I watched this when I was a teenager, and it left me very uninformed about the roots of this fashionable fad of Left Wing violence we are experiencing. As a consequnce of being so wildly uninformed, I pissed off a lot of sensible moderate, conservative people who were familiar with what happened in this era. Thank God I was never the sort ot be a True Believer. But if you go around referring to these people as "activists" uncritically a lot of sensible people will never speak to you ever again. The Weather Underground claimed to stand for things... and took credit for a lot of things. This documentary has a pretense at evenhandedness, but really presents the following choices:
1. They were the good guys. 2. They were misguided good guys.
But not:
3. They were dangerous and stupid. 4. They were legitimately bad people who had fun doing violent things. 5. They were driven by narcisism. And a cringey white savior complex. 6. What they did was terrorism; violence for the purposes of inspiring fear and creating political change outside of the consensual, democratic process. Not activism. 7. They damaged the cause of "anti-racism" by appropriating the black sturggle to push communism and anti-American sentiment. 8. They weren't very important. But they've obviously continued to weild influence: they all sought positions in academia. And their kids/protiges seek public office even today. Look at the SF DA race.
1. They were the good guys. 2. They were misguided good guys.
But not:
3. They were dangerous and stupid. 4. They were legitimately bad people who had fun doing violent things. 5. They were driven by narcisism. And a cringey white savior complex. 6. What they did was terrorism; violence for the purposes of inspiring fear and creating political change outside of the consensual, democratic process. Not activism. 7. They damaged the cause of "anti-racism" by appropriating the black sturggle to push communism and anti-American sentiment. 8. They weren't very important. But they've obviously continued to weild influence: they all sought positions in academia. And their kids/protiges seek public office even today. Look at the SF DA race.