Running Head: WEATHERRHETORIC

weatherrhetoric
speaking to extremes in support of a righteous cause

robert e g black
california state university, los angeles
coms 573
professor irene grau

ABSTRACT: The following paper analyzes a particular rhetorical event in the history of the
revolutionary underground group Weathermana single speech during their December 1969
Flint, Michigan War Councilthen expands outward to their use of actual explosives to create
what Deluca (1999) calls mind bombs. This paper also used Greggs (1971) notion of the egofunction of protest rhetoric to discover what function both explosive rhetoric and rhetorical
explosions served for the organization. My thesis: Weathermans rhetoric and Weathermans
bombs served the same purpose. My purpose is simple: We need to understand how Weatherman
came to be and how it managed to commit the actions it did, and we must do the same for all
forms of protests because explosive rhetoric does not emerge spontaneously; it comes from
somewhere and it does, indeed, have a point.

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part one : same rhetoric, different day

Whenever there are guns and bombs, the line narrows between politics and terror, between
rebellion and gangsterism. Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days (p. 271)
Sometimes, our rhetoric gets ahead of us. In November of last year, Louis Head,
stepfather to Michael Brown, turned to a group of demonstrators and told them, Burn this
motherfucker down and Burn this bitch down. His stepson had, of course, been killed by
police officers in Ferguson, Missouri months earlier. The decision not to indict Officer Darren
Wilson had just come down. By the end of the day, police and other vehicles were in flames in
Ferguson. Further rioting and violence would occur. Days later, Louis Head tells CNN:
I was so angry and full of raw emotions, as so many others were, and granted, I screamed
out words that I shouldnt have screamed in the heat of the moment... It was wrong, and I
humbly apologize to all those who read my pain and anger as a true desire for what I
want for our community. (Hanna, Perez & Prokupecz, 2014, December 3)
A clear apology. He acknowledges that he spoke in a heated moment of pain and anger and he
spoke without thinking first. But, he continues:
But to place blame solely on me for the conditions of our community, and country, after
the grand jury decision, goes way too far and is as wrong as the decision itself. To declare
a state of emergency and send a message of war, and not peace, before a grand jury
decision was announced is also wrong. (ibid)
His rhetoric backs off from the tone of the apology that precedes it. His anger has lessened but he
clearly still sees a problem. He still sees something wrong. His second line here, about declaring
a state of emergency before the court decision has even been announced, suggests that the blame
for the violence that followed had a cause much bigger than his own heated rhetoric, a cause that
preceded his outburst. Finally, he offers: In the end, Ive lived in this community for a long

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time. The last thing I truly wanted was to see it go up in flames. In spite of my frustration, it
really hurt to see that (ibid). What he wanted and what he said are two very different things. It is
easy for rhetoric to work this way in extreme situations. One of the women in the radical
Weatherman group writes in her poem For Assata Shakur of A ballooning breath of anger
caged inside / Carefully choosing the moment of attack (Dohrn, Ayers & Jones, 1975/2006, p.
82). Choosing that moment of attack, of course, is not so easy when the anger wants out.
In the 1960s, radical groups often turned to radical rhetoric quite deliberately. Sometimes
they went too far, intent to Bring the War Home. One clear example came forty-five years before
Louis Heads public outcry may or may not have fueled violence. At a Weatherman-led SDS
War Council meeting in Flint, Michigan, December 1969, Bernardine Dorhrn quite famously
referenced the Manson murders. Dig it! she began. First they killed those pigs, then they ate
dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victims stomach! Wild!
Years later, Dohrn would claim this was a joke. It was a joke. We were mocking violence in
America. Even in my most inflamed moment I never supported a racist mass murderer (Smith,
2001, September 11, p. E1). Another prominent member of Weatherman, Mark Rudd, contradicts
this in his memoir, Underground. He explains:
We instantly adopted as Weathers salute four fingers held up in the air, invoking the fork
left in Sharon Tates belly. The message was that we shit on all your conventional values,
you murderers of black revolutionaries and Vietnamese babies. There were no limits now
to our politics of transgression. (Rudd, 2009, p 189)
Were Dohrns remarks a joke? The rhetoric of a heated moment? Weatherman member Judy Siff
recalls the War Council as an exciting, frightening, and ultimately cartoonish event (Berger,
2006, p. 122). She explains:

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It was as if everything was in bold and italics. Sometimes you have to psych yourself up
to take on what you believe in... It was like doing a hundred pushupsyou just got
energized by it, even if there were things that you really couldnt relate to. (ibid)
It was a pep rally leading not to a sports game but a potentially violent revolution. Weatherman
member Bill Ayers, after watching Emile de Antonios (1976) documentary Underground, said
he was embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone
knew the way The rigidity and the narcissism. (quoted in Smith, 2001, p. E1). In 1970, he
supposedly summed up Weathermans philosophy: Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars
and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, thats where its really at. He tells
the New York Times that he doesnt remember saying that, but its been quoted so many times
Im beginning to think I did... It was a joke about the distribution of wealth (ibid). On the one
hand, he cannot remember saying it, yet he is sure it was a joke. The surrounding rhetoric was
clear. A huge papier-mch machine gun hung in the ballroom where they held their War
Council. A poster on the wall depicted a rifle and the words PIECE NOW. Gitlin (1987)
describes a twenty-foot poster [that] depicted bullets attached ecumenically to the
Weathermens enemies list: Mayor Daley, Humphrey, Johnson, Nixon, Ronald Reagan, the
Guardianand Sharon Tate... (p. 399). Tate was the victim Dohrn referred to, the one who was
stabbed with a fork. Her image was on the wall at the War Council yet we are supposed to
believe that Dohrn was joking when she dug Tates murder. It may have been simply rhetoric,
something to be said but not necessarily believed, but it is difficult to believe that it was a joke.
Varon (2004) argues that while the War Council and the accidental townhouse
explosion that would kill three members of Weatherman a few months later may represent
striking instances of going too far... Weathermans escalating violence was far from a simple

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case of zealotry or excess. It was also an outraged or even traumatized response to the Vietnam
War, to racism, and to domestic repression (p. 167). Traumatized may be the key word to
understanding the rhetoric of digging mass murder. Rudd explains: There were crazy
discussions at Flint over whether killing white babies was inherently revolutionary, since all
white people are the enemy (p. 189). Being a part of a nation, as they saw it, killing Vietnamese
babies on the other side of the world, they felt a responsibility for it. They were party to
something abhorrentmuch like Louis Head, they probably did not want to see America in
flames, but they saw no other way to stop it but to fight back, with extremist rhetoric and with
explosives. Of equal importance to the extremist rhetoric around the time of the War Council,
Varon argues, is the fact that Weatherman pulled itself back from a kind of abyss; where they
stopped powerfully defined the entire journey (p. 167). This turning point in the rhetoric is vital
in understanding the ongoing transformation, from SDS to Weatherman to Weather
Underground. The Weather Underground iteration of Weatherman communicated with the world
through a series of communiqus statements released to the pressand a series of bombings.
Explosions served as a new rhetoric for an organization making an effort to be less extreme.
Understanding the relationship, violence as rhetoric, is integral to understanding not only
Weatherman but any organization (whether defined in a constitution or simply ad hoc)
responding to the darker aspects of the world, to inequality, to racism, to government-sanctioned
violence and oppression. Building on DeLucas (1999) idea of the image event and Greggs
(1971) ideas about the ego-function of protest, the following paper will explore the rhetoric of
Weatherman, how it changed over time, but more importantly how it did not. Haiman (1967)
acknowledges, much of the current rhetoric of the streets exceeds the bounds of permissible
time, place, and manner (p. 100). If necessary, we must look beyond words to actions.

