The murderers, rapists, arsonists, bombers, and kidnappers of the 1970s won. They won everything they could have dreamed of. Today, every public and non-denominational private school teaches their beliefs like the absolute truth. Every conference in the Humanities does little else but repeat their slogans. The government spent billions on indoctrinating residents of every country in the world into the beliefs of rapist Eldridge Cleaver and murderer Assata Shakur. Terrorist Bill Ayers put his protegee Barack Obama into the White House.
The shocking thing in Days of Rage isn’t that domestic terrorism existed. It’s that it won so decisively. Even the author of the book believes much of what the terrorists wanted us to believe. It’s instinctive, unthinking, and completely unselfconscious. We breathe air. We agree with Assata Shakur.
But it gets worse. We not only rewarded these criminals by adopting their ideology. We took their ideas much further, reaching the depths of leftist absorption that Dohrn and Levasseur couldn’t imagine. We gave them everything they wanted. And then we gave a lot more.
As bad as the events of 1975 were, they dissolve into nothingness in comparison with their consequences.
“There was a sense that these guys might go on doing this, the bombings, literally forever,” a retired FBI officer told Burrough. Back then, I’m sure, it felt like the worst case scenario. Small groups of radicals lashing out violently against a society that didn’t accept their beliefs. Now we know that what’s much worse is when these radicals don’t need to live underground and rob banks to pay for food and dynamite. Because they are in charge and whoever disagrees with them becomes a marginal loser. They dynamite our institutions from within and do a mich better job of it than Weathermen or FALN.
And that’s a real shame.
Clarissa's Blog 
“We, Kemisabe?”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly, it was the working class, and particularly working class men, that told the wouldbe revolutionaries to get stuffed.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/hard-hat-riot-1970-pitted-construction-workers-against-anti-war-protestors-180974831/
LikeLiked by 1 person
The terrorists won, but did terrorism win it? I’m inclined to think it was the long march through the institutions that was more effective here. Though it’s hard to separate in a case like Bill Ayers. Would he have that prominence without being a Weatherman first?
LikeLike
I’d say so. It normalized extra-judicial political violence, provided you can frame it in terms of “justice.” See: BLM riots, violence against ICE officers, or cities boarding up shops the day before an important verdict is due, the idea being that if the judgment is unfavorable to the left, then of course there will be violence. It’s another form of jury intimidation but is treated as the most natural thing in the world.
The left needs tweedy professors for the theory and thugs for the praxis. Everyone serves a function.
LikeLike
I can’t figure out why this is so successful but it is and we’ve seen it during the BLM riots. We are seeing it now. They murder and rampage and then get rewarded by control over the entire society. Is it a form of Stockholm syndrome?
Burrough himself speaks the language of leftist race hustlers but concludes his book by saying that leftist terrorists achieved nothing.
LikeLike
Oh, so he’s a leftie.
Their justification for continuing violence and smothering of political opponents is that they’re the permanent underdog, have not achieved their goals, and the other side is the oppressor, no?
-ethyl
LikeLike
The hardest part for me to get through was where he tells the story of Puerto Ricans who became terrorists because their school lunches didn’t include beans. Burrough clearly perceives it as a genuine grievance.
Oh, and there’s a story of a French Canadian guy who felt like a victim because he was French Canadian. He imagined himself as black and proceeded to bomb and rob banks for years to compensate for the racial persecution he experienced. As a black. Which he definitely wasn’t. This story is also told with great compassion and understanding for the terrorist”s plight.
LikeLike
I think it might be a symptom of success rather than a cause. They’re so passionate and devoted that they’ll do anything.
LikeLike
Clarissa
Kid, just perhaps the romantic cachet, the Robin Hood image, the well meaning, exciting bad guy with noble intentions? It is not like a lot of young student have actually experienced significant violence.
LikeLike
I do think the modern left is smarter about political violence. Fewer random bombings, more targeted assassinations, which are far more effective.
LikeLike
LOL, no, it never works, it cannot. Clarissa’s early history should warn you: hopeless poverty, drunkeness, broken ruined men giving up, while increasingly desperate women try but fail. Because the promised utopia, equality, the underlying wetdream; “from each according to their ability, from each according to their needs” is horseshit². And anybody that has ever created a company understands why. The simple fact is that men work harder to support a spouse, and even harder to support a family. That increased effort creates the surplus, the immense wealth, underlying Western Civilisation. And It takes very, very special kind of stupid to continue to ignore that reality ;-D
LikeLike
Did you mean to reply to someone else? I’m confused how this relates to anything I said.
LikeLike
LOL, I was suggesting that in the longer term the left cannot succeed because their utopian ideas always stubbornly ignore human drives.
LikeLike
Having now finished the epilogue, two things strike me. One, radicals bombed the Senate chamber and nobody even remembers, meanwhile liberals have spent years crying about January 6th. Two, a ton of these people were pardoned by Bill Clinton. Even the “moderate” liberal is an ally of these people.
I still crave an equally detailed book on how the left gradually entered and transformed our institutions. I’m aware of some of the heavyweights, but what about the mass of rank and file bureaucrats?
LikeLike
Nice thread.
LikeLiked by 2 people