THE RIOT MAKERS

[Music] July 1964 and New York's Harlem explodes. In quick succession, six other cities erupt. Let's go back. In the next three summers, 105 major urban riots occur in almost as many cities. No section of the country is spared. Come on, let's go. April 1968. In the 10 days following the assassination of Martin Luther King, violence breaks out in 140 cities. Federal troops are sent into Washington, Baltimore, and Chicago. Two blocks from the White House, buildings are burned and stores are looted. The flames of turmoil spread to the campuses. Berkeley, Colombia, Wisconsin, Harvard. The roster eventually includes dozens of our most prestigious universities. The riot era had come to America. And the plumes of smoke spread a tragic fallout. a bitter wrangling over causes, blame, guilt, and remedies. And most of us would agree that almost every cause mentioned had a role. Historic and recent failings of government and private behavior, various social and economic inequities, these causes have all been examined and are pretty well understood today. But there is one other important cause of civil commotion in America that few people know very much about. Simply stated, it is this. No matter how bad the conditions are, trouble does not happen automatically. It must be agitated. That means the riots of the 60s came about because there were those who wanted them to come about, who did everything in their power to cause them. It is these agitators and their methods we'll be examining during the next half hour. Many of the film sequences you'll see were shot by TV news cameramen, local police departments, and the Army Signal Corps during actual riots. So many of them are not in beautiful living color or have the kind of quality you're used to seeing in your neighborhood theater. But these scenes are real, as real as the point we'll try to make in this film. That to cope with civil disorders, we must understand and act on all the causes, including the people who manipulate violence and destruction. The people we call the riot makers. [Music] A chemist knows that if he drops a block of sodium in water, it will explode. An engineer knows that if he buries dynamite in proper quantities and patterns and detonates it, he can dig an irrigation ditch. And a trained revolutionary knows that if he chooses proper slogans, gathers a crowd, and sends agents in to agitate it, he can create a riot. The techniques of riotmaking are as simple, scientific, and systematic as that. Of course, street crowds and mobs and mass hysteria have been weapons of political warfare from time immemorial. In ancient Rome, the riot touched off by Mark Anthony with his funeral for Caesar helped him overthrow the government. And ever since, the manipulated mass demonstration has been an effective weapon for opportunists who would achieve their own ends by force. In 1789, the people of France under the leadership of the Duke of Orleans defied the king and took to the streets and storm the Bastile. This was the start of the French Revolution and sparked hundreds of riots throughout the country. There are many other examples of mob action in the history of countries around the world. But until the 20th century, riots and civil upheavalss were usually spontaneous. True professional troublemakers and agitators usually figured in the plot somewhere, but no one ever had begun to analyze their role in a scientific spirit to collect the techniques of agitation, create a handbook, and train others in the art of disruption and revolution. until this man, Vladimir Lenon, the evil genius who became the chief architect, instigator, and beneficiary of the Russian Revolution. Lenon studied carefully every account of urban insurrection and other writings on the use of propaganda, mass manipulation. A major part of his early credo was that mass movements can and must be artificially promoted. His methods consisted of exploiting every trace of discontent, creating widespread illusions about the nature and strength of the movement and then seizing power. By 1915, Lenon had so cultivated his techniques that he was able to estimate quite precisely how much organization and agitation was required to achieve a given result. In 1917, Lenon and his trained Bolevik followers used their accumulated knowledge to harness virtually every Russian who had a gripe and promising them true democracy and reform rode them all to power. Lenon's methodology has been the guide ever since for those who have tried to overthrow the existing order. One who learned well was Adolf Hitler who openly copied the German Marxist organization and the Leninist Combat Party in constructing his own movement. In mine confi wrote the technical methods were clear to me. I understood the infamous spiritual terror which this movement exerts on the mass of people who are neither mentally nor morally equal to such attacks. At any given sign, he wrote, the leadership unleashes a veritital barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous until the nerves of the attacked persons break down and just to