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Weatherman chose bombs. Those bombs meant something. I do not seek to justify extreme
tactics, necessarily, but it is vital that we look to a group like Weatherman on its own terms, to
neither dismiss image events as gimmicks or the antics of the unruly nor to reduce them to
flares sent out to gain attention for the real rhetoric (DeLuca, 1999, p. 17). We need to
understand how Weatherman came to be and how it managed to commit the actions it did, and
we must do the same for all forms of protests. Explosive rhetoric does not emerge spontaneously;
it comes from somewhere and it does, indeed, have a point.
part two : the ego-function of mind bombs
We were in communication. Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days (p. 227)
Before we get into detail with Weatherman, we should examine the terminology to come.
DeLuca (1999) and Gregg (1971) offer us two ways to look at the explosive rhetoric and
rhetorical explosions of Weatherman.
DeLuca (1999) focuses on environmental organizations like Greenpeace and Earth First!
He tells us, Earth First!, like Greenpeace before them, understands that the significance of direct
actions is in their function as image events in the larger arena of public discourse (p. 6). In other
words, direct action serves the same function as verbal rhetoric, sparking a conversation, even
forcing a response. In examining the actions of Earth First!, DeLuca (1999) writes of
extralinguistic confrontational activities, which is really just a fancy way of describing
anything from a protest in the streets to a Greenpeace Zodiac boat putting itself between a whaler
and its prey to blowing the head off the Haymarket statue in Chicago two years in a row.
Physical actions, intended for public consumption, become what DeLuca calls image events or,
upping his rhetoric briefly, mind bombs. DeLuca cites Robert Hunter, director of Greenpeace,
in describing a mind bomb as an image event that explodes in the publics consciousness to
transform the way people view their world (p. 1). That confrontation with the Zodiac boat and

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the whaling shipGreenpeace failed to stop the harpooning, but they caught the event on film,
and it became the image seen around the world (ibid).
The internal affect of an image event becomes a sort of simulacrum of DeBords
(1970/1967) spectacle, not a collection of images but a social relation among people mediated
by images (para. 4). Images replace words and help to form bonds between people. DeLuca
shifts rhetoric to a new level with his analysis. He explains:
When taken seriously as rhetorical activity, image events challenge a number of tenets of
traditional rhetorical theory and criticism, starting with the notion that rhetoric ideally is
reasoned discourse, with reasoned connoting civil or rational and discourse
connoting words. Although there have been challenges to such a narrow notion of
rhetoric, in practice this conventional conceptualization remains prevalent. (p. 14)
In this paper, we will first look to the words of Weatherman, examining some of their reasoned
discourse before expanding to their actions. We will see that Weathermans words and
Weathermans deeds serve the same functions in terms of its communication with the general
public.
Gregg (1971) suggests that the rhetoric of a protest group also serves an internal egofunction for a protest group like Weatherman and Lake (1983) argues that the kind of rhetoric
Weatherman usedLake specifically studied the American Indian Movementdemonstrates
an underlying militant desire to control their own destinies (p. 132). Essentially, protest
rhetoric that goes beyond what the general public can readily accept, serves a constitutive
function for the in-group. Gregg (1971) explains:
The rhetoric of protest would logically seem to be aimed at those in power or positions
of authority who appear responsible for the conditions being protested. The usual view of

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rhetorical communication expects the entreaties, appeals, arguments, and exhortations of

those asking for change to speak somehow to the basic reasoning and feeling capacities
of those in authority [or, I would add, at least to the general public]. But, contemporary
public protest does not make this kind of appeal. Rather than raise a few specific issues
which might be dealt with by programmatic changes or legislation, spokesmen for protest
movements thrust forward a host of issues or demands. In many cases the demands go
beyond the power of the authorities to act... (p. 73)
The student protest at Columbia University, for example, did put out a list of six specific
demands, reasonable demands that could be answered by the university. But then, in their
rhetoric, the Columbia Strike Coordinating Committee (1968) proclaimed:
But in reality, striking students are responding to the totality of the conditions of our
society, not just one small part of it, the university. We are disgusted with the war, with
racism, with being a part of a system over which we have no control, a system which
demands gross inequalities of wealth and power, a system which denies personal and
social freedom and potential, a system which has to manipulate and repress us in order to
exist. (p. 336)
The strike takes on far larger a reach than the six specific demands. The university cannot end
war. It cannot end racism. It cannot end the system in which it is a cog in this machine. By
making the rhetorical aims so large, actual success becomes impossible. This does not mean that
the group does not want actual success. But, in what is apparently a natural function of protest
rhetoric, the group maintains its existence by continuing to aim bigger and continuing to fail.
Gregg (1971) separates out three conditions or stages to the ego-function of protest
rhetoric, one of which is ego-denial. A protest group can only continue as long as it fails. Actual

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success means the death of the organization. Through these three conditions, a protest group can
constitut[e] self-hood through expression; that is, with establishing, defining, and affirming
ones self-hood as one engages in a rhetorical act (p. 74). The three condition are ego-forming,
ego-maintenance and ego-denial. I have already described, somewhat, ego-denial, and we will
see more detail later in regards to Weatherman. Ego-forming rhetoric, like that in Weathermans
initial statement (Ashley et al, 1969) or its Declaration of a State of War (Dorhn, 1970), brings
the in-group together. These early Weatherman statements serve a basic psychological function
they separate us from them. That way, everyone outside of Weatherman can be lumped together
as guilty, making Weathermans initial plans for bombings that would kill people reasonable.
Fiske (2002) explains: People often attribute the out-groups perceived failings to their essence:
Innate, inherent, enduring attributes, perhaps biological, especially genetic, define category
distinctiveness (p. 125). For Weatherman, this was a troubling position. As we will see later,
they had serious discussions about the morality of killing white babies. White America was the
out-group for Weatherman, but every member of Weatherman was white, every member of
Weatherman was American. This would make very little sense but for Greggs (1971) conditions.
Weathermans very existence served as both ego-forming and ego-denial. Any potential
hypocrisy in Weathermans position really just proved that Weatherman was right. Egomaintenance, though, would have to wait until the birth pangs were over, as the organization
went underground after the War Council.
part three : what historians wont talk about
Memory is a motherfucker. Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days (p. 7)
When it comes to talking about the rhetoric of Weatherman, there are few outsiders who
engage it, and those who do are generally historians, intent not on exploring the rhetoric itself but
the historical role of the group. Even when outside authors do approach Weatherman, the group

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is usually little more than a footnote to the New Left, despite years of bombings and placement
of at least one of its members on the FBIs Most Wanted. The rhetoric of Weatherman is a failed
rhetoric so few bother to look closely. Virtually no outside author really seeks to understand why.
Davis (1988) reviews five books about the New Left and finds, Though the five books describe
often in agonizing detailhow the movement in the United States became demonic, they do not
explain what was wrong at its heart that made it end that way (p. 52). Of course, Davis uses the
hyperbolic demonic to describe the later movement and he sees fit to include details from
Manson murder speech from the Flint War Council and groups together 43 bombings committed
by numerous organizations, essentially severing the individual ideologies and motivations from a
supposed collective ends.1 He becomes as guilty of ignoring what was wrong at its heart in
looking indirectly at the movement.
Those who do look at Weatherman can easily be broken down into two groupsinsiders
(those who had been a part of at least SDS if not Weatherman itself) and outsiders, and insiders,
for obvious reasons have both the best information and the greatest biases. On insider, Todd
Gitlin, author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, left the movement as it became more
radical. Isserman (1989) points out, quite tellingly,
For reasons left unclear, Gitlin pays little attention to the mid-1960s. The years of hope,
in his version of the decade, had already begun to erode by the autumn of 1964, although
it might be argued that, with the great civil rights victory at Selma, Alabama, still to come
1 In Sing a Battle Song, Weatherman members claim responsibility for only 15 bombings in their
timeline, including two explosions of the Haymarket statue in Chicago and the accidental
townhouse bombing in Greenwich Village (Dohrn, Ayers & Jones, 2006, pp. 60-64). One
bombing referenced later in this paperthat of the office of Californias Attorney General Evelle
J. Younger in May 1971while credited to the Weather Underground in a letter, is not on their
list. This bombing is on the FBIs list of bombings and attempted bombings, along with others
for an estimated total around forty. Black (2009) compiled a list of 22 bombings for which
Weatherman was likely directly responsible (pp. 35-37).

