Not long ago, I had a conversation in which (as I am want to do), I recommended a book to a friend of mine. The title of the book was Diana: the Making of a Terrorist, written at the time to explain the events leading up to, and culminating in, the death of Diana Oughton, who had been a member of Students for a Democratic Society, before joining its successor group, the Weathermen, better known by its name the Weather Underground. Diana Oughton perished in the Greenwich village townhouse that the Weather Underground had been using as a safe house from which to begin a campaign of terrorism. Their goals were to end America’s guarantee of South Vietnam’s independence, thereby making that country vulnerable to conquest, before bringing down the American government by initiating a guerrilla war for the benefit of Brezhnev’s USSR, and Mao’s China.
Bombings were the primary tactics of the Weather Underground, with the strategy of inducing a climate of fear inside the United States before precipitating its collapse. One of the bombs built by the radicals, on which Diana was working, detonated prematurely. Her demise was instantaneous on a March morning in 1970, her young years wasted as a Maoist revolutionary, dying in her attempt to destroy the very nation that she had grown up in. Of course, her passing did not initiate the implosion of the organization to which she belonged. Her then-boyfriend, Bill Ayers, escaped the combusting conflagration that occurred on March 15, 1970. He and his company of terrorists continued down the path of destruction that the Weather Underground had committed to, ultimately delivering bombs to over 30 locations between 1970 and 1974. Among these targets were the Capitol building and the Pentagon — the latter target one that only Osama Bin Laden would ever successfully penetrate.
Those to whom this information is news to might ask what became of these terrorists? Were they imprisoned for life? Executed for treason? Sent to Gitmo? None of the above.
Bill Ayers, a member of the Weather Underground, now married to another of the Weather Underground’s alumni, Bernardine Dohrn, has made the rounds of higher education in the United States. From 1987-2010, Ayers held the prestigious position of distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. One may say that Ayers reformed in those years, though his comments on his past tell a different story. On an autumn morning, a New York Times editorial written by him appeared, in which the terrorist-turned-professor bluntly stated: “I don’t regret setting bombs, I don’t think we did enough!” Readers of the Times that morning were slow to notice it. That autumn morning just happened to be September 11th, 2001.
Twenty years from that day, I relayed my encounter with this book to my friend. I ran through the discussions of the Greenwich Village explosion that cost Diana Oughton her life, after which I commented that they (Ayers and Dorn, but also many others in the WU and SDS) are still out causing trouble on the streets and in America’s classrooms. Ayers and Dorn, for example, were both parties to the Disrupt J20 riots, organized by Refuse Fascism, a project of Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, led by Bob Avakian, another alumnus of SDS and WU. These riots took place on January 20th, 2017, the day that President Trump was inaugurated, and were damaging, to say the least. Automobiles were burned, windows smashed, and people hurt.
I had not yet mentioned all of these facts when I was told that the old “radicals for a new day” did not have a big following anymore. Hearing that comment made me awestruck. What was I to say? Discuss how people with college degrees sincerely planned to open Gulag-type detention facilities for political prisoners in the southwest? That in those very same camps they planned on eliminating 25 million people? That more than a few educators had passed through their teaching instruction and gone to stoke the flames of resentment? How Ayers’ wife, glorifying violence at the Port Huron conference in 1969, lauded the death of Hollywood Starlet Sharon Tate with a fork? How these two were known associates of then-candidate, turned President Barack Obama? I had no such opportunity but cogitating on the book I had read that had initiated the conversation, I recalled Diana Oughton. She had been involved with a reprehensible cause, and wholly debased individuals, but died a premature and undeserved death, though perhaps she had already perished long before March 15, 1970.
Few have recalled the information discussed in this piece, and those who have seldom introduce it to mundane circles. No one reached out to Diana from the outside to remove her from such an odious group, and before they could have, it was too late. Those close to her who were bereaved of her life were completely unaware of what had happened. It is with this information, the will to engage with the story, and a sufficiently long memory, that the mourning of the Diana Oughtons of the world may one day no longer be necessary.
The views and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the values and beliefs of Cogitare Magazine, nor of Grove City College.
