Some history of US leftist political violence. Evidently, some people believe theUS left

[old mark]

has been non-violent. This certainly is untrue. I have some links to historical examples beginning with the 1960's here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground_(organization)
Here is an excellent article on http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/usa-riot.htm

The left has planted it's share of bombs, started riots, staged assassinations. Generally , we were protesting against excesses of the rich and powerful against the laboring class, and against racism and against wars.

Kindly read some history before concluding we on the left are always victims and always mild mannered, logical and somehow above it all.

mark

[Dr Morbius]

1. Please identify the "some people" who make this claim.

And are you familiar with the strawman fallacy?

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Ignored

[stray cat]

6. Violence on the left is ignored by the left - just like the conservatives do

for violence on the right

[SteppingRazor]

3. I wouldn't argue there's been no violence on the left. I would argue there is no equivalency.

McVeigh alone outweighs anything the let has dished out in the history of the country.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. That McVeigh was more effective does not impact if the left or right fringe is more violent

ELF/ALF has certainly had more incidents of major property damage. In what column does the bombing of anti abortion clinics go? Does a sit in count? Its a very difficult calculus to weigh and compare.

I submit its better viewed in an historical context not just numbers.

[DireStrike]

32. ALF/ELF "major" property damage vs the Oklahoma city bombing

And you are claiming the only difference is one of effectiveness? I don't even know where to start on this.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

39. I for one perceive a significant difference between violence and mayhem

You may consider it a hair split, but in my experience it is significant. It’s a concept many do not look at, but is critical in this debate. IMO being violent is an attitude and mayhem is damage that occurs.

I am a martial artist. I have been since I was single digit years old. It includes the complete suite of the martial arts; weapons including firearms, tactics, logistics and not just hand to hand stuff in a dojo. I am quite capable of a great deal of carnage and mayhem. Over the years I have used my skills when I believed the situation called for it. Does that make me violent? I think not since it has never been my intent to use mayhem to further my political, professional, or personal goals.

I have known people on both sides of the political spectrum that call for violence and mayhem. Most who declared their desire to do mayhem on behalf of their cause in my presence have tended to be young and inexperienced, a malevolent form of misdirected youthful energy. It also tends to be on left since young people tend to be more left wing and get more conservative or at least more practical as they get older. They are not intrinsically violent, but misguided, thinking that mayhem will change things. They are wrong and some have paid a stiff price. While some will disagree on the split, it valid in my experience.

Being violent is an attitude of the soul. It’s the willingness to harm another for gain whether it is personal or political. It’s the ultimate ends justify the means. No side has a monopoly on it. Both sides rationalize it. Neither is right. The good news is that those who are violent are often ill equipment to do all that much mayhem.

Left wing organizations such as the Black Panthers, Weather Underground, SLA, ALF, ELF, etc, have been fairly impotent in their attempts at violence and revolution. Rife with traitors and lousy at operational security, they tend to do little and get caught. Their only left wing successes (in terms of mayhem) have been riots. I will not claim any specific riot was caused by a left wing group, but certainly some have cheered and claimed validation via them. Regardless of origin, riots and even mass demonstrations are not effective as motivators for change in the US. Smaller events, mostly property damage, for which credit is claimed and due, are similarly ineffective in motivating change and often result in a backlash.

Right wing violence is much the same. The vast majority of the time it is just as ineffective and their groups are as full of infiltrators as the left. However, with McVeigh being the best example, sometimes the righties get things right and do a fair amount of mayhem. IMO their success is based on their maturity, their knowledge of effective techniques, and better OPSEC, not numbers, ideology or fervor.

However in the end it is well nigh impossible to really create a calculus that allows us to adequately compare relative violence across the political spectrum. Body count, $$$ in property damage, kind of events, time in history all make those kinds of comparisons specious and destined for failure. More over being violent is an attitude and and willingness, and that is even harder to measure.

[DireStrike]

63. Property damage is far less significant than murder

[ProgressiveProfessor]

64. What about intent and dersire? It is to me the true measure of violence, political and otherwise

I see many violent people as impotent in their rage...

[mrcheerful]

4. Actually outside of the weatherman movement doing bombings the rest of this is BS

The riots of the 60's were actually started by police who were trying to prevent citizens from peaceably protesting the war. The riots of 1967 were caused by the murder of MLK and had nothing to do with liberal or conservative politics, those riots were caused from frustration and anger by people who saw their leader who gave them civil rights murdered. Same with the 1992 riot, it was not about politics it was about injustice that a black man got best down by police and police walked free. So to call these events proof of liberal violence is BS.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. You are using the motivation matters as rationalizing violence...are you sure you want to go there?

To claim the Rodney King Riots were somehow legitimate protest is specious as well.

[sabrina 1]

15. So if motivation doesn't at least explain some acts of violence,

how would you describe the American Revolution or the Civil War? I mean they dwarf any of the acts of violence from either the right or left in recent times. Were they justified?