have peace again, they give in. However, Hitler concludes, "The fools obtained no peace. The game begins again and is repeated over and over again until fear of the mad dog results in suggestive paralysis." If the technique sounds familiar, it should because many of today's agitators have been studying the same technology, the technology of social demolition. Down with a system, down with the government, down with a flag. Renie Davis, one of the Chicago 7, speaks. Uh, we understand that there's going to be a gigantic styrofoam ball that spells out USA and people are going to parade past like sheep and uh, put their American flag in this styrofoam ball. Well, we brought an American flag attached to a lollipop because we think that this kind of uh ritualistic ceremony of flag waving, this kind of mindless patriotism represents the sort of suckers that Richard Nixon is trying to make into the make out of the American people. Today's riot maker is the end product of 175 years of cultural and technical evolution and mass manipulation. We have dubbed him the lenonoid. He uses the techniques of Lenin without necessarily subscribing to the ideology of Lenin. He's a new type of professional man, the graduate engineer in social demolition, practicing his art in an age of organized revolution. By the hundreds, these Lenonoids are criss-crossing America, colonizing in every major city, attacking the very fabric of our constitutional democracy, and spreading an epidemic of false hopes among the nation's Jews. Just exactly who are these riot makers of today? These lenonoids, where did they come from? One of them, Abby Hoffman, a former psychologist, left his profession for civil rights activism in the South in the early 60s. Hoffman was convicted of crossing state lines to organize the violence at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago along with Renie Davis, whose father served as economic adviser to President Truman. A political science graduate, Davis left his graduate studies for SDS activism and gained fame for his theories of organized militant political action. Working with Davis to found the SDS was Thomas Hayden, a former campus newspaper editor who understudied Communist Party leaders in California in 1960. Described as the prototype new leftist, Hayden was also convicted in the Chicago 7 trial. A key leader at Kent State in the radical preconditioning that led up to the riots in which four students were killed was Howard Emmer, the son of old line Communist Party members, Emmer was trained from his earliest days in Leninous sloganering and mass manipulation techniques, said one observer. In revolutionary tactics, Emmer was a master. He was fantastic in face-to-face persuasion. Another radical spawned by the civil rights militancy in the South is Rap Brown, a Louisiana native. When he succeeded Stokeley Carmichael as head of SNIK, Carmichael said, "You'll be happy to have me back when you hear him." Brown, indicted for inciting to riot in Maryland, interstate transportation of firearms in Louisiana, and listed on the FBI's most wanted list, coined the slogan, "Violence is as American as cherry pie." By no means are all these people members of the World Communist Conspiracy so-called. It's not that simple anymore, if indeed it ever was. Some are compulsive revolutionaries seeking an outlet for their frustrations and complexes. Others are modern-day nihilists. Just as Hitler wanted to see Paris burned, they want to send our world up in flames. There are the philosophers and the amateurs and those who use the tools of protest for purely personal gain. And some are merely opportunists who see a way to get themselves in the spotlight and on the television screen, seeking to escape the boredom of ordinary careers to make what Abby Hoffman called revolution for the hell of it. These modern lenoids have inherited from their 19th and 20th century forerunners their whole technology. Their riotmaking methods follow a time- tested formula and the results are as predictable as what happens when the chemist we mentioned earlier drops a block of sodium in water and creates an explosion. There are three stages in riotm making. First, the putting together of an organization and the deploying of workers where they can be the most effective. Second, getting the masses of people ready and in the right frame of mind to riot. And third, the riot itself. In the beginning, the professional radicals deploy protest groups into every pyramid of society. Priority targets are organizations which give them access to the mass media which become outlets for their propaganda. And to recruit new followers, they move into areas where they are most likely to find large groups of discontented people. The biggest such group was the one created by the mechanization of farming after World War II. This so-called tractor revolution created widespread unemployment in rural areas. Relentlessly, the new machines pushed the workers out and the mass migration to the cities began by the tens of thousands and then by the millions they came, lured by