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TechnoratiSixties Radicals Are Back. But Why?
When is it right – morally necessary, even – to break the law?
Their story seems strange even after all this time. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, small posses emerged from among the most privileged young people in Europe and America and took up arms against the society their parents had built. They bombed the Pentagon, killed some of the most senior businessmen and politicians in Germany and Italy, and became icons. Then they were forgotten – until now.
Across the West, the rebels of Christmas past are back, rattling their rusty old weapons once more. In the US, one of the Weathermen, Bill Ayers, was smeared across the Presidential election after it was revealed that Barack Obama had served on the board of a charity with him. In Germany and Italy, films about the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Brigades have become the home-grown hits of the year. In France, there has been a row after President Sarkozy refused to deport a hunger-striking ex-Red Brigader, Marina Petrella, to Rome.
It's easy to write-off everyone who participated in these acts as purposeless psychos, a Guerrilla High mirroring Columbine High, or to see them as spoiled Oedipussies trying to strike back at Daddy. But the truth is more complex and troubling than that.
Let's start with the group that killed nobody but themselves, because they illustrate the shades of grey in this tale. Bill Ayers joined the Weathermen, he says, for one reason. His country was annihilating a peasant society 10,000 miles away, and after long peaceful protests he kept asking himself: "How can we make the decision-makers hear us if they cannot hear the screams of a little girl burned by napalm?" Ayers' memoir, Fugitive Days, asks: when you see your country murdering three million people for nothing, what should you do?
He explains: "I felt as if my whole generation had turned a corner and walked smack into a rape in progress: the victim, a stranger – small and ragged, she looked poor, she spoke no English, she held no currency. But – and this was the shock – the attacker was a man we all knew well, somebody we'd admired vaguely without ever examining the basis for that admiration."
So they bombed targets linked to the war. They gave warnings, so nobody ever died, except three of the bomb-makers themselves.
In democracies change happens by building voter coalitions, and these bombings drove the centre towards the war-hugging Richard Nixon. One of the group, Diana Oughton, returned from Vietnam and admitted: "The Vietnamese were only mildly interested in our willingness to die and much more animated about how we were going to reach out to our Republican parents, something that didn't interest us at all." These groups had their own toxic ideology, calling for Maoism. Fighting for freedom in the name of Chairman Mao is like fighting for chickens in the name of Colonel Sanders.
Yet the row about Ayers reveals there is still a distortion in our memories of the violence of that time. After condemning Obama for vaguely knowing Ayers, John McCain boasted about his "close friendship" with Henry Kissinger – and nobody noticed the dissonance. While Ayers didn't kill anybody, Kissinger played a key role in killing three million people, overwhelmingly civilians, in a bogus cause. Can it be right to damn one as a terrorist and laud the other as a great statesman?
Other groups went even further than the Weathermen. In Germany, the Baader-Meinhof gang became convinced that fascism was rising again. "This is the generation of Auschwitz! They cannot be reasoned with!" declared leader Gudrun Ensslin. They murdered former Nazi functionaries who had been absorbed into the West German state. But then – drunk on violence – they killed totally innocent people: security guards and holidaymakers. As soon as you target civilians, you have become the monster you claim to be fighting against.
Today, there is another group of wealthy young Westerners determined to bomb their own societies, motivated by hatred of Anglo-American foreign policy and their own totalitarian ideology. Jihadis are much more likely to be doctors and BMW owners than lads from council estates. As Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Of course there are variations in the tune. You can see this in The Baader-Meinhof Complex, where the gang arrive at a Palestinian training camp and proceed to strip. "Anti-imperialism and sexual revolution go together!" they jeer at the jihadis – who consider killing them.
But while the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the jihadis illustrate vile ways of breaching the law in the name of mad ideologies, this still leaves a painful question hanging: are there different times when it is right – morally necessary, even – to break the law? I think there is just such a situation today – and a jury of 12 ordinary British people just agreed with me.
The destruction wrought by global warming makes even the destruction of Vietnam pale. The President of the Maldives just revealed he has to buy land for his people to live on since his entire country is on course to drown in my lifetime. This is one small speck in a global maelstrom. When pundits lecture environmentalists on the need to be "moderate", they fail to see that the environment is not a swing voter in Iowa. It has an independent physical reality, and it is being disastrously destabilised today.
