Norman Mailer on the '68 DNC
Recalling one of the most notorious riots of modern American politics
In the wake of recent events, we can expect the Democrats to be less inclined than ever to recall the events of their Chicago convention in 1968. Presumably the Republicans would like nothing more than another riot, adept as they are in such matters. While the media should never forget how they were first against the wall, beaten and gassed like everyone else.
Norman Mailer’s Miami and the Siege of Chicago covered both conventions, contrasting the sanitized WASPy Americana of Nixon’s Miami show with the Freak Power summit in Chicago. The Republican Party of 1968 was a different beast. That era’s MAGA faction, embodied by segregationist George Wallace, was relegated to the fringes. Nixon’s Silent Majority promised stability over chaos. That message resonated because chaos was everywhere, like a natural force, or a reckoning.
Some dark momentum was accumulating evidence for itself in 1968. In January, the Tet Offensive marked a disastrous turn for the Vietnam War, undermining the American public message and so necessitating a major escalation. In March, Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not be seeking reelection. In April, Martin Luther King, Jr, was murdered. Any small hopes for suspension of chaos were dashed by the murder of Robert Kennedy in June. Longtime political loser Richard Nixon sought not to solve but set his platform upon all of this. Mailer describes the noticeable change on seeing him in person: “the sort of improvement that comes upon a man when he shifts in appearance from looking like an undertaker’s assistant to looking like an old con seriously determined to go respectable.”
We should describe Norman Mailer as well. His name was preeminent, as notable for publicity as his pen. He was an egotist of the highest order. Ego was the theme of 1967’s The Armies of the Night, his stylized account of the March on the Pentagon. It’s an oddly insightful book, theorizing that everyone from protester to tyrant operated ultimately from their own ego needs. No greater pursuit, in Mailer’s world. His prose is dense, following circuitous riffs to abstract philosophical ends, equal parts macho posturing and vulnerable self-examination, easily distracted by a fight or a woman. His brand of New Journalism was more literary, but still grounded, subjective if seeking some omniscience.
Hanging over everything was the Vietnam War. It was impossible to defend, the peace movement too vocal to ignore. Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey couldn’t make any easy promises, given the fractured state of the party. He had no momentum of his own. Mailer on Humphrey: “it came down to the simple fear that he was not ready to tell the generals that they were wrong. Peace they might yet accept, but not the recognition that they were somewhat insane - as quickly tell dragons to shift their nest.”
The logic of the protesters at the ‘68 DNC was to confront that insanity with equal measures. The Yippies trafficked in revolutionary rhetoric, performative absurdity, and guerilla war tactics. We can imagine the phrase repeated among their ranks - “bring the Tet Offensive home!” Still their guiding values were optimism, poetry, music, love and inclusion. What is the true source of political power? Moral authority. Any great movement assumes that advantage and capitalizes on it.
Middle aged Mailer strolled into the fray, with no real allegiances but to his ego and a good story. The first half of his book in Miami flails with some desperation, as he expounds on handshake processions and the mindset of the Nixon electorate (“they could only grow more insane each year, like a rich nobleman in an empty castle chasing elves and ogres with his stick”). Initially in Chicago his thoughts are given to abstraction, with some critical appraisal of hippie America. Surely his loyalties were with the counterculture, given the freedom and free love, and how peers like Allen Ginsberg were shown adulation. But he had some trepidations of the provocation tactics. Their rising power was seen as an existential threat.
In Chicago the story finds him. Many reporters were caught up in the gas attacks, and brutally beaten. Hunter S Thompson’s account of the riots is uncharacteristically sober. The man who got stomped out by Hell’s Angels and faced down a Vegas police convention dosed to the gills on acid was shook. In a letter he wrote: “from now on it’s going to be hell; those freaks on the barricades stood in clouds of tear gas and fired spray-cans of oven-cleaner at the cops…Chicago was the reality I’ve been theorizing about for too long.”
What exactly happened? Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was a local powermonger, who used his power to secure the convention so it could be displayed in full on the streets. If Nixon promised to quell the chaos with stability, Daley would show strength. No matter that he was a Democrat. We are beyond the realm of party politics, into some old school Game of Thrones territory keeping. We can imagine Daley as a dark magic villain, eying his maps, sending off his minions for battle.
The first few skirmishes are described as testy violence, notable protesters rounded up as braver ones catch the first beatings. A fine moment sees the shift in allegiance to the hippie cause, as crowds chanted around the main hotel where media and campaign operators were headquartered. They were seeking support, and got it as lights on every floor blinked in accordance. None were prepared for the brutality of the major demonstration. Provocation turned to war, visceral aggression raising the bar until it broke.
The ‘68 Chicago riot was not just about police beating on hippies and reporters, but a Police State unleashed. Tourists and onlookers, young and old, were caught up as cops smashed into cafes to administer further beatings. A kid is injured, and the doctor crawling to help gets clubbed too. Blind rage was the only rule for the police, while the protesters exacerbated it with counterstrikes. Which just exposes the absurdity of war. All theoretical plans get consumed by blood, and escalating retributions.
Reflecting on it, Mailer comes to the same conclusion as Mick Jagger later that year on “Sympathy for the Devil” - “Every cop is a criminal.” Mailer writes: “The cop tries to solve his violence by blanketing it with a uniform…the guiltier the situation in which a policeman finds himself, the more will he attack the victim of his guilt.” Not that history has absolved the protest organizers. They came looking for a fight, and got one. The only blessing was that no one was killed. But what effect did all of this have on the peace movement? The heroes were the ones who wrote about their experiences, with temperance and insight. That’s more valuable than any act of violence.