the promise of jobs. But they found that here too technology had advanced far beyond the training and comprehension of most of the poorly educated farm workers. All told, America's farm revolution crammed an estimated 10 million impoverished people, white and black, into the cities during the 1950s. And right behind them came the radical organizers to exploit the misery and frustrations of the ghetto dwellers. The radicals made no secret of their intentions, boasted SDS Secretary Gregory Calbertt just before the 1967 riot in Newark. We are working to build a guerilla force in an urban environment. We are actively organizing sedition. They got what they wanted. Years later, Newark still shows the scars of four days of violence and destruction. One man who studied the early buildup in Newark was Eugene Methman, author of the book, The Riot Makers. Propaganda. The SDS moved in there in 1964 led by Tom Hayden. He had a small group with him and they began knocking on doors, organizing block by block. They took what they called housing surveys, which was really a a grievance census, an effort to locate the key slogans and irritants that people would be stirred up about. In 1965, when the Johnson administration started pouring money into the war on poverty, this offered a great target of opportunity to the radicals there in Newark. They took over, literally captured by electoral process by uh voting their members onto the boards of directors. two of the neighborhood offices set up to conduct the war on poverty that gave them the physical resources and assets and offices right there in the neighborhoods. Uh this was the power base from which they operated. What happened in Newark was repeated in large cities all over the country. The social and economic dislocations caused by the mass movement from the farms had made our cities seedbeds for violence. Less easy to understand was what was happening on America's campuses during this same period. You burn the professor's papers up there. What about it? There was nobody in the room. What about the book? It went under many names. At Berkeley, it was known as the free speech movement. On other campuses, it had other labels. But whatever it was called, the purposes were the same. To destroy in the name of improving. And behind the demonstrations were the skilled organizers of the new left. Carefully staying in the background to give the movement a look of leaderlessness, of spontaneous action. But their methods and objectives were clear, as was evident in a speech by a leader of the 1968 Columbia University riots. The ability to manipulate people through violence and mass media has never been greater. He said, "The potential for liberation for us as radicals has never been more exciting than now." Or these sentences from a handbook written by former SDS Vice President Carl Davidson. Ultimately, we have only one source of power, and that lies in our potential ability to stop the university from functioning, to render the system dysfunctional. Nick Laniello, editor of the University of Wisconsin's independent student newspaper, tells how the radicals operate. I think the first thing they try to do is monopolize student expression. Uh first by taking over the student newspaper perhaps and then taking over the student government and uh in large part by being as loudmouthed as possible. Then they would take up certain issues that would interest students and oftentimes raising many more. If they couldn't get students to support some of them or all of them, they could support at least some of them. uh and the next step I think was to make unreasonable and often non-negotiable demands with the hope that their movement would be frustrated and uh in so doing uh uh rub the sores of uh campus conflict. They recruit their hardcore active members usually on a onetoone basis. They go knocking on dor rooms and ask a person to commit themselves to a cause. That cause usually is phrased in idealistic terms. And the people who go knocking on these doors are armed with facts and figures that uh uh the dorm resident usually uh isn't ready to refute. Once their organization is formed and the key workers trained and deployed, the riot makers are ready for stage two, the preconditioning of large groups of basically uncommitted persons. When the time is ripe for mass action, these are the people who must be counted on to respond. The goal is to set up hate targets, develop issues, and create a climate of hostility that will draw people together, make them act as a unit, and follow their leaders anywhere when the signal is given. They must be conditioned to accept violence as an instrument of change and convinced of the necessity for direct action. They must give up their individual identities and act with the crowd without questioning the morality of the act. There are many proven ways of accomplishing this. One way is the in-group outgroup tendency which motivates most people. It's human nature to want to be in to become a member of a group. If initially you may not agree with some members of the group, social