Weatherlanguage: The Rhetoric of the Weather Underground and How it Facilitated Their Movement

The Weather Underground Organization (WUO), a militant faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), was heavily criticized by the New Left for their ideology, tactics, and expressions. The rhetoric of the WUO was meant to recruit, polarize, and connect others to anti-imperialist struggle. Weather viewed themselves as "forming the core of a future revolutionary army" which "in order to attain its goal... needed to be willing to take the initiative by attacking the enemy" (Jacobs 35). Although the quotes and slogans that Weather is famous for are viewed as extreme and sometimes crazy, they strategically employed language in a way that would foster their anti-imperialist cause.

Guns and Grass United

"In every tribe, commune, dormitory, farmhouse, barracks, and town-house where kids are making love, smoking dope and loading guns- fugitives from Amerikan justice are free to go" (Weather A 512).

One of the first places WUO sought to recruit from the new hippie counterculture. Weather believed that youth were "more open to new ideas and are therefore more able and willing to move in a revolutionary direction" (Ashley et al. 7). The Weather Underground Organization originally called Weatherman, took their name from Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues.' The group was inspired by the lyric "better stay away from those/ that carry around a fire hose/ keep a clean nose/ watch the plain clothes/ you don't need a weather man/ to know which way the wind blows (Dylan). Weatherman was chosen to represent their feeling that revolution was inevitable and "you don't need
Weather looked to youth for membership in the revolution and in doing so focused on appealing to the hippies in order to gain support. By seeking members from the counterculture Weather hoped to gain an assembly of youths who were pre-exposed to anti-authoritarian and unconventional social ideals.

It was general knowledge the youth involved in the counter-culture were typically white and middle class. It is important to note that Weather made a distinction between youth insofar as they categorized them into the counterculture or the working class (Ashley et al. 7). This distinction eventually led to rhetoric that was meant to capture the rebellious spirit of oppressed working class youth.

In Weather's first communiqué, they forcefully stated their dedication to the idea that "guns and grass are united in the youth underground" (Weather A 512). By uniting guns and grass Weather hoped get the message across to counterculture converts that if you wanted to keep smoking grass, you'd have to pick up a gun, because eventually the state would come down hard. The state, meaning the police and the government, would eventually punish the illegality of the counterculture and the only way in Weather's view to stop them was to smash the state so it would no longer be able to oppress. The connection was made again in their first communiqué when they said, "Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks" (Weather A 512). The word freak was reclaimed by so-called degenerate youth and "worn as a badge of honor" by those involved in the hippie counterculture (Varon 164).

The focus on drugs was part of the anti-establishment philosophy. Drugs such as marijuana and LSD were signature of the counterculture. Although drugs were not a major part of Weather's politics, they were important to the organization's image. The image Weather wanted to take on was one in contrast to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), a Maoist party that had infiltrated SDS. PLP was known for their disgust for anything that distracted from the revolution, and anything that had to do with the counterculture was on the enemies list. Among the New Lefties Weather wanted to be seen as the more "real" movement. In New Left language being real meant "'being what one becomes upon rejection of the conventions' learned through one's mainstream socialization" (Varon 88).

Drugs were also used to establish cohesiveness. Gut checks and acid tests were forced upon those who tried to become involved in Weather. When SDS was mostly disintegrated, Weather shut down their national office and began purging people who were not dedicated, in an attempt to move underground. The series of acid tests and gut checks doled out regularly became the method for Weather to successfully stop those who did not believe in their new culture to from entering. LSD was also a way for Weather to "ferret out police," as it would be "difficult for anyone, especially an informer, to maintain his/her cover while under the influence of LSD" (Jacobs 94). Only one known infiltrator is said to have survived the so called acid test by pretending to take an LSD tablet while being called a "homicidal pig" for hours on end (Varon 171). Taking drugs and being criticized on a daily basis became a way of life that only the most dedicated revolutionaries could handle.

