Those who make peaceful revolution impossible only make violent revolution inevitable
Considering all the controversy over Obama's association with supposed American sixties terrorist Bill Ayers, I decided to learn a little more about the Weather Underground myself, since my years as a political observer have taught me what's known as the prevailing wisdom is usually wrong. What I've learned so far is that Ayers and people like him weren't terrorists at all (they targeted government property, not civilian populations), but young leftist idealists committed to justice who couldn't psychologically process the horror of the Vietnam war and the atrocities being committed there by their own country. It drove rational people (and ideological pacifists) to do things they otherwise would never consider. But what else do you do when you see a massive injustice being committed in your name that you're powerless to stop through the democratic process? The only conclusion is that the Vietnam War and the weak and miserable men who lead America during that era created the Weather Underground, or to put it another way, made such extremism inevitable.
Documentary: the Weather Underground
Review:
One member of the Weather Underground interviewed in this film is quite ambivalent about what he did and says "the Vietnam war drove us crazy". That, in a nutshell, is how the whole movement came about. The members of the underground were the extremist fringe. However, even they had their limits and took precautions to make sure that only property and not lives were destroyed in the bombings they committed after the death of some of their members occurred in a premature explosion in New York City. A most interesting comment is by Todd Gitlin, who denounces the Weather Underground as being made up of those who decided they were right and that anything was justified for their cause (not true, as just mentioned above). He compares their thinking to that of Stalin and Hitler, but curiously he leaves out Richard Nixon, who singlehandedly made decisions (as did presidents before him) that destroyed not hundreds, but thousands of Vietnamese lives and 50,000 American lives. Frustration drives people to do things they would not otherwise do. When the government of a country wages war in the name of its citizens, yet leaves those citizens helpless to stop the war, extremism can easily result as this movie shows so well. Totaling up all the bombings this group did, can it hold even a tiny candle to the amount of terror that was unleashed on a distant county by men who claimed to be thoroughly rational and refused just as adamantly as the members of the Weather Underground to consider that what they were doing might not be right? An educational film
Documentary: the Weather Underground
Review:
One member of the Weather Underground interviewed in this film is quite ambivalent about what he did and says "the Vietnam war drove us crazy". That, in a nutshell, is how the whole movement came about. The members of the underground were the extremist fringe. However, even they had their limits and took precautions to make sure that only property and not lives were destroyed in the bombings they committed after the death of some of their members occurred in a premature explosion in New York City. A most interesting comment is by Todd Gitlin, who denounces the Weather Underground as being made up of those who decided they were right and that anything was justified for their cause (not true, as just mentioned above). He compares their thinking to that of Stalin and Hitler, but curiously he leaves out Richard Nixon, who singlehandedly made decisions (as did presidents before him) that destroyed not hundreds, but thousands of Vietnamese lives and 50,000 American lives. Frustration drives people to do things they would not otherwise do. When the government of a country wages war in the name of its citizens, yet leaves those citizens helpless to stop the war, extremism can easily result as this movie shows so well. Totaling up all the bombings this group did, can it hold even a tiny candle to the amount of terror that was unleashed on a distant county by men who claimed to be thoroughly rational and refused just as adamantly as the members of the Weather Underground to consider that what they were doing might not be right? An educational film