The rise and fall of domestic terrorism

The Weathermen, the woke idealists of the 60's.

You would be forgiven for thinking that we are living in unique times. Many of us have watched the elite, Ivy League Tentifada crew with a puzzled bemusement, as they assumed solidarity with terrorist, murderers, rapists and misogynists. ‘Queers for Palestine, ‘Mums for Palestine,’ ‘Fatties for Palestine,’ insert buzzword here for Palestine. The list became more ridiculous with every new affiliation.

However as with most fads, we only have to dig through a little history to see that we have in fact, been here before. During the free love and mung beans decade of the sixties, the United States became involved in a conflict that drew huge amounts of condemnation from the far left and the hippies (the woke of the day). In early August 1964, two U.S. destroyers stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam radioed that they had been fired upon by North Vietnamese forces. After the Gulf of Tonkin incident, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered air strikes against North Vietnam, and Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorised military intervention in defence of South Vietnam.

“Hello. I’m going to read a declaration of a state of war… Within the next 14 days we will attack a symbol or institution of American injustice.” — Bernadine Dohrn¹

Leaders of the radical American student group the Weathermen, (left to right) Jim Mellen, Peter Clapp, John Jacobs, Bill Ayers, and Terry Robbins, march in 1969 at the van of a group of demonstrators during the 'Days of Rage' actions organized by the Weathermen to protest the trial of the Chicago Seven and 'to bring the war home.'David Fenton—Getty Images

The Weather Underground, originally called the Weathermen, was a radical, militant organisation that sprung up from the far left University crowd in 1969. Emerging from opposition to the Vietnam War, the Weathermen adhered to a communist and anti-war ideology, targeting what it saw as symbols of U.S. military power, authoritarianism, and racism. Sounds familiar?

The Weather Underground originated as a faction of the antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Bernardine Dohrn², James Mellen³, and Mark Rudd⁴, spearheaded the movement, and in 1969 published their position paper, “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows.” The paper called for a white revolutionary movement to support black liberation, which the faction called central to SDS’s anti-imperialist fight.

What started as campus unrest, became something far more serious when the Weathermen took the step from protest to resistance — by any means necessary. Between 1969 and 1974, this small group of violent intellectual extremists bombed police stations, courthouses, and even the Pentagon. The parallels between the Weathermen and todays woke student movements, are too similar to ignore. Primarily from privilege and attending the best Ivy League schools, their aim was to destroy the country that they lived in and hated, they blamed the United States for not only the civilian deaths in Vietnam, but all imperialism, capitalism and every other ‘ism’ that America stood for.

To further their goals of revolution the Weathermen started a recruitment drive, and organised for young people to mobilise for “The Days of Rage” riots in Chicago⁵. However it appeared that many disaffected youth weren’t quite disaffected enough to risk arrest and jail.

They gathered on October 8, 1969, in Lincoln Park with violent intent. Adorned in football helmet and shoulder pads, they carried rudimentary weapons such as steel pipes, baseball bats, chains and slingshots. Sadly for the revolution, only a few hundred people showed up, instead of the fifty thousand they had imagined.

The ones who did show up however were ready to rumble, breaking the windows of cars and storefronts, charging police barricades, and generally causing a ruckus. With far less support that they had counted on the Days of Rage fizzled out to be no more than a few hours of pointless misplaced anger.

Ironically even the Black Panthers began to distance themselves from the group. Fred Hampton, a Chicago Panther leader stated;

“We believe that the Weathermen action is antiarchistic, opportunistic, individualistic, is chauvinistic, it’s custeristic in that its leaders take people into situations where the people can be massacred, and they call it a revolution. There’s nothing for child’s play, its folly. We think these people may be sincere, but they’re misguided, they’re muddleheads, and they’re scatterbrains.⁶”

Scatterbrains or not, the Weathermen truly believed they were at the forefront of a revolution that would save the world from itself.

Several months following the Days of Rage, the Weathermen went into hiding, after three of their leaders were killed in New York City when a bomb they were making accidentally exploded.

Group tactics with recruits became unhinged, with gruelling interrogations, psychological torture and forced orgies. The Weathermen had become a cult. And true to form, the cult leaders lived in luxury inside a gated San Fransisco community, while members lived in slums or on the streets.

Although the Weathermen’ leaders topped the FBI’s most wanted list, illegal surveillance resulted in zero prosecutions for the domestic terrorist group. Interestingly many of the original leaders of the Weathermen, went on to careers in academia or law.

Bernardine Dohrn, the radical chic leader of The Weathermen.

So what can we take from this?

The Weathermen believed that they were on the side of good—proof that good intentions indeed are the starting point of every journey, but the destination depends on the choices we make along the way. And white skinned privileged students can only crap on for so long about marxist ideology before people begin to smell a rat.

The radicalisation and cult behaviour of the group ultimately became their downfall. When the Weatherman started their bombing campaign, they were abandoned, even by the extreme left. It appears that ‘resistance by any means necessary’ did in fact have its limits in the court of public approval.

Almanac The Weather Underground Blast Cbs News

However the escalation of violence and extreme ideas by The Weathermen should keep us alert to the potentials of the radicalisation that we are witnessing in 2024. When protestors are telling us what they are prepared to do, we must listen. It’s not a big jump for well-meaning yet crazy idealists to put down the placard and pick up the gun.

Despite what many people think, a lot of damage can be done by a surprisingly small group of committed believers.

1. https://itvs.org/about/pressroom/press-release/the-weather-underground/

2. https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/topten-history/hires_images/FBI-314-BernardineRaeDohrn.jpg/view

3. https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Mellen

4. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Rudd

5. https://interactive.wttw.com/playlist/2019/10/08/days-rage

6. When Students Become Terrorists