, 9/11 in 2001, and then the Iraq War. Before that, I don’t think I was remotely political or conscious of how many people hated America. Our response was in part to start a music-based movement on campus, which evolved and exists today as an educational nonprofit, MIMA Music. Historically, the 60s have always fascinated me, as have the 1930s. How progressive and regressive collectives form and expand, and then evolve, and often come crumbling down or get corrupted in some way.

Bingham: How would you describe the kind of 60s movements and organizations that informed your novel?

Nemett: There’s SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), who organized non-violent teach-ins, sit-ins, and protest marches. And then there were the Weathermen, and off-shoots of that, who believed in direct action, militancy, and bringing the war home. I think those two opposite sides of the same coin still exist today, and there’s still debate over which method is more effective. Is it non-violent resistance? Civil disobedience? Or is it punching back and taking the fight to the streets? I don’t think any one approach is by definition more or less effective. I think there is a diversification that’s necessary.

For example, when Black Bloc protestors throw a rock through windows, I’m not saying that’s necessarily the best way to get a point across, but it’s an important piece on the chess board, largely because it distracts police. I think there’s room for different forms of protest, and I think it’s hard to tell someone that their form of protest is wrong, whether it’s some sort of righteous anger, or whether it’s dialogue and peaceful education, or whether it’s something like what Colin Kaepernick is doing. But I do think if it’s pure violence for the sake of violence, that’s wrong.

Bingham:  I think that the 60s proved in spades that violent protest was counter-productive because it alienated the general public and played into the hands of the Nixon administration.

Nemett: I agree, but I’m still not convinced that peaceful protest is the only way to go, especially living in Charlottesville right now. I’m not convinced that we shouldn’t be out there punching back in some way. The far right is playing for keeps, and they don’t get too worked up about specific tactics so long as they’re all working toward the same racist/sexist oppression. A peaceful sit-in from the left is probably not going to change that, and it sometimes feels like we’re bringing a knife to a gunfight. But I don’t think armed warfare is the answer at all. I think there’s a middle ground, combining bold, theatrical disruption and non-violence, and that’s what I was trying to go for in the book.

Bingham: Let’s look at an example in We Can Save Us All. The energy of the students in the Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes and the way that their collective was organized and the charisma of some of its leaders like Mathias Blue and Haley Roth reminded me of aspects of the Weathermen. For example, there are strong women leaders, and it’s a drug-saturated, sexualized group dynamic with mandated group sex. Do you think the Weathermen protests against the government were as effective as SDS was before it broke up in late 1969?

Nemett: Probably not, but I agree with one kernel of Weathermen ideology, that we need to get white people off the sidelines and fighting to end white supremacy because, tragically, the powers-that-be don’t care about hurting black and brown people—but if there are white kids on the front lines, then the cops have to contend with that. And I think people like Bernardine Dohrn gave powerful, charismatic speeches that rallied a lot of people, not necessarily to do what the Weathermen were doing, but to get off the sidelines and organize and protest as part of a multi-racial coalition.

Where the Weathermen fell off was when they started building bombs. I know part of their reasoning was to put bombs in buildings when nobody was there, and bring that sense of danger home without actually hurting people, but ultimately, people did get hurt and killed, because they didn’t really know what they were doing. So, I think there’s a line that got crossed where it went from being potentially powerful to just straight up dangerous.

Bingham: The Weathermen’s initial intent was to bring the war home and kill people with their bombs, but they came to their senses after March 1970 when they accidentally blew up a Greenwich Village townhouse, killing three of their own. After that, they changed to a symbolic, non-lethal bombing campaign.

Nemett: There’s a group in Charlottesville—SURJ: Showing Up for Racial Justice—that’s part of a much larger regional and national network of anti-racist and anti-fascist organizers. I think they come a little bit out of the Weathermen sensibility, because it’s specifically targeted at getting white people off the sidelines—not acting as white saviors but using white privilege to support and follow the lead of organizers from communities of color. It’s about listening and bringing yourself into the fight in some meaningful way, and maybe putting yourself in situations that people of color can’t be in safely, but, you can.

