Back to the future: Ayers and other 60s leftist radicals
See this for a stroll down memory lane, and not an especially pleasant one:
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, the former terrorist leaders of the Weathermen and the Chicago power couple who spotted Obama and moved him up the political ladder getting third row seats to the opening of the Obama Presidential Center spoke more eloquently about what Obama represented than any of the hollow political speeches and media press releases. …
But what [Obama] actually stood for was sitting in the third row and wearing the Communist star. The media didn’t even believe that Obama’s mentor getting a front row seat to the opening of his presidential center while wearing the symbol of a movement responsible for the mass murder of millions mattered.
Bill Ayers was pretty clear about what Obama represented. “The people who tried to say that Obama palled around with terrorists, that he had Palestinian friends, that he had a black nationalist minister, none of that s___ worked,” Ayers told the one reporter who stopped him to chat.
Some of us – actually, many of us – were quite aware of what Obama stood for even back in 2008. The media and the left (but I repeat myself) were devoted to covering it up. But apparently there’s no need to cover it up any more.
Those of us of a certain age can remember the 60s quite well:
The Weathermen were a murderous Marxist terrorist organization dedicated to bringing down the United States. After they realized that planting bombs wouldn’t work, they turned to politics.
And the radicals accomplished with politics what they never managed to do with explosives.
“We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men,” Prairie Fire, a book co-authored by Ayers, Dohrn and other radicals declared. “Revolutionary war will be complicated and protracted. It includes mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political and economic, cultural and military, where all forms are developed in harmony with the armed struggle.”
Barack Obama may have seated his two terrorist mentors in the front rows, but he made no direct reference to them, except for having “found my community here, friendships that would last a lifetime.”
Ah, but remember that Obama claimed back during his first campaign that Ayers was someone he hardly knew, just “a guy” who lived “in the neighborhood.” I wrote this post about the Obama-Ayers connection in 2008 prior to Obama’s first election, and I was hardly alone. But the media was engaged in covering it up, and they succeeded.
So here we are. Ayers is 81 years old now, and retired. But he has managed to have an outsized influence on politics by going into academia and focusing on the field of teaching teachers to teach. That’s how he has shaped the beliefs of several generations of students. He must be very very proud:
Ayers is a retired professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education. His interests include teaching for social justice, urban educational reform, narrative and interpretive research, children in trouble with the law, and related issues. …
Ayers was elected vice president for curriculum studies by the American Educational Research Association in 2008.[48] William H. Schubert, a fellow professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wrote that his election was “a testimony of [Ayers’s] stature and [the] high esteem he holds in the field of education locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally”. Writer Sol Stern, a conservative opponent of progressive education policies, has criticized Ayers as having a virulent “hatred of America”, and said, “Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer.” …
In an interview published in 1995, Ayers characterized his political beliefs at that time and in the 1960s and 1970s: “I am a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist … [Laughs] Maybe I’m the last communist who is willing to admit it. [Laughs]
Funny stuff.
Charlie Kirk was an effective kind of antidote to the poison Ayres & Co. poured into American education, and was murdered for his efficacy. Such are the differences of approach.
He and she still need a helicopter ride, for old times sake.
“I am a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist …
Because the ideals claimed for the philosophy of communism are so vastly superior to the horrors of actual Communist governments in reality. Ayers, the man who never grew up.
Ayers learned from Antonio Gramsci. That’s why he became a professsional educator, to learn how to bend minds, I am sure. And he succeeded. In his pre-educator days, he was not convicted of felonious setting of bombs because of a “technicality”. Now 99% of K thru university faculties and administrators are Leftist.
“Guilty as hell, free as a bird.”
Could he fly from a helicopter?
Call it science.
om, for the rest of his life actually.
CICERO is correct. Ayers influence on the K-PHd level should not be underestimated. He followed Lenin’s advice to take over education, and he accomplished more than he ever could throwing bombs.
The moron DSA wants…(Question for those morons, “exactly how do you intend to do that when you are all dead? Cuz if try this we will kill you all.)
Abolish the Senate: The DSA argues the Senate historically served “very wealthy people” and is not representative of the general population
They propose expanding the House’s powers and making it the sole legislative body.
Replace the President and Supreme Court: The updated platform calls for an executive branch and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress, effectively concentrating power in a single legislative body
Amnesty for all immigrants and defunding the Department of War are also part of the platform
Other sweeping changes: The platform supports abolishing the Electoral College, replacing the two-party system with proportional representation, and establishing public ownership of major corporations and essential industries
It’s a little late. As the saying goes, the horse is out of the barn. Think of how much better the world would have been if three who were given mercy after failed coups/uprisings had instead been executed: Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez. Ditto if Bill and Bernadine had met their fate 50 years ago. (Recall Bernadine’s glee after the Manson killings.)
