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The Example of Peggy Duff
The activist community Chomsky entered during this period was vast and loosely knit. Many have attempted to draw a portrait of this milieu David Dellinger and Howard Zinn have each written about it. Here, however, with the aim of exemplifying what Chomsky considers to be useful activist work, I've chosen to focus on one important individual: Peggy Duff. Chomsky's own lists of key activists generally contain names that are rarely mentioned beyond certain small circles. Duff was for decades a serious activist who, despite her enormous output, has remained relatively obsure (especially in the United States). One of the most influential figures in the British peace movement from the 1940s onward, and general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from 1958 to 1967, Duff was deeply involved in the Israel-Palestine issue; moreover, according to Chomsky, she kept "the international opposition against the Vietnam War on some kind of serious and useful track, and she helped organize some of the most important aspects of it" (13 Feb. 1996). She was also the general secretary of the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace ( ICDP a grouping of independent movements in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australasia); one of the leading figures in CND, and antinuclear work generally; the editor of two journals, Vietnam International and Peace Press; a contributor to the Peace Press and the Tribune; editor of War or Peace in the Middle East? (to which Chomsky contributed); author of Left, Left, Left in short, Duff was, in Chomsky's assessment, "one of the people who really changed modern history." [S]he is a woman, an activist, a serious intellectual, a knowledgeable and informed writer and therefore unknown outside the universe of others who are actually engaged in the problems of the world. She has disappeared from history. She's not a "public intellectual"; she was far too important in modern history for that. She spent no time posturing before other intellectuals or inhabiting the various cocoons of the literary intellectual culture. She belongs to the same category as the sncc [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] workers who carried out the civil rights movement in the U.S., or the dedicated Christian activists who were at the core of the solidarity movements of the '80s, or the unknown people who created the labor movements, or the other people who have mattered in history, and are therefore unknown and forgotten (if ever known in respectable i.e., intellectually and morally corrupt circles). . . [Duff is] typical of people who make a difference in history. She's also typical of the people in my actual milieu, since childhood, except for her unusual international prominence. . . (31 Mar. 1995)True intellectuals, like Peggy Duff, are unattractive to the ruling elite because they reveal things that those in power would prefer to conceal. Unlike (say) Irving Howe, Duff was not relied upon by the popular media for commentary on current events; she is not mentioned in mainstream history books; and her work has been played down or ignored. The mainstream historical record of the late 1960s, like that of virtually any period, contains very few references to really important activist work. The prevalence of this kind of willful ignorance is another leitmotif for Chomsky. If it weren't for Howard Zinn and a few others, few (apart from actual participants) would even know about the sncc, the leading element in the civil rights movement. Similarly, the truth about the Black Panthers is not, and never will be, made known, I suppose. Resist was supporting elements of the Panthers from very early on, discriminating quite carefully between the serious organizers (like Fred Hampton) and the criminal elements and hustlers. (31 Mar. 1995)Of course, resistance has a price as Mailer, Spock, and Coffin, among so many others, learned during this era and people such as Black Panther Fred Hampton ended up by paying with their lives. Chomsky writes: "I was one of the few white faces at Fred Hampton's funeral in Chicago in 1969, after he was murdered by the Chicago police and fbi" (31 Mar. 1995). That even a supreme sacrifice such as this can go virtually unnoticed beyond a limited community is appalling to Chomsky. He points out that "only actual participants. . . would know or understand any of this, and they don't write their reminiscences. . . Without serious oral history, the truth will never be known" (31 Mar. 1995).
One of the existing organs for accurate recollections of history is
the activist press. I mentioned earlier that Chomsky's political books
are available through a number of presses, including Pantheon, Black
Rose, Common Courage, South End, Columbia, and Verso, and that his
articles have been published in dozens of different journals, notably
Z Magazine. South End Press and Z Magazine merit
special attention here in the context of a discussion of activist
groups since they are collective enterprises that concentrate upon
activist works. South End Press has published more books by Chomsky
than any other publisher, and Z Magazine has published more
of his political articles than all other outlets combined. This
indicates Chomsky's determination to participate in collectives, here
initiated by his former students at MIT.
These particular collectives were born from the Rosa Luxemburg student
group at MIT, for which Noam Chomsky and Louis
Kampf were faculty advisers (just as Rosenberg and Harris were faculty
advisers for Avukah). Kampf and Chomsky had been teaching the
previously described social-sciences courses at MIT, and some of the students studying with them were
leaders of the intellectual/political-activist ferment in and around
Cambridge. The most active of these students was Mike Albert, who
became student president and then went on to participate in the
launching of South End Press and Z Magazine. Other students,
including Steve Shalom and Peter Bohmer, also went on to participate
in the collectives. "In fact," notes Chomsky, "it's a more cohesive
and politically active group than Avukah and what came out of it
which was interesting and important, but mainly a small group
of intellectuals with narrow concerns, very Jewish-Palestine centered
and has had far more of an impact on the political scene, for
30 years now" (31 Mar. 1995).
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