That's why last year, six environmental activists broke into Britain's dirtiest power station in Kingsnorth and tried to stop it spewing its warming gases into the atmosphere. When they came to trial, they called the world's leading scientists to testify. The jury of ordinary people had never seen the evidence presented plainly before. They were so horrified they acquitted the activists and several pledged to join the fight themselves.
These Sixties radicals may be poking back into our consciousness today because – for all their obvious ugliness – they remind us of our own passivity. Drugged by consumerism and comfort, we respond to the great history-shaking challenges of our times by changing our light bulbs. Shorn of the Baader-madness, the Kingsnorth activists – and thousands more environmentalists who lobby and persuade – remind us it doesn't have to be this way. We do not have to stand at the edge of a climatic atrocity and wait listlessly for somebody else to act.
38 Comments so far
Show AllThe greatest generation was -- sorry Tom Brokaw -- the sixties generation. It rightly kicked Amerikkka's ass.
Bring America Back !!!! We gotta be back, do we not ???
These Neocon s.o.b.'s transformed our democracy backwards to pre=1776,
a Monarchy stronghold===Don't you think it is way past time for another
Tea Party ????????????????
Let's all join hands and sing "Kumba-Ya" while we wait for Obama to pull his thumb out of his ass and do something to reverse eight years of Nazi terror.
Using the model of peaceful protest within the framework of representative democracy has accomplished NOTHING.
Obama is a neocon trojan horse just like the Clintons, and after he repeatedly shoots himself in the foot for four interminable years, pausing only to reload, the Nazis will be back for eight more years of unapologetic corporate fascism.
SPREAD THE POWER!
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
what would happen to the companies that build and operate power plants if people drastically reduced their power usage?
People who don't pay attention can be easily scared by loud noises. Give them notice and they will line up.
Hari's positive examples didn't involve violence. As others have noted, this author has lumped together a lot of disparate events. His essay is not helpful in resolving questions about violence as a means toward positive change (also known as a red herring).
Martin Luther King - a key advocate for nonviolent resistance - at one point noted that the United States was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. It's still true today, but few in the United States would say so.
So, that's the answer Hari is looking for: not violent tactics, but education. When average Americans understand what destruction their Democratic and Republican elected representatives have supported - with the people's tax dollars - then there will be no need for resistance, violent or otherwise. People will not stand for it. Today, though, most Americans are blissfully ignorant.
Ayers and the weathermen weren't crazy. They were aware and frustrated. To understand, check out the documentary, "The Weather Underground."
-TIA
As pointed out above, the author blows it in conflating the Weathermen and the German (and Italian) groups. We are going through a period of historical distortion which is over-representing the amount of violence in the 1960's. In reality, there was very little violence, and when it occurred, efforts were made to protect people. In contrast to current times, there were many large, peaceful demonstrations around the country, particularly on university campuses.
Yes, lawbreaking doesn't faze we of the sixties generation. They had laws against cohabitation, unauthorized assembly, pot smoking, all kinds of silly things. There are people serving life sentences in Texas for things I did every day for 30 years. Do I feel like a criminal? Nope. Behavior for habitual felons such as we was based on the sloppy dictates of conscience, not on the letter of the law in the sovereign state of Texas. Of course you don't put bombs in public buildings. And of course you don't sit in a free speech cage because your government has found a way to make it a crime for you to get out on the street and oppose their crappy little wars. We (sixties generation) don't give a shit about laws. We've been lawbreakers all our lives. We fly by the seat of our pants. If you want to get our attention, talk morality, not torts.
It is important to get the terms and laws right on these issues.
"Violence" is too vague.
Terrorism must involve actions that, by intent or context, killing or seriously wounding innocent, non-combatants for political, ideological or other purposes. This applies whether the perpetrator is a government (state terrorism) or a smaller group or a single person.
Sabotage involves attacks on infrastructure, and symbolic attacks, but not attacks against people, combatants, or civilian and/or non-combatants.
Resistance involves attacks on combatants in an occupation situation.
Murder, first or second degree, manslaughter, battery, assault, death threats, kidnapping are mostly all crimes outside of the political context.