Some musings on the children, actual or foster, of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn follow.
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn became the foster parents for Chesa Boudin after his parents were sent to prison for participation in the Brinks robbery in 1981. Chesa Boudin visited Venezuela during his backpacking trip through Latin America. For belonging to leftist royalty—check out his Boudin relatives—he was invited to Miraflores, the Venezuelan equivalent of our White House, within 24 hours of his arrival in Caracas. Chesa Boudin spent a year as a translator for Hugo Chavez. Bill later visited Venezuela and, of course, fell in love with Hugo’s Bolivarian “Revolution.” Chesa later was elected AG for San Francisco, until he was voted out of office.
Bill and Bernadette’s son, Zayd Ayers Dohrn, has written a book on his childhood.Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground.
Ron Suskind wrote an interesting book about a DC teen’s struggle to go against his peer culture and do well in academics.A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League. I read it in the 1990s, and recently reread it. From the Amazon blurb:
Cedric Jennings and Zayd Ayers Dohrn were in the same freshman dorm at Brown, and became friends.
Yes, yes, but Barack Obama is Black!
When McCain was running against Obama, he commented about Ayers that “No one cares about some old washed-up communist” or words to that affect.
I thought that showed an appalling lack of perspicacity about several things:
(1) What Ayers was doing, and had been, since he skated on the criminal charges – he was NOT “washed up” at all, but engaged in all the things Neo reviewed here: if McCain didn’t know about that, or himself didn’t care, then he had no business being President.
(2) That Obama was clearly lying about their connection, which signaled a lot about Obama’s character: if McCain wouldn’t pursue the Ayers lead for that alone, then he had no respect for the Office of the President — not that the position has ever been filled with completely honest holders, but at least we shouldn’t start out with such a blatant one.
McCain may not have wanted to throw rocks at that glass house.
(3) That he thought the public (including our generation who knew Ayers, though that demographic is the most likely to vote), should overlook the ties between the terrorist and the enigmatic young politician for some reason, never really specified — what else would he want us to overlook?
Those idiocies told me that McCain was not interested in taking advantage of some major negatives of his opponent even though hammering them would aid his own campaign.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure McCain himself didn’t vote for Obama.
I strongly suspect some of his staff (the Palin haters) might have.
— AesopFan
John McCain has something in common with Hilary Clinton. They both wanted to win, yes, but they both also wanted to win on their own terms.
Hilary got caught by surprise by Obama in 2008, and ended up trying to counter him by running for the ‘conservative Dem’ lane, which is laughable but she did end up getting more total votes than Obama did in the Dem primaries. They were just in the wrong places.
In 2016, she was determined to run on ‘vote for me because I’m a woman and it’s my/our turn!’. She was tired to pretending not to be who she is.
Whatever we might think of Bill Clinton’s Presidency or personal behavior, there’s no question the man is a sharp political analyst and operator. He reportedly urged Hilary to moderate her positions in 2016, and she refused. She’d waited decades and she was tired of compromising.
John McCain wanted to run in 2008 on ‘vote for me because I’m a war hero and I can work with Democrats’. That was his preferred pitch. He even wanted Joe Lieberman as his veep to show his cross-aisle bone fides.
He reportedly said at the start of his campaign that ‘this was where his work making friends with the press would pay off’. Not an exact quote, but he said something to that effect, according to various people.
He was warned by a number of Republican politicians, and by right-leaning media people like Limbaugh, that the press would not be on his side once he had the nomination. But he apparently really, truly believed he had won them over.
Of course, the moment he had the nomination, his ‘friends’ in the press started demanding to know why he was opposing that nice Barack Obama. Suddenly he wasn’t ‘Maverick McCain’ anymore. His assigned role, as far as the media were concerned, was to lose gracefully to Obama. Period.
Anytime he started to use a line or ad or approach that began to draw blood from Obama, the press demanded, “Why are being racist?!” Nothing he said, nothing he argued, nothing he could do would make the MsM treat him the way he was used to being treated. He just wasn’t useful anymore.
McCain’s whole battle plan was dependent on press support or at least openness, and he discovered that it just wasn’t going to happen. You could see the fight draining out of him as the later months of 2008 unfolded and nothing worked and his ‘friends’ treated him as racist scum for challenging Obama.
Without press support, his battle plan was futile. ‘Vote for me because I’m a war hero.’ That vote was already baked in because he was the GOP candidate. Emphasizing it changed nothing in the fall.
‘Vote for me because I can work with Democrats’. That was exactly, precisely the problem, as far as the GOP base was concerned. They knew a President McCain would be a Business Wing, open borders man, and that he would roll over on every social issue.