Unlike other organizations in the New Left, WUO did not make the bold statement of separating from societal norms without acting on it. Along with this new culture came the idea of smashing monogamy and the typical family structure. According to Weather it was necessary to divest one's self from all social norms associated with an imperial societal upbringing. Once underground, Weather wanted to become completely separated from mainstream society and to liberate themselves. Weather took the campaign seriously and forced couples in underground collectives to live separately. There were mixed reactions; one couple ended up leaving after realizing that they were more effective revolutionaries when together. Others saw elimination of monogamy as a good thing and said, "Women, who for years had been silent or someone's girlfriend, in two or three weeks became strong political leaders" (Sale 585). Although the women's movement was not adequately addressed by WUO, feminists looked to the idea of smashing monogamy as an interesting form of women's liberation. Debate aside, Weather's attempt to live outside social norms succeeded insofar as they created a revolutionary lifestyle.

Mother Country Radicals

"There is no way to be committed to non-violence in the middle of the most violent society history has ever created" (Weather B).

Dividing the whites in America was one of Weather's primary goals. Weather used violent and critical language with the aim of forcing white people to choose between "build[ing] a white movement which will support the blacks" or being "objectively racist" (Ashley et al. 4). Weather's view was that failure to join a revolutionary movement was the same as supporting the white power structure at the expense of the black revolutionaries. Such support meant that one morally tolerated racism, and not fighting the system that oppressed blacks was actively tolerating racism. In deciding who would benefit the movement by joining, Weather developed a class analysis of "white Amerika."

The most oppressed section of the working class are "poor southern white workers; the unemployed or semi-employed, or those employed at very low wages for long hours and bad conditions" and more generally are those who have "as oppressive material conditions as the blacks" (Ashley et al. 6). Although not all oppressed workers were blacks, Weather made it a point to include whites among those who were not enemies of the revolution. This was an important interjection because without it, Weather would have been making generalized and arrogant statements about whites. It was necessary to get across that all whites were not enemies, just those complicit in imperialist oppression.

The second category of the working class was referred to as the upper strata. The upper strata had a small objective interest in maintaining the imperialist system. Weather states that this category included the "proletarianized and the semi-proletarianized" but warns there is "no clearly marked dividing line between the previous section and this one" (Ashley et al. 6). Lack of a clear division was due to the inability to delineate oppressive material conditions and failure to define exactly what those in the upper strata possessed that the most oppressed did not.

The next strata, called the middle strata, was not of the working class. The only difference between the middle strata and the upper strata of the working class was the closeness of their ties to imperialism. The middle strata include "management personnel, corporate lawyers...government agents,
Youth were in a different category all together and were divided into two. Weather drew more heavily on the working class youth as potential revolutionaries because they have "less stake in society" and have "grown up experiencing crises in imperialism" (Ashley et al. 7). The dealings with authoritarian school systems, the draft, and the police repression created youth imbued with revolutionary consciousness; youth who were capable of joining the revolution. Recruitment efforts among youth were directed at urban high schoolers and working class youth. The relative losses associated with the revolution, among working class youth compared to those of middle class youth seemed small, and led Weather to believe it would be easier to convince them that armed struggle was the only answer.

The most violent rhetoric Weather used was aimed at polarizing whites. Weather believed that the role of whites was to aid black liberation and anti-imperialist struggles of the third world. They also believed that a decision not to join the revolution was a decision to be against it. David Gilbert, a member of Weather, reported his revelations as "not to be willing to fight against the forces who actively use violence to maintain these social conditions, [is] acquiescing to more violence" (Varon 90). Gilbert's discussion was similar to that of other Weather members who felt that the only answer was armed struggle and to be against it was complicity in oppression.

"The political polarization that has occurred through these struggles has been the basis for our organizing success. Everyday it becomes clearer that the struggle is the only way to build a fighting movement" (qtd. in Sale 586). Weather members were fully aware that their language alienated some even in the New Left, and saw success in both gaining and losing members. Purging a member who could not pass a gut check was just as successful as gaining one who could. The goal was not numbers. At this point in the struggle, the goal was finding effective fighters and dedicated cadre as opposed to building a mass base of supporters. Members of the underground were convinced that violence was the only way to compete with violence. This being said, it was imperative that they separate out those who were not willing to commit acts of violence from those who were. In order to form the revolutionary movement they envisioned, Weather believed that they must first find those who were on their side by testing their limits with intense rhetoric.