The morality of these kinds of things is a separate discussion. So is the legality. But to lump together symbolic bombings, infrastructure sabotage, terrorism as "violence" is too broad of a conceptual stroke to have a useful discussion.
The technical definitions of these exist, vary a bit, but those definitions from the UN are more objective than from the CIA, FBI or other US government agencies.
I knew a woman who told me a story about her group who were outraged that their university was working on napalm. Protests accomplished nothing, so finally they decided to bomb the lab. This was maybe Madison, or maybe it was actually Ann Arbor, I forget. Anyway, they did it at 3 am so no one would be hurt. Turned out there was some nerd in there working, who was killed. She told me this story to show the problem in practice with nonviolent destruction. Yet I think there are times when it's necessary. Attempting to stop an evil through writing letters, attending hearings, calling "your" representatives, organizing demonstrations and rallies, etc., tends to be a waste of time, because the criminals you oppose have planned for and can easily accomodate all such activity. Public education and direct action are the tactics that can actually work...
I speak for myself as one, and I believe we are all a recovering violent people. I wanted to bomb a few things in the '60's, and I don't see myself doing that now. We have in the last 40 years come to the mind-numbing realization that violence is a useless strategy for resolving conflict in a media-shrunken world, that communication IS. Mr. Ayers has evolved, we all have evolved (well, with a few exceptions), and we are just beginning to grasp the true meaning of non-violence. To "face history fully and honestly," as he says, to have a truth and reconciliation event, to support the horrifying grief that must necessarily ensue, is our next step toward recovery from violence as a conflict-resolution strategy. Have we ever made amends for Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The true amends is to shoot all the nuclear weapons into the sun.
We are back because we are needed. Our time has come. If US Democracy can be instituted it is we who will usher it in.
We're back because we were right.
One of the first things we have to do is debunk the myth of leaders and leadership as a panacea and begin to embrace direct democracy, not government that invariably represents the rich and powerful. The only legitimate leaders in a democracy are We the People together.
Conservatives tout leaders and leadership because they know that since they are the loudest and most power hungry they will be the leaders.
In a direct democracy we can be free of the left and right wing authoritarianism of conservative dictatorships. Unlike leaderless anarchy, We the People can lead by referendum.
To me, the difference is between nonviolent law breaking as a political tactic, and violent law breaking as a political tactic: injuring or killing people in the name of dramatizing the need to change government policies that injure or kill people crosses the line between civil disobedience and plain old politically-motivated criminality. Opposition to capital punishment does not morally entitle me to bushwhack the executioner with a sniper rifle.
As I understand it, the Kingsnorth environmental activists committed only a dramatic but nonviolent property crime. They should be able to successfully raise a necessity defense to criminal charges flowing from their protest efforts (and they apparently did just that). Had they instead kidnapped and held hostage the power plant's staff or beheaded the company's chief executive "to stop it spewing its warming gases into the atmosphere", the defense of necessity would no longer apply.
In late 60's Ann Arbor when I lived there, most folks grasped the difference between setting off a bomb in the campus ROTC building in the middle of the night when it was unoccupied, versus setting off the same bomb in daylight when students or faculty were likely to be in the vicinity. What's so difficult about applying this simple distinction today?
Also, who says "Fighting for freedom in the name of Chairman Mao is like fighting for chickens in the name of Colonel Sanders"? It's a cute slogan, but not really a very precise analogy if you were a Vietnamese peasant for instance, or even an American student facing imminent conscription into the US military machine's Indochina infantry meat grinder.
Back then, if you were against the war, I for one wasn't about to quibble about whether your ideology was toxic, or if your motivations were pure. What mattered to me (and most folks in the peace movement of that era) was whether your political tactics included using violence against people as an acceptable means to force an end to US military involvement. Leftist bombings did not drive "the centre towards the war-hugging Richard Nixon." Tricky Dick worked long and hard to pull middle America in that direction through conscious partisan demagoguery. Let's give credit where credit is due.
As Bob Dylan put it with such delicious ambiguity, you don't need the weatherman to know which way the wind blows - but people like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn skated us all right up to the edge nevertheless, and the world is better for their efforts.
