Weather Underground Documentary Worthwhile

“America’s suicide attempt.”
-historian Paul Johnson, referring to the 1960s in Modern Times

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In the course of researching “Barack Obama: A Radical Leftist’s Journey from Community Organizing to Politics,” (Foundation Watch, June 2008) I stumbled upon a documentary that provided an excellent overview of the domestic terrorist group from the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground bombed the Pentagon years before Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group flew an airplane into it.

The film, The Weather Underground, tells the story of the Students for a Democratic Society splinter group that became a violent revolutionary force. The movie contains interviews with Barack Obama’s close personal friends from Hyde Park, unrepentant terrorist bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. (movie trailer available here; edited clip available here) Ayers and Dohrn hosted a fundraising event at their home in the 1990s that helped to launch Obama’s political career.

The film, which Reason magazine’s David Weigel previously reviewed, shows a young, attractive Dohrn spewing the kind of anti-American hatred that, unfortunately, has become commonplace on American university campuses today:

There’s no way to be committed to nonviolence in the middle of the most violent society that history’s ever created. I’m not committed to nonviolence in any way.

If you’re a customer of the DVD rental service Netflix, you can watch the documentary online.