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in 1965, and the height of the countercultural utopianism not attained until 1967, this is
an instance in which The Sixties is perhaps more reliable as memoir than history. (p. 996)
Gitlins (1987) version of the history is personal. When he left the movement is when the
movement was on its downward trajectory. The reality becomes irrelevant. Breines (1988),
reviewing Gitlin and several other authors comes down on Gitlin as well. After calling Gitlins
book, For sheer information unequaled, Breines criticizes Gitlins neglect of context
[which] creates the misleading impression that movement participants became militant
extremists with no provocation (p. 533). Nevermind Pachs (2000) contention that televised
[s]hocks and traumas in rapid succession suggested that disorder, disarray, destruction, and
death were the most important facts of American life and international affairs (p. 29). Fire hoses
and dogs turned on civil rights demonstrators (some children) in Birmingham in 1963; police
dragging protesters involved in Berkeleys Free Speech Movement in 1964; the police riot in
Chicago, 1968which some 90 million Americans watched on TV; the violence over Peoples
Park in 1969; the murders of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark; and this is only the
highlights of the list. Add footage and stories coming out of Vietnam and it is not so surprising
that these shocks would lead into the Flint War Council and the violent rhetoric to come. Gitlin
(1987) does not approve of the turn toward militarism and violence, though even he concedes,
Vietnam, whose flattened TV images were the cultures clich, was at once remote and queerly,
heartbreakingly present (p. 318). Breines (1988) continues:
The order in which topics are considered also contributes to that sense [that the turn to
extremism came without provocation]. A long and disapproving section of the book
devoted to the development of militance, the romance with the Third World, and the
hopes for community based on drugs, sex, rocknroll and mysticism precedes the

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discussion of the escalation of the Vietnam War and of racial violence. By its omission
and its arrangement, the book conveys the impression that there was little relationship
between the movements development and government policies. (pp. 533-534)
But, Gitlin is not the only one to reorder or dismiss details. Reviewing thirteen history textbooks,
Schulman (1999) finds, The New Left and the counterculture receive almost no sympathetic
treatment themselves (p. 1529). He calls these things
historical developments that influenced a generation of textbook authors to revise the
standard narrative While every leading text devotes substantial chapters to the Vietnam
War and the African American struggle for rights and power, a measly three or four pages
remain the portion for the white New Left and the counterculture. (ibid)
One of the texts that Schulman reviews, for exampleThe American Pageantoffers up the
Free Speech Movement and the counterculture in a single paragraph before segueing into the
sexual revolution then back into SDS and flower children for just over a page in total. Two
specifics are worth noting: 1) This book does mention Weatherman;
Launched in youthful idealism, many of the cultural revolutions of the 1960s sputtered
out in violence and cynicism. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), once at the
forefront of the antipoverty and antiwar campaigns, had by decades end spawned an
underground terrorist group called the Weathermen. Peaceful civil rights demonstrators
has given way to blockbusting urban riots. (p. 960)
The paragraph goes on to link apparently innocent experimenting with drugs to a loathsome
underworld of drug lords and addicted users but the negativity is already clear. From the
sarcastic quotation marks around revolutions to the usual establishment practice of terming
Weatherman terrorists, The American Pageant does not approve of the later New Left any more

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than Todd Gitlin does. Gitlin (1987) sees Weatherman as embodying the worst of both poles of
the movements long-standing built-in dilemma. Their guilty Third Worldism was a caricature of
the politics-for-others stance, their arrogance an extension of politics-for-selves (p. 396).
Weatherman, Gitlin insists, was a scourge, not an argument (p. 397). 2) The authors of The
American Pageant are also clear in their terminology regarding hippies and student protestors.
Straitlaced guardians of respectability, they tell us, denounced the self-indulgent romanticism
of the flower children as the beginning of the end of modern civilization (p.960). After a
whole two sentences on the incident at Kent State, in which National Guard killed four and
wounded more, The American Pageant tells us simply, The nation fell prey to turmoil as rioters
and arsonists convulsed the land (p. 968). The passive voice here puts the blame on the rioters,
lumping them together with arsonists, immediately after mentioning the National Guard openly
firing on a crowd. Andersons (2007) The Sixties offers more pages to the antiwar movement, but
dismisses the violence as not revolution, just senseless violence (p. 158). Anderson also paints
a biased picture of Weatherman:
The violence resulted from the swelling numbers of youth, but also because a few
activitists had become so frustrated with the war that they tried trashing, a tactic aimed
to stop business as usual. Some radicals vandalized public offices, cut electric or
telephone wires, even burned or bombed buildings, especially selective service or ROTC
offices. Most of the bombs were fire or pipe devices, exploded at night to avoid casualties
but disrupt businesses and public agencies. The most deadly bombing was in New York
City, where three members of the Weathermen were making bombsand blew
themselves up. (ibid).
This would not be so dismissive or disparaging except for the very next sentence:

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In comparison, the most deadly bombing in American history was the federal building in
Oklahoma City in 1995 that killed 168 people, but in 1969 and 1970 radicals issued bomb
threats, forcing numerous evacuations from businesses, university classrooms, and
government buildings. (ibid)
Anderson juxtaposes Weatherman accidentally killing its own members to the bombing of the
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Even if he already hadnt dismissed their actions as
senseless violence he is now also a) suggesting they were failures at that because they didnt
kill as many people and b) lumping together all violent activists with no substantial reference to
their causes. Meanwhile, Anderson offers up Operation Rolling Thunder, in which we dropped
864,000 tons of explosives (more than we dropped in the entirety of the Korean War) onto North
Vietnam matter-of-factly, with a direct (but unequal) reference to an inciting event. He writes:
During spring 1965 the Vietcong attacked a small American base at Pleiku, and that
angered [President] Johnson. Im not going to be the first president to lose a war, said
LBJ and he changed U.S. policy by ordering Operation Rolling Thunderair strikes
against North Vietnam. He also decided that the only way to prevent defeat was to change
policy again, and he sent a few thousand Marines. Previously, the U.S. troops there were
to advise ARVN. Now, the commander in chief gave those 25,000 soldiers new orders:
they could conduct combat missions with ARVN to search out and destroy the enemy. As
one general proclaimed, No one ever won a battle sitting on his ass. (p. 64)
The nations bombs fall virtually without question or comparison; to be fair, while Anderson
does link the bombing to increased antiwar efforts on the very next page, he passes no judgment
on the bombing in Vietnam as he does implicitly the bombing by radicals at home.