Way before August 12th [2017 the Neo Nazi rally when counter protester Heather Heyer was killed], we saw the seeds of what was going to happen. It started with the statue debate. The city council convened a Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces to publicly debate what should happen with the [Robert E. Lee] statue. I went to some of those meetings in October, November, December. Initially, I wondered, “What is the deal with the statue?” And within about 30 seconds of hearing the pro-statue public comments, I thought, if these people want to keep the statue, I want the opposite, because these people are fucking crazy and dangerous. They were coming purely out of racism and white fragility, and the same kind of intimidation as the Jim Crow-era mentality that commissioned these statues in the early 1900s.

I remember joining SURJ for a counter protest to disrupt Corey Stewart, the neo-Nazi Republican who ran against Tim Kaine for Virginia Senate. He came to the Lee statue as a publicity stunt and SURJ showed up and we shouted him down and made it uncomfortable for him to be there. We were making it impossible for him to have his photo op without us being on top of him.

I got into a jostling match thing with this 60-year-old racist who was open-carrying and he said to me, “Do you want to fight right now?” I said, “No, I’m not going to fight you. You’ve got a gun.” They’ve got the guns. They’re begging for you to punch them, because then they can pull out their gun and shoot you. That’s what they’re trying to goad us into. We can arm ourselves and play their game, or, I thought, what if we chose a different tactic other than just screaming and chanting and meeting their anger with our anger?

Bingham: Just my point about how fighting fire with fire is counterproductive. But what does work if anything?

Nemett: I don’t know that it’s any one thing, but what the Yippies (the 1960s Youth International Party) did with their use of humor and street theater was really interesting. They said, “Everything that’s happening is absurd, so we’re going to meet that with our absurdity and costume and theater.” I think Abbie Hoffman was a genius at using the media. The far-right doesn’t know what to do with humor or talent, because they have none of either.

There’s a great video of a guy with the sousaphone at a neo-Nazi rally in 2015: I would never watch 15 minutes of a normal protestor screaming at someone, but I’ll watch 15 minutes of a guy with a sousaphone trolling a group of neo Nazis, because it’s funny and it’s smart and it just undercuts what’s trying to be a super serious gathering of angry white guys. And it gains media attention. That forces them to play by our game, which they don’t understand how to play.

Bingham: Your student collective in the book, the Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes, dress up in superhero costumes which reminded me of the Yippies and also the women’s liberation group WITCH: Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell.

Nemett: WITCH would dress up in witch costumes and show up at the New York Stock Exchange to release mice and cast spells. There’s something about dressing up. There’s a certain anonymity that came with that. You could put on a costume and a mask and blend in. You’re a little bit more protected against police and being identified by the opposition, which is just practical. But the anonymity, the power of being a little bit disguised or in someone else’s skin, that’s what I was trying to get at in my book. Although in the novel it’s not about becoming someone else, but instead dressing as the most elevated version of your idealized self—manifesting your own latent superpower.

Bingham: I want to ask you about the current student movement. You wrote this book way before Parkland, and the birth of serious modern-day student activism. What do you think of kids like Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg?

Nemett: I think they’re following on a tradition of powerful student activism from people of color that gets less media attention, and I think they’ve been equally articulate, motivated, and consistent. They’re out there having the dialogues that most of us are too scared to have. I’ve watched video of them having conversations and listening to pro-gun NRA activists, and saying, “We’re not trying to take away your guns, we’re here for common sense legislation. Here are our five points, here’s why.” Meanwhile, they are getting thousands of death threats, and they’re dealing with so much shit from the propaganda machine, but they’re out there doing the work. Emma Gonzalez’s speech at the March for Our Lives with the six-minute-twenty-second silence—that’s the kind of power that we were talking about before. That’s not humor-theater, but it’s coming at it from a different angle. It’s an uncommon, unexpected form of resistance. That’s who’s going to save us all, the teenagers. They are my heroes.