Ramparts

RAMPARTS. The preeminent popular journal of the New Left era of the 1960s and early 1970s, Ramparts—although plagued with financial problems and a chaotic publishing history—nonetheless managed to print many of the most significant articles of the decade. Most notably, Ramparts exposed the Cold War and Vietnam War policies of the US government—insights often sandwiched between colorful ads for Day-Glo posters or psychedelic music. The glossy paper, provocative covers, vivid graphics, and high-profile publicity efforts attracted the attention of the mainstream media, young people just being introduced to the Left, politicians afraid of the Left, and the core activists of Left movements.

Founded in 1962 as a liberal Catholic quarterly, the San Francisco Bay area-based magazine had 4,000 subscribers in 1964. With the rise of the New Left and the editorship of young, brash, flamboyant, and publicity-seeking Warren Hinckle III, from 1965 to 1968 subscriptions to the now-monthly Ramparts soared to perhaps 250,000. Debts and bitterness among Ramparts’ founders and financial backers also soared out of control. By 1969 paid circulation had fallen to 125,000 and slid gradually to 50,000 when Ramparts folded in 1975.

The most influential Ramparts stories were often exposés. In one spectacular instance, the magazine uncovered ties between Michigan State University academics and South Vietnam’s murderous Diem regime; in another it revealed the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert funding of and influence on the National Student Association. Ramparts also carried many dramatic anti-war features, from Tom Hayden’s and Noam Chomsky’s essays to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, masterful critique of US foreign policy (he credited his own compulsion to go public on Vietnam to his viewing of Ramparts’ photo essay about the war’s effects on Vietnamese children), to exposure of US intelligence connections with Southeast Asia’s drug trade. The first English-language publisher of Che Guevara’s diary from Bolivia, Ramparts also boosted the Black Panther Party, documented mistreatment of Native Americans, and focused attention on environmental dangers. While in its early days overwhelmingly “male” in style and substance, Ramparts began in 1969 to run major feminist features and, soon after, publicized gay liberation.

Ramparts’ criticisms of Israeli occupation policies, if balanced by careful support of Israel’s existence, nevertheless provoked the withdrawal of major funder and later New Republic owner, hyper-aggressive Cold Warrior, Martin Peretz. Other Ramparts figures shifting rightward included Eldridge Cleaver, David Horowitz, a future conservative publicist of note, and Peter Collier. More typically, Robert Scheer, Andrew Kopkind, Alexander Cockburn, James Ridgeway, Derek Shearer, Edward Sorel, and others became leading progressive commentators elsewhere after the magazine’s demise.

Financial supporter and editor Adam Hochschild, a leading figure in a split within Ramparts’ inner circle, went on in 1976 to found Mother Jones magazine, which can be viewed as Ramparts’ most enduring journalistic legacy. Based in the Bay Area but self-consciously more mainstream and upscale, Mother Jones also featured much dramatic exposé journalism on the environment and other issues. Another notable feature, rooted less in the Ramparts experience, was the leading role of feminist intellectuals on its editorial board and among its writers. Its circulation reached 200,000 by 2020 with a significant digital presence.

Browning, Frank. “The Strange Journey of David Horowitz.” Mother Jones 12 (May 1987).

Hinckle, Warren. If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974.

Richardson, Peter. A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America. New York: New Press, 2009.

Ridgeway, James. “The Ramparts Story: … Um, Very Interesting.” New York Times Magazine, 20 April 1969.

Rorabaugh, W.J. Berkeley at War: The 1960s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Ramparts Magazine Archives. The Unz Review: An Alternative Media Selection. https://www.unz.com/print/Ramparts