Bernardine Dohrn

From Brian Hecht:

Bernardine Dohrn, tellingly enough, helped set the tone for the Weathermen’s militant agenda. She was arrested for assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest during an attempt to incite a riot during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and even spent time on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List.  In 1969, shortly after members of the Manson Family committed the brutal Tate/LaBianca murders, Dohrn, speaking before an audience of SDS members, exclaimed, “Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.”  Dohrn now claims to have made the remark in jest, “mocking violence in America.” Her recent characterization, however, injects some irony to her tale, as the Weathermen did their level best to increase the amount of violence in America during their heyday. 

Yet, despite her militant track record, Dohrn has managed to secure gainful employment at one of America’s most prestigious law schools. For Dohrn, her current prominent position at Northwestern is the culmination of nearly four decades of violent anti-Americanism.

What is disturbing is that The Mainstream Left continues to embrace those with a history of violence.

Comments

[Laurent]

What is REALLY disturbing is that you forget the amount of violence that USA brought and go on bringing all around the world in the name of capitalism.
The wind always blows the same way, but you don't care about the weather, isn'it?

[Tom McMahon]

So, she was justified in her violence?

[Laurent]

Yes of course she was justified!
At least she didn't kill anybody with their bombings, while the USA government comitted GENOCIDE in Vietnam, that is what is going on doing even now in Iraq.
State violence is the real violence: if you can't see it you're just a hypocrite. And you know every government feeds on hypocrisy.

[Tom McMahon]

The genocide didn't happen in Vietnam while the USA was there, it happened in Cambodia after the USA left. A couple of million or so.

I kinda like this every-6-months form of debate, though. :-)

[Laurent]

Ok so the USA soldiers brought PEACE everywhere they went...every DICTATORSHIP they sustained... Ok ok you're right, keep living in your dreamy reality...

How can you care more about one little Bernardine Dohrn when you should reconsider years and years of american imperialism?

[Tom McMahon]

To be honest, since I made this post about 6 months ago I hadn't really thought about Bernadine Dohrn.

Personally, I'll take "American Imperialism" over Italian Fascism any day.

[Laurent]

To be honest, I think about Bernardine Dohrn and The Weathermen every single day since the imperialist war in Iraq started.

Personally, I suggest you the reading of "The Way The Wind Blew - A History Of The Weather Underground".
You can find it here:

http://www.sunrisedancer.com/radicalreader/library/waythewindblew/

See you next month, or even later...

[Tom McMahon]

See you then! I made your url into a hyperlink, so people can just click on it.

I had these sort of arguments 30 years ago with my high school friends, I still have them now on occasion (with the same friends), and God willing I'll still be arguing with them 30 years from now.

[Jack Friedman]

Laurent, you are a spectacular moron. A perpetual petulent child. Just like Dohrn and her ilk.
Ugh.

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I read that in 2008, Dohrn's husband Bill Ayers wrote that Dohrn was being ironic when she made the statement about the Manson murders. Ayers wrote that he always thought Dohrn's statement was intended to make a political point, "agitated and inflamed and full of rhetorical overkill, and partly as a joke, stupid perhaps, tasteless, but a joke nonetheless", and similar (he said) to jokes about Charles Manson that were being made by Hunter S Thompson and Richard Pryor. Ayers said he had been present at interviews with reporters in which Dohrn had tried to put her statement in context but the reporters had dismissed her explanation.