Bill Ayers: Denouncing the U.S. Military Bohemoth
Posted by Mike E on December 27, 2009
RT has carried an interview with Bill Ayers, and then responded to the Fox News hysteria over it.
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KurtFF8 said
A group I’m involved with invited Ayers to come speak at our University last year and the video of the speech is up on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWpgN-icKzc
Obviously at first he comes off as a reformist, but he does quickly distance himself from Obama and the US power structure. His comments on Imperialism and the American structure do come from a history of Leftism, as he was involved in leading SDS and the Weather Underground. He may have become slightly more reformist over the years but I wouldn’t write him off as one (I’m just anticipating such comments apparently hah)
Mike E said
Kurt:
We all need to understand the many different voices in the field, seeking allies and new insights. With someone like Bill Ayers, who clearly wants a radically different world, I don’t think we should act as if the only issue is to insert him (quickly quickly) into some “bag” with a big label on it (“reformist” or whatever) — in order to efficiently (quickly quickly) move past him, without learning or appreciating. A revolution in the United States will take literally millions of people — and many participants who come there from different roads. It is hard to imagine that Bill Ayers will not be an important voice in such events.
Also some people may think we should only post and discuss views that we completely agree with — which (as should be obvious) would lead to a highly impoverished encapsulated political bubble. thanks for sharing your vid.
Matt said
In numerous interviews Bill Ayers has given over the 18 months or so, he repeatedly presents the Weather Underground as an anti-Vietnam War organization. I actually have a good deal of respect for Bill and his former comrades, but it is disingenuous (and unhelpful) of him to portray the Weather Underground so narrowly. The Weather Underground was (or, more accurately, was hoping to be)a vanguard organization for communist revolution. Opposition to the Vietnam War was only part of their battle cry. They explicitly called for revolution to topple U.S. imperialist domination of the Third World, to liberate the black colonies here at home, to “take the war” directly to the U.S. ruling class, to combat fascist attacks on the Panthers, to create revolutionary cultural alternatives to the stultifying, corrupting effects of consumer culture, particularly for our youth…
I don’t know why, exactly, Bill is ignoring or soft-peddling the revolutionary aims and the broad sweep of the Weather Underground’s critique of U.S. capitalism. But we cannot do what Bill suggests — to learn from history — unless we accurately consider what we were (and are) trying to accomplish, and the various paths we have tried to take.
Mike E said
hmmm. It is a bit complicated.
Yes, it is true that when Weather people emerged from SDS they spoke of themselves as a revolutionary vanguard, and spoke of revolutionary war of the people in the U.S.
But all along, there was a deep pessimism mixed in with such claims: because central to the Weather-outlook there quickly emerged a view that the whole dominant white nationality in the U.S. was reactionary (including especially white workers). This came out in the fascination that the Weather people had with the Manson murders (where they started mockingly giving the fork as a hand signal etc.) In other words, they increasingly saw them selves as exceptional individuals from the white nation that had come over to the side of the third world revolutions (fighting inside the mother country). This was (if you think about it) a strategy for a tiny auxilary within the U.S., not for a revolution.
So despite their occasional rhetoric (that continued into the prairie fire document etc.), WOU was (objectively) becoming a highly militant and isolated expression of anti-imperialist protest (rather than an actual revolutionary organization). And their militancy was in many ways an expression of a very extreme moralism — “are you doing all you can to fight for the Vietnamese? Are you taking the same risks they are taking?” — and so on, in ways that jacked up the militancy (to the level of isolated armed attacks) without any correlary strategy of bringing sections of the people along.
In other words, there is some truth to what Bill is now saying: that they were essentially a highly moralized, freaked out, highly militant wing of the antiwar movement — rather than a group with any serious revolutionary strategy or potential.
KurtFF8 said
Mike E, I wasn’t trying to just pigeonhole him or label him, and I certainly didn’t mean to come off as “we should distance ourselves” from him in any way. I feel the opposite (especially about him specifically since I’ve met him and he’s quite an awesome guy who understands activism).
I was trying to anticipate responses like “he’s too ‘pro-Obama’ and we shouldn’t support him” and took a stance similar to what you’ve said.
About the nature of the WU: their main focus was the war, but then again the movements of the Sixties certainly had Vietnam as a major focus point in general. But even many of their actions were indeed unrelated to the war (i.e. the Haymarket Statue bombing, bombings in retaliation to the murder of Fred Hampton, etc. etc.)
I understand why they should be portrayed for what they were: a more general revolutionary organization, but I think Ayers strategy here is to try to link the two by pointing out the popular sentiment against the war at the time and how the WU and SDS were a major part of forming that sentiment.
Matt said
Mike wrote:
Let’s stipulate right up front: the Weather people, as you write, completely lacked any “serious revolutionary strategy or potential.” They were into a deeply twisted macho/moralistic revolutionary suicide schtick: You were either ready to pick up the gun or you were part of the privileged white supremacist imperialist structure, blah, blah, blah…
The fact that they lacked a serious strategy or revolutionary potential does not negate the fact that the Weather Underground saw itself as a force attempting to topple (or at least too materially cripple)the U.S. state. They were not merely an uber-militant anti-war group. Their analysis (however bizzare — the Manson example is a fine demonstration of their weirdness) was far broader than that, and however deluded they were, they considered and presented themselves a revolutionary organization.
My point is simply that a proper analysis and critique of our own history must include the revolutionary movement’s swings into adventurism. And that certainly includes the Weather Underground.
Mike E said
[moderator: This comment has been made into a self standing post]
Matt said
We can let this go.
I did not say that you stated the Weather people were simply “some anti-war group.” I did say that is, more or less, how Ayers is presenting things nowadays and framing things in that fashion does, indeed, represent “a bit of a rewrite.”
You get to exactly WHY I think this is an important point and not simply a matter of rehashing tired arguments: Adventurism (whether by Ayers & Co., Franklin & Co., the BLA … whomever) is left-in-form/right-in-essence. It is inherently an abandonment of the difficult tasks of building a mass movement and is, in fact, destructive of that end.
It is important to get this right because, given the under-developed nature of our movement, the relatively powerful position of the state, and the sharpening contradictions here at home and overseas, adventurism could again pop up as a significant tendency. There are real lessons to learn here that might help prevent others, perhaps young, frustrated, moralistic and idealistic, from heading down similar dead ends in the future.