Bill from Saginaw
I'm 72 and remember the 1960s. Although it is often portrayed as time of violence, sex, and drugs, it was also a time when freedom was important. We believed that we lived in a free society capable of reform. It was merely a matter of getting the truth out to people. Those who tried to do this were sneered at, discredited, and labelled as radicals or terrorists. I remember Vice-President Agnew (who had to resign because of his problems) referring to the "effete group of impudent snobs". I believe that violence began when people realized that the society was not capable of reform.
After the 60s, it was said the "the center held". It was not the center, it was the power structure that held. It reached its peak (I hope) in the last eight years. At least, this time, there seems to be some agreement on the need for change. This, in spite of Palin's shrill screams of "terrorist".
Good thoughtful post as usual. I mostly agree.
I picked up big time on that Col. Sanders quote also. I find it totally stupid. I hated the leftoid Maoists in my midsts in the late 60s, 70s with their self-flattering confused tactics of swarming whatever meeting they felt like taking over and yelling their revolutionary slogans. (I've been a democratic socialist, atheist, feminist since I was 19... a long time ago!) But the urban 'Maoists' I came across in those years, to me, were more part of the problem than part of the solution. But I'll admit that such small groups differed a lot one from the other.
But imagine the people of Vietnam trying to rid their country of a murderous occupying force...!
I imagine Maoism had a different meaning to them, and even if parts of that ideology were reprehensible, I'm willing to cut those people a lot of slack and Maoism likely served them well as an organizing structure.
Very naive, insensitive, and condescending for the author to treat the Vietnamese as if they were university-cocooned, bourgeois frat-brats, playing at being revolutionaries by yelling at people in and around their university campus.
Apparantly, Hari is wrong again, as the Red Brigade and Bader-Meinhoff and others were rightest Gladio elements. Do please read this account. This is not the first time I've found Hari of publishing disinformation and outright lies. One must also look into Mossad operations using the same sort of "radical-leftist" cover for its European campaign of assassinations and bombings.
Quite correct. These so called leftist terrorist groups were in fact funded by and aided by the CIA and other Government agencies of various Governments to discredit the left and advance the agenda of militarism.
It was simply the European version of Counterintelpro.
Rule of thumb. If a Government agency claims "Ridical leftits" responsible for a bombing or kidnapping, 9 times out of 10 the operation was run with the full blessing and knowledge of that same Government.
Good post. I'm not that knowledgeable on that but I know that basically you're very likely correct. I've certainly read of specific instances where the groups were either started from scratch by the CIA, or infiltrated, and financed and controlled as you suggest.
But you made some very interesting typos (I don't usually pick on typos, because understanding the post is all that counts to me, but yours are so...catchy!)
"Ridical leftits" ...! Love it. (Or you're likely being funny...even better...which would maybe explain the quotes...!?...not sure)
Radicalism has always arisen from underlying conditions. Trying to isolate it will always be fruitless. It is a symptom, not a disease.
Very true, and the answer is to treat the disease, and in this case the only cure lies in deconstruction.
Just as anarchist bombings in the latter 19th & early 20th centuries only sparked reaction rather than revolution, the return to those tactics, both in the Weather & the Baader-Meinhof responses, enabled reactionaries to use them as icons for the assault on all social democracy & prepared the groundwork for the neo-liberal assault on progress in the '90s and early Zero years.
In his "Assault on Reason," Al Gore discussed the difficulties, anchored in the evolution of the brain, in persuading humans that there is an impersonal threat linked to our own daily activities & institutions. Americans only turned against the Vietnam War because the images became unbearable & because Walter Cronkite turned against it; as a people, we never really made the connection between our own imperial economic demands and the destruction in Vietnam -- it just came to seem to be an irrational destructive action, a viewpoint which is embodied in "Apocalypse Now", in which the anti-imperialist theme of "Heart of Darkness" was subsumed by the dark absurdist theme.
Saint-Just:
Americans only turned against the Vietnam War because the images became unbearable & because Walter Cronkite turned against it; as a people, we never really made the connection between our own imperial economic demands and the destruction in Vietnam....
COMMENT:
We don't have a Walter Cronkite today and the unbearable images have been censored by both the US government and the corporate media.