In the law, motive does play a role. Someone defending themselves or their property eg, is justified in using violence if it is the only way to stop the violence directed at them.

There is such a thing as victims V perpetrators. Imho, perpetrators, initiators of violence are most at fault when their victims react violently. They should think about that before acting violently.

And btw, the picture of 'wimpy liberals' was painted by the wackos on the right. People are human and will react violently sometimes when they or someone they care about is attacked. I'm surprised it hasn't happened more often on the left. They've certainly had cause, what with the assassinations of their leaders eg. Sometimes violence is the only thing some people understand, not that I think it's a good idea, but I can definitely see where it can be justified sometimes.

[gateley]

16. I'm not sure that those riots began as riots -- just the mob mentality

got out of hand. It happens to both sides -- feeling passionate, angry, others of like mind stoking the feelings, and it morphs into something out of control.

I don't think anybody PLANS a riot. Let me rephrase that -- I don't think people without ulterior motives plan a riot, it grows out of protest.

[Demoiselle]

17. The Rodney King riots seemed to me to be spontaneous eruptions of anger that

fed on themselves. Frightening and violent, yes. And I'd certainly never call them "legitimate protest." But has there been any evidence that they were organized by the left?

[mrcheerful]

20. It was the same way as the 67 riots of Detroit and Newark it wasn't organized by any group

liberal or conservative, an event happened, people exploded and opportunists took advantage of the event to grab as much loot as they could carry. To blame this on liberal agitators is BS, though the right has been very good at rewriting the events to slant it as liberal acts of violence, when in fact it was criminals who are apolitical who were behind most of the violent acts.

[provis99]

52. looks like you posted and ran when you began to lose the argument.

That's not very professorial of you.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

53. Actually was busy teaching non-college stuff today

and I posted elsewhere in the thread tonight. People confuse a violent person with the mayhem they create, but they are often not proportional. See post 39.

My real thrust here is that its not really possible to create some sort of calculus that can measure political violence. Way way way too many variables. As for rationalizing mayhem, we all do it. The discussion of why its OK is what is of interest. First response was interesting in that regards.

I am yet to meet a true pacifist though there are a few Buddhist monks that get real close.

[stray cat]

8. Violence by animal rights activists? shooting army recruiters recently?

[Unvanguard]

12. Animal rights activists very rarely kill anyone. Same with the Weather Underground, actually. n/t

[flvegan]

49. Rarely? Try never.

Actual animal rights activists have never harmed anyone.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

54. So if someone dies by accident in a fire they start they are not actual animal rights activists?

FWIW, I have met animal rights activists who were fine with harming and intimidating others. One example was at a anti-fur PETA protest. They were scaring the hell out of a couple of older women who had fur collared jackets on. I showed them how it felt in return.

[flvegan]

56. IMO

real animal rights actions don't use fire. For that very reason. Anything done with fire (or a like device) isn't done in the name of animal rights.

[harkadog]

9. How could the riots of 1967 be the result of the murder of MLK?

Did the people who rioted in Detroit and Newark know King would be killed a year later?

[mrcheerful]

11. Ok I was thinking of the 68 riots after MLK was murder here is what I found about the 67 riots

http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/n_index.htm

As can be plainly seen it was neither liberal or conservative politics involved it was about how these cities were treating citizens.

[mmonk]

10. What does that have to do with now?

[Unvanguard]

13. The Weather Underground killed only its own members, accidentally.

You'd be better off citing, say, the Black Liberation Army, but even then the death toll is not even close to that of right-wing terrorism like the Oklahoma City Bombing or the history of lynching shown in your second link.

[harkadog]

18. They blew up a cop in SF and a grad student in Madison.

Weatherman Kathy Boudin, daughter of Weatherman financier Leonard Boudin, helped kill 3 cops before she was sent to prison.

[Unvanguard]

21. Source?

As for Kathy Boudin, like David Gilbert (another former WUO member), she was imprisoned for her involvement in the Brinks robbery, which was a BLA operation after the Weather Underground had already fallen apart.

[harkadog]

23. Links below

A grand jury was recently formed in SF to investigate the role of Dohrn and Ayes in the bombing. http://www.channel3000.com/news/13347096/detail.html http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-09-16/news/time-bomb/

[Unvanguard]

26. All you have there are allegations.

Mostly from FBI agents and their informants, but the FBI is not really a trustworthy source on this question.

I don't know, they may have been involved, but the bombings they were definitely responsible for, the ones they claimed responsibility for (and like most groups of their kind they were not out to hide their responsibility), did not kill anyone.

