I believe that we weakened the larger movement, whose goal was uniting as many people as possible to end the Vietnam War. Besides causing people to drop out, we gave the government ammunition to smear the whole anti-war movement as violent crazies bent on destruction of the society. Did our actions help attract the huge middle of American society who might otherwise have joined the anti-war movement, public opinion being vastly against the war? “Bring the War Home,” was as counter-productive a line in 1969 and 1970 as it was in 2001 at the World Trade Center.
We should have united as many people as possible within an anti-war movement. We should have maintained an anti-imperialist analysis but not insisted that everyone engaged in armed revolutionary struggle. That was stupid, it split the movement and it played into the hands of the FBI. The country was not in a revolutionary stage and we overestimated where we were at. We were true idealists, in the sense that we thought revolution was on the agenda just because we had the idea, and having the idea proved the reality. It’s no different from the imbecilic idealist neo-cons running the govt. who have the stupid idea that supporting Israel and invading Iraq will bring democracy to the Middle East.
ANTI-IMPERIALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS: AN INTERVIEW WITH MARK RUDD, FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND
by Sina Rahmani
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