Today we only have an economic connection and that has nothing to do with destroying another country, it has only to do with our pocketbooks, our bank accounts, our mortgages, and the falling value of our dollars.
The only threat the majority of US citizens respond to seems to be to their own money. The only god they respond to is Mammon.
I wouldn't lump the Weathermen with the German and Italian groups for the obvious reasons:degrees of violence. There's a huge range of resistance starting with protest and then civil disobedience. I was just a bit older than the Weathermen. I shall leave that part of the discussion to those who were there.
I WAS there--not as a Weatherman, but as an active member of other groups.
And I still AM here--only not in the US.
I very much take umbrage at the author's description of us as "obviously ugly". Holding up a mirror to society's evils doesn't mean that it's the mirror that is ugly!
moon:Hi. I saw some of your other comments. This article contrasts interestingly with the one higher up by Nicholas Mele, a former diplomat.
This one is fear-mongering.
Which is the hallmark of the Busg Gang.
No kidding. How many times have we had to suffer through hearing about the fake Obama-Ayers connection? This is FOX style fer-mongering at it's best (or worst). At least the article states that Obama only "vaguely" knew Ayers.
Read the article again. He does make some silly statements and he is a fairly typical MSM hack with typical bourgeois notions, but the main theme of the article is sound.
He correctly asserts that groups that killed innocent people to attract attention to their group and/or cause were murderous scum...And I agree.
But he specifies that some groups--like the Weathermen--didn't kill anybody but a few of their own in accidents. And he contrasts Ayers with Kessinger, who "played a key role in killing three million people, overwhelmingly civilians, in a bogus cause. Can it be right to damn one as a terrorist and laud the other as a great statesman?" He's scoring some pretty big points for Ayers by comparing him favorably to a Noble Peace prize winner...who didn't deserve it, of course, but this guy doesn't pull his punches.
"Fear-mongering!????" Did you read the article?
And...there's nothing 'fake' about the Obama/Ayers connection. It did happen, and there wasn't a thing wrong with it; other politicians including Repugs sat on the same boards. The problem was that McCain/Palin exaggerated the connection and bleated stupid, demagogic trash about it. But the connection existed.
I swear some of you people don't even read the article before you get on your high (keyboard) horse and trot off after those windmills.
The author does use his description of some of those ridiculous wanna-be-Che bourgeois frat-brat idiots (as well as some who were much more reasonable, which he describes well) to set up the main point of the article:
The people who were brought to trial for illegally trying to stop Britain's dirtiest power station that spews climate-changing gases... were ACQUITTED!! For good reason, he tells us, because climate change is so nasty.
In other words, illegal action is often necessary to change things. But killing innocent people to attract attention is the work of scum.
Read the article again...all the way through...carefully.
I am not reading-deficient so it is not appropriate to condescend to me. My PhD didn't come out of a box of cracker jacks.
The article was a confused muddle designed to stoke the fires of fear among fearful gringos. Just like everything else in the MSM.
(That would be a box of Cracker Jacks...capitals for brand names...)
Well...You didn't get the point of that article, that's for sure: "...designed to stoke the fires of fear..." Not at all. How can you possibly read that into an article that is quite fair and reasonable?
Bragging about having a PhD is not a strong way to debate. Naturally, it appears suspect, but even if true, I'm profoundly unimpressed by graduate degrees. I've known so many totally stupid, and parasitic dimbulbs with PhDs...
Think of Wolfowitz, who got everything wrong about Irak and who had no notion of the religious situation in the country. He didn't make an ass of himself at the World Bank because of his shenanigans with his honey; he was such a simpleton with his idiot neo-con foolishness that the staff desperately wanted to get rid of him...and they did; the actual charges was pretext. A typical over-educated, egotistical, moronic schmuck. Hitler was surrounded by morons with PhDs.
Think of Friedman at the U. of Chicago who spewed the most abject, moronic trash and 'trained' thousands of PhD'd twits all bleating this unbelievably stupid garbage about the business/financial world needing no regulations!!! LOL!! What a gang of PhD'd simpletons.
All the totally stupid, perfectly useless, parasitic PhDs in America wouldn't fit in the New Orleans Superdome. Anyway...
