The split in the left
Most of the critics of the Warren Report have come from the Left. The Left in
America has been a movement more of reaction than of positive governance. Put
these two together, and you get a potentially bad combination. That is exactly
what happened to the JFK critics—they split, and
split, and split again.
The first split was perhaps the biggest—a
major fissure down the middle nearly as soon as the Warren Report was released.
It amounted to what one might call the "institutional Left" versus the
"individual Left." On the one side was the empowered Left as
represented by I. F. Stone, of I.F. Stone's Weekly, and the larger
magazine The Nation. To the chagrin of the individuals, the institutions
not declined to trash the Warren Report, but criticized the individuals for
using the same tactics against the Report that they had criticized others for
using against them. On the other side were individual citizen members of the
Left, who often spoke in harsh voices and who had only themselves to worry
about. They criticized the Report severely and condemned the institutional Left
for not doing so also. The individual Left is represented here by Mark
Lane,
Bertrand Russell, Joachim Joesten, Thomas
Buchanan, Ray Marcus, and later Jim
DiEugenio.
I. F. Stone fired the first shot. In the 5 October 1964 issue of his I.F.
Stone's Weekly, appearing immediately after the Warren Report was released, he
attacked Bertrand Russell ("16 Questions on
the Assassination," Minority of One, 6 September 1964), Mark Lane
(implicitly), Joachim Joesten (Oswald: Assassin or Fall-Guy?), Carl
Marzani for publishing it, and Thomas G. Buchanan (Who Killed Kennedy?).
When West Coast critic Ray Marcus got his copy of Stone's newsletter, he was so
shocked that he tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to get Stone to reverse
himself. He later recounted this episode in a passage from Addendum
B: Addendum to the HSCA, the
Zapruder film, and the Single
bullet theory (July 1995).
Also on Stone's side was The Nation, which although generally Leftist refused to criticize the WCR
and maintained that stance for over 30 years. Di Eugenio complains bitterly
against that stance, and notes that it helped reduce the Left to its current
position of weakness. E. Martin Schotz traces the stance of The Nation in his History
Will Not Absolve Us. (See the many reports from The Nation.)
Todd Gitlin, in book The Sixties, describes the
effect of the JFK assassination on the "young radicals" as he saw it.
The history of JFK literature is summarized in Dangerous Knowledge: The
JFK Assassination in Art and Film, by Art Simon (1996). Among other topics,
Simon deals with the assassination's effect on the Left. Christopher Sharrett
reviewed the book.
I. F. Stone (I. F. Stone's Weekly, 5 October 1964)
Ray Marcus on Stone
DiEugenio on
the Left and The Nation
Schotz on The Nation
Various items from The Nation
Sharrett reviews Art Simon
Art Simon on JFK literature, in "Dangerous Knowledge"