In “Forever 1968,” a 2016 City Journal article, Siegel observed that “there is [a] continuity between the current moment and the never-ending ‘60s: the revival of Black Pantherism in the form of the Black Lives Matter movement and the writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates , the new Eldridge Cleaver.” Siegel argued that “the ‘60s are sometimes associated with the idea of participatory democracy, but that concept was buried under the weight of Great Society bureaucracies.”

Then he explores the main problem: “One feature of the ‘60s has endured: the glorification of violence … Violence incarnate was glamorized by the dashing, handsome, leather-clad Black Panthers and their gorgeous consorts. The Panthers colonized the minds of the New Left — particularly Students for a Democratic Society and its offshoot, the Weathermen — which longed to win their approval. Liberals were caught up in Panthermania, too.”

Reading Siegel for the first time in the 1990s inspired me to research the riots that had torn apart my native city of Washington, D.C. Siegel was right: The violence had been fueled by radical politics.

[The era of the last generation has a severe case of envy over the Civil Rights Movement. Their teachers extol it for its transformational power, and succeeding waves of students have tried to re-do it ever since. Its main purpose is to impose Marxism by intimidation or force, as Mark discusses further, but its attraction as a fashion is almost equally as strong. It’s virtue-signaling through nihilistic defiance. It’s the embodiment of Marlon Brando’s response in “The Wild One” to the question, “Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” His answer: “Whaddya got?” — Ed]