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Another example, Burns (1990) Social Movements of the 1960s appropriately spends a
great deal of its pages with antiwar groups, even giving over half a page to Weatherman. And,
Burns does so without implicit judgment; he writes:
While many student activists shifted to antiwar electioneering in the summer and fall [of
1970] a small number expressed their frustration and revolutionary fervor by torching or
bombing dozens of ROTC buildings and other tainted facilities, including a Bank of
America near Santa Barbara and a military research center at the University of Wisconsin
where the bomb (apparently provided by an FBI informant) took a graduate students life.
(p. 109)
Burns writes matter-of-factly, and even includes the FBI involvement parenthetically. Of course,
Burns was an antiwar and draft resistance organizer during the Vietnam War (p. x). His bias
may simply swing the other direction. Schulman (1999) characterizes the usual dismissal of the
New Left and the counterculture in historical texts as setting forth a simplistic narrative:
Panhandling flower children filled the streets, and easily frustrated student radicals grew
increasingly militant because they lacked the patience and discipline for nonviolent protest (p.
1529). Yet, in 1970, an Illinois Senate report called Weatherman an immediate and long-range
threat to the nations internal security and said this new branch of SDS had evolved into an
organization that has risen beyond revolution to the level of anarchy (quoted in Illinois report, p.
72). And, a New York Times panel debated, Are We in the Middle of the Second American
Revolution? (McReynolds, p. 216).
Weatherman remains mostly forgotten, a footnote to SDS. The Manson Murder speech at
the Flint War Council might be left behind entirely, but it is necessary that we look at this
rhetoric, that we explore the rhetoric of the bombs. No group driven to explosions should be

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forgotten. The ability to turn to such extreme measures is something we must understand for the
next time it happens. To understand how Weatherman, or any radical group, can turn to
explosives, we must understand the link between politics and violence so, as Frazer and
Hutchings (2007) argue, we must begin by focusing on the ways in which the link is explicitly
justified. The most obvious of these arguments is the familiar one, that violence is instrumental
for politics because it is an effective means for achieving political ends (p. 181). But, history
and studytends to focus on the winner. Weatherman was not the winner, so its explosive
rhetoric becomes a dismissible means to an unwarranted end if we neglect the details.
part four : the flint war council as it was
...the excessive rhetoric of revolutiontwo parts intellectual exercise, one part armor-piercing
humor. - Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days (p. 153)
A flyer for the War Council bore Santa Claus with a bandolier and a bag overflowing
with weapons. Included in the convention packet was a copy of Honky Tonk Women, an essay
that argued, The pig role forced on men and women by Amerikan society has corroded our
minds and strengththe only way to change that role is to destroy the pigs who want us to
passively accept it (reprinted in Jacobs, 1970, p. 315). It also argued that the change to being
revolutionaries is only real when we are actually fighting and destroying Amerika, ripping her
apart from the inside as the rest of the world destroys her from the outside (ibid, p. 320).
Weatherman member Susan Stern (1974) tells us that the War Council was supposed to be one
big orgy-party-trip, a gathering of the freak counterculture clanWhite Panthers, Motherfucker
types, Weatherpeople, and your average hippie high school dropout, alienated youth, plus various
other Movement people (p. 195). Undercover FBI agent Larry Grathwohl describes the location
upon arrival:

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The meeting took place in an old ballroom in Flint. Its decorations were somber. A large
papier-mch gun hung from the ceiling, its crooked barrel pointing down at a
photograph of President Nixon. A slight draft circulating around the hall twisted the
photograph so that it appeared to be trying to escape from the barrel of the machine gun.
It was an eerie sight. (Grathwohl & Reagan, 1976, p. 100)
Grathwohl skips past what must have been another eerie sight, as Weatherman member Cathy
Wilkerson (1974) describes: On the concrete in front of the door a noticeable bloodstain
remained from a gang shooting just the day before (p. 319). Rudd (2009) offers differing
details, but still links the hall to a fatality; he describes a glass door covered with plywood
because, The night before, a disgruntled patron, bounced from the premises for reasons I never
found out, had fired a single shotgun slug through the closed door. It had struck and killed an
innocent Christmas reveler at the back of the hall... what a fitting place for us to hold SDSs last
National Council meeting (p. 187). Still another set of details comes from Thai Jones (2004),
son of two Weatherman members: In one corner was a pool of blood from a knife fight that had
broken out the night before (p. 208). Is it any wonder that Death and hate obsessed
Weatherman at Flint? (Matusow, 1984, p. 341). Fred Hampton and Mark Clark had been murder
by the police in Chicago only three weeks earlier and the very location of the War Council had
been the site of violence the day before. In addition to the giant papier-mch gun, there was the
PIECE NOW poster mentioned above. Grathwohl describes the walls:
One wall was covered with a montage of black and red posters of Fred Hampton, the
[recently] slain Illinois Black Panther leader, designed to form the words Live Like
him. The rest of the hall was decorated with banners, posters, and photographs of

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Eldridge Cleaver, Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, and Ch Guevara. (Grathwohl
& Reagan, 1976, p. 100)
Wilkerson (1974) refers only to posters of fallen heroes (p. 319). There were a few wooden
folding chairs, but most attendees stood or sat on the floor. Behind the microphone there was a
poster of a pig wearing a police helmet. To the side of the stage was a counter where snacks were
available. Grathwohl points out, A middle-aged black man was serving coffee, donuts, hot dogs,
sodas, potato chips, and peanuts. According to his list of prices, he was not sacrificing profit for
the sake of the revolution (Grathwohl & Reagan, 1976, p. 101). An irony mentioned only by the
undercover FBI agent.
Activities included karate exercises, CSC sessions,2 and the singing of Weather songs
Im dreaming of a white riot to the tune of White Christmas, Weather Machine to the
tune of Yellow Submarine, When Youre a Red to the tune of When Youre a Jet and more.
One song, Lay, Elrod, Lay (sung to the tune of Lay, Lady, Lay) referenced Richard Elrod, a
Chicago lawyer and sheriff hopeful, who was left with a broken neck, quadriparetic (not
paralyzed but having significant weakness in all four limbs) after an altercation with Weatherman
2 Usually drug-fueled in the privacy of the collective, Criticism/Self-Criticism (CSC) sessions involved
members taking turns being the target of everyone elses criticism. Varon (2004) tells us these sessions
sought to encourage political and emotional honesty and group bonding (criticism came first so as to
prevent members from using self-criticism to preempt the scrutiny of others). More deeply, the
Weathermen used the practice to confront and root out their racist, individualist, and chauvinist tendencies.
In tone and substance, the sessions were part political trial, part hazing, part shock therapy, part exorcism,
and, in a word used by more than one former member, part brainwashing. (pp. 58-59)
Ostensibly, CSC sessions should have outed any infiltration by the authorities, as well. However, when Grathwohl
was subject to CSC, he was accused of being a pig and though he had surreptitiously spit out most of his LSD tab,
his heart was racing, his mind running wild with thoughts.
Did they really know who I was? If they did, how did they find out? I recapped what had happened since
[Dianne]Donghi [who he calls the instigating force of the verbal assault here] came to the collective.
She couldnt know anything about me other than what I had told her. She came in suspicious of everybody,
me especially. But this had to be a bluff. (p. 121)
Still, amidst chants and taunts that he was a pig he finally shouted, Im a pig! Im a pig! He explains, This took
them by surprise. The chanting stopped. I screamed louder: Youre right. I am a pig! Then he proceeded to tell
them, Sure, Im a pig... Im a pig because I killed for the pigs in Vietnam. I was on the payroll of a monster that
was destroying innocent men, women and children (p. 122). Grathwohl knew their rhetoric and he passed their test.