It could only work if the ‘old media’ supported him in his effort, and absent that, it was an exercise in futility, and I think he knew it once he realized that ‘Maverick McCain’ was no longer in play.
Maybe in theory he could have changed plans, but like Hilary, I don’t think he could bear to do it. He wanted to win his way, on his terms, without the GOP hard core base, and if he couldn’t do that he just more or less gave up.
One reason I really do think he expected the press to back him in 2008 was that afterward, for quite some time, McCain was very quiet. The ‘maverick’ fell mostly silent throughout Obama’s years. When he was on a screen you could sort of see that he was deflated, disillusioned.
Even his own campaign manager from 2000 said in an interview that they knew, going in, that if they didn’t knock out Bush the Younger in the GOP primaries by Super Tuesday, it was over, but that the adoring press coverage went to McCain’s head and he lost sight of why it was happening. The press stroked and fed his ego up until he ceased to be useful in 2008.
I try to remember how I viewed him at that time, since I was the perfect age.
Re: Bill Ayers turns his focus to education
As Patton might have said, “Bill Ayers, you magnificent bastard!”
To be fair Ayer’s first real job was teaching at a “free school” in 1965, based on the well-known Summerhill school in England. That’s where he met Diana Oughton, also of silver spoon heritage, and the two fell in love and became a couple.
Oughton was killed in the notorious Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, helping to build nail bombs to kill Army people at a Fort Dix dance.
Ayers came up with a rationalization that Oughton intentionally set off the bomb being built in order to stop the Fort Dix bombing and the loss of innocent lives.
I doubt it.
Double doubt it. Bad luck and Murphy are one thing, intent to save innocent lives (non soldiers) is another.
Humans are Natural Born Criminals. Then they form governments—and whomever runs it gets to decide which crimes are to be punished, and how big that punishment will be. One side shouts “LOCK HER UP!!!” Later, you’ll hear the other side shout “LOCK HIM UP!!!”
Hold on, my shoulder just started hurting and I need a puff of Medical Marijuana to relieve the pain………………………………………………………………………… puff puff ………………………….
OK, much better now. Pain is gone. Hard to believe that I was once arrested for possession of the stuff…after my probation officer and a cop searched my growing hut illegally. American Justice known as ‘Break a Law to Enforce a Law’. They didn’t find the patches tho…no, not those adhesive strips they now call “Cannabis patches.” These:
Good stuff. OK, where was I? Bill Ayers! Yes, “Guilty as Sin, Free as a Bird,” and another case of American ‘Break a Law to Enforce a Law’ Justice.
Had came out of the City of Miami Police Academy right into the 1968 Republican National Convention being held in Miami Beach, Florida. Miami Beach was in Dade County and most all officers had full county jurisdiction back then, if I recall correctly.
1972 was a big convention year for me, i.e., Democratic National Convention July 10–13 and Republican National Convention August 21–23. Was on the swat team back then. I think the cops may have committed more crimes than the protesters did in at least the Republican Convention. We were all Psyched for Battle (with the Federal Govt spending loads of money on more training & equip). Had Scott Camil in back of car…can’t really say where I wanted to take him (and didn’t have a helicopter), but ended up just taking him to Dade County jail.
Not sure if I had heard of Bill Ayers back then…probably did but can’t recall now. Lots of protesting groups were there tho. SDS for sure. Neo has a lot of good posts up…I’m also commenting here on her “DSA history: Part II” post.
Think: Bill Ayers becoming “SDS leader in 1968 and 1969 as head of an SDS regional group, the “Jesse James Gang”. 1982 “elements existed that merged” into DSA. Obama…we’ll skip him since I get PTSD just thinking about him.
Hold on, my head just started hurting and I need another puff of Medical Marijuana to relieve the pain……………………………… puff ………………………………………… puff puff ………………………….
OK. Neo’s “Trump’s speech on securing elections” post. Look at what all has happened just since Ayers became an SDS leader some 57-58 years ago. I didn’t even include ’Slick Willy’! If you have ever followed Obama’s small ‘c’ communist links – his mother was a communist, and her parents as well. Frank Marshall Davis was Communist big time. Not sure about Jerry Kellman, but probably was whilst just guessing. Anyway, those links got him into Harvard and on to President of the USA.
Ditto on the Anyway, that’s about all my 80-year-old brain can ponder on such. Funny how a straight line runs from a “Jesse James Gang” regional SDS chapter in ’68 to a guy sitting in the Oval Office forty-some years later…and how the folks who’d have hauled me off for a patch of plants back then never batted an eye at any of it. Same country, different rules, same old game: ‘Break a Law to Enforce a Law.‘ Good post, Neo — keeps an old ex-cop’s memory limber. Puff puff, and out.