Bill & Bernie, still radical after all these years

A big RBO hat’s off to Tim Graham at NewsBusters for having the courage to listen to every word unrepentant Communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn said November 24, 2008, during part two of their Democracy Now! interview. RBO posted video links here.

Graham writes (with his emphasis):

Anyone who doesn’t think Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are currently radical should pay attention … Listen to Dohrn wail about all the disasters the U.S. military is allegedly causing, and how we need to get “off the necks and the backs” of the world:

Here’s Bill and Bernie:

That’s a remarkable opportunity, because we have to do a lot more listening and a lot more talking to deal with, really, the future of the planet, massive starvation, the destruction of water and rivers and oceans, and the relationship of all that to war and armament. I don’t see how we can move forward out of this economic crisis without massive demilitarizing of the U.S. empire machine.

BILL AYERS: And, and…

BERNARDINE DOHRN: I think that’s what we have to do, but how do we have that? I don’t have any formula for how we do that. I want to talk to everybody about how key that question is of how much money and resources and off the budget, you know, budgeting of our tax dollars goes into that unaccountable, highly privatized war machine of domination and mayhem. When we have so many fundamental human needs here and around the world. And what?

Graham also points to the end of the interview, where Dohrn “added that it’s the radical Marxists who are somehow the pro-lifers”:

I want to say one last thing. The best of the new Left and the best of the social struggles of today have at their core the valuing of human life. All human life. You have to say both parts of that because people in the United States have to find our place in the world. And in some ways get off the necks and the backs of people of the world. We have to live differently. We have to live, and I say this with all humility too, you know. We have to all together learn to live differently so that others may live. So that core notion that animates social justice movements is really the valuing of all human life.

However, the phrase that jumps out in this paragraph for us, besides having to get off the necks and backs of people in the world — meaning? — of course, is in the last sentence: “the core notion that animates social justice movements is really the valuing of all human life.”

Because words are so important, let’s analyze this a bit.

“Core” is fairly easy. It’s the inner heart, the center of something. The word “notion” is less precise, while you can be sure it doesn’t refer to sewing notions — needles, thread, ribbon, etc..

The dictionary gives us several choices:

1. general understanding; vague or imperfect conception or idea of something: a notion of how something should be done.
2. an opinion, view, or belief: That’s his notion, not mine.
3. conception or idea: his notion of democracy.
4. a fanciful or foolish idea; whim

There’s nothing here indicating that the “core notion” is exact or even firmly set. In fact, you could say there’s not much to this “notion” at all.

Now we turn to the somewhat reliable Wikipedia, where we find (emphasis added) a definition for “social justice”:

Social justice, sometimes called civil justice, refers to the concept of a society in which justice is achieved in every aspect of society, rather than merely the administration of law. It is generally thought of as a world which affords individuals and groups fair treatment and an impartial share of the benefits of society.

In Bill & Bernie World “social justice” apparently means bomb! bomb! bomb! — but only for the ones who are doing the bombing. As long as it is them doing the bombing, it’s okay!

But, regular RBO readers won’t have to scratch their heads for long to recall where else we’ve heard this before. How about black liberation theology, Rev. Jeremiah “God-Damn-AmeriKKKa” Wright, Michael Pfleger, James Meeks, Otis Moss III, Louis Farrakhan, Conrad Worrill, John Conyers, and reparations and white folks “you owe us”.

Who could ever forget Joe the Plumber and Obama’s redistribution of the wealth slip of the tongue?

Then there’s ACORN! You all remember the ACORN connection, don’t you. Located right at the top of its “ACORN History” page is the section entitled ACORN: Roots of a Social Justice Movement (1970-75).

In fact, pick an organization or group with whom Obama has been connected and you’ll find that phrase employed there somewhere.

Obama bundler and Hugo Chavez’s BFF Jodie Evans and CODEPINK? Its “About Us” page starts out with

CODEPINK is a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end the war in Iraq, stop new wars, and redirect our resources into healthcare, education and other life-affirming activities.

Do we detect “redistribution of the wealth” here? Doesn’t “redirect our resources” sound slightly familiar, as well?

Even more befuddling is Bernie’s statement that this amorphous “core notion” is the “valuing of all human life.” Graham put this in the context of Bill and Bernie being pro-life Marxists. Falling from the lips of an unrepentant decades-long Communist who once led and taught others how to kill innocent people by making and planting bombs it is beyond ludicrous.

Would RBO have the time, or the inclination, we suspect that close examination of Bill and Bernie’s talk is just a whole lot of that. They’ve been doing it so long they don’t even grasp the absurdity of their own words. If this is any example of what they teach in the classroom, it raises scary thoughts.

It’s also important to point out that this sounds quite similar to Obamaspeak — “hope” — “change” — “this is what we’ve got to do” — “we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for.” It’s lots of rousing rally rhetoric with ambiguous meaning behind it. You can take away from it all whatever meaning you wish.

Graham ended his NewsBusters piece with the question “Do these people sound like Barack Obama’s ideal supporters? Even at his career’s beginning?”

Evidence supports an affirmative response. Obama sounds very much like them. Just look at the evidence: Was Bernardine Dohrn not a student organizer for the National Lawyers Guild at the same time she was organizing Students for a Democratic Society on college campuses in the late 1960s? Was it not Bernardine Dohrn who led Weather in its split from SDS? Was it not Bernardine Dohrn who is vividly portrayed in the August 1976 declassified FBI report on Weather’s foreign contacts?

It’s organizer speak. Obama, Ayers and Dohrn speak the same language.

Add to that “community organizer” Obama has surrounded himself with many people of the same stripe from the 1980s onward. Birds of a feather, as they say.