Recent behavior of working-class Americans, sometimes called “new ethnics,”; has deeply shocked and bewildered many .acute commentators. The supposed return to militant self-identification has led one radical, Pete Hamill, to claim that “the working-class white man is actually in revolt against taxes, joyless work, the double standards and short memories of professional politicians, hypocrisy and what he considers the debasement of the American dream.”

The same display of muscular working-class behavior has led Herbert Hill, an equally radical critic, to assert that “the hard-hat labor unionists, and they are by no means limited to the building trades, have joined with the military elite and their political spokesmen. This suggests the great danger of the rise of a proto-fascdst workers” movement in the United States.