WEATHERRHETORIC

18

member Brian Flanagan during the Days of Rage. Lay Elrod lay / Lay in the street for a while /
Stay Elrod stay / Stay in your bed for a while... Stay Elrod stay / Stay in your iron lung / Play
Elrod play / Play with your toes for a while. Varon (2004) argues that this song had a humor
that had turned plainly sick. The lyrics, of course, helped separate the insiders from the outsiders.
When Youre a Red for example, includes the lyrics Whenre youre a red you will fight till
you die / With a gun in your hand and an armed struggle line (quoted in Jacobs, 1970, p. 354).
The rhetoric of violence in song would push some away, but pull others in. The sing-along aspect
of things was, of course, the point, as we will see below. Weatherman members would also dance
each night to music that rattled the walls and would spend the night together in the ballroom,
growing closer (Jones, 2004, p. 209). But first, they had their speeches.
Mark Rudd (2009), a leader at Columbia who would leave Weatherman when it went
underground, calls the speeches performances in themselves. I harked back to my high-school
education: We have to be like Captain Ahab, we have to become monomaniacal and take the
harpoon of righteousness and kill the white whale of imperialism (pp. 188-189). Further, Rudd
offered what Gitlin (1993) calls a pensea clearly sarcastic label, appropriating the French
word for thought a la Blaise PascalIts a wonderful feeling to hit a pig. It must be a really
wonderful feeling to kill a pig or blow up a building. (p. 399). Rudd (2009) asks, Where did
these words come from? Posturing alone doesnt tell the story. They came from my righteous
angerand my griefover what our country was doing in Vietnam and what the police were
doing here at home (p. 189). Ron Jacobs (1997) was too young to be a part of Weatherman but
admits, I found its politics difficult to understand but always admired its style and its ability to
hit targets which in my view deserved to be hit (p. vi). He writes matter-of-factly about the
discussions that followed Rudds speech:

WEATHERRHETORIC

19

Some discussions concerned the necessity for immediate armed violence, others the
targets of that violence. Perhaps to prove the sincerity of their commitment to total
revolution, some Weather members discussed the political correctness of the murder of
white babies. (p. 85)
The latter discussion will be important later in regards to in-group and out-group distinctions.
That last speech of opening night was J.J. who Rudd (2009) calls poetic as always with this
pense: Were against everything thats good and decent in honky America. We will burn and
loot and destroy. We are the incubation of your mothers nightmare (p. 189)
The big speech that everyone loves to cite was that of Weatherman leader Bernardine
Dohrn. Arguably the centerpiece of the War Council, Dohrns speech came after the
announcement to go underground. Gitlin (1993), no longer a part of the Movement, tells us,
Charles Manson, exulted Bernardine Dohrn, truly understood the iniquity of white-skinned
America (p. 399). No other sources that I can find provide this detail. According to Matusow
(1984), the next part of Dohrns speech, celebrated the death of Sharon Tate in her eighth month
of pregnancy because no white baby born in the mother country of the empire deserved to live
(p. 341). Clearly, hes conflating the discussion about killing white babies with Dohrns speech,
but as the War Council was one big rally for Weatherman, this conflation makes sense. In
conflating the two, Matusow cites Susan Stern (1974) who does, indeed, jump from the picture
of Sharon Tate up on the wall, in tribute to Mansons murder of the star in her eighth month of
pregnancy [note the phrasing echoed in Matusow] to I didnt agree that all white babies should
die; I had been a white baby once, and now I was trying to be a revolutionary (p. 204).
Wilkerson (2007) describes the relentless, monotonous glorification of violence throughout the
War Council (p. 319). Stern says, The theme of violence dominated the convention in other

WEATHERRHETORIC

20

ways which disturbed me, because it seemed more the product of insanity and depravity than
revolution (ibid). To be clear, it was not all of the violent rhetoric that disturbed Stern, but she
does single out Dohrns as disturbing. Rudd (2009) also links the discussion about killing white
babies to Dohrns speech; after referencing that discussion, he writes, Out of this bizarre
thinking came Bernardines infamous speech praising Charles Manson and his gangs murder of
actress Sharon Tate, her unborn child, and the LaBiancas (p. 189).
Dohrns comments on the murders have already been quoted above, but let us revisit
them now. 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 victims stomach. Wild! Let us break it down. The second
and third sentences are fairly straight forward (and Dohrns use of the word pigs is clear), but
what matterswhat is open for interpretation when all we have is text and not an audio
recordingare those first and last sentences. Dig it! and Wild! SDS founder Tom Hayden
(1970/2003) tells us how
The language of the Establishment is mutilated by hypocrisy. When love is used in
advertising, peace in foreign policy, freedom in private enterprise, then these words
have been stolen from their humanist origins, and new words become vital for the
identity of people seeking to remake themselves and society. Negroes become blacks,
blacks become Panthers, the oppressors become pigs. Often the only words with
emotional content are those that cannot be spoken or published in the legitimate world:
fuck, motherfucker, shit, and other obscenities. New words are needed to express
feelings: right on, cool, outta sight, freaky. New language becomes a weapon of the
Movement because it is mysterious, threatening to conventional power: Were gonna off
the pig; Were gonna freak the delegates. (p. 378)

WEATHERRHETORIC

21

Dig takes on a new meaning, as does wild. Dig it! could mean that Dohrn digs it, meaning she
likes it. Except, she uses dig it to introduce the description of the Manson murders. She does
not describe them and then say, I can dig that. That would mean something far different than a
simple Dig it at the start means. To dig is to understand or to support. Here, as an introduction,
dig it simply works as an attention getter, like listen up or get this. She is not demonstrating
support, necessarily. Similarly, her wild is not a judgment of rightness or likability. It doesnt
mean that she likes the events she just described (though she may). Insert far out or right on
in the place of wild and you will get two very different effects. In this context, Dohrns
language, if not her attitude, suggest the former over the latter. She is marveling at the craziness
of the Manson murders, not the rightness. At least, her words are. Hart (1997) tells us, what is
not present in a message is often more important than what is present (p. 32). We should not
read into the words tacit approval if the words do not warrant it.
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 victims stomach. Wild! Most descriptions of Dohrns
War Council speech leave it to those four sentences. Limiting it to that makes it sound, indeed, as
Dohrn praising the murders. She may have been doing that, but then we must remember that
Dohrn later claimed this was a joke. Gitlin follows the four sentences by pointing out, Flints
favored greeting was four slightly spread fingersto symbolize the fork (p. 399). Matusow
simplifies the rest of Weathermans years into a single follow-up sentence: After Flint,
Weatherman lived out the guerilla fantasy by going underground to set off bombs against the
property of the empire (p. 342). It is not inaccurate, but it is dismissive in its brevity.

