Ayers, Dohrn accuse Hillary of 'white supremacy'
Aaron Klein
Nov. 12, 2009
 Mug shots of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn |
In a co-authored article in the socialist Monthly Review magazine, the two radicals argued last year's national elections had "racist" undertones and that President Obama's ascent to power can be used to "build a new society."
"[Hillary] Clinton flagrantly appealed to white voters' identity as 'workers' or 'women' – offering white people any reason to vote against Obama without saying he's black – and followed the ancient and dismal road of racial discourse that appeals to white supremacy, fear and anxiety," wrote Ayers and Dohrn.
The two referenced a New York Times opinion piece by feminist activist Gloria Steinem, "Women are Never Front-Runners," written on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. Steinem argued the gender barrier had not yet been broken and asked, "Why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one?"
Ayers and Dohrn charged Steinem had asserted a "superior victim status on the part of white, powerful women."
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The duo went on to claim the 2008 presidential elections had racist undertones.
"The invisible race talk was about 'blue collar' or 'working class' or 'mainstream' or 'small town' or 'hockey mom' or 'Joe the plumber,' but we were meant to think 'white,'" they wrote.
Continued Ayers and Dohrn: "All the talk of Senator Barack Obama's exotic background, all the references to him as 'unknown, 'untested,' a 'stranger,' or a 'symbolic candidate,' or 'alien,' a 'wildcard,' or an 'elitist.' ... The discourse was all about race, us and them, understood by everyone in the United States even when the words African American, black or white are not spoken."
The couple, however, took pride in Obama's win.
They said Obama's presidency "calls for us to have to agitate for democracy and egalitarianism, press harder for human rights, link the demands that animate us, and learn to build a new society through our collective self-transformations and our limited everyday struggles.
"We must seek ways to live sustainably; to stop the addiction to consumption and development and military power; to become real actors and authentic subjects in our own history," they wrote.
The two added, "Now their experience can be put to use mobilizing those same people to insist on the changes they imagined."
Ayers became a name in last year's presidential campaign when it was disclosed the radical worked closely with Obama for years.
Ayers, and his wife, Dohrn, were two of the main founders of the Weather Underground, which bombed the New York City Police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. The group was responsible for some 30 bombings aimed at destroying the defense and security infrastructures of the U.S.
Characterizing Weathermen as "an American Red Army," Ayers summed up the organization's ideology: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents."
"Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon," Ayers recalled in his 2001 memoir, "Fugitive Days." "The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them."
Ayers brandished his unrepentant radicalism for years to come, as evidenced by his now notorious 2001 interview with the New York Times, published one day after the 9/11 attacks, in which he stated, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
Ayers posed for a photograph accompanying the New York Times piece that showed him stepping on an American flag. He said of the U.S.: "What a country. It makes me want to puke."
Ayers and Dohrn helped launch Obama's political career with a fundraiser in their home. WND columnist Jack Cashill has produced a series of persuasive arguments that it was Ayers who ghostwrote Obama's award-winning autobiography, "Dreams from My Father."
With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott.