This is the latest in a weekly series of exclusive interviews with Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, who has just released a major book revealing how communists, from Moscow to New York to Chicago, have long manipulated America’s liberals/progressives. Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century, is based on an unprecedented volume of declassified materials. Dinesh D’Souza calls Dupes “a significant addition to our historical understanding of the past hundred years.” Big Peace’s own Peter Schweizer calls it the “21st century equivalent” to Whittaker Chambers’ classic Witness.
Big Peace: Professor Kengor, in the last two interviews (click here and here), we looked at “Progressives for Obama”–Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Mark Rudd, plus other ’60s radical communists who emerged as “progressives” backing Obama for president. Today, we’re transitioning to Weathermen for Obama, referring to the ’60s extremists who deemed Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) not extreme enough.
Kengor: Yes, they spawned the Weathermen (or simply “Weatherman”), which eventually became the Weather Underground.
Mark Rudd, the SDS spearhead at Columbia, was pivotal. He summed up: “My friends and I formed an underground revolutionary guerrilla band called Weatherman which had as its goal the violent overthrow of the United States government.”
This gets ahead of the narrative but, in 2008, they saw in Obama a way to transform America not through violent overthrow but the ballot box. They simply needed enough duped Democrats and moderates and independents to elect Obama under the banner of “change.”
Big Peace: Sticking with this transition to the Weathermen, they likewise were communists, right?
Kengor: Yes. The shift toward the Weathermen was the culmination of a rift within SDS. SDS had soured into a witches’ brew of varying factions, from anti-war liberals to Maoists, followers of Che and Fidel, and even the occasional Stalinist. Rudd was disturbed by the unusual “adulation of Joseph Stalin” among some comrades.
Another critical area of separation was the divergent feelings about violence. Advocacy of violence was a central reason why Weathermen went underground. But it wasn’t the only reason. Some were interacting with foreign adversaries. Bill Ayers was inspired by the Cuban revolution–still is. Ayers is currently swept up with Hugo Chavez, as are many “Progressives for Obama.” Not coincidentally, Chavez is a huge fan of Obama, who he calls “hope.”
In Dupes, I look at the connection between the Weathermen and Cuba, the KGB, Soviet Bloc, and Vietcong.
Big Peace: In Chicago from 1968-69, these folks held several major events. You have a couple chapters on this in Dupes.
Kengor: Yes, the slogan was “BRING THE WAR HOME!” One of the wild apparatchiks, John Jacobs, yet another product of Columbia, was the sloganeer. He declared an “all-out civil war over Vietnam” and against “fascist U.S. imperialism.” Jacobs also declared that “The Elections Don’t Mean Sh-t.”
I find that ironic. In 2008, with the advent of Obama, elections finally meant something to the old comrades–so long as enough traditional Democrats and moderates could be brought along.
In October 1969, they uncorked their National Action in Chicago. Rudd affirmed the cornerstone of the plan: “In Chicago the pigs [police] have to be wiped out. We’re going to fight with violence and wipe out Chicago.”
Big Peace: Also there were Ayers, Dohrn, Hayden, the usual suspects. You write that “what ensued was an organized riot.”
Kengor: Yes, commencing on October 5, 1969, when the peace-loving “flower children” dynamited the statue commemorating the Chicago police killed in the 1886 Haymarket Riot. To these “progressives,” the police weren’t Chicago’s finest, or veterans of the force or (in many cases) World War II, but jackbooted swine. They clashed with over 1,000 police, many injured, and one city official paralyzed.
Big Peace: Of course, Bernardine Dohrn was there.
Kengor: The day after the initial rampage, the young Reds were licking their wounds, bruised and beaten. There to buck up the boys and girls at a Grant Park rally was Bernardine Dohrn, anointed commissar of the “Women’s Militia.”
Speaking of ironies, this was the same spot where the comrades later assembled to celebrate Barack Obama’s coronation. Think about it: 40 years earlier, they had sabotaged the Democrats’ convention in Chicago. Now, the Democrats finally agreed with them on a president. They won.
Big Peace: You write that the most infamous moment was the “War Council” held in Flint, Michigan on December 27, 1969, attended by some 400 “student troops.” John Jacobs created another fitting slogan: “We’re against everything that’s good and decent.”
Kengor: Yes, that was quickly made manifest when an indecent Bernardine Dohrn grabbed the microphone and, true to form, went on a scorching rant, shouting: “We’re about being crazy motherf—ers!”
Like a radical revival meeting, Mark Rudd got caught up in the fervor, uttering words he later regretted: “It’s a wonderful feeling to hit a pig. It must be a really wonderful feeling to kill a pig or blow up something.”
Likewise moved by the spirit, Kathy Boudin, a red-diaper baby who later did prison-time for murder, and today is on Columbia’s faculty, declared all mothers of white children to be “pig mothers.” She spoke of “doing some sh-t like political assassinations.”
Big Peace: Worst of all was Dohrn. This is where she did the four-finger salute?
Kengor: Bernardine enriched the brethren with her ruminations on the Tate-LaBianca murders, committed by the satanic Charles Manson “family.” The victims got no sympathy from Dohrn, the future childcare advocate who today is a faculty member at Northwestern University.
The crime done by the Manson clan was horrific. They ripped open Tate, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant, and shoved a fork in her belly. Bernardine Dohrn, professor of child education, saw a kind of deliciousness in these “revolutionaries,” sharing her feelings with the assembled. Dohrn thrilled: “Dig it! First they killed those pigs. Then they ate dinner in the same room with them. Then they even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!”
Big Peace: Dohrn was serious, right?
Kengor: Dead serious. The faithful in the room, including Bernadine’s sweetheart, Bill Ayers, knew she was serious. In 1980, David Horowitz, an ex-communist who today is fearless in exposing the insane left, interviewed 30 members of the Weather Underground present at the War Council. He said not one of them doubted that Dohrn was anything but serious.
Indeed, they “dug it.” As Mark Rudd reported, the assembled “instantly adopted as Weather’s salute four fingers held up in the air, invoking the fork left in Sharon Tate’s belly.”
Big Peace: This isn’t the flowery image of the ’60s children dancing with daisies and holding up two fingers for peace.
Kengor: No. Today, there’s no Kodak moment of the four-finger salute tacked on bulletin boards outside the offices of these tenured radicals, to be observed by duped education majors.
In hindsight, this was a turning point. A line had been crossed, like the Jacobins after the first drop of the guillotine. The blood began to flow, rushing from the altar where Bishop Dohrn saluted and exhorted the faithful. Domestic terror cells, bomb-making units, criminal acts, murder, death–all followed. The Weather Underground proudly took credit for upwards of a dozen bombings. I won’t go through those here.
Big Peace: We should add that this is ironic given Bernardine Dohrn’s new comments labeling the Tea Party as violent extremists. There’s a post at David Horowitz’s website where Dohrn, interviewed on video, says that.
Kengor: I’m not shocked. There are no limits to the Left’s self-delusion.
Big Peace: These people today are Obama supporters?
Kengor: Absolutely. As I document in the book, Dohrn and Ayers even made a political donation to Obama. They gave Obama a political blessing in their living room in Chicago in 1995.
Big Peace: Next week, let’s take a closer look at the Weather Underground, including their manifesto, Prairie Fire.
Kengor: Sure. Not only are three of the authors of Prairie Fire core Obama supporters but one–I know this is unbelievable–reportedly helped put together the “stimulus” package. We can look at that next week. Or, if you can’t wait, buy the book!
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