A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pentagon

As a small bit of joy, on this, the last day of what has felt like the longest month in human history, I present a quick look at the October 1967 “raising”-slash-exorcism of the Pentagon. This event plays an important part in Radio Downtown (which you can still see at 59E59!), serving as a moment of immense absurdity, as well as earnest expression of hope for a better future.

There are many ways to describe the character known officially as Abbie—short for Abbott—Hoffman, one of the chief instigators of the Pentagon happening, but the following line from collaborator of his says it all: “He was the Vince Lombardi of Leftism.” Bullish, brazen and wiley, Hoffman once said that reality was “made up of myths,” and as such, sought to spread his own brand of iconoclastic reality shifting propaganda to move the country’s political imagination. (This particular quote is from an incredible oral history of events published in Arthur Magazine.) If reality is made up of myths, Hoffman thought, spread the right myths, and you just might be able to turn the sinking war-mongering ship around. From all accounts, Hoffman was, despite—and perhaps, because of—his continuous use of acid and other recreational drugs, an extremely focused and intense political organizer, who had the gift of understanding scenes and factions of all kinds. And since the hippie-ism’s free-flowing ideology was the most amenable to leftist ideals, Hoffman immersed himself in the 60s counterculture as a way of shaping this culture to serious political ends.

Before the Pentagon protest, there were a number of events, called “Be-Ins” where participants/protestors would gather to smoke marijuana, dance, revel, and confront the problem raised by the Vietnam War. It was also a time of action and happenings. While protests and demonstrations were standard, many organizations found ways to make their displeasure known in playful and creative ways. For example, in 1967, a group of anti-war demonstrators threw a yellow submarine that they’d decorated with balloons into the Hudson River. Another event saw a group of what Michael Simmons called “psychedelic cash clowns” sprinkling hundreds of singles on stockbrokers at the NYSE under Hoffman’s direction. It was a movement with many leaders and many tactics, but by the time organizers approached activist Jerry Rubin to organize an anti-war demonstration in the fall of 1967, he turned to Hoffman.

From here, the details are scented with marijuana but amount to the following: Rubin and Hoffman decided there would be a demonstration in front of the Pentagon, after which, they would exorcise the demons that caused the on-going war in Vietnam. Oh, and then they would levitate it a few feet into the air. There’s a lot of what the kids would call “lore” behind this decision: the symbolism of pentagrams, the location of the pentagon, etc. Suffice it to say, the October 21st event would quickly become an iconic moment in the history of American political theater. After securing permits from the government to levitate the Pentagon and sprinkling cornmeal around the perimeter, a few hundred people broke off from the original protest to begin the ritual.

The Fugs, a rock bank that included the poet Ed Sanders, played a critical role in this process, as Sanders had drawn up a step by step “exogasm” instruction guide. And it was Sanders who created the following text, read in front of the Pentagon:

“In the name of the amulets of touching, seeing, groping, hearing and loving, we call upon the powers of the cosmos to protect our ceremonies in the name of Zeus, in the name of Anubis, god of the dead, in the name of all those killed because they do not comprehend, in the name of the lives of the soldiers in Vietnam who were killed because of a bad karma, in the name of sea-born Aphrodite, in the name of Magna Mater, in the name of Dionysus, Zagreus, Jesus, Yahweh, the unnamable, the quintessent finality of the Zoroastrian fire, in the name of Hermes, in the name of the Beak of Sok, in the name of scarab, in the name, in the name, in the name of the Tyrone Power Pound Cake Society in the Sky, in the name of Rah, Osiris, Horus, Nepta, Isis, in the name of the flowing living universe, in the name of the mouth of the river, we call upon the spirit to raise the Pentagon from its destiny and preserve it.” In the end, leftists of all stripes converged with one rallying phrase, the pithy, “Out demons, out!”

Watching the madness and mayhem unfold, it’s fitting that Allen Ginsberg described Hoffman’s anti-war tactics as “action poet[ry].” Ginsberg and Sanders go on, in the aforementioned Arthur Magazine article to link Hoffman’s work to a lineage that includes Cabaret Voltaire, Ubu Roi, Surrealism, the Living Theatre and Bread and Puppet Theater. In short, the strains of a leftist Pentagon “exogasm” likely has its roots in rude, crude and off-kilter (some might even say avant-garde) theatrical modes. Just as Radio Downtown is so much about legacy and looking to the past for inspiration, I wonder what Hoffman’s keen eye for media manipulation and spectacle can offer to this present time and our current political demons. Some would suggest that Hoffman was a “media savvy grifter” more interested in cashing in on the aesthetics of cool and notoriety rather than engaging in on the ground organizing. While this may be true, I still believe there is power in engaging with symbolism, with myth and with the unconscious, in attempting to turn people’s attention away from their perceived lack of power and into collective political will.

On that note, the best place to end our wanderings through this arcane and fantastical story is perhaps with these words from a member of the Diggers—a San Francisco “anarchist street theater group”—named Peter Coyote who said the following:

“People often expressed wonderment at how thousands of disparate and often antithetical groups – Hell’s Angels, Black Panthers, Gay Collectives, merchants, runaways, soldiers on leave, flower children, deserters and civilians – interacted so peacefully. Accepting the Planet as the most inclusive frame of reference, subliminally united rather than divided people; gave them equal standing with one another under the Sun.” 

Even if the hippies, beatniks, witches and communists (and Norman Mailer?) couldn’t manage to levitate the Pentagon, they did something equally shocking: found a way to be together under a shared political banner, invoking all manner of deities–somehow equal.

Extended Play is a project of The Civilians. To learn more about The Civilians and to access exclusive discounts to shows, visit us and join our email list at TheCivilians.org.