WEATHERRHETORIC

22

There was more to Dohrns speech, of course. In explaining why Dohrn referenced the
Manson murders, Wilkerson (2007) offers us a glimpse at earlier details of the speech; she
writes,
Bernardine Dohrn had come to the Flint convention after walking through the Loop in
downtown Chicago days before Christmas. There, she had been infuriated that people
could lose themselves in a frenzy of Christmas shopping, while people were dying in
their own city as well as in Vietnam. Even worse, while the public seemed disinterested
in the gruesome human consequences of these events, they were voyeuristically hungry
for grisly details of the recent Manson murders in Los Angeles. In her speech, Bernardine
astutely observed that rather than dealing with the real carnage, the press and population
were obsessing on Charlie Manson and his tiny cult following. It was her outrage at this
that provoked her [Manson comments]. (p. 320)
Neither an outsider like Gitlin nor an insider like Rudd make any suggestion that the general
public might have been hungry for details about the murders. Dohrns, and by extension
Weathermans, interest is instead portrayed as anathema, something that only the revolutionary
freaks would have any interest in at all. In fact, Yippie Jerry Rubin visited Manson in prison and,
caricaturing the caricature, as Gitlin (1993) puts it,
wrote, I fell in love with Charlie Manson the first time I saw his cherub face and
sparkling eyes on national TV.... His words and courage inspired [me]... and I felt great
the rest of the day, overwhelmed by the depth of the experience of touching Mansons
soul.... The Los Angeles Free Press let Manson write a column, and ran free ads for a
recording he made; another underground paper, Tuesdays Child, depicted him as a hippie
on the cross. (p. 404)

WEATHERRHETORIC

23

Dohrns Manson comments were neither isolated nor particularly spontaneous. And, given the
potential tongue-in-cheek nature of Rubins description, Dohrns words do sound more like they
could be a joke, mocking Americas unabashed love affair with violence (Berger, 2006, p.
123). But, that doesnt mean we should dismiss them either. They came from a real critique of
public attitudes about violence. Varon (2004) describes an earlier portion of the speech in which
Dohrn
excoriat[ed] the white conspiracy trial defendants [in Chicago] and the left generally for
not tearing up the courtroom when [Bobby] Seale was bound and gagged. According to
Dohrn, this passivity encouraged Chicagos police to kill [Fred] Hampton. (p. 159)
She is indirectly excoriating her audience and all of America for not doing enough when any
unjust violence is taking place. Next, Dohrn presented the ideal Weatherman not simply as a
determined revolutionary but as an unruly agent of disruption and offense (ibid, pp. 159-160).
Varon references a story Gitlin (1993) quotes in more detail:
We were in an airplane and we went up and down the aisle borrowing food from
peoples plates. They didnt know we were Weathermen; they just knew we were crazy.
Thats what were about, being crazy motherfuckers and scaring the shit out of honky
America. (p. 399)
Thats the kind of behavior more emblematic of the Yippies, not Weatherman. Jacobs (1997)
offers one more sentence that came after the Manson lines. Parents are now gonna tell their
kids to stay away from home vacationtheyre afraid theyll get offed in their sleep.
Weatherman wanted to be as scary as Charles Manson. Gitlin calls Manson readymade as the
monster lurking in the heart of every longhair, the rough beast slouching toward Beverly Hills to

WEATHERRHETORIC

24

be born for the next millennium (p. 404).3 Grathwohl, who was quite enamored of Dohrn, offers
up more of the speech that followed:
Next, she criticized white revolutionaries for being afraid of fighting alongside blacks in
the street. Were honkies, she shouted. We cant just stand around and talk about it; we
have to get into armed struggle. She condemned our racist, chauvinistic society and
urged the women to become more involved in all aspects of the movement. (p. 103)
The movement, now, would become more of an armed struggle. Weatherman would go
underground and start fashioning bombs. And sometimes, their rhetoric would get even stronger.
Weatherman member Terry Gold (who would die in the accidental townhouse explosion the
coming March), had written on a subway wall earlier that year: BLOOD TO THE HORSES
BROW, AND WOE TO THOSE WHO CANNOT SWIM. Genocide was on Weathermans mind.
Terry explained the line to Bill Ayers:
It means a vengeful river of blood will wash through this place, and soon. And it will be
way deep, full of wrath, and all the way up to the head of a horse. Terry was sounding
more Old Testament every day. (Ayers, 2001, p. 174)
Their righteous anger was growing. Weatherman members would later dismiss all of this talk
simply as the military error.
part five : from violent rhetoric to rhetorical violence
Theres something about a good bomb. - Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days (p. 17)

3 Gitlin here references both the title of Joan Didions 1968 collection of essays, Slouching
Towards Bethlehem, that paint a very bleak image of the counterculture, particularly in HaightAshbury, and the source of that title, W. B. Yeats poem The Second Coming. Yeats (1919)
poem, of course, speaks of the end of the world and includes the lines, Mere anarchy is loosed
upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of
innocence is drowned... Perhaps Gitlin still romanticizes the counterculture (and Weatherman)
just a little, denouncing them with poetry.

WEATHERRHETORIC

25

Jacobs (1970) calls what took place at the War Council almost a total inversion of
Weathermans projected intentions (p. 308). What were Weathermans projected intentions? In
Weathermans inaugural statementYou Dont Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the
Wind Blowsthe strategy is clear:
...to mobilize the struggle so sharply in so many places that the imperialists cannot
possibly deal with it all. Since it is essential to their interests, they will try to deal with it
all, and will be defeated and destroyed in the process. (Ashley et al, 1969)
Weatherman called for the defeat and destruction of the imperialists. Weatherman wanted to
smash imperialism and a year before the organization went underground, it was already
arguing for secrecy. It writes:
To win a war with an enemy as highly organized and centralized as the imperialists will
require a (clandestine) organization of revolutionaries... Because war is political... the
centralized organization of revolutionaries must be a political as well as military, what is
generally called a Marxist-Leninist party. (ibid)
Weathermans rhetoric included notions of violence and militarism from the start. Jacobs (1970)
argues, If people on the New Left had mixed feelings about Weatherman theory, if they admired
its courage and critically supported its street actions, they were generally disturbed, if not
disgusted, with much of Weathermans performance in Flint (p. 308). Weathermans street
actionschiefly the so-called Days of Rage so farwere deliberately violent, of course.
Jacobs would have us believe that violent rhetoric overpowered actual violence. Jacobs
misunderstands the call for the birth of a new SDS at the War Council as reconstituting what
already was. But, SDS had failed. The new SDS had to be something different. The new SDS
was Weatherman, intent on violence, and sloughing off those who did not support its aims. Yet,

WEATHERRHETORIC

26

he understands quite readily what the rhetoric at the War Council did to operationalize the new
organization; he writes:
Having lost confidence in their own revolution, Weatherpeople could not help but doubt
their own authenticity as revolutionaries. The provocativeness of their flamboyant
rhetoric provided them with the illusion of strength. (p. 311)
This was no illusion of strength, but a legitimate strengthening of the core groupthe socalled Weatherbureauand those closest to it. Gregg (1971) explains that, while rhetoric of
protest would logically seem to be aimed at the power or positions in authority, what really is
happening is that the primary appeal of the rhetoric of protest is to the protestors themselves,
who feel the need for psychological refurbishing and affirmation (pp. 73-74). The antiwar (antiimperialist) movement had been put down violently at Columbia, at Berkeley, at Champaign, at
Harvard, and in the streets of Chicago two years in a row. Weatherman and its followers needed
something to energize them, to galvanize them as a new, cohesive unit. Those who were offended
need not apply. Wilkerson (2007) says of Dohrns Manson remarks,
Perhaps, she was satirizing the publics prurient interest in the murders, or, perhaps, she
was responding to the challenge incipient in the publics obsession with Manson: If only
bizarre violence captured the publics interest, then those who wanted the publics eye
would be forced to provide violence to get their attention.
At the time, the speech was seen by many, myself included, to reinforce the
overall glorification of violence, presumably, I thought, in the spirit of [Marxist scholar
Frantz] Fanon. Violence was cleansing and resurrecting. Violence was the only act that
could absolutely separate us from complicity with what the United States was doing to
injure others. I couldnt see how that kind of violence was cleansing, but I guessed that

