Bonus Sample: 1970’s Violent Revolutionary Chic

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The “Summer of Love” ushered in a decade of revolutionary terrorism in the West. “Bring the war home” went the slogan of the Weather Underground, a small and highly-educated Marxist-Leninist group who’d decided violent revolution was the only answer to American imperialism and police brutality.

In opposition to the Vietnam War and in solidarity with Black Americans and Third World liberation movements, the Weather Underground issued their own declaration of war in 1970, which led to 25 bombings inside America.

Meanwhile, in West Germany, the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Group) terrorized their country in the name of revolutionary anti-imperialism. They enacted bombing sprees and were also arsonists, kidnappers, assassins, and bank robbers. Palestinian friends even hijacked a plane on their behalf.

Both groups exploded onto the scene in the early days of mass media. Riding rebellious pop culture, these global rock stars drove a generational wedge between Boomer parents and kids hungry for radical change.

Leaders were charismatic, stylish, and eloquent. Striving for the likes of Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, and Yasser Arafat, they were white, mostly from well-educated and well-fed backgrounds. Yet they saw themselves as part of the vanguard that would lead a worldwide revolution of the proletariat against capitalist domination.

Julian weaves together a very seventies of how the Weather Underground, Red Army Faction, Provisional IRA, and Palestinian groups like the PFLP and Black September intersected.

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