ABSTRACT
The topic of radicalization or, more specifically, the question of how to radicalize others, was frequently discussed within Vietnam Summer, and is obviously a crucial question for the entire New Left. The most common controversy in such discussions was the relative weight of emotion and intellect in radicalization. Moreover, the psychological diversity of the leaders in Vietnam Summer entailed similar diversity in the relative importance of intellect and feeling in their radicalization. If it is difficult to define exactly the relative weight of intellect and emotion in the political development of these young radicals, it is even harder to provide any simple formula to explain how and why they became radicals. While there have been few empirical studies of radicals of the Left, the most common assumption brought to the analysis of radicalization is, as in the radical-rebel theory, an assumption of a profound and usually unconscious discontinuity.
