The Loud Few: MLK, Gnosticism, Hippies, Social and Countercultural Movements — an Exploration in State-Citizen Dynamics
Hi, my name is Shimon Newman. This is my first time posting on Medium. I am sharing today the thesis I wrote for my undergraduate degree in International Political Economy at the College of Idaho.
I became enchanted with the politics of Gnosticism from the moment I heard of it in 2014. The next three years saw me contemplating political theory, the historicity of Christianity, and some fantastic authors such as Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Charles Tilly, Kurt Rudolph, and Barbara Ehrenreich. For my senior thesis, I chose to analyze how countercultures are different from social movements, and the necessary thresholds for countercultures to become social movements and get what they want. But it’s really a story about Gnosticism, and how the Church emerged out of it by being better politicians.
The writing is a bit pretentious (I’m sorry) and really really long, but I believe contains some interesting, original ideas. Thank you to all of the professors, philosophers, historians, theologians, radicals, and dreamers that have given me the confidence to publish this. I hope you know who you are. If you are interested in what I have written, think that I got something wrong, or just want to start a discussion about this, please email me.
Abstract
While we may often speak of countercultures and social movements in historical analysis, distinctions between both are tenuous. Furthermore, relatively little attention has been given to elucidating why certain movements succeed in achieving their goals. In this paper I distinguish between countercultures and social movements as different types of social movements, arguing that all social movements first must coalesce out of countercultures. Countercultures pose potential threats to the State whereas social movements pose them immediately; the former have societal loci of contention and the latter are transgressive political actors with institutional loci of contention. I am interested in discerning the necessary conditions for a counterculture to successfully coalesce into a transgressive political actor and successfully make the State respond to its claims. Drawing upon the experiences of the United States from the 1960s-70s, I utilize a most-similar case study analyzing the divergences in success between the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) to construct the theoretical conditions that led the CRM to succeed and the BPP to fail.
The necessary conditions are initially low-threat state perception; presence/persistence of charismatic leaders; unity in movement/between movements; and access to capital. As all conditions are so initially interrelated, I argue that if any one of them were to be absent then the movement will not succeed in making the State respond to its claims. I test these conditions against 5 other U.S social movements from the same time period: the Antiwar, Hippie, Feminist, American Indian Association and the United Klans of America movements, respectively. I then use my theoretical conditions to reexamine the origins of Christianity and ask why its version of faith emerged supreme by comparing the early Gnostic and Christian social movements, respectively. Ultimately, I argue that Christianity and Gnosticism must have simultaneously evolved out of the same counterculture, but whereas the Christian movement eventually met all of my theoretical conditions, the Gnostic movements lacked persistence of charismatic leaders, unity, and steady access to capital. It is for this reason that the Orthodox Church eventually became the State religion of the Roman Empire whereas the Gnostics fell into historical and literal obscurity. My research has potential applications in the study of social movements, State-citizen interactions and dynamics, and the history of Christianity.
Introduction
In 1969, facing mounting political tensions from the failing Vietnam intervention, Nixon gave what is widely regarded to be his most prolific speech. Speaking “to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans,” the president called for support for the war and against a humiliation that “only Americans,” not North Vietnam, could inflict on their nation. But who was this silent majority, and more importantly, who were the loud few? While the histories of social movements and countercultures are well-documented, defining such movements has been a contentious endeavor. Many may speak of the overlapping social and countercultural movements of 1960s America, but the actual distinction between both has been tenuous at best. In this paper, I distinguish between these two as separate types of social movements and show that they both pose unique respective risks for the State.
I argue that all social movements first come out of countercultures and that from a Tillian perspective, the State should theoretically never allow a counterculture to coalesce into the point where it can successfully make claims (demands) of the State. While some social movements throughout history have been successful at making their governments comply with their demands, others have been brutally and totally suppressed. Why is it that some social movements are better at making their State respond to them than others? To answer this question, my research focuses on elucidating the necessary conditions for a counterculture to successfully coalesce into a transgressive political actor and make successful claims of the State.
There are four necessary conditions are needed for counterculture transform into a political actor and successfully gain concessions from the State: Initially low State-threat perception; presence and persistence of charismatic leaders; unity of movement/between movements; and access to capital. If any of these conditions are absent, then the movement will either fail to effectively coalesce or it will fail to get the State to answer its claims. My argument is built upon the experiences of four U.S movements from the 60s-80s due to the plethora of available historical data as well as the unique variety of contemporaneous movements during this time period.
Even though my framework is built on the American experience, it is generalizable in that it simply asserts the necessary conditions for a counterculture to organize to the point of successfully making the State its claimant. An important operating assumption I make is that the U.S government would only directly respond to movements if they believed they would not face significant political backlash doing so.
First, I argue that social movements (or, rather, social-political actors) and countercultures, respectively, pose different threats to the State, with the former being short-term and the latter being long-term. After, I justify my theoretical conditions by presenting a most-similar case design comparing the Civil Rights and Black Panther movements. Despite their similar demographics and causes, these movements had completely different experiences in their ability to coalesce and make the State its claimant. The former movement resulted in several tangible changes in U.S law — why was it successful where the Black Panthers were not? I argue that the Civil Rights movement’s unprecedented use of passive resistance allowed the movement to successfully coalesce from a counterculture into a political actor, whereas the U.S proactively ensured that the Black Panther Party never left its countercultural infancy and died before it could become a transgressive social movement. I will use the divergences in the experiences of these two movements to build my necessary conditions which will then be tested against five other American social movements of the same time period: the Antiwar, Hippie, Feminist, American Indian Association and the United Klans of America movements, respectively. An emerging necessary conditions model from the experience of the U.S will then be used to reexamine the political and socioeconomic dynamics that influenced the first major historical counterculture, that of the “Gnostics” in the Roman Empire, as well as its analogous social movement: Christianity. Developing such a framework will shed much-needed new perspective on the Gnostics, the origins of the Modern Church, as well as contribute valuable insights into the nature of state-citizen dynamics.