Weather's general position was "we're ready to fight and die. We're ready to do

anything, and you're either on our side or you're on the side of the pigs" (Varon 93). The deep seated belief that refusal to join the revolution was supporting imperialism led to the concept of no middle ground in the anti-imperialism fight. This attitude demonstrated that Weather's use of shocking rhetoric was purposeful in polarizing the New Left movement insofar as they challenged the movement to act.

Bringing the War Home

"PIG AMERIKA - BEWARE: THERE'S AN ARMY GROWING RIGHT IN YOUR GUTS, AND IT'S GOING TO HELP BRING YOU DOWN" (qtd. in Varon 108).

In Weather's view "the main struggle going on in the world [was] between US imperialism and the national liberation struggles against it" (Ashley et al. 1). The principle catalyst in the formation of the Weather Underground was the inspiring success of the National Liberation Front (NLF) in Viet Nam. The NLF was fighting imperialism with guerilla style warfare abroad and winning. After the US increased the bombing campaigns in Viet Nam in spite of the growing peaceful anti-war movement, Weather was obsessed with finding new tactics. The only way for United States imperialism to be defeated at home was to use the tactics of NLF which were successful abroad. Similar student uprisings in France, Mexico, and Czechoslovakia, shed a new light on the possibility of western revolution. All of the combined factors, successful NLF tactics, increased United States bombings, and beginnings of western revolution in other countries influenced the Weather strategy of armed struggle.

WUO was similarly inspired by the militancy of the black liberation struggle in the United States. The black community in the United States was called an internal black colony. They referred to it this way because they believed that black people in the United States were suffering from the same oppressive material conditions as were those in Viet Nam. Weather looked to the Black Panthers, the leaders of the black liberation struggle, as the vanguard of revolutionary movements in the United States. In an effort to employ successful tactics Weather adopted the militant imagery and inflammatory rhetoric used by the Black Panthers.

Weather created the slogan "Bring the war home" to express their revolutionary strategy which commenced with the Days of Rage in Chicago. While most New Lefties wanted to end the war in Vietnam, Weather attempted to bring third world struggles into the streets of the imperialist nation that was oppressing them. Bringing the war to America was an attempt to counter apathetic attitudes and to bring the realities and consequences of war where Americans could see them. Weather believed that they had a unique opportunity to bring the state down from within 'the belly of the beast.' Weather drew analogies between the relationship of Captain Ahab to the white whale, from Melville's Moby Dick, and their pursuit of revolution against a large and oppressive state. The magnitude of the task only intensified Weather's struggle. NYC Police Headquarters, Military Police station at Presidio Army Base, Bank of America, and Harvard were all symbols of American imperialism bombed by the WUO. The members of the media warned that "the first stages of an urban guerilla movement were afoot" (Ayers 185). Weather's new third world revolutionary tactics succeeded in garnering attention from desensitized Americans and bringing them a step closer to the revolution they were aiming for.

Verbal Overkill - Conclusion

The violent language used by the WUO that urges kids to do drugs and bomb buildings served an important purpose in their movement. By emphasizing illegal drugs as a means of escape, they hoped to recruit youth who were already inclined to have hostility for the state and be willing to act on that hostility. As Weather searched among other youth, they deliberately divided whites into those who would "either take this stand with us, or 'fuck you'"; if they didn't" (qtd. in Varon 93). The role of whites in America was to help free the black colony which the imperialism had created. The only way to fight against a violent state was with a violent message. The difference between Weather and other New Lefties was their willingness to carry out their message of revolutionary violence. Although it was often said that "they are all fucking crazy," the Weather Underground will always be admired for doing it! (Sale 604).

Works Cited

Ashley, Karen, et al. "You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows." Debate Within SDS: RYM II vs. Weatherman. Alternative Press Collection in the Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

Ayers, William. Fugitive Days. Massachusetts: Beacon Press Books, 2001.

Dylan, Bob. "Subterranean Homesick Blues." Bringing it All Back Home. Columbia 1965.

Jacobs, Ron. The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. New York: Verso, 1997.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. sds [sic]. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.

Varon, Jeremy. Bringing the War Home. California: University of California Press, 2004.

Weather Underground The Radical Reader. Ed. by Timothy Patrick McCarthy, John McMillian. New York: The New Press, 2003.

Weather Underground [B]. Dir. Sam Green, Bill Seigel. California: The Free History Project, 2003.