[lbo-talk] the beating heart of oakland commune: the kitchen

[Carrol Cox]

This is for the most part nonsense. The Weathrman trash's fundamental
principle was the invincible racism of the U.S. working class. (Note that
phrasing is racist: it paints the working-class white. But Weatherman
despite their endless anti-racist slogans was an essentially racist outfit.)
They did not, as has the Black Bloc, even attempt to work with other left
groups. They condemned those SDS members who supported strikes: such strike
support was Opportunist, they said. One of them c laimed (personal
conversation with me) that the only way socialism could come to the U.S. was
through a lengthy occupation by the PLA. One of them, Mark Rudd, as been
decently self-critical. Look up what he has to say about his own actions. 

They were incompetent and fat-headed assholes. Blowing themselves up was
about the best thing they ever did. The smashed the unity of the anti-war
effort. All the tendencies into which SDS degenerated were tragically
sectarian, but Weatherman was too extravagant and stupid to be graced with
any left label.

Carrol

Carrol

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Mike Ballard
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2011 9:35 PM
To: lbo lbo
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] the beating heart of oakland commune: the kitchen

Weatherman said, "We are everywhere." And they were. But, there weren't very
many of them. Max, I'd say about 700, if you include active sympathizers.
Still, that was a lot of people, mostly kids, who took up the challenge of
making a political revolution in order to help stop the Vietnam War and to
participate in what the Weather Underground ideologically understood as a
world revolution in the late '60s-mid '70s. That was one of the BIG problems
with Weatherman. They didn't think too deeply about history or theory. They
were the self-described "action faction" of Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS). They weren't going to wait around while a bunch of armchair
revolutionaries were intellectually masturbating while black, brown, red and
yellow people were being oppressed by white honkeys. No sir-ree, Bob. They
were going to stop the Vietnam War by, "bringing the war home" and align
themselves with the oppressed peoples of the Third World and people of

 colour at home in order to meaningfully participate in the anti-imperialist
peoples' war. "We chose to become guerillas", they announced as they watched
television and saw what they called imperialist soldiers wreaking a
"destruction of peoples' culture."
...from my review of the movie about THEM! full:
http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/2011/01/wobbly-times-number-99.html

Hi-ho,
Mike B)

On 12/7/2011 11:01 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:


> I very seriously want to warn people that even as a metaphor 
> references to Weatherman will lead to degradation of political 
> discourse and political thought. I am still sad that Ron Jacobs wrote 
> a book on them. However you approach them, to do so is to distort 
> history and to distort current thought.

This is one of my favorite lbo-talk posts of all time.

SA

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