Is the book "Days of Rage" more or less accurate?

[Krosan]

I am reading it now and I want to watch out for major themes, that might be false there.

I already recognize it employs that literary trick of starting to explain something in a too positive way and then revealing the harsh reality in order to draw in sceptical readers.

I have noticed small mistakes, but I can live with them.

Is there anything you know, that is majorly wrong with it?

Thank you!

[alexander_busek]

Are you referring to this book:

Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence is a 2015 book by Bryan Burrough about American left-wing political violence in the 1970s. The book discusses the Weather Underground, Black Liberation Army, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña and other groups. Burrough's perspective is generally sympathetic to the law enforcement officials who pursued these groups. - Wikipedia

Regards,

[normbal]

And Wikipedia is a known leftist POV-supporting site.

[Rockingham]

I lived through the era as a high school and college student. Left-wing agitation and violence in the 60s and 70s was a serious problem for the US. The apparent focus was on the Vietnam war and race relations but the movement was led by communists who were trying to brew up a revolution, overthrow the US government, and radically remake the country.

[Krosan]

Yes, that book.

I haven’t read wikipedia, but in the introduction, the author wrote that when he used to call these radicals, he said, “I believe politically the opposite things that you do. Would you agree to tell me about the Days of Rage and what you did then?”.

The author’s voice is in the book and it is disapproving.

I thought that maybe someone with some knowledge, who has read the book, can comment. Something like “I was an East Coast cop at the time and this story is true and this is a lie”.

[Krosan]

I haven’t finished the book yet, but by how far I have read I see the rich kids have killed only 2 innocents (not likely many to follow) plus 3 of their own and the BLA has already killed many.

[Chickensoup]

Read Radical Son.

That book matched my very peripheral experience.

[Krosan]

Thank you! It is so hard to make sense of it nowadays.

The Days of Rage was on my reading list, but I only started reading it after Senator Ted Cruz endorsed it. I started because he is (supposedly) very well read and smart.

[Chickensoup]

I have not read days of rage and it is probably accurate. Lot of communists manipulating students and using the black movement turning it into a black power movement that hurt blacks the most. Cities burned and never recovered.

Most of the manipulating communists were from wealthy families and funded and were dedicated to the movement along with some professors class and some out of country effector. One wealthy guy from Yale gave up his entire share of the family fortune to the panthers.

The movement people went into government law politics universities social services and non profits. I knew one who took a low level position at the Rand Corp. Her bf was a communist.

There was a cartoon with a sympathetic leftist perspective at the time called doonesbury. It gently mocked.

[Rockingham]

From what I saw in that era, Leftists have an innate liking for disruption and violence, which is rooted in their character and personality. Psychologists and medical researchers have done a lot of work over the years theorizing why that is so. Much of it comes from innate traits that are similar to those of criminals. In both instances, a desire for power is a large component of their motivation, with claims of victimhood and idealism as a justification.

In the mid 70s, I saw student radical types in college who went to meetings to plan campus disruption and minor violence return in an excited state, as if they had taken a drug. I was shocked. And it made things I read about the mafia and in history about revolutionary violence easier to understand.

In the course of Leftist revolutions, power driven criminal types with a taste for violence soon displace and often kill or imprison the idealists and useful idiots who may become troublesome. Properly understood, the Soviet Union was a regime based on gangsterism and violence. The supposed communist ideals were just drapery and disguise for the criminals who ran things.

[spankalib]

Good summation!

[Fedora]

Yes, it’s generally accurate.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I’ve read it twice and enjoyed it both times. I believe it is good history.

[Krosan]

I now think the same.

What prompted me to ask this question was that I thought before that these rich kids were far more evil than stupid. I’ve now adjusted my opinion toward stupidity.

I thought that maybe the book downplays how evil they were (which they were), but all I see is also adequately explained by stupidity.

[Seruzawa]

All was controlled by the KGB who raised the $ through Americah leftists. We have always paid for our own destruction. And have a traitor class amongst leftists.

[Rockingham]

I am not so sure of KGB involvement, but there is no doubt that communist ideals animated American Leftists.

Based on spying by Morris H. Childs for the FBI and Operation Solo, the Soviet leadership and the KGB scorned America's radical leftists as undisciplined and even detrimental to a proper Soviet communist revolution.

Your larger point though is true: America's leftists put up cash to support the revolutionary agitation of the 1960s and 70s, and the effort was monitored by the KGB and assisted to one degree or another by Castro.

[Seruzawa]

When the Russian files were opened to western researchers for a brief period after the USSR collapsed I remember seeing articles about the KGB involvement. Unfortunately it was before the modern net and I didn’t save them. But the KGB did have a hand in those antiwar groups.

Also the fact that the Rosenbergs were paid spies and that McCarthy was correct was also revealed.