Debates of the Weather Underground: Defining the Role of the White Revolutionary

As the 1960s drew to a close, a faction of student protestors became radical and violent to combat the violence they saw in the US and bring about revolutionary change. The Weather Underground, founded in 1968, reinvented their organization multiple times as they struggled to find the best way to support the revolution, failing constantly until they disbanded in 1976. This paper will analyze the debates within Weather and the New Left and illustrate how this constant reinvention resulted in their dissolution. By analyzing the publications of Weather and their affiliates, this paper argues that their insecurity in their role as white radicals pushed them to not only alter their own methods and beliefs constantly, but resulted in infighting and fracturing within white leftist groups. As they reckoned with their own white privilege, they often turned against one another, tragically limiting the real change the New Left was able to accomplish.