My motivation for pursuing this research question — beyond exploring the nature of collective citizen organization, action and resistance — is to introduce a new paradigm for understanding the birth of Christianity. Although my paper primarily draws upon data from 20th century United States experience, I believe it has potential to shed new light on the political undercurrents of the first countercultures — the various Gnostic and proto-orthodox Christian movements competing for legitimacy in the eyes of the Roman Empire — and help explain why the orthodox version of Christianity emerged as dominant. While it may seem ahistorical and tentative to draw any meaningful relationship between the 2nd century and the 20th, I have chosen to examine the politics of Gnosticism precisely because the Roman Empire presents one of the least-likely cases where my conditions would hold true. Engaging with the experiences of respective social movements in both the Roman Empire and 20th century USA may set up a foundation for further exploration of the political dynamics behind the birth of modern Christianity, as well as to understand when countercultures can successfully become social movements.
Defining Social Movements
Charles Tilly defines a social movement as “a sustained challenge to power holders in the name of a population living under the jurisdiction of power holders by means of repeated public displays of that population’s worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment” (Tilly, 2009). Tilly argues that analysts and activists injudiciously extend the term “social movement” loosely to any collective action they support, do not differentiate between those participating in the movement and those supporting the movement, and/or grossly simplify the dynamics of social movements as unitary actors. Precisely because previous definitions have been so sweeping, I endeavor to assert inherent categorical differences between countercultures and other social movements. In Dynamics of Contention Sidney Tarrow, Doug McAdam and Tilly distinguish between “contained” and “transgressive” contention, with the former being unsurprising (from the State’s perspective) organized action by established political movements and the latter referring to newly self-identified political actors employing innovative tactics of collective action to make their claims (2008). By definition, the State does not have an established history with transgressive tactics of contention and thus itself must envision innovative mechanisms of suppression. From a Tillian framework, any counterculture must necessarily also be a social movement; however, this does not mean that they are the same kind of social movement. This paper defines two different types of social movements: countercultural social movements with societal loci of contention and transgressive social movements (political actors) with institutional loci of contention.
Tarrow, Tilly and McAdam define contentious politics as “episodic, public, collective interaction among makers of claims and their objects when (a) at least one government is a claimant, an object of claims, or a party to the claims and (b) the claims would, if realized, affect the interests of at least one of the claimants” (McAdam et. Al, 2008). Inherent to this definition is what the authors refer to as an “institutional locus of contention”, meaning that the Government is always the claimant in this relationship. But, not every social movement has institutional loci. Unlike transgressive social movements, countercultures have exclusively societal loci of contention. This means that the claimant is not their Government, but the current cultural hegemony in play. By cultural hegemony I use Marx’s definition, meaning the imposed “beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores” that the ruling class attempts to instill into a culturally diverse society (Bullock, 1999, 387). A classic example is the LSD guru Timothy Leary telling his followers to take drugs, “tune in, turn on, and drop out” of society. David Chalmers embodies this sentiment when he describes the countercultural ethos of the 1960s as wanting to change “the human condition”, or at the very least, to escape from it (Chalmers, 2012). In order for there to be a social movement, there must be a countercultural movement that births it. All transgressive social movements with institutional loci are first non-transgressive social movements with societal loci. As countercultures ferment, new, organized movements embodying the values of those countercultures emerge. When this happens, the claimant of countercultural social movements can shift from societal to institutional; it is at this moment, I argue, that the movement becomes transgressive, and can longer be categorized as countercultural. Using Tilly’s definition of transgressive, it follows that this transition also demarks when the counterculture forms a political actor, an entity contending for concessions from the State through innovative means. It is the fear that countercultures can turn into organized political actors, I believe, that drives the State’s fear of them.
Risks for State: Social Movements with Societal Loci of Contention (Countercultures)
Social movements with societal loci of contention present uncertain long-term threats to the State. While they make many claims, it is very rare that the actual State is the claimant (though not impossible). More typically the leaders and followers of these movements demand intangible changes to the condition of their societies at large (i.e. peace, spiritual/sexual exploration, societal withdrawal). Rather than the State being the claimant, it is instead the individual who is tasked with meeting the demands of the movement. These movements can be transgressive and innovative in their mechanisms of contention but primarily spread their message through citizen-citizen interactions. As such, the State may not know that a counterculture is forming, or lacks short-term incentives to stop them. Their true threat is long-term: countercultural movements with societal loci of contention may eventually coalesce to the point where the societal loci of contention become institutional.
So if enough of the claimant (the various individual members of society) respond to the claim (that X needs to be changed in society), then theoretically mass societal coalitions form demanding that the State be responsible for facilitating the claim. For instance, veganism is a movement that currently does not attract enough political support for vegan activists to seek institutional protections for the animals we consume. However, if enough vegans can annoy meat-eaters into questioning their dietary choices, then perhaps one day they can garner enough support to successfully coalesce into a transgressive movement.
Thus the true long-term risk for States when it comes to countercultures is the possibility that eventually the counterculture will birth movements with institutional loci of contention. The State has limited resources, and cannot give equal attention to all countercultures. Additionally, it may fear the political backlash of unjustly interfering with a “harmless” counterculture. As such, the State should only interact with the countercultures that they expect to have the potential to coalesce into transgressive actors. If such a potential threat is perceived, then we would expect the State to actively stop the counterculture from growing to the point where it could make institutional claims. Countercultures, then, should theoretically rarely advance to the point where they coalesce into institutionally-localized contentious movements — if potentially dangerous, the State should be doing everything in its power to stop them.
Risks for State: Transgressive Social Movements with Institutional Loci of Contention (Political Actors)
If a counterculture coalesces into a transgressive political actor with institutional loci of contention, it is immediately dangerous for the State, which must quickly find ways to counter the innovations of the movement. If uncurbed, a Pandora’s Box of civil resistance may violently break out. Tilly asserts that as a transgressive social movement exhibits new mechanisms of contention, it simultaneously produces new social movements modeled on its failures and successes. As such, the longer that the State fails to counter a movement’s innovative mechanisms, the more likely that movement will grow and gain support, make more claims, and spawn other similar movements. If enough simultaneous political actors adopting transgressive mechanisms of contention rise against the State, then the State theoretically must either meet the demands of all of these groups or risk external changes to the ruling government. The sooner that a State can counter the innovations of transgressive movements, and the more forcibly that they do, the more likely it is that other movements will not emerge nor model themselves after them. Thus transgressive political actors with institutional loci of contention pose acute short-term risks for the State; we would expect Governments to make concerted and immediate efforts to push for the forceful ends to such campaigns. Discerning what determines if a counterculture can successfully turn into a social movement and make claims of the State occupies the rest of my paper.
