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well, it's a little more complicated than that--the weather underground were kinda on the same order as the autonomen and baader-meinhof group which used actions directed against buildings or prominent individuals as a way of demonstrating that the existing order couldn't maintain the control it pretended to as a way of either undermining the legitimacy of the system as a whole or as a way of trying to accomplish a more limited objective (ending the war in vietnam, which the weathermen pushed into the logic of the existing order as a whole)...so at that level, the term "terrorism" actually named a tactic. i think it turned out to be a bad tactic, accomplishing the opposite from what was intended...but it was part of the death rattle of the anarchist wing of the new left.
none of this stuff has a space in the whitewashed revisionist world of contemporary far-right revisionism made general, and the term "terrorism" is a good index of that--the shift from something that was a self-evidently political tactic to a term that denies the existence of political motivations beyond being Pissy or Jealous or whatever other cretin subjectivising term you want.
fact is that there was every reason to oppose the war in vietnam, and by the early 1970s, had i been old enough, i would have been active in the opposition and can very easily imagine myself seriously considering something like what the weather underground did---i wouldn't support it now because i know how the story turned out---but i can see why they felt it might work, or why they'd be so pissed off with the evil that was the united states in its vietnam war period that they'd resort to those tactics.
the reason that i find this whole redbaiting smear thing so thoroughly distasteful and offensive, really, is that there was EVERY reason to oppose the war in vietnam and EVERY reason to oppose the american political and economic orders which enabled it to happen. so there was EVERY reason to support that opposition, even if you do not agree with the tactics of particular groups. so there's NO PROBLEM with being associated with william ayers. but the fact is that obama was NOT particularly associated with him----this has already been dredged through in this endless sporting event of a campaign.
but coming from palin, now, this is pretty fucking vile stuff.
check out the thread in "found on the net" for some lovely footage of pissy fasco-republicans at a palin speech. it's lovely.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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