Fact Checking Statements on the Weather Underground

While I think it's best to understand the historical context that helped the Weather Undergound come to the surface, there's a lot of good reason why people from all stripes in the US (including myself) are furious at the Weather Underground.

But as far as I know, it is factually wrong to imply as the McCain campaigns Robocalls have, that the Weather Underground killed any innocent civilians. I'm pretty sure that there was a short phase within their history when their most extreme wing had decided that attacking civilians would be justified. Of course, this was crossing a line that is despicable. The result of this, however, was that this extreme wing had created a bomb and accidentally killed themselves in the process. They were the only ones to die. After that the Weather Underground reevaluated their approach and did their best to make sure that innocent civilians would not be physically harmed by their acts of terrorism. And they were not. That's not a defense of the Weather Underground. But they were a lot more like Fight Club and a lot less like what we think of when we think of traditional terrorism.

At this point, it is disappointing though not shocking to watch the mainstream media's critique of activism in the 1960's of which the Weather Underground only consisted of a tiny minority. We sometimes make parallels between Iraq and Vietnam.

However, what goes little mentioned is that the FBI's COINTELPRO program which was established under the auspices of fighting Soviet/communist ties within the US ended up being used to attack the constitutional rights of many members of BOTH the left and the right. In the case of Black Panther Fred Hampton who was expecting a child and who never laid a finger on any one, the US government assassinated him while in his sleep by shooting him about seventeen times and then made it look like it was a shoot out between he and the Chicago Police. Even writing that makes me feel like I sound like some sort of delusional throwback who thinks the government is out to get us. I don't this this. But sometimes the facts are as strange as ficiton.

Further, in the case of Dr. King, very few realize the measures to which the FBI took in order to have Dr. King either kill himself or have someone assassinate him (black mailing him with tapes of his affairs, publishing his hotel room in a local paper...the hotel in which he was killed). This would in turn remind us of what a shame it is that people can name any building after J Edgar Hoover with a straight face.

And even less mentioned are the hideous acts that COINTELPRO took against the Ku Klux Klan (though those don't involve assassinations) and were, I believe, authorized (sadly) by Bobby Kennedy who I am a big fan of.

Why I bring all of this up is that Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground as a threat were never any thing compared to COINTELPRO. In fact, most members of the Weather Underground got off without jail time because of how many constitutional rights the FBI had stripped them of. After 1978 the FBI lost it's power to declare underground wars against it's own citizens.

After 9/11/01 it regained many of those powers.

It's not an issue that any one on wants to talk about right now before the election, but if there's any frightening parallels between now and the 1960's and 70's it's not the history of either the left or the right. It's the unchecked power of the FBI.

The Right's narration of the Weather Underground killing Americans is somewhat delusional. Not entirely wrong as they did intend to at one point and did kill their own members on accident. But still. It's factually inaccurate and on a much deeper level, ignores the larger threats being posed at that time by the FBI.