Case Studies
I now present my case studies, where I look at the Civil Rights Movement (CPP) and the Black Panthers Party (BPP) before testing my conditions against other major American social movements. An important operating assumption I make is that a U.S administration would only use coercion against a movement when it believed doing so would have little negative political impact. For the sake of scope, I focus only on Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Coalition’s (SCLC) role in the Civil Rights movement and examine only explicit State-sanctioned defamation or coercion against these movements (i.e. the coercive measures of the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, will not be analyzed). Although my case study is limited in scope and guilty of vastly oversimplifying the various forces behind American social movements, I posit that it still remains a useful tool for understanding what makes certain social movements successful. I aim to see how the presence or absence of the following conditions correspond historically with the movement’s ability to coalesce out of a counterculture and successfully make claims of the U.S: initially low State-threat perception; presence and persistence of charismatic leaders; unity of movement/between movements; and access to capital. The success of a movements’ ability to make the U.S their claimant will be measured by whether or not federal legislation was passed addressing their claims.
Civil Rights Movement & Birth of Black Power
In And the Crooked Places Made Straight, historian David Chalmers writes how the white leadership of the 1950s South did everything in its power to sustain Jim Crow segregation. At the time, all African Americans really had to rely on was the community of black churches, the “nurturing culture and the institutional resources from which the civil rights movement grew” (17). Initially, the coalitions that would eventually form the CRM were uninterested in fighting for sweeping racial change throughout America — litigation in the Supreme Court by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was “the only path used or imagined [meaning contained contention]” (17). A counterculture of black spiritual resistance was growing. The various black organizations that sprang up in the 1950s were initially countercultural in that their claimants were societal, not institutional. Rather than push for federalized desegregation, they fought to change the attitude of the white majority. They wished to be treated with politeness, but they did not demand (at first) equal rights. All of this changed after Rosa Parks. Parks’ refusal to get up inspired the eventual creation of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), led by King, which spurred the successful Montgomery bus boycott — in 1956, the federal ruling of Browder v Gayle took effect, and segregated buses were declared unconstitutional (Branch 2006).
The purpose of MIA wasn’t to get the law changed — rather it was, through peaceful resistance, to confront the ethics of the white majority. But, realizing that passive resistance could be an actually successful mechanism of contention, on January 27, 1957, King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a coalition of African American Church groups that through passive resistance and civil disobedience would collectively fight for Black rights in the American South (Umoja 1999). “When their boycott began”, writes Chalmers, “the black people of Montgomery asked only to be treated politely, and they were refused. The result was not only the desegregation of the buses but also the creation of a movement” (20). It was at this point that the CRM became transgressive, both through coalescing into a self-named political actor and by utilizing a mechanism of contention (passive resistance) inexperienced in the U.S before. It also at this point that the State began to perceive the SCLC and Dr. King as threats. In response to the SCLC’s foundation in 1957, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover commanded its Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) to begin investigating the burgeoning movement but did not at first perceive it as a real threat (Weiner 2013, 200). In 1961, fearful of King’s rise, Hoover tried to convince newly elected President Kennedy of Dr. King’s “Marxist” threat. However, President Kennedy, who initially believed Hoover to be a “dangerous” man (182), was more worried about domestic organized crime than communists or civil rights activists (188). Thus State attention was diverted from the CRM to the mafia. In 1962, Hoover convinced the Kennedys that Dr. King’s speechwriter, Stanley Levison, was a former member of the Communist Party who whispered sweet nothings about Marxism into King’s ear (180). Kennedy bought it; although Hoover’s allegations were later deemed unfounded, this allowed COINTELPRO to begin its first illegal wiretapping against the SCLC (190). This marked the beginning of the State’s concerted efforts to destroy the CRM.
In 1963, Dr. King and the SCLC led its crucial Birmingham Campaign. Its locus of contention was decisively institutional, but only on a local basis, pursuing a single goal — the desegregation of Birmingham’s downtown merchants (Morris 621). Thousands of people marched peacefully until Police Commissioner “Bull” Connor ordered brute force and arrests against hordes of unarmed, unresisting black protestors. As televisions blasted images of police beating unarmed black children, President Kennedy worked quickly to restore civil order — days after Connor’s attack, the local Birmingham government reached a settlement that desegregated hiring processes and released the jailed protestors (Chalmers 25). It was at this stage that the SCLC realized that its fight for equality could extend from beyond Alabama throughout America — that same year King delivered his “I have a Dream” speech in D.C to hundreds of thousands of supporters.
In response to King’s meteoric rise, the FBI was preparing to eradicate the CRM. After the D.C march, Hoover wrote: “in the light of King’s powerful demagogic speech…We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security” (Weiner, 235). Despite the protests of Kennedy, this memo was widely circulated all across Washington, giving Hoover the leverage to begin actively interfering in King’s life. This transition coincided with the SCLC’s institutional locus shifting from local to national.
Chalmers describes the shift in the scale of the CRM’s locus of contention: “its goal was no longer local, piecemeal gains, but the end of racial segregation in America” (235). COINTELPRO began earnestly to defame and stop King’s momentum, continuously spying on him for incriminating information or, ironically, proof of illegal activity. FBI friendly newspapers began circulating rumors of King’s alleged communist agenda. Hoover called a special press conference in response to King winning the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, calling King “the most notorious liar in the country” (235). At the same time, FBI intelligence Chief Bill Sullivan sent King an anonymous letter containing wiretapped audio recordings of King having sex. The letter threatened to release the proof of his “filthy, abnormal fraudulent self” if he did not commit suicide (260). Despite the government’s harassment, King’s movement continued to grow; the civil disquiet following the 1963 D.C march and assassination of JFK that same year led his successor President Johnson to quickly pass the Civil Rights Law of 1964 to maintain order, ending explicit segregation (Chalmers, 26). Thus the SCLC successfully got its claimant (the U.S federal government) to respond to its claims.
