Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power by Seth Rosenfeld (review)

Subversives is a compelling and meticulously documented work of cultural history that moves with the inexorable pace of tragedy, part Greek in its concatenation of events, deceptively unrelated but propelled as if by some strange design; part Shakespearean in its mammoth cast of characters, a mix of protagonists with tragic flaws and antagonists too lacking in self knowledge to elicit pity and fear.

It all seemed so simple: Free Speech. Or so the students at the University of California at Berkeley thought in 1964, when in the midst of a protest, a (then) philosophy major injected the voice of reason into what was turning into a shout-out. “My name is Mario Savio,” he declared, thus becoming a Hamlet in a tragedy-by-installments. Blazingly committed, with a crusader’s zeal, Savio only wanted students to enjoy their First Amendment Rights. His zeal set off the Free Speech Movement, which spiraled out of control and devolved into the Filthy Speech Movement. That was how the public perceived it. A notorious dance replete with drugs and sex undermined the cause even more. The students became “The Kids”; the police, “The Pigs,” and a simple plea for due process became a generational conflict.

Although curricular reform was needed (e.g., an ethnic studies program), some of the demands made by counter organizations were so ludicrous that they alienated many of the original sympathizers. Rosenfeld did not have to portray Savio as a Hamlet who morphed into a Christ figure; history took care of that. Savio went through his own agony in the garden—depression, homelessness, panic attacks, a failed marriage. But still he managed to graduate summa cum laude with a degree in physics from San Francisco State, from which he later received a master’s. The years of protest took their toll. Savio died of heart problems in 1996, a mere fifty-three. Clark Kerr, Berkeley’s president, was also a tragic scapegoat, but enjoyed a longer life, dying at 92. He was a victim of both history and J. Edgar Hoover, who believed informants’ reports that Kerr was too far to the left. When the Free Speech Movement galvanized Berkeley, Kerr was faced with an impossible situation: how to keep the campus from succumbing to anarchy. When the demonstrations turned ominous, Ronald Reagan, then California governor, argued that they were Communist-instigated. Reagan became a major player in the offstage drama to have Kerr fired. Savio and Kerr could not withstand the juggernaut of the FBI and Reagan, whose anti-Communist paranoia began in 1946 when he started cooperating with the FBI after becoming convinced of Communist infiltration of the movie business. Ironically, in 1938, according to Reagan’s biographer, Edmund Morris, Reagan, then a liberal with a concern for the marginalized and the dispossessed, considered joining the Communist Party (Dutch, 158). Equally ironic is that, as an undergraduate at Eureka College, Reagan advocated a student strike when programs were in jeopardy because of restructuring. But that was in 1928. One wonders how Reagan’s political career would have fared if he retained his idealism.

Subversives is a monumental achievement. Read it and wonder how much talent was lost in the cataclysm that might have been averted if the need for recognition were divorced from the fear of radicalization. One erratum: Larry Parks did not win an Oscar for The Jolson Story (1946), although he was nominated. The best actor Oscar went to Frederic March for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), which the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) found questionable because it implied that WWII veterans had problems adjusting to civilian life. Such were the times. Subversives should be required reading for the social network generation, who don’t know how good they have it.