pressure forces you in anyway. You forget your differences in your desire to be with the rest of the crowd. And suddenly you're not only there on the inside, but you're actively opposing the out group. This explains partially at least the large numbers of students who were drawn into the new left movements during the 60s. They joined because that seemed to be the place to be, the thing to do rather than because of any philosophical commitment. And the fact that the whole thing may have been programmed by professional radical organizers didn't change their desire to belong. Another preconditioning tool is hate targeting based on the principle that the best way to win an ally is to find a common enemy. We've all seen examples. Hate him because he's white. Hate him because he's black. Hate him because he's the law. Hate the establishment. Whether it's the government of the United States, the trustees of a university, or the leaders of industry. The reasons don't have to make sense. The main thing is to focus the hate. And people with nothing else in common are suddenly united. And to keep emotions at a high pitch, the trained propagandist makes skillful use of slogans. Again, borrowing a page from the Leninist Handbook. [Music] An early communist directive on organization of demonstrations stated, "Demonstrations must under no circumstances proceed in silence. Party members are responsible for seeing to it that appropriate slogans are chanted. The same technique is practiced today by the professional shepherds of today's herd of demonstrators, especially the young. The aim is to generate a kind of pep rally hysteria that sweeps away all moderation and reason and reduces a crowd to a state approaching mindlessness. [Applause] Now [Applause] stage three after the organizing and the preconditioning is the actual incitement to riot including the staging of the initial violence if necessary. In any mass action of this type, creating the crowd nucleus is of the utmost importance. In this day of instant communication, the initial concentration attracts the allimportant television cameramen and news photographers. and these in turn attract more people to the commotion. The result is a snowballing effect and a crowd many times the size of the original nucleus is formed. Creating the nucleus is not difficult for a well-developed radical organization. It can be as simple as ordering a dozen or more leaders deployed in various sections of the city to produce a few demonstrators each. This provides enough commotion so that augmented by the everpresent curious bystanders and the excitement seekers, a respectable demonstration can be held. Sometimes at a critical moment in community or world affairs, the local radical corps on its own initiative makes the decision to invoke radical tactics. But most of the rioting in American cities in the 1960s started with what has been called the fishing in troubled waters technique, which is what happens when the organization swings into action to take advantage of a spontaneous and unforeseen event. It can be a trivial incident, but in a preconditioned atmosphere and with an organization trained to react instantly to any spark the way a fire department does, but for the purpose of fanning and fueling, not extinguishing, the resulting explosion can rock a city and start a chain of events that spreads across the entire country. Such an incident was the one that started the Newark riot in 1967. Newark's violence began here on this street. It was triggered, as is so often the case, by a seemingly small occurrence. Newark News reporter Ed Higgins describes what happened. They had arrested this John Smith for tailgating and uh somehow the rumor spread through the community that he had been beaten by the police. Uh although there was nothing to uh to make this any different from any other arrest. Uh allegedly some taxi cab drivers uh saw him being pulled uh from his cab and being dragged into the fourth precinct which is in the uh central ward the black ward of the city. And uh within, as I say, within hours, uh there must have been a crowd of around two or 300 blacks in front of the police station, demanding uh that they see this man, demanding that he be released. Cars were set on fire, firebombs smashed against the police station, somebody threw a garbage can through a liquor store window, and looters jumped through. An informant on the scene ran to a phone booth at a corner service station and called an anti-poverty headquarters that had been taken over by SDS radicals. Within minutes, the word was spread throughout the organization and people came running. That's all it took. Inflammatory leaflets were firly printed urging everyone to come to a mass rally the next day. And of course, the TV crews moved in and that helped publicize it even more. Reports uh that first this was just an isolated incident. Then uh the thing seemed to spring up in in every other place all throughout that ward. In other words, it was no longer localized and although there was no other sparking incident, let's say on