In 1965 President Johnson signed the Voters Right Act in response to the successful SCLC Selma campaign (29). However, in spite of the successes of Selma, the CRM was splintering. COINTELPRO had done its job. Gallup polls from 1965 show that 48% of Americans believed that communists had infiltrated the CRM; King’s public approval rating that same year was an all-time high of 45%; by 1966 it plummeted to 33% (Public Opinion Polls). The mood and phase had changed. Street marches were no longer an effective instrument. The SCLC had lost the support of most of its original Christian base (Chalmers, 29). As KKK-murders targeting minorities skyrocketed and went unpunished, many began to feel that the Civil Rights Law only offered an illusion of change. A new counterculture was rising: Black Power. As factions of loosely organized black-militants began actively fighting against the State, white support of the SCLC dwindled despite King’s peaceful message (32). Black riots in 1967 in cities across America and a wiretapping of King where he considered supporting the violence instead of denouncing it led President Johnson to ask Hoover to begin tracing a communist link between the riots and MLK.
In 1968 Hoover launched operation COINTELPRO-BLACK HATE; orders went out to twenty-three FBI field offices to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of Black Nationalist hate type organizations” (Weiner, 200). Specifically, its purposes included forbidding the growth and recruitment of black movements, finding and exasperating existing conflicts between movement leaders and capitalizing upon tensions between organizations; and cooperating with local news to ensure the targeted group is “disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited through the publicity and not merely publicized” (Hoover). Hoover wrote that King had the potential to be a Black “Messiah” should he “abandon his supposed ‘obedience’ to ‘white, liberal doctrines’ (nonviolence) and embrace Black Nationalism”. A month after Hoover’s letter, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Although the SCLC was able to successfully transform from a black-Christian counterculture into a transgressive social movement and make claims of the U.S government, it never went further than formalizing African-American citizenship. The Black Panther Party, however, despite being rooted in the collective frustrations of black Americans, was never able to achieve the same success.
Black Power and the Black Panther Party
The Black Power (BP) movement was birthed from the frustrations and perceived failures of the CRM. Black Power was countercultural in that, initially, its locus of contention was societal and its mechanisms non-transgressive; its primary goal was to promote a “cultural consciousness of black history, black art, black student organizations, black pride and ‘black is beautiful’; and being Afro-American” (Chalmers, 31–32). Frustration with their powerlessness led many to pose a question the Civil Rights Movement could not answer: “how would black people in America win not only formal citizenship rights but actual economic and political power?” (Bloom 2013, 12). The Black Panther Party, formed in October 1966, was one version of the various replies. It was founded in Oakland, California by two young self-dubbed revolutionaries, Huey P. Newton, and Bobby Seale, who preached a philosophy diametrically opposed to King’s Christian ethos of pacifism. The BPP perceived the explosive rebellious anger of the ghetto as a force that could be organized into political power. Initially, the BPP focused on “policing the police”, following patrols while armed and taking advantage of California’s open-carry law to ensure that police brutality was not committed. In 1967 the BBP released its “10-point program” of immediate demands in its self-published newspaper, a mixture of both societal (freedom, end of racism, end of capitalism) and institutional (black exemption from the Draft, end of police brutality, freeing of black prisoners) claims (115). That same year, Huey P. Newton was charged with murdering Oakland officer John Fey. He was imprisoned for 3 years and then acquitted. Newton claimed that he had been falsely accused; as he awaited trial the BPP led an extremely successful “Free Huey!” campaign, coalescing with other BP movements (104). Black support skyrocketed for the BPP as white support dwindled; while actual violence was rare, perceptions of it alienated many otherwise sympathetic supporters. The BPP’s popularity peaked in 1970, with offices in over 68 cities and thousands of members — but by 1972, it was “basically a local Oakland community organization once again” (104). Unlike the CRM, the BPP exemplifies how difficult it is for a counterculture to coalesce into a transgressive actor if the State already fears its potential, unknown threat. It was the State’s immediate intervention against the BPP that ensured that the Movement never grew into its full revolutionary potential.
Indicative of how threatening the BPP were, by the time that Nixon was elected in 1968, FBI Chief Sullivan already had agents infiltrating the BPP at the highest level (Weiner, 324). Hoover declared the BPP as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country”, and COINTELPRO began measures to destroy the movement. By 1969, the BPP and their allies had become primary COINTELPRO targets, singled out in 233 of the 295 authorized actions against Black Hate groups (PBS). On an external level, the FBI began wiretapping, conspiring with local police for illegal house raids and arrests (Marcetic 2016). Other measures included exacerbating existing tensions between the BPP and its rival, Maulana Karenga’s Black Nationalist “US Movement”, purposefully inciting gunplay between them through the use of forged derogatory cartoons depicting each side murdering the other (Harris 2000, 162–174). Many Panthers were targeted and assassinated — on December 4, 1969, the FBI ordered a raid on BPP leader Fred Hampton; Hampton and another BPP member, Mark Clark, were both shot dead (Monthly Review). Overall white apathy and a strong Nixon White House meant that the U.S could use coercion against the movement without fear. The most vocal backlash against unjust State coercion came solely from the very people they were unjustly coercing.
On an internal level, COINTELPRO successfully split the movement’s leaders apart. In particular, efforts to divide Newton and Eldridge Cleaver were highly effective. In 1970, the same year that Newton was released from jail, the FBI sent Cleaver a message saying that he was going to be assassinated by Newton’s followers; wiretaps revealed this tactic’s psychological success, and they followed up with a barrage of fake letters. Newton kicked Cleaver out of the BPP in 1971 (Harris, 163–174). By 1971 the BPP was completely splintering and by 1972 Newton shut down all chapters across the country except for Oakland (Heffernan 2006). While still nominally active, the BPP never grew in success after 1972 and eventually was disbanded in 1982.
Testing the Conditions
Despite the initial successes and support behind the BPP, the organization never was able to coalesce into a true transgressional political actor able to make the government respond to its claims. Why the CRM was successful where the BP was not will serve as the question that frames my necessary conditions. I now evaluate the conflicting experiences of these two movements through the lens of my proposed necessary conditions: initially low State-threat perception; presence/persistence of charismatic leaders; unity within/between movements; and wealthy supporters.