[harkadog]

27. Allegations?

So you choose to believe members of the Weather Underground when they say "We didn't kill anyone." Don't you think it is in their self interest to say that? Since most, if not all of them, have re-surfaced long ago, I don't think that any of them want to go to prison for the rest of their life. BTW you are aware I hope that the bombs they were making in New York when they blew themselves up were intended for soldiers and their girlfriends at a dance at Ft. Dix in New Jersey. That is not an allegation. The only reason those bombs didn't kill others is because of incompetence.

[Unvanguard]

28. I don't "choose" to believe anybody. Certainly I do not trust the FBI on this issue.

I do not simply take the Weather Underground members at their word either, though I think the aspects of their record that we do know indicate that at least after the Greenwich Village incident they were not out to kill people.

[EFerrari]

29. OMFG Your source is THE FBI? Did you hear how they defended themselves

against Fred Hampton, too?

The Assassination of Fred Hampton

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/290956-1

What about something more recent, like how they solved the Amerithrax case?


Exonerated anthrax suspect: FBI harassed me
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4346463

Come on.

[harkadog]

30. OMFG Your source is the Weather Underground?

People who would go to prison if they admitted past crimes?

Come on.

[EFerrari]

31. LOL. Bill Ayers is one of the most respected educators in the country.

[harkadog]

35. Which means what exactly?

That he is exempt from crimes he may have committed while younger? You do know don't you that his father was Tom Ayers who was CEO of Commonwealth Edison at the time? He was able to use a building full of lawyers to get his son off. Also your statement is very overblown. I went to school as an undergrad where Ayers teaches. He wouldn't be teaching there and in the capacity he teaches if your statement was even partially true. A grand jury was recently empaneled in SF to examine his role and that of his wife, B. Dohrn, in the bombing which killed the cop.

[KonaKane]

37. Which means you are avoiding the facts about Ayers

Bluster all you like, but the guy was never even charged with anything connected to a death attributed to the WU. The government itself dropped all charges against him it did have, because of the tactics its own FBI used in pursuing Ayers and others in the movement. Ayers didn't dodge anything. The system decided it didnt have a case against him.

This whole "crimes he may have committed" thing is very disturbing. We don't do the "crimes you might have committed" thing in this country. A person is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty and if proven guilty and they do their time, they have done their time and we move on.

[harkadog]

38. You are incorrect.

There is no statute of limitations on murder. That is why a grand jury in SF was recently formed to examine new evidence in the case. The fact that he had his father's attorneys working for him to get him off certainly helped get the charges dropped.

[KonaKane]

44. I'm incorrect that we don't hold people responsible for "might haves"?

Excuse me, I'm quite correct in that. Go check your constitution for what they say about Bills of Attainder.

[harkadog]

46. I hope you only give legal opinions on the internet.

Bills of attainder have absolutely nothing to do with case. Sorry but thanks for playing.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

40. Errr, not really. He has a good PR department, but he is not part of most educators thought process

That does not mean he doesn't have national standing, but "most respected" is too much of a stretch.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. The left has resorted to violence throughout U.S. history.

From Shay's rebellion, to the Haymarket riots, to the IWW bombings, to the Weather Underground. You could, with good evidence, even say that the Revolution was leftist violence.

But, all of that is minuscule compared to the violence committed by the state and it's agencies.

[Downtown Hound]

19. A lot of so-caled leftist violence is simply vandalism

I'm not saying that throughout the entire history of the left, there has never been anything more than that. Obviously there has. Most notably in recent history would be the more radical groups of the '60's such as The Weathermen.

But really, in recent years, how much person on person violence has there been from the left? Very little. Yeah, there's been a few broken corporate windows and kicked over newsstands at some protests, and a few torched Hummers and break ins at animal research facilities from groups like ELF and ALF, but in the grand scheme of things, that really isn't shit compared to what those in power and those on the so-called other side have done.

I reject the false dichotomy of "both sides commit violence." I think a more accurate description is: capitalism is a big gigantic killing machine that causes untold amounts of destruction in the world, and SOME people opposed to it have responded by vandalizing and destroying corporate property. In return, the powers that be, scared that this behavior might spread, have done everything they can to make these crimes appear much more dangerous, mindless, and violent than they really are.

And no, I don't support vandalism or property destruction, at least not as things are today. If things were to get really bad and America really took a turn for the worse, then I might. I'm a big believer in civil disobedience. I just think comparisons of left wing vs. right wing violence are false and a distraction from the real debate we should be having: the violence of capitalism against humankind and Mother Earth.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

57. Is that because they chose not to or is it all they could manage?

I tend to think it is the latter.

[Downtown Hound]

61. Who are "they" specifically?

It's hard to ascribe motivations when I don't really know exactly who you're talking about. The Black Bloc? ELF? ALF? Those are the only active leftist groups I can think of (and in the case of the Black Bloc, more of an affinity between certain protesters about tactics they like to use rather than a group) that could be considered as supporting violence (if you take the statist position) or vandalism (if you take their position). And of all of them, it is their stated position that they never intend to harm human beings, only property.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

62. I was responding to your collection in the prior post

It turns out that there are few people who have the skills and zealotry to really take on something big on either side. Most talk a good game but can not pull it off...