Springfield Avenue or on Belmont Avenue or on Jones Street, incidents sprang up there. The organization had done its work well. It took the authorities 4 days to quell the Newark riot. 23 people were killed. Scores were injured. Property damage was estimated at $15 million. The riots in Philadelphia, Rochester, and Watts were ignited from similar routine arrests, which extremists then exploited, and by spreading false rumors and keynoting the crowds, incited a preconditioned populace to riot. Films of the Newark riot were seen in other tense areas, said a Detroit news editor. People here sat at home in front of their television sets viewing these looters at work in Newark, and many thought they'd get in on similar action. They got their wish. 10 days later, Detroit erupted. The Newark violence helped precondition the people of Detroit and everybody else within the reach of television. Similar tactics were used on many university campuses. To set the stage, minor disagreements were escalated out of all proportion. Another area of expertise developed by the new lab is on the scene management of mass actions. In informal training sessions, recruits are taught how to organize demonstrations, control crowds, set up walkie-talkie communication networks, and maneuver unsuspecting masses into an explosive confrontation. Often times develop a carnival atmosphere. At Wisconsin, they've even had bands playing in the library mall in frisbee contests that all would lead up to the final demonstration. And uh the uh violence itself I think is an important part of the recruitment of a radical student. It's all it takes is one rock thrown by a student to be returned by a volley of tear gas by the police and you've developed in that crowd uh a number of radicals who were bystanders. Once they get teargassed or clubbed by a policeman, you've made a radical student. When confrontations do occur, the rioters are armed with a lethal array of weapons, most of them homemade. Giant slingshots in Berkeley. Cherry bombs coated with glue and tacks for hurling into police lines. Water pistols for shooting ammonia at police horses. Lead and steel pipes. Blackjacks and chains. Aerosol cans of oven cleaner for spraying police. Stink bombs. Molotov cocktail bombs and pipe bombs. And for those who need instructions, they're available. When the police fight back, which they eventually must do when their direct orders are defied or in self-defense, the radicals are ready with their cries of police brutality. This is a standard tactic of the extremist. And the propaganda barrage turns many otherwise clear-thinking citizens against the police, which of course is exactly what the radicals want. And the few demonstrators who are hurt, usually not as seriously as they pretend, become martyrs to the cause. These so-called unprovoked assaults on innocent spectators moved the liberal New York Post columnist Harriet Van Horn to write, "I shall never forget those young bloodied heads. Suddenly, the students seem so young, so vulnerable, and the police so incomprehensibly cruel." While she was writing this about the 1968 riot at Columbia University, Mark Rudd, leader of the action that shut down Colombia, one of the world's greatest centers of learning, had this to say. This cop violence is good. We're going to get lots of help, which follows precisely the guerilla theater scenario written in 1902 by a young Russian radical. Street demonstrations are the most effective revolutionary weapon, he said. Because they can compel police to use force that cannot help but strike the innocent spectators as well as the radical organizers. The government will continue to win, he wrote. But a few more victories like these and the government's fall is inevitable. The young radical who said that is known today by the revolutionary name he later took, Joseph Stalin. This has been a look at the techniques of the riot makers, a short course in revolutionary warfare. While commissions and panels sift the ashes and seek solutions to the violence of the 60s, the real threat, the real catalyst is still at work. Whether their future shouts are for peace or prosperity, for bread or for justice, when the issue becomes one for the streets, those in charge will not be the idealistic amateurs or the righteous crusaders. They will be the lenonoids, a small core of trained and dedicated revolutionaries, the riot makers. Listen to them and be on guard. Make it bloodier until the Americans can't take it anymore. until they have only one alternative to overthrow the system that makes war necessary. Americans are idealistic. We have to let them see that the government offends their idealism by making our demonstrations louder and more violent until the government is forced to take general repressive action. Then the government will fall. The end we're fighting for and working for is revolution. Opposition to the war is simply a protest to create a revolutionary class. Check off the middle class. We need only 3% of the [Music] population. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music]