Initially low State-threat Perception
The only reason the CRM was able to grow as much as it did without State-resistance is that President Kennedy shared Hoover’s concern over neither communism nor Black Nationalism (Weiner, 250). Whereas Hoover demarked the SCLC potentially dangerous in 1957, this was a standalone response; he was unable to convince Kennedy of the movement’s dangers until 1962. This meant that the SCLC had 4 years to unperturbably grow into a movement of significant popularity. After King’s 1963 speech in D.C, Kennedy came on board and the FBI began trying to end the movement. Although the SCLC had enough popularity to successfully push its Selma campaign and pass the Voters Rights Act, this was the last claim the SCLC would ever have addressed by the U.S. By 1965 King’s support was dwindling, and by 1968 he was dead. The shift in perceived threat of the CRM, demarked by Kennedy’s compliance in COINTELPRO’s operations, also demarks the beginning of CRM’s downward spiral. Although COINTELPRO’s interference with King did not initially slow him down, the tactics of defamation used by the FBI slowly but successfully alienated blacks and whites alike against him.
The BPP, comparatively, never had a chance. The 1968 COINTELPRO-BLACK HATE operation meant that the FBI was preemptively preparing responses to all black militant groups. By 1969 COINTELPRO had already infiltrated the BPP at the highest level and was complicit in illegal activity of all sorts — wiretappings, beat-downs, arrests, and murders. Although initially the government’s clash with the BPP actually made it grow in popularity, the FBI’s tactics of suppression were so effective that by 1971 Party members were too internally hemorrhaged to recover. The BPP never coalesced to the point where it could make the U.S respond to any of its claims; Hoover and the FBI were completely prepared for the challenges that a successful black militant form of transgressive contention would bring. In other words, an initially high-state perception of risk allowed the State to prepare for potentially innovative and dangerous forms of contentious politics. With the CRM, then, an initially low-state perception of risk meant that the State did not adequately prepare to counter King’s unprecedented passive resistance. It was only after the U.S perceived King’s movement as potentially dangerous that they began endeavors to end the SCLC.
Presence and Persistence of Charismatic Leaders
The BPP had no MLK, no leader who continued to fight for the movement with the same intensity in the face of state-sanctioned suppression. King, as the charismatic leader now synonymous with the CRM, never gave up his faith in radical nonaggression. King overcame momentous interference from white-hate groups and the FBI from 1963 onward but persisted undeterred. The power that he held as an individual became so great that the 1968 COINTELPRO-BLACK HATE report indicated that he had the potential to become a messiah if he exchanged his pacifism for Black Nationalism. That same year he was dead. If it were not for King, then the CRM would have never achieved even a modicum of the success that it did. Although the BPP was founded by radicals who had the potential to lead a great movement, no single charismatic leader emerged to guide the BPP through the onslaught of state resistance from 1969 on. By 1967 Huey Newton was in jail; when released, the FBI had already successfully splintered the BPP. Although Newton became the effective leader of the BPP after 1972, he was no longer committed to the radicalism of his youth and soon fled arrest in 1974 (Bloom, 17). The lack of present or persistent charismatic leaders, or rather the State’s ability to ensure that no new charismatic leader rose within the BPP, was a fundamental reason that the BPP never successfully made the State its claimant.
Unity of Movement/Between Movements
Although the SCLC was made up of a coalition of a variety of black-church groups, its radical vision of passive resistance always upset many other existing black Christian organizations. Chalmers describes how “despite appearances and the vital role that black churches and communities had played in the South, local unity was often fragile or lacking” (Chalmers, 29). For instance, only 20 of the 250 black ministers in Birmingham supported his 1963 campaign there (29). After 1963, the FBI attempted to convince the public and King himself that his speechwriter Stanley Levison was secretly a Marxist to break up SCLC support. President Kennedy himself directly urged King to disassociate from Levison, but he refused (Weisler 155). What this all shows is incredible unity within the SCLC despite an equally incredible disunity between other concurrent African-American organizations. This unity was evident in how King’s followers unwaveringly faced the hatred, violence, imprisonment, or death that following him meant. The BPP then was not a united movement. The meteoric rise of the BPP soon led to a splintering of Panther factions throughout America, each expressing different versions of the BPP’s original purpose. This diaspora allowed the FBI to effectively turn different BPP factions against each other, climaxing in Newton kicking out his cofounder Cleaver. Intense efforts were made to make sure that the BPP never united with the Antiwar movement; when Stokely Carmichael attempted to bring the BPP and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) together, the FBI managed to convince both movements that Carmichael was secretly a CIA agent (Marcetic). Furthermore, the perceived violence of the BPP, combined with Nixon’s White House’s coordinated media war against its “two enemies: the antiwar left and black people” (Baum et. All, 2016) meant that many concurrent movements began to distance themselves from BPP affiliation. State-sanctioned executions of BPP leaders made many of its members flee or reconsider their purpose. When Newton returned to the helm of BPP operations in 1972, he was returning to a lifeless corpse.
Two factors may explain the difference in unity between the SCLC and BPP: 1) because the SCLC revolved around King, it never had the opportunity to splinter, and 2) the SCLC was allowed the time to build internal trust. The leaders of the SCLC went wherever King did — overcoming obstacle after obstacle together. It did not matter that other organizations refused to unite with the SCLC — together, they accomplished impossible task after impossible task. This invariably created solidarity and solidified the trust between SCLC members — evident in how King refused to fire Levison. In stark contrast, the leaders of the BPP were physically spread out and experienced too many obstacles too quickly to ever have the opportunity to forge trust with one another. The FBI infiltrated various BPP factions and easily got its leaders to turn on each other, as well as on other BP movements. As per the first goal of the 1968 COINTELPRO BLACK-HATE order, the U.S ensured that the BPP would never unite to the point of “the beginning of a true black revolution” (Hoover). Thus the differences in both internal and external unity of these two respective movements determined their differing successes.
