William Ayers Whitewashes History and the Blood on His Hands

When I heard that Bill Ayers had an op-ed in today’s New York Times, I thought I’d have some fun with the soggy little simp. After all, it’s not every day you get a living, breathing, whining 60’s leftover coming out into the light reeking of fake humility and patchouli-stank for us to point and laugh at.

But, after reading what he wrote, I revised my plan. Yes, Ayers is still a whining little tool, but he’s also pernicious fantasist who bends history to his benefit. His op-ed should be taken seriously because it is history and we need to be careful to get it right. Ayers’ recounting of his ever-so-innocent days as just another protestor who slipped over the line of politeness in a chaotic time is a rank disservice to history and the people he had a hand in killing. Here’s how he begins.

In the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why.

And then he goes on for a couple or three paragraphs about how all that was just a construct of mean ol’ Republicans with nothing else to say. There’s some self-congratulations for his cleverness in not playing their nefarious game. Then came this.

Now that the election is over, I want to say as plainly as I can that the character invented to serve this drama wasn’t me, not even close. Here are the facts:

I never killed or injured anyone. I did join the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, and later resisted the draft and was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations. I became a full-time antiwar organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious — as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.

Those paragraphs are gigantic distortions from a master crap-slinger.

Here’s what Ayers does not tell you. First, he did not found the Weather Underground after that explosion. He renamed what was already called the Weather Underground Organization. That group published a “Declaration of a State of War” on the US government in 1970, before the “accidental explosion”.

The explosion did, as he says, kill three. One of them was his girlfriend at the time, Diana Oughton. The explosion was caused by a nail bomb that Oughton and the rest of Ayers “comrades” were building. In fact, their little party contained several pipe bombs and up to 50 sticks of dynamite, in bundles. So were Ayers’ friends building them to “carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism”? Well, if by “vandalism” he means “detonate several nail bombs during a military dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey” then yes. It is true that the Weather Underground never attacked a human being after that explosion. It is also true that the Weather Underground attacked many people before 1970. In fact, just a couple weeks before Ayers “comrades” blew themselves up, a shrapnel bomb exploded in a police station in San Francisco, killing a young police officer named Brian McDonnell. An undercover FBI information who was inside the Weather Underground in 1969 and 1970 testified that Ayers, a member of the Weather Underground’s Central Committee, knew exactly where the bomb was and what was inside it.

In 1968, Ayers’ group, the Weatherman, launched the “Days of Rage” – four days of rioting and attacks on people and property in Chicago. During that, a lawyer named Richard Elrod was beaten and paralyzed shortly after another police officer was thrown through a plate glass window. The friend of Ayers who did that remains entirely unrepentant and says he was provoked by the unarmed Elrod. Ayers and others exulted over the carnage they created in Chicago in their New Left Notes publication.

All that was prepetrated by the group Ayers claimed never hurt anyone and never targeted anyone.

Again, let me be clear. After Ayers’ friends blew themselves up instead of a few dozen or more civilians, the Weather Underground reorganized and launched mostly ineffective attacks on property. Before that day, however, the Weather Underground (aka: Weathermen) specifically attacked people and was perhaps the most dangerous domestic terorist group our contry has ever known. As a founder and hand-on leader of the group, William Ayers is responsible. He is responsible for the murder of Sgt. McDonnell. He is responsible for the deaths of his fellow terrorists. He is responsible for those killed during the Days of Rage. Those are, as he says, the facts.

His simpering rationalizations do not get around the fact that he has blood on his hands. In a good world, the Times will seek out someone to balance Ayers’ distorted and self-aggrandizing view of the world. His fiction should not stand unchallenged.

(via memeorandum)

Tags: Bill Ayers, Chicago, Domestic Terrorism, New York Times, Progressives, Republicans, The Weathermen, William Ayers