bill ayers, bernadine dohrn
kathleen cleaver, john jacobs
mark rudd
unfashionable observations rating: A-
The Weathermen philosophy was entirely based on one very compelling proposition: If you sit back and allow bad things to happen without so much as moving a finger, then you are as guilty as those who perpetrate the evil in question. For the Weathermen, evil was not confined to those who pull the trigger; evil was a state of mind that did not require action at all. Self-complacency and even indifference was enough.
The Weathermen cleverly used this logic to justify their bombings of several government buildings throughout the 1960s and 70s in protest against the Vietnam War. The idea was to “Bring the War Home,” as their slogan proclaimed. They believed that if the anti-war movement was to have any real results, they had to show the American people just how horrible war really was. Only then could the people be mobilized into action (presumably in a state of moral outrage) against the war.
Surely, American people everywhere recognize the horrors of war. Even those that espouse a pro-war sentiment can and do realize the grave consequences of war. However, the Weathermen make the very lucid point that such recognition—whether made by pro-war conservatives or anti-war liberals—is all-too often so abstract and removed from our everyday lives as sheltered Americans that the correlation between belief and reality becomes something of a farce. We believe war is horrible, but allow it to happen at any rate. Therefore, it cannot be that horrible.
According to the Weathermen, even anti-war liberals are guilty of such things as the My Lai massacre because of the fact that they did nothing more than have an opinion on the matter. Participating in a negligible and wholly inconsequential anti-war parade here and there did nothing to alleviate the suffering of those innocents under attack in Vietnam. Merely having an anti-war sentiment was not enough for those who had been massacred. When it came to as grave a moral crisis as war, action was deemed morally imperative. Such was the Weathermen philosophy.
Of course, this kind of logic leads to the absurdist conclusion that violence against innocents—which is precisely the target of the anti-war movement—becomes a necessity. “You have to fight for peace” would be an adequate summary of the Weathermen paradox. But what makes the Weathermen’s paradox particularly suspect is that the target of action is not the people against whom we declare war, but ourselves. We are the enemy. We Americans, who have elected a government that engages in acts of war, are the enemy, because we sit idly by.
In bombing American government buildings for the sake of the anti-war effort, the terror of war was shown to Americans first-hand. The Weathermen believed that it was only through an experience of terror that Americans would be forced to rethink their self-complacent stance on the Vietnam War.
Unfortunately for the Weathermen, fighting war with terror tactics brought with it even more thorny moral issues that they could never quite escape. The Weathermen obviously thought they had the moral upper hand in their ventures, for after all, they were terrorizing Americans for a good cause (or so they reasoned). But much like the self-complacent Americans whose attitudes towards the war they despised, the Weathermen’s philosophy was based on an abstraction that was at all times in conflict with itself. They attempted to achieve a moral end through immoral means. While a clever tactic, the average American could not possibly buy into their philosophy, for the average American was at once the enemy (in indifference) and the savior (in potentially helping to overthrow the government). Such a moral paradox could not sustain itself—or even gain understanding—among the American masses, especially when their buildings were being bombed. Perhaps the Weathermen were too smart for even their own good.
The Weather Underground is an excellent documentary that provocatively illustrates the tension in the philosophy and reality of the Weathermen. Above all, it shows us the all-too thin line separating passion from moral conviction. With a belief that morality is on one’s side, anything is possible. Too much, in fact.
I’d give Sam Green and Bill Siegel's The Weather Underground an A-.