WEATHERRHETORIC

27

we had to come so far to make sense of Fanons idea that we were inevitably a little
messy in our process. (p. 321).
The collective in the Greenwich Village townhouse was building a bomb intended for a dance at
Fort Dix. Were going to kill the pigs at Fort Dix, Terry told Rudd. Rudd (2009) assented to
this plan; I, too, wanted this country to have a taste of what it had been dishing out daily in
Southeast Asia over the course of the previous decade (p. 194). They justified their plans quite
simply:
At that point we had determined that there were no innocent Americans, at least no white
ones. Theyweall played some part in the atrocity of Vietnam, if only the passive
roles of ignorance, acquiescence, and acceptance of privilege. Universally guilty, all
Americans were legitimate targets for attack. (ibid)
Simons (1970) tells us, If moderates employ rhetoric as an alternative to force, militants use
rhetoric as an expression, an instrument, and act of force (p. 8). Everything said at the War
Council was an act of force then, and the rhetoric of Weatherman was about to, quite literally,
explode. Explosions would not be very convincing for anyone outside Weatherman. Lake (1983)
explains, regarding the American Indian Movement, Most commentators attribute [AIMs]
failure to the use of protest strategies that are unpersuasive, and indeed repellant, to whites (p.
127). That is, the in-group solidified its own membership by giving them what they needed. For
Weatherman, this is why they had their sing-along at Flint. This is why they had their posters.
Their protest was only aimed outward in part; but part and parcel with the outward rhetoric was
the need to know that we all believe in something, we are all working together. The sing-along
offered a singular voice just when the organization needed one. Ayers (2001) tells us that
Weatherman intended, through their smash monogamy regular trading of sexual partners and

WEATHERRHETORIC

28

group-sex sessions, they were an army of lovers (p. 147). Black (2012) argues, the ondemand sex [of smash monogamy] favored the men of the organization... Refusal to participate in
sexual relations led to dissent, even among the women (p. 19). However successful smash
monogamy was, the point of it was to draw the members of Weatherman closer, like the elite
Sacred Band of Thebes. Like their public protest, like their bombs, it was supposed to strengthen
the glue that held them together as a revolutionary unit.
Additionally, it didnt matter if the rhetoric at the War Council was exclusionary. It didnt
matter if one was put off by the posters or opted out of the sing-along. It didnt matter if the
bombs that followed raised the general publics ire rather than its empathy. Lake (1983) tells us
(again, specifically regarding AIMs protest rhetoric), militant rhetoric serves only to reinforce
in whites nonserious, stereotypic Wild West images of Indian protestors and their cause (p.
127). Seemingly random bombings served only to turn the public against Weatherman.4 Lake
argues against his own only and I must argue against mine. Protest rhetoric primarily serves an
internal, constitutive function, Greggs (1971) ego-function. Its effect on the public was
secondary.
We cannot dismiss the effect on the public. The first Weatherman communiqu was a
Declaration of a State of War against Amerika. And, Weatherman promised to attack a symbol
or institution of Amerikan injustice (Dohrn, 1970/2006, p. 151). A little more than two weeks
4 Keep in mind that without the ubiquitous media coverage that we have today, Weathermans
communiqus went mostly unread or their messages were dismissed because talk of explosions
grabbed attention more completely. The Los Angeles Times, for example, uses the headline Call
Directs Times to Letter in Phone Booth for an article that is, ostensibly, about one communiqu
one for which Weatherman does not claim authorship; nor does it claim responsibility for the
bombing related to it (it is not included in Sing a Battle Song though the FBI file on Weatherman
includes it [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1976, p. 156]), but that is not the point. It takes
seven paragraphs to get to the letter itself, then three paragraphs to describe the letter and
provide one quotation from it. Morrisons (1974) story makes the content of the letter secondary
to the story of a reporter and photographer venturing out to retrieve it.

WEATHERRHETORIC

29

later, a bomb exploded at the New York City Police Headquarters. Ayers (2001) says that with
this singular explosion, the Weathermyth was fully launched (p. 227). He does not explain
what the Weathermyth was, but we can assume it had a different meaning for the public than it
did for those in Weatherman. For those in Weatherman, this was proof; they were capable of
anything. For those outside Weatherman, those outside the Movement altogether, this was,
indeed, also proof that Weatherman was capable of anything, but that was not a comforting
thought. To the general public, Weatherman were terrorists. Ayers (2001) debates this label;
But were not terrorists... no matter how many times they repeat the charge. We came
close, its truewhenever there are guns and bombs, the line narrows between politics
and terror, between rebellion and gangsterism. We were part of a movement, and then of
a tendency toward armed struggle. We crossed the line and came back...
To me the distinction was huge. Terrorists terrorize, they kill innocent civilians, while we
organized and agitated. Terrorists destroy randomly, while our actions bore, we hoped,
the precise stamp of a cut diamond5. Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to
educated. No, were not terrorists. (p. 271)
In its second6 communiqu, Weatherman made clear three things: first, yes, they set the bomb in
the police headquarters; second, they called in a warning beforehand so that no one was hurt;
finally, they picked that target for a specific reason: The pigs in this country are our enemies
(Weatherman, 1970/2006, p. 151). They also proclaimed, Political power grows out of a gun, a
molotov, a riot, a commune... and from the soul of the people (ibid, p. 152). They claimed
solidarity with the people though they did not have it.

5 The specific distinctions are debatable, but the point here is what Weatherman thought of itself.
6 Third, according to the FBI.

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30

Weathermans intention was clear. This explosion was a message, paired with the
communiqu. It was all rhetoric. It was all DeLucas (1999) mind bombs. Dohrn, Ayers and
Jones (2006) explain Weathermans rhetoric as, yes, often overheated, but, they argue, we saw
the actions as theater, a way to penetrate the bourgeois media, poke holes in the imperialist
facade by demonstrating that the U.S. government was not all powerful, and give hope to
resisters everywhere (p. 46). That there are more bombs credited to Weatherman than
Weatherman ever claimed could indicate that copycats were, indeed, given hope. And, that they
were called terrorists may even have worked in their favor. DeLuca (1999) explains: Because
Earth First!s rhetoric and goals fundamentally challenge the discourse of industrialism and
progress, their power is perhaps most evident in the vehemence of the counterrhetoric and
backlash they have provoked (p. 6). Return for a moment to Gitlins (1993) insistence that
Weatherman was a scourge, not an argument, that They were the foam on a sea of rage (p.
397). A scourge is used for punishment. Punishment, logically, follows wrongdoing. Varon
argues, Weatherman seemed to declare themselves the progeny of a sick society now turning on
its creators, and, to strive, however unselfconsciously, to make what was monstrous in American
society apparent by themselves becoming monstrous (p. 165). Weatherman sought to provoke
Amerikan society by blowing up parts of it that served its imperialist actions. Like
Frankensteins monster, Weatherman was born out of a nation regularly committing violence;
how else was Weatherman supposed to express itself? In the film The Weather Underground
(Green & Siegel, 2002), Bernardine Dorhn says, Theres no way to be committed to nonviolence in the most violent society that history has ever created. Im not committed to nonviolence in any way. In the film Underground (de Antonio, Lampson & Wexler, 1976), shot
while Weatherman was underground, Bill Ayers argues that its a common mistake to think that

