What seemed “radical” a couple of years previously gets overtaken by ‘events’ and – frankly, by other people needing to stake out more extreme/holier-than-thou edgelord positions in order to distinguish themselves from ‘the pack.’
This dynamic is well understood – see Irving Janis on “groupthink“, or “Chaos of Disciplines” by Andrew Abbott. Bateson probably wrote about this under the heading schismogenesis. The tragedy is that after a short sharp bout of posing, most of the poseurs bugger off looking for a new sugar rush, leaving smoking ruins behind them. They suffer few to zero consequences, and are able to repeat the grift somewhere else.
“A lot of rhetoric about fighting with the police in the streets was now going around campuses, and as a consequence, the formerly radical people such as I who broke the law by practicing civil disobedience rather than violence were considered “moderate.” From “radical” to “moderate” was a long [page break] distance to come without ever once having changed your stance, but it was typical of the time.”
(Harris, 1982:251-252)
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