Access to Capital
Perhaps the most important determinant in the success of a social movement is if it can finance itself long enough to be successful. In “Black Radicalization and the Funding of Civil Rights: 1957–1970”, Herbert H. Haines argues that the CRM offers a seriously neglected area of study for resource-allocation scholars. Indeed, while the “utility of the resource mobilization perspective is still being debated…it has been rather firmly established that organized conflict cannot operate for long on shared discontent and moral commitment alone” (Haines 1984, 34). It does not pay to resist the State; a social movement must have access to some form of capital in order to finance its expansion. For the SCLC, this capital came overwhelmingly from King himself. As Table 1 indicates, the rise of external revenue for the SCLC (growing and then exploding in 1965 just as the movement died) correlates to the aforementioned timeline of the movement’s success. Importantly, external revenue never accounted for more than 23% of the SCLC’s capital (Haines, 39). The rest of the revenue was raised from the SCLC Ministries and King’s profit from his speeches, five books, and the Nobel Peace Prize (Bayne 2013). King and his fellow SCLC Ministers had already established congregations which they depended upon for financial support; additionally, King’s widespread media coverage in 1963, as well as the passing of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, led to surges in donations nationwide (Haines, 39). The CRM only died once the SCLC lost the support of both its Ministries and the public at large — this cutoff from their capital, coupled with the State’s unlimited budget to counter the CRM, was ultimately why the movement died.
Unlike the CRM, which was founded by already wealthy and popular ministers, the BPP was founded by two broke teenagers in the ghettos of Oakland. Huey and Bobby first raised the money to purchase arms for the BPP by bulk-ordering and reselling Mao’s Little Red Book to “leftist radicals and liberal intellectuals on the Berkeley campus at three times the price” (Seale, 79–83). Unlike the CRM, which had consistent access to capital in its inception, the BPP had to rely on recruiting supporters to voluntarily carry out its cause. Most of the BPP’s programs were financed through informal markets like donations of clothing, distribution of narcotics, and the support of Socialist leaders across the world (Bloom 120). While support for the BPP grew explosively during the “Free Huey!” campaign, by 1970, despite having dozens of offices and thousands of members, it no longer had access to any of the capital it needed to resist the relentless defamation from the State. The difference in access to capital is fundamental to why the CRM was successful where the BPP was not. An important lesson: no matter how popular a social movement is, it will die unless it can maintain access to capital.
Summary of Findings
In sum, the conditions of initially low State-threat perception, presence/persistence of a charismatic leader, unity within the movement, and access to capital were needed for the CRM to coalesce from a countercultural social movement into a transgressive political actor that successfully made the State respond to its claims. None of these conditions were met in the BPP’s campaign, and thus it failed to ever organize into a transgressive movement capable of making claims of the State. Because of how initially interconnected the conditions are, I argue that if any one of them were to be absent, the CRM would have likely failed. If there had been initially high State-threat perception, the FBI may have taken more explicit action to ensure the SCLC did not grow. If there had been no Martin Luther King, there simply would have been no SCLC. If the SCLC was not united in cause, and if King were to fire Levison, it is likely that the FBI could make the movement implode as it did with the BPP. Finally, if not for the personal wealth of King and his fellow ministers, the SCLC would have lacked the capital needed to logistically fuel its expansion and protests. The absence of any one of these four conditions would have made it virtually impossible for the SCLC to grow to the point where the State was forced to make concessions to it. As such, my model posits that all four conditions must be met in order for a countercultural social movement to turn into a transgressive political actor that successfully gets the State to respond to its claims.
Testing the Model
I now test my necessary conditions model against five respective American social movements: the Antiwar, Hippie, Feminist, LGBTQ, and KKK. Having already established my conditions, the full historical context behind these movements will be overlooked; instead, I will analyze how many of the conditions were met and how their presence or absence determined whether or not the movement could coalesce into a transgressive political actor. The level of State-threat perception will be measured as either high or low by whether or not historical records indicate the State in some form (CIA, FBI, Executive, Legislative or Judicial Branches) within 3 years of the movement’s inception. Presence and persistence of charismatic leaders will be measured by whether or not at least one charismatic leader (someone who without the movement would likely fail) remained invested in the movement’s cause throughout the duration of the movement’s existence. Unity within movement/between movements will be measured by whether or not the movement splintered into factions and whether or not in-fighting happened between it and similar concurrent movements. Access to capital will be measured either through budget reports when available or through the individual wealth of the leaders of each respective movement. Finally, I deem a movement succeeded in making the State respond to its claims only if federal legislation was passed in response to their enumerated demands. Although limited in scope, this analysis still compares a significant variety of social movements, both in enumerated goals and mechanisms of contention.
My results, shown on the next page, show that out of every case analyzed, only the Civil Rights movement was successful in coalescing enough to make the State concede any of its claims. Out of every other movement, at least one of my necessary conditions was not present; only the SCLC had all four. What this speaks to is both a remarkably strong U.S State apparatus of suppressing dissident groups and the uniqueness of King’s campaign. Since my tested model yielded results consistent with my argument, it will then be used to shed new light on some of the most important countercultures and social movements in History: the birth of Christianity.
The Gnostic Mystery
The discovery of Coptic manuscripts containing “Gnostic” scriptures in 1945 in Egypt sparked renewed interest in the origins of Christianity (Rudolph 1981, 3). The findings of would later be referred to as the Nag Hammadi Library led to widespread interest into what is called “Gnosticism” (from the Greek “Gnosis” meaning knowledge) in both academic fields and beyond. There is no one “Gnostic” theology, but rather various Gnostic sects or wisdom schools. Prior to these discoveries, the only information about the Gnostics was obviously biased and unreliable, coming solely from the Church Fathers (the champions of orthodox Christianity), like Irenaeus, who viciously denounced Gnostic practices as heretical (3). What exactly Gnosticism is, however, and how the “Gnostics” behaved are widely disputed questions. Earlier explorations into Gnosticism asserted that it probably emerged out of Zoroastrian, Jewish, or popular Oriental Cults in response to the “profound spiritual ferment” in the eastern Mediterranean world, that Gnostics were myriad groups of esoteric mystery schools that, rejecting mainline Christianity and sometimes even Christ as Savior, believed that they possessed a secret and superior gnosis that gave them true divine understanding (Jonas 31). Many Historians argue that Gnosticism was a movement separate from Christianity, actually emerging from Judaism or Zoroastrianism (31); however, despite their apparent differences in hindsight, more recent studies have argued that Gnosticism must be understood as an “exclusively Christian phenomena” (Wortham 2006, 4).
