This week, Tuesday (Dec. 15) to be exact, I was a guest on Gary Null’s WBAI/Pacifica radio show, preceded by Chris Hedges, a solid analyst and critic of the contemporary social order, to discuss the failure of American radicalism to act as as a transformative political-ideological social force in opposition to repression at home, intervention abroad. As usual, Gary’s questions prodded interviewees through his penetrating insights to launch into orbit with mini-monologues on the given topic, and Chris was superb in his portion, focusing on Woodrow Wilson’s administration, its pursuit of repayment for Morgan and other bankers’ loans to European nations threatened by German victory as reason for intervention, its Creel Committee (CPI) steady propaganda to control public opinion, and of course its suppression of radicals, notably the Wobblies, as the genesis for modern-day US antiradicalism. This is persuasive but doesn’t go far enough either on Wilson or on America.