[HughMoran]

22. Never seen anybody claim that - what they have claimed is that was 40 years ago

So, you might want to consider the CONTEXT of your statement.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. Oh it goes FURHTER BACK than the 1960s... how about the 1880s

or earlier?

Ye are right, but history is not the American's strong suit, neither is science. I guess anything that involves some book learnin' is anathema (there I go with a fifty cent college word)

[old mark]

42. You are correct, and again I would urge people to actually read some history

before making ignorant statements such as many in this thread.
There are a few rational people here, but many who have no knowledge of the political/social background of their own country.

There has been leftist violence since the 19th century, very heavily in the period from 1880's till WWII.

This is actually a very quiet period.

mark

[havocmom]

25. For true disclosure, there have been convictions of agents provocateurs in left groups

One might consider that not all members of leftist groups who did violent acts were actually leftists. You know, just to be accurate.

[whatchamacallit]

33. What's the purpose of this rancid puke? (nt)

[old mark]

43. This particular rancid puke is American History - try reading some sometime. nt

[whatchamacallit]

50. You know what I mean

What was the point of sharing this bit of history?

[KonaKane]

34. I impugn your motives for this drivel.

First of all, the weathermen only managed to kill a few of themselves and their movement. Secondly, the riots at the '68 Democratic convention would probably have not happened had not Daley's thugs, bent on smashing as many "hippy" heads as their batons could find, had not been set on the loose.

"Listen, the police are not here to create disorder. They're here to maintain disorder!" - ominous freudian slip by Mayor Daley.

Why did you really post this? Seriously this time.

[G_j]

36. your second link does not demonstrate your point

it does not distinguish between "left" and "right" violence, from what I read.

[bemildred]

41. Well, thank goodness we have cleared that up. nt

[old mark]

45. The ignorance of US history here is apalling. Please take some time to study the

political history of your own country and of the left.
The stupid comments here would be laughable if you were not obviously serious.

mark

[Cleobulus]

47. I think the problem is that if you look at the political violence map...

well over half of the political killings were perpetrated by the right, most were lynchings, the labor disputes you listed, a detailed analysis would show that most of the victims were union organizers and their families, and for the racial riots, those were non-political and not organized. No one would dispute that there are groups on the left that are violent, but most violence is perpetrated by the right. The problem is this country has a blind spot when it comes to political violence, we have a tendency to excuse the actions of the right and blame the left for everything. Hell, think of the Greensboro massacre, for example.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

55. What if you take it internationally?

Look at the political killings by acknowledged leftists such as the various Maoist group, China itself, and Cambodia? Of course there is Argentina, Honduras etc to help balance the body count and its hard to know where to put Jangaweed and others groups in Africa.

Not taking a side here, but there has been a hell of a lot of political killing over the years.

[LeftyMom]

48. Oh my god, I was just about to say the same thing. Would you like a reading list?

If you're trying to imply any sort of equivalent level of violence from the American left (such as it is) and the American right, you clearly have a lot of reading to do.

[backscatter712]

51. Bob Altemeyer's studied authoritarianism on the left and the right. Guess which side's got more...

Yep. There are a few Maoists and Marxists on the left in the U.S. these days, but they're very few.

The right-wing authoritarians are the ones that make up 25-28% of the population.

So yeah, it's no shit that there's going to be faaaaaar more right-wing violence than left-wing violence. Of course, in the once-a-blue-moon occurrence of left-wing violence, FAUX Noise and the rest of the corporate media's gonna jump all over them, then have their bobbleheads say "SEE?! BOTH SIDES ARE DOING IT!!! WHY ARE THEY PICKING ON THE TEABAGGERS?!!"

Edit: Linkage to Altemeyer here... http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

[RickyM]

58. I think

most of what you are referring to is counter-violence. No amount of violence can touch the degree of state violence.

[hayu_lol]

59. Old Mark was right by the way...

have to go back to the end of the civil war and the actions and responses by management and labor in the railroads. Bit later was the Black Mollies against the mine owners and then steelworkers and so on. The real start of the union movement. Read some Emma Goldman and then, Richard Henry Dana: Two Years Before The Mast.

Actions in the late 19th century against Scabs in many industries and then the management responses in bringing in the army. Pinkerton involvement. The Longshoreman strike in San Francisco with massive deaths and injuries.

Lotta history out there when no one was worrying about fur coats.

[karynnj]

60. Wouldn't your logic allow Tim McVeigh to call his violence "counter-violence"

because he too saw the state as engaging in violence?

Old Mark is right - the extreme left had some who engaged in violence - as did the extreme right. Both are 100% wrong.