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31

violence is a choice in political matters. Violence exists in certain social situations and its not a
question of choosing to be violent or non-violent.
Weatherman regularly paired communiqus with bombings. Jones (2004) explains: Over
time the police came to recognize the fingerprints of an authentic Weather action. There was
always a warning ahead of time and a communiqu claiming responsibility afterward (p. 230).
Weatherman member J.J. explains, We put a lot of work into our timing and our choice of target
and our explanation of why we did it (de Antonio, Lampson & Wexler, 1976). When they
bombed a courtroom in the Marin County Civic Center, they dedicate[d] this act to the prisoners
of San Quentin, Soledad and New York, and to all black prisoners of war, demonstrating
solidarity with what they called political prisoners (The Weatherman Underground, 1970/2006,
p. 159) In a lengthy communiqu entitled New MorningChanging Weather, Weatherman
explained in detail how and why it was backing down from the military conception of what we
are doing (Dohrn, 1970/2006, p. 163). Weatherman also explained why it was born, citing the
Greenwich townhouse collective specifically; Because their collective began to define armed
struggle as the only legitimate form of revolutionary action, they did not believe that there was
any revolutionary motion among white youth. It seemed like black and third world people were
going up against Amerikan imperialism alone (ibid). When Weatherman then bombed the
Capitol, it was because it is, along with the White house and the Pentagon, the worldwide
symbol of the government which is now attacking Indochina (Weather Underground,
1971/2006, p. 170). They bombed California prison offices on behalf of prisoner George Jackson
because The prisons are part of a strategy of colonial warfare being waged against the Black
population (Weather Underground, 1971/2006, p. 175). And so on. Each bombing had an
explanation. Each served as an image event, challeng[ing] the association of rhetoric with a

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32

notion of discourse as limited to words (DeLuca, 1999, p. 17). Each bombing was not only
literal but also a mind bomb.
part six : penses
I dont regret setting bombs... I feel we didnt do enough. - Bill Ayers to Smith (2001, E1)
The rhetoric of words and action blended together with Weatherman. The two cannot be
separated. Weatherman deliberately combined the two; with each communiqu came an
explosion. Bombs served to punctuate arguments, arguments served as prelude to explosions.
Crosswhite (2013) argues,
To distinguish rhetoric and violence in an absolute way would be to shut ones eyes and
ears to the testimony of Walter Benjamin, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, Michel
Foucault and others that there is a violence in language and sociality that cannot be fully
eradicated without eradicating language and sociality themselves. (p. 135)
More specifically, and more substantially, given the topic of Weatherman, Crosswhite suggests
that interactions of rhetoric and violence [shape] outcomes that are mostly beyond the reach of
ordinary political actions (p. 163). That is, violence can achieve ends that politics cannot, the
protest cannot. For Weatherman, violence gave it birth, violence gave it life and, if things had
gone a little differently, violence would have given it its death.
Let us return to Greggs (1971) three conditions: ego-formation, ego-denial and egomaintenance. Everything Weatherman did was a rhetorical act. From the Days of Rage protest to
smash monogamy, the War Council to each communiqu/bomb pairing, Weatherman was always
communicating. With itself and with the outside world. Greggs conditions need not be distinctly
separated, nor linear in time. For Weatherman, all three stages cycled and spun around one
another throughout its life. The violent protest of the Days of Rage served as ego-formation for
Weatherman. While the protest a year earlier had transpired under the power of violent police,

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this return to Chicago involved Weatherman members armed and armored and ready for battle.
They formed a new identity in taking the violence to the authorities this time.
The War Council served as a combination of ego-denial and ego-(re-)formation. Jacobs
(1970) argues that coming into the War Council, Weatherman members had lost confidence in
their own revolution [so they] could not help but doubt their own authenticity as revolutionaries
(p. 311). That was their ego-denial. They needed a War Council instead of a General
Meeting because SDS was being left behind with its failures. Weatherman needed to move on.
Jacobs continues: The provocativeness of their flamboyant rhetoric provided them with the
illusion of strength. This helps explain the speeches in praise of barbarism and devilry (ibid).
This was ego-formation, and it also served to draw clear lines between who was with
Weatherman and who was against it. Keep in mind, also that Hamptons and Clarks murders
were only three weeks past; that blow to the Movement was fresh. Referencing it was ego-denial.
Also, digging details of the Manson murders could conceivably work as a surrogate for
discussing these Black Panther deaths in grisly detail. Rudds remarks about being like Captain
Ahab also go to explaining the ego-functions. Being Ahabthats ego-formation. But chasing
the white whalethats ego-denial. Gitlin (1993) argues that the War Council was a public rite
to exorcise the Weathermens last doubts. Their experiments in ego-smashing had succeeded
(pp. 399-400). They may have smashed their individual egos but Weathermans ego was only
being broken down too be built right back up anew.
Identifying with violence abhorrent to the general public gave Weatherman strength. It
solidified its edges, separated it from everyone else. Varon (2004) argues that Manson was
attractive to Weatherman because the murders were

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nihilistic, summoning Doestoevskys formula of distinctly modern crime: Nothing is

forbidden, everything is permitted. To elevate oneself, in [Weatherman member Naomi]
Jaffes words, as at least capable of doing anything, even if the Weathermen had no
intention of repeating his acts. Praising Manson, Weatherman rhetorically blurred the
revolutionary imperative to use any means necessary for political ends with a
fascination with normlessness and total license. (p. 163)
Weatherman needed to feel capable of doing anything. They were the id of the antiwar
movement, a necessary radicalization. They could not be impotent. Wilkerson (2007) concludes
her description of the War Council quite succinctly; she writes, ...maybe this frenzy was
necessary to build up everyones courage (p. 321). They needed courage to be even a portion of
what they hoped to be, a truly revolutionary organization.
Weathermans ego would be denied one more time in March, 1970, three months after the
War Council. The accidental bombing that claimed three Weatherman members dialed the
rhetoric back. The military error went away. No longer did Weatherman want blood. This made
Weathermans action more difficult. Jones (2004) tells us,
A bombs purpose is to kill. It is far easier to build a bomb to kill a hundred people than it
is to construct one that will harm none. Once the Weathermen decided that their bombs
would never hurt people, constructing and placing them became far more complex. (p.
230)
But Weatherman still wanted violence. It needed violence to survive. With each communiqu and
each explosions, Weatherman, now calling itself the Weather Underground Organization (WUO),
performed ego-maintenance (and another round of ego-(re-)formation. Weatherman member
David Gilbert writes in a pamphlet composed in prison, The WUOs recovery from militarism

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35

didnt magically put everything into perfect balance (2002, p. 19). We can take from this simple
statement a couple key facts about Weatherman. It still had its ego-denial; it would never be
perfect. But, every time the FBI got close to catching Weatherman members, there was egoformation, affirmation of the in-group and the righteousness of its cause. The FBI were pigs and
pigs were the enemy. But, most importantly, we can take from Gilberts statement that for
Weatherman, militarism meant violence on the streets, protest with clubs and helmets in the
Days of Rage. Blowing up parts of buildingsthis was not violence. This was almost purely
rhetoric.
Now, come back to Louis Head, Ferguson, Missouri. Burn this motherfucker down.
Burn this bitch down. He is correct when he tells CNN, [T]o place the blame solely on me for
the conditions of our community, and country... goes way too far. The grand jury decision that
prompted Louis Heads outburstthat was ego-denial for a people who needed to feel strength,
needed to feel togetherness. If protest was their only way for ego-(re-)formation, then can we
fault them for it? If actually burning the place down was the only way they could feel something
other than powerlessness, is the fault theirs? Or should we be looking at the larger problems that
meager protest cannot solve? America believes in violence or would not have a history full of
war. As H. Rap Brown once said, violence is as American as cherry pie. That Americas
citizens also believe in violence sometimes is entirely understandable and should be expected.

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part seven : references

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