The article by Hari is completely reasonable and even kind to 60s radicals. The only problem, really, is that stupid Col. Sanders comment. Other than that it strongly makes an extremely important point: that deeply desirable (sometimes desperately needed..) change often requires illegal action because that's the only way to get there. Any solid radical knows that, but the MSM rarely says something like that. He out and out states that the acquittal of those people who broke the law for a good cause, was correct. Fear mongering!!!!??????
He is extremely kind to Ayers by explaining his reasons for turning to radical action (from Ayers' memoir, Fugitive Days, that he generously mentions) and those reasons sound extremely reasonable: his country was murdering millions of Vietnamese and legal protest was getting absolutely nowhere.
Hari explains that they bombed targets associated with the war and gave warnings so nobody was hurt. Fear mongering!???
He makes John McCain look like a no-integrity idiot for attacking Obama with the Ayers demagogery while chumming with Kissinger, whom he attacks directly: "While Ayers didn't kill anybody, Kissinger played a key role in killing three million people, overwhelmingly civilians, in a bogus cause. Can it be right to damn one as a terrorist and laud the other as a great statesman?" Fear mongering!?????
He even bends over backwards to be fair with the nasty, stupid Baader-Meinhof gang that did horrible things, by explaining that "They murdered former Nazi functionaries who had been absorbed into the West German state." Fear mongering!???
He finishes by stating that for all their blemishes, 60s radicals "...remind us of our own passivity. Drugged by consumerism and comfort, we respond to the great history-shaking challenges of our times by changing our light bulbs." A very good comment about the vast majority who talk green but don't go much further than changing a few light bulbs. A funny comment, and an extremely pertinent one.
That this article indulges in fear-mongering is simply ridiculous.
And your comment that this stoking of fear is: "Just like everything else in the MSM"!!???? EVERYTHING!!!!
Such blanket statements are obviously silly and wrong. I go on for days about what is wrong with the MSM ....But there are plenty of fantastic reporters who publish in the MSM. Molly Ivens, who is no longer with us. People like Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, and Bob Herbert of the NYTimes, who not only analyse certain things very well, but who predict...and turn out right. Krugman warned and explained clearly about the lack of regs and the housing bubble for a couple of years. He made specific predictions that came true. And those Friedman/Ayn Rand morons thought they knew better.
George Monbiot and Greg Palast, who both appear on the BBC and publish in the Gardian are excellent...Isn't that MSM enough?
Read the article by Linda McQuaig (carefully...) in yesterday's CD. She writes in Canada for the Toronto Star, the biggest daily in the country. Is that mainstream enough for you. And she's simply excellent. Extreme statements like you make are so obviously wrong and even silly.
On your honor, I ask you to give me just give one single, simple, well-explained
example of fear mongering in that article.
You are protesting waaay too much.
Continuing to attack me personally--even for the generic use of cracker jacks--just makes you look like an insecure blowhard.
Buzz off.
Who's insecure...?
Attacking you personnally...!?? You really don't understand anything. I'm simply explaining how silly is your statement that the article is fear-mongering.
By the way, the generic of Cracker Jacks is....pop corn. 'Cracker Jacks' is a brand name. 'A box of Cracker Jacks' takes capitals.
hey, mellow out! You think you're a "realist"? Get real, dude! Like she said, "buzz off"!
Hey doggystyle, what are you doing here days after the conversation? Did you just wake up? And what business is it of yours?
I don't think I'm a realist, I am a realist. It's not that difficult; you might want to try it. As your silly name implies, you're probably 'in the moon'.
"Buzz off"....!!??? You guys sure are tough!
Moon trashes a very decent article that made perfect sense and that any progressive should understand: Desperately needed change often requires illegal action.
She ridiculously called it 'fear mongering' and I debated her on that point...that she was obviously wrong.
So what have you got to contribute to this, little doggy?
Why are you calling Upper Middle class kids who became radicals "frat brats"?
Why not?
Unfortunately the US arent so easy on public protests.
Activists go after an animal torture lab by having people write nasty letters to scientists or shareholders and the government calls it terrorism.
Grand jury trials...
Getting 20 year sentences.
The government even baits people into committing illegal acts.
Hopefully this sort of thing will be less under Obama.