William Ayers On George Orwell and John McCain
Walter Shapiro, my former boss and continuing mentor, has a fascinating interview up at Salon with former "domestic terrorist" William Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground. It's notable because Shapiro and Ayers go way back, as "guys in the neighborhood" in 1968 at the University of Michigan, but also because it gives one of the clearest pictures yet of Ayers' view of the 2008 campaign and the legacy of his violent activism. Some highlights:
SHAPIRO: During the campaign, how many clips did you see of people like Sarah Palin denouncing Bill Ayers, "the terrorist pal" of Barack Obama?
AYERS: I'm not a big consumer of television, so I didn't see a lot. I also felt from the beginning that this is a cartoon character that's been cast up on the screen and I didn't feel personally implicated in that character. One of the delicious ironies of a campaign filled with ironies was that the McCain campaign tried to use me to bring Obama down -- and every time that he mentioned my name his poll numbers dropped. Again, I think that's a big credit to the American people. But I did see a few clips. I saw the clip where she [Palin] first talked about Barack Obama palling around with terrorists and the crowd shouted, "Kill him, kill him." That was sent to me by my kids. I don't know if you remember the Two Minutes Hate in George Orwell's "1984"? In Two Minutes Hate, the party faithful gather in front of a television screen and the image of Emmanuel Goldstein is cast up on the screen and they work themselves into a frenzy of hatred and they begin to chant, "Kill him." That's how I felt. I felt a little bit like I was this character cast on the screen. It bore no relation to me. And yet it had a serious purpose and potentially serious consequences. I was in New York when this was shown and my alderman from Chicago called -- worried -- and wanted to know how I was taking care of my safety. I was touched that she would do that. . . .
SHAPIRO: In [your] book you also state that a phone call was made to the Pentagon a half-hour in advance warning them to evacuate that part of the building [before the Weather Underground's 1972 bombing]. But reading this entire passage -- and remembering the era -- what baffles me is how could you possibly ever believe that doing things like this would be an effective way to getting what you wanted?
AYERS: What we thought we were doing was to raise a screaming alarm -- to try to wake up anybody who was still sleepwalking to the reality of what was going on in our name. Frankly, I look back at it, and I don't claim or claim in the book, any particular heroism or status as leaders in any sense. What I do try to point out is that 1968 comes and the war is massively unpopular and our democracy can't grapple with that. It can't end the war somehow. And those of us who are committed to ending the war did many, many different things. Some went to Europe and Africa to get away from the madness. Some went to the communes of Vermont and California to start an alternative life. Some went into the factories of the Northeast to organize the workers. My younger brother actually enlisted in the Army and tried to build a serviceman's union. You talk about nuts. Was that nuts? It was admirable and a little unrealistic.
And a small group of us decided that we wanted to survive what we thought was an impending American fascism. We saw this in the murders of black leaders close to us. The murder of Fred Hampton [of the Black Panthers] had a huge impact on us. We wanted to survive that -- and make the making of the war painful for the war makers. So, looking back, it was hard for me to say that anybody had a purchase on the right thing to do. . . . History is always lived looking forward not backward. What are we doing now to end two unpopular wars? Two wars without end. What are we doing? And I would argue that we're not doing enough, those of us who see the war as illegal, immoral, unwinnable. What are we doing to stop it?
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Speaking of Orwell, how about those Heritage-supplied talking points coming out of George Will's mouth? Didn't he know he had an actual economist sitting beside him?
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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_11/015686.php
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http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/11/lessons-from-th.html -
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But it pays to remember that the self-styled maverick was never very comfortable as the standard bearer of a party that he had opposed so many times on so many issues. And the party long felt the same way.
And so once again, we see the staying power of a good story even if it has no bearing whatsoever on reality. If McCain were a quarter as principled as you insist on pretending, then he would have run an honest campaign. From the moment he repudiated the DREAM act(10/25/2007) , McCain embraced hatred and fear as the driving force upon which he would build his campaign.
Obama, for his part has a strong interest in toning down the polarization that McCain encouraged and McCain's concession speech was certainly a demonstration both that he could be gracious if he chose and that his supoorters could not.
Certainly the meeting is a good thing, but the effort to rehabilitate McCain has a lot more to accomplish than merely earning Jay Carney's forgiveness.
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Michael, thanks for posting this. I have to say Professor Ayers comes across as very intelligent, insightful, and learned, whether he has fully come to grips with the regrettable choice he made back in the 60s or not.
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I'm actually quite interested in his memoirs. -
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SDFHP & WVNG,
ah...you're right about ELF, I forgot about them. And I'm glad it's "ok", WVNG, as I am a "right of center" kinda codeguy. But extremists of all stripes scare the hell outta me. Is it ok to be an "extreme moderate" and use violence against extremists? hmmm...only if it is the "system" itself that reponds so to extremism, I guess, otherwise it's as much all a form of vigilantism, left, right, or middle. I guess I'm always worried about 1933 happening: democratically voting in a fascist...or a communist for that matter.
So...support your local and not-so-local democracy!
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One of the benefits of reading Nixonland is being reminded that there were pitched battles going on all around the country in 1968. And that the better armed forces were the government's. They used those arms, and many people were killed. Many more than the dirty hippies killed.
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And also that the narrative that survived is inaccurate. The narrative of Kent State in my head before I read the book was 18 year olds putting flowers in gun barrels being shot down. I didn't know about the buildings that were burned down that week, nor the attacks of the firefighters who tried to put it out. -
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53_3
re: Black Panthers. I figured that was what Palin & Giuliani were conjuring when they dissed Obama as a community organizer.
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Also, considering what happened to Fred Hampton, lining Obama up with him seemed like some kind of threat. Just one of many ways in which the Republican campaign shocked & nauseated me. -
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Several interesting things came out of Shapiro's interview. (1) Obama had numerous contacts with Ayers but (2) had no reason to know of Ayers' nefarious past. The Obamas WERE "palling around with (one-time) terrorists, because Ayers' wife was a more famous terrorist than he, & she was friendly with the Obamas, too.
(4) Ayers IS unrepentant. After decades, he still can't face the fact that petty acts of violence are not good ways to oppose a colossal act of violence. He seems like a naive, preening, self-righteous jerk, which in no way casts aspersions on Barack Obama. I'm sure the Obamas know hundreds of jerks, just as most of us know way too many.
John McCain should read Shapiro's interview (also featured on http://www.realitychex.com ) and he would find out every little thing he kept insisting he needed to know. It's all one big so-what?
In fact, McCain himself had many interactions with a variety of terrorists, both domestic & foreign, & HIS interactions were not nearly so innocent as the Obamas' chance meetings with the Ayers.
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Michael - thanks for posting the interview.
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http://dummidumbwit.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/oh-my-god-blagojevich-was-on-msnbc/
Illinois has heroes and.....
- michaelscherer Speaking of Mars, these may be the best lyrics of any non-Dylan song: http://bit.ly/4nfnz5 - 5 hours ago
- michaelscherer Mars is super cool. http://bit.ly/4b0IBH - 5 hours ago
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