Mark Rudd and Bill Ayers - Abominable Petulance

Mark Rudd and Bill Ayers - Abominable Petulance

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/5/739254/-Mark-Rudd-and-Bill-AyersAbominable-Petulance

by thomasrodd
Jun 05, 2009

Mark Rudd has written a new book about his involvement in the 1960s
and 1970s with Students for a Democratic Society ("SDS") and the
Weather Underground, titled "Underground: My Life in SDS and Weatherman."

In the late 1960s, photographs of Rudd's touseled visage were
featured in national magazines that were covering the Columbia
University students, led by SDS, who took over college buildings to
protest the Vietnam War and college plans to expand in African
American neighborhoods. After Rudd was expelled by Columbia, he
rabble-roused against the War and racism on college campuses in his
role as the national head of SDS. Then he joined the Weathermen, a
small, extreme faction of SDS -- to "go underground" and "make the
revolution."

The Weather Underground's strategy was to "bring the war home" ­
mostly by blowing up public buildings. After a number of Weathermen,
including Rudd, came "aboveground" in the late 1970s, they claimed
that their bombings "never hurt anyone." They were lucky in that
regard, but they did manage to make a lot of innocent people very
afraid. (Three Weathermen were killed building a bomb they planned
to attack US soldiers with.) The Weather Underground claimed that
there were no innocents ­ if you weren't part of their revolution,
your workplace and public property were fair game. Rudd does a good
job of explaining how this is the precise attitude that leads to mass murder.

Rudd was featured in Sam Green's 2003 documentary film, "The
Weather Underground." Green's film is a sympathetic portrayal of the
Weather Underground, and it brought Rudd, who had become a college
math teacher, back to popular attention. Since that time, Rudd has
spoken and written extensively about his experiences. Some of his
writings are collected on his website, markrudd.com. Rudd says that
he wrote his new book to help to younger idealists who are working
for social change, by pointing them away from "activism" and toward
"organizing."

Rudd doesn't know very much about organizing, from either a
practical or intellectual viewpoint. His specialty was sound-bite
posturing with the cameras rolling, preferably with a cute girl
watching who would spend the night with a romantic "student
leader." Rudd 's advice about how to work for social change is
heartfelt but shallow.

Rudd's book does have the substantial virtue of being a
prolonged and sincere apology for his part in the idiotic, stupid,
disgusting, criminal behavior of the Weather Underground. In this
respect, Rudd has become a much better human being than his Weather
Underground colleagues Bill Ayers ­ "Obama's pal" -- and his wife
Bernadine Dohrn. They still preen that their opposition to the
Vietnam War moderates or diminishes their culpability for committing
acts that in every way made that evil war last longer! Equally
disgusting is Ayers' and Dohrn's (and Rudd's) pitiful claim to have
been acting in solidarity with African Americans. Like Jonestown,
and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's Oregon commune, the Weather Underground
was at its core a cult whose members "crossed the line." The
leadership of all three groups were self-centered idealists who had
(and still have) a high degree of vulnerability to self-delusion and
moral idiocy.

Rudd's best writing is found not in his book, but in an
essay on his website, where Rudd repudiates and demystifies his
long-time hero, Che Guevara. However, I doubt that any admirer of
Guevara will be brought to a different attitude by reading Rudd's
essay. The romance of violence strikes deep chords in the human
psyche, where rationality holds little sway. "La coeur a ses raisons
que la raison ne connnait point."

Countering Guevara, as world-historical figures, are Gandhi
and Martin Luther King ­also romantic figures, but of the nonviolent
persuasion, which Rudd says he now embraces. Perhaps King's death --
when the nation lost a great soul who could stir the romantic chords
in idealistic young people like Rudd -- helped the Weather
Underground to occur. But given the millions of people who survived
that loss, and went on to work against the war and racism without
becoming childish, violent fools -- it is wrong to view the
Weathermen's conduct (including Rudd's) as anything other than an
abominable kind of petulance.

Few people are likely to pay much attention to Rudd's
advice, and that's just as well ­ his track record is poor, and the
best part of his new book is the fact of his mea culpa, not his
political prescriptions. But the campaign to elect Barack Obama has
its roots deeply in the powerful organizing/electoral tradition of
Bayard Rustin and Saul Alinsky, and even a touch of Gandhi and
King. Maybe, from this blend, change will come -- we can hope!
--

(Tom Rodd, the author of this review, spent two years in a federal
prison in 1964-67 for draft resistance in opposition to the Vietnam
War. He received a Presidential pardon from Jimmy Carter in 1982 and
is a lawyer in West Virginia.)

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