Yet few accounts make compelling arguments as to why exactly Gnosticism fell into historical obscurity, why its books were deemed uncanonical (the Nag Hammadi scrolls are believed to be the only existing records of Gnostic thought from an inside perspective), and why Orthodox Christianity emerged as supreme. I believe analyzing the birth of these movements through my necessary conditions model can lend profound insights into why the orthodox version of Christianity emerged victoriously. I argue that Gnosticism and mainline Christianity were both originally countercultures bred out of profound political and spiritual discontent (Rudolph, 18); however, Gnosticism never successfully transformed from a countercultural social movement into a transgressive one that made the Roman Empire its claimant — the reason that mainline Christianity became dominant was because it succeeded in this endeavor. The claimant of the Gnostics was generally societal, encouraging followers to individually pursue access to secret knowledge. The Christian claimant was both societal (a rejection of Judaism) and eventually institutional (the legalization of Christianity). There is a dearth of historical data on Gnosticism and early Christianity, and my argument operates with the most current assumptions about their origins. It is my hope that the case I make about Gnosticism is not viewed as definitive, but rather a preliminary investigation that hopefully, future researchers can build upon. I ultimately argue that the Gnostics and the Orthodox Christians simultaneously evolved out of the same counterculture, but the leaders of the early Christian movement were able to successfully coalesce into a political actor that successfully made claims of the Roman Empire. The Gnostics were various countercultural movements with societal loci of contention (the rejection of earthly institutions) whereas the early Church was a social movement with both societal (the acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and savior) and institutional (the legalization of practicing Christianity) claimants. The Apologies serve as our best examples of how the Church Fathers demanded that Christianity is accepted as a legal (licita) faith.
Initially low State-threat Perceptions
As a caveat, I assume here that as both Gnosticism and Christianity grew in the 1st century, the Roman Empire likely had no way of knowing the differences of each respective movement, and treated all perceived Christians the same way. For the first three centuries after Christ, persecutions of Christians were relatively rare, locally inspired, sporadic, and almost never state-sanctioned Imperial decrees (Grey, 49). Persecution did not directly stem from the State, but instead “from neighbors reacting to the perceived threat of Christianity to the well-being of society” who demanded that local governments respond through coercion (62). Although Nero blamed Christians for fires in Rome in A.D 64 and heavily persecuted them, they were charged for Arson, not for being Christian; many historians argue that Nero likely was just conveniently scapegoating an already distrusted group for his own complicity in the fires, and that persecution was likely contained in Rome (i.e.Tacitus) (70). For much of the first, second, and early third centuries, Christians were perceived by some state authorities as a threat — in some cases, a severe threat that needed to be extricated. True, top-down Empire-wide persecution against the Christians did not begin until A.D 249 when the new Emperor Decius ordered an arrest of Christian clergy and for Christians to make sacrifices to the State Gods (70). Thus, despite localized instances of persecution, the Christian and Gnostic movements both enjoyed relatively low State-threat perceptions for the first centuries of their existence, allowing both movements to grow.
Presence and Persistence of Charismatic Leaders
It should be fairly obvious that mainline Christians were following the message of perhaps the most famous charismatic leader of all time. But after Christ’s death, his Apostles and the tradition of Apostolic Succession — where the authority of one Apostle was directly transferred to a chosen successor — ensured that charismatic leadership was always present in the genesis of the Early Church (Gonzales 15) As the Christian movement grew, more and more charismatic leaders joined its ranks (i.e. Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, or Irenaeus), all overcoming persecution and sometimes seeking martyrdom in order to provide early Christian communities with the guidance they needed to survive in the Roman World (Herbermann). These leaders preached the necessity of unity and patience as the Church grew — Christian commitment to community building is at it’s most evident in 2nd Clement, a popularly distributed Church Sermon that said that the Church itself was the Body of Christ and had always existed and must always exist (2Clem 14:1). Thus, early Christian charismatic leaders had a continuous presence and persistence as the movement grew.
The Gnostics also had several charismatic leaders, the various leaders of Gnostic Mystery schools that attracted huge followings. While little is known about who followed the Gnostics, much is recorded on those who led them; the great founders and leaders of the earliest Gnostic schools and systems. All received formal education and were well versed in the lore of the various canons that they interpreted (Rudolph, 295–300). The progenitors of the Gnostic corpus and community were also undeniably influenced by Christianity, with the eventual systems of Basilides, Marcion and Valentinus constituting a definitive Christian Gnosis (309–325). The first followers and members of the Gnostic communities started by these Gnostic geniuses were likely the lower classes within the constraints of already elite Hellenized societies. These Gnostic leaders must have been extremely charismatic, for the anti-heretical writings of the Church Fathers continuously describe how effectively they seduced well-meaning believers into their ranks (20) While their exact popularity is unknown, in the 2nd century one of the greatest Gnostic leaders, Valentinus, was almost elected as the Bishop of Rome (the precursor to the Pope), indicating that certain Gnostics initially maintained some form of credibility/popularity (Goode). While some of these Gnostic leaders had learned from one another, they were mostly isolated, each with similar yet distinct systems of esoterica. No Gnostic Apostolic Succession is known of, meaning that the Gnostic movement of an individual leader likely died off or splintered into new movements after its leader’s death. Thus both the mainline Christians and the Gnostics had charismatic leaders, all though it is very likely that the former group was more committed to persistent collaborative leadership focused on building the Church whereas the latter believed in the merits of subscribing to the individual systems of individual Gnostic leaders.
