Nobody Left by Mr. Fish

 This is subtitled on the cover:

“Conversations with famous radicals, progressives, and cultural icons about the end of dissent, revolution, and liberalism in America”

This book was discovered by accident in a local library in a town in Nassau County of Long Island, New York. It was in among the new graphic novels and comics. It’s large format 10” by 7” so supposedly that was why it was shelved where it was. It is also a good place for it. It’s the kind of thing that it would be nice for some suburban kid to accidentally come upon and then discover a new world. Actually the kid would be discovering an old world since Mr. Fish has set about talking to aged people who meant something to him and to the culture of the USA at one time.There are a lot of illustrations, the artwork of Mr. Fish. Some of them are a bit lurid and shocking which could also be a draw to a young person.  

This is a book from a left perspective. Not what the Trumpers and Republican Party call “far left”. That label is only a way to smear Democratic Party centrist liberals with Red Baiting because they might entertain leaving Social Security around for a bit longer, as long as it doesn’t take money away from the military budget.

The “left” referred to in this book is the old “New Left '' of the mid-20th Cemtury. That which reached its peak among post WWII Baby Boomers in the late 1960s. This left is the left that considers Clinton, and Obama, centerest sellouts who did more harm than good. The Democratic presidents who prepared the way for a Trump.

The book becomes a sort of memorial to that type of New Left politics since they have to a substantial degree disappeared from being a significant factor in mainstream politics. It could be argued that they never were much of a factor, but they certainly were more of a presence in the mainstream, even the old Big Three network mainstream of the 1950s and 60s.
High points of the book are interviews with greats Mort Sahl and (the late) Paul Krassner both of whom go back to the 1950s. But there are many others
And Mr Fish does talk about getting to people before they die off and missing that opportunity for some.

For those of us who miss that end of the dialog and adhere to that type of politics this is kind of a sad book. It’s about something that is dying off with a generation or a couple of generations that were a part of it. Mr Fish does not supply a path of hope forward. Most of the conversations are about what happened and why. 

The book was in print before the last great people’s movement appeared with the worldwide Black Lives Matter demonstrations and its movement.
That and the Bernie Sanders for President movements presented the old spirit. It is a spirit of rebellion and righteous anger at inequity that can inspire mass participating in demanding real change.

It is a spirit that has to be revived. There are millions waiting for it after being fooled by centrist Democrats that fail to deliver much other than, inadvertently, power to the rebellious tone of Right Wing populism which we have just seen in the Trump people and the January 6th storming of the Capitol Building. If a left movement does not come in, speak to these people and their needs and build a real socialist democracy, the fascist are going to rule the day and once they rule the day, that day can go on for decades.