14 episodes
Mother Country Radicals Crooked Media
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- Society & Culture
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4.8 • 29 Ratings
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Zayd Dohrn was born underground - his parents were radicals and counter-culture outlaws, on the run from the FBI. Now Zayd takes us back to the 1970s, when his parents and their young friends in the Weather Underground Organization declared war on the United States government. They brawled with riot cops on the streets of Chicago, bombed the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, broke comrades out of prison, and teamed up with Black militant groups to rob banks, fight racism - and help build a revolution.
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Chapter 1: The Most Dangerous Woman in America
In 1970, a former law student named Bernardine Dohrn declared war on the United States government. Decades later, her son Zayd Ayers Dohrn tells the story of how his mother was radicalized, and became the most wanted woman in America.
For more of the story, check out:
Students for a Democratic Society, The Port Huron Statement (1962)
Revolutionary Youth Movement, "The Weatherman Paper" (1969)
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Chapter 2: Days of Rage
Zayd’s father Bill Ayers joins the Weathermen, and he and his friends teach themselves to be revolutionaries, gearing up to build bombs and brawl with police on the streets of Chicago.
For more of the story, check out:
Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Carlos Marighella, The Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla (1969)
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Chapter 3: I Am A Revolutionary
Jamal Joseph is radicalized at 15, and joins the New York Black Panthers. And a deadly attack by Chicago Police puts both Panthers and Weathermen on a path towards violent revolution.
For more of the story, check out:
Jamal Joseph, Panther Baby: A Life of Rebellion and Reinvention (2012)
Stanley Nelson, The Black Panther Party: Vanguard of the Revolution (2016)
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Chapter 4: Bring the War Home
The Weathermen decide to bring the horrors of the Vietnam War back to America’s doorstep, planning an action that will change the future of the organization, and Zayd’s family, forever.
For more of the story, check out:
Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Antiwar Activist (2001)
Cathy Wilkerson, Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman (2007)
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Chapter 5: New Morning
The Weathermen go underground, and become famous - and infamous - as counter-culture outlaws.
For more of the story, check out:
Thai Jones, A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground (2004)
Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience (1964)
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Chapter 6: The Belly of the Beast, Part I
The FBI targets the Weather Underground, and a split in the Black Panther Party gives rise to a new, more militant organization - the Black Liberation Army.
For more of the story, check out:
The Weather Underground, Prairie Fire: The Politics Of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism (1974)
Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Declassified FBI Files on the Weather Underground Organization (2010)
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Customer Reviews
Fascinating and compelling
Absolutely fascinating informative insight into a dark and confusing time and the motivation (and emotional evolution) of a group
of young radicals. The pod raises questions about civil disobedience and it’s causes - questions and causes that are as relevant today as they were in the 1970s. First hand narrative from major players and Zayd Ayers-Dohrn’s insightful narration make this one of the best pods I have heard. Give it a go!
Terrific
A window into how middle class kids get radicalised, excuse or renounce violence and blame it on the actions of their opponents. On the connections, fleeting and accidental or deliberate and long term between undergrounds in North America. On shocking police brutality towards black citizens. On the sexism and dubious Maoist practices of left micro-organisations. On the ‘60s generation who weren’t going to take it any more, and the ‘70s kids who thought taking up armed resistance was their right and duty. On the influence of charismatic leaders. The beginnings of identity politics and the move away from class consciousness.
“(S)he who fights monsters…”
If the story of the Weather Underground is an important chapter in American history then it’s a cautionary tale – one which proves that any ideal or ideology taken too far becomes a form of extremism, in which violence (even murder) comes to be seen as a necessity of the cause.
For this to be told by the son of Bernardine Dorhn is certainly interesting, who better, in some ways, though it also has the potential to be troubling in its intimacy. The Weather Underground worshipped Lenin, a man who believed the torture and mass killing of those who disagreed with his ideas to be the actions of a moral revolutionary. By all evidence so did Bernardine Dorhn and her compatriots, who also admired figures such as Charles Manson, and felt that their revolution would be sparked by similar acts of ritualised, symbolic violence.
Bernardine’s chapter of the Weather Underground used a four-finger salute, apparently chosen by her, admiringly, to symbolise the fork used to stab Sharon Tate to death. A totally senseless act of murder committed against a house full of Hollywood friends, for no other reason than it would shock America, that it would spark the ‘Helter Skelter’ race-war of Manson’s feverish imaginings. That this was admired, and taken as a kind of inspiration and symbol of their revolution ought to tell you about the views of the people this story centres on, and the kind of regard they had for human life back then, both as expressed and enacted in their own symbolic violence.
I have no right to judge this podcast until it’s complete, I just hope it won’t attempt to wave away the nature of these ideas, and the darkness and cruelty at the centre of them. We cannot afford to lionise or glamorise ideological violence on the far reaches of the left, just as we can’t afford to do so on the far-right, and where they advocate for extremes of intolerance and violence they should surely be treated much the same.