Unity within Movement/Between Movements
Although Orthodox Christianity emerged out of several forms of Christianity, early Christians were united in their deference to the Apostles and acceptance of Jesus as Savior. Key to the Church’s unity was how its cohesion was strengthened through church leaders adjudicating most intra-Christian disputes (Grey, 78). If the Church was to survive until the Parousia, then they would need to be able to coexist with a Roman Empire. It is precisely because the Gnostic messages — which promoted Dionysian ideals where the Christians preached Apollonian order — sought to drive away pagans from deference to the Apostles that the Church Fathers likely feared the Gnostic movement so much. Indeed, prominent throughout the development of the early Church was the attack of popular Gnostic leaders by influential Christians like Hippolytus of Rome or Irenaeus (Rudolph, 9). What this speaks to is a strong unity within the early Christian movement, as well as a strong disunity between the movement and the “heretical” schools that it feared would sway pagans onto the wrong path.
Despite the lack of historical data on Gnostic practice, in a sense, every found Gnostic text is a direct declaration that the 4 canonical Gospels are untrue/inadequate. What is clear is that many Gnostics adopted the view that conventional Christians were sheep, blindly following their priests without realizing that both Baptism and the Church were a mere placebo for true spiritual experience (Bennet, 333). It is also unclear if there was any cooperation between different Gnostic groups — but based on the anarchistic structure of many Gnostic gatherings (where women were allowed to preach and everyone took turns rotating positions of power) this seems unlikely (Rudolph, 216). Based on my model, the failure or unwillingness of the Gnostics to unify is a key part of the reason why Gnosticism died out. In contrast to the Church Fathers, where interpretations on Christ’s meaning were contained within certain bounds by the combination of authoritative texts and episcopal leadership and communication, the Gnostics believed exclusively in individual Gnosis and thus were also unlikely to want to listen to each other or to the mainline Christians. It may be, for all that we know, that the birth of Christianity saw mainline Christians attempt — and fail — to coalesce with existing Gnostic groups (i.e. Clement of Alexandria). What is clear is that Gnostics disunity likely spelled out to the eventual collapse of its various movements.
Access to Capital
Despite early Christianity being widely depicted as a revolt of the poor, more recent analysis has reached some startling suggestions about the intended audiences of Jesus’s message. In “Early Christianity: Opiate of the Privileged?” respected sociologist Rodney Stark argues that Christianity was never exclusively a lower-class movement, and that “from the very beginning, Christianity was especially attractive to people of privilege” (Stark 2009, 2). While Stark makes some dubious claims about the wealth of Jesus and his disciples, he provides ample evidence that they appealed directly to higher-class citizens and from as early as the 2nd century already had political influence within the Roman capital. Important wealthy Christian donors to the early movement (Lydia, Joseph of Arimathea, Salome, Barnabas, etc.) were all vital in ensuring that the apostolic ministry had the logistical means to spread their universal message. Christianity was in no means exclusively a religion of the rich; the Church grew rapidly until 300 AD about 15 million Christians lived in the Roman Empire or 25% of the total population; in 313 AD Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan, legalizing the worship of Christianity, and in 380 AD it was made the Empire’s official religion (Frend 137). Its meteoric rise can probably be attributed to the spread of Christianity through existing trade routes, the attention that martyrdom brought to the Christian cause, and the efforts of early Christian communities to provide for the needy in their communities (33). This spread could surely not have been possible if it were not for the capital that early wealthy converts provided for the movement continuously throughout the centuries.
While little known about the various Gnostic schools, it is generally accepted that they were led by well-educated Roman citizen “geniuses” but mainly populated by lower-class traders or serfs (Rudolph 295–300). Certain leaders like Valentinus or Marcion were certainly respected and likely wealthy. Gnosticism was inherently elitist, with each respective Gnostic leader offering their secret wisdom to those that proved worthy of initiation into their sect. It is likely that Gnostic teachers used their own personal capital to finance their individual movements, but were not invested in using it for recruiting members. Unlike the Church, which used its capital to finance its continuous and collective expansion as a universal movement in the direction of legalizing Christianity, Gnostic leaders used their capital as fuel for their individual cults of wisdom. When a Gnostic teacher died their movement died with them — although certain Gnostic disciples (Marcion, Mani, etc,) went on to form their own movements, this was likely contingent on them being already wealthy. In other words, new Gnostic movements could not evolve unless they had the capital to do so — but because they were internally financed they were doomed to die.
Conclusions
What my theoretical model based on U.S experience shows when applied to the Roman Empire is that mainline Christianity met all four of the conditions to successfully make claims of the State whereas Gnosticism only met the first two. This implies that while mainline Christianity was busy coalescing into transgressional political actors that through various mechanisms of contention (martyrdom, apologetics, etc.) to make its claim (legalization of Christianity) known to the Roman Empire, the Gnostics never coalesced into similar organizations. Theoretically, since in Gnosticism there was both low State-level perceptions of threat and the presence of charismatic leaders, if the Gnostics had wanted to form into political actors that made demands of the State they easily could have, and who knows how history would have turned out. Kurt Rudolph, the father of modern Gnostic study, finds no evidence that Gnostics expressed “interest of any kind in a reform of earthy conditions but only in their complete and final destruction. It possessed no other ‘revolutionary’ program for altering conditions…than the elimination of earthly structures in general” (265). Thus the claims of the Gnostic movements were specifically societal, whereas mainline Christianity transitioned into both societal and institutional loci of contention. It may be that the Roman Empire ended up adopting Christianity simply because it had mistakenly allowed the Church to persistently grow to the point where it could legitimately make the Empire its claimant. Future historians analyzing the influence of capital and unity within the early Gnostic movements may provide interesting avenues into understanding Gnosticism in light of my theoretical framework.
My necessary conditions model, based on the differing experiences of the SCLC and Black Panthers, holds that all four conditions of initially low State-threat perception, presence and persistence of charismatic leaders, unity of movement/between movements and access to capital are all needed in order for a counterculture to successfully coalesce into a transgressive political actor that can successfully get the State to answer its claims. My conditions were tested on 5 different respective movements that yielded results in support of my argument. These conditions were then used to reframe the reasons why Orthodox Christianity, and not Gnosticism, emerged triumphantly. Despite its limitations in scope and reliance on sketchy historical data about the 3rd century, it is my hope that my research sets up avenues for future, more in-depth analysis about both the dynamics of civil organization and the origins of Christianity.
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