In the 1980s, a Far-Left, Female-Led Domestic Terrorism Group Bombed the U.S. Capitol. By Lila Thulin.
Amidst the social and political turmoil of the 1970s, a handful of women — among them a onetime Barnard student, a Texas sorority sister, the daughter of a former communist journalist — joined and became leaders of the May 19th Communist Organization. …
Eventually, M19 turned to building explosives themselves. Just before 11 p.m. on November 7, 1983, they called the U.S. Capitol switchboard and warned them to evacuate the building. Ten minutes later, a bomb detonated in the building’s north wing, harming no one but blasting a 15-foot gash in a wall and causing $1 million in damage.
Over the course of a 20-month span in 1983 and 1984, M19 also bombed an FBI office, the Israel Aircraft Industries building, and the South African consulate in New York, D.C.’s Fort McNair and Navy Yard (which they hit twice.) The attacks tended to follow a similar pattern: a warning call to clear the area, an explosion, a pre-recorded message to media railing against U.S. imperialism or the war machine under various organizational aliases (never using the name M19).
Who were these domestic terrorists sought by the FBI? Rosenau writes of “self-described ‘corn-fed girl’” Linda Sue Evans, whose politics took a radical turn while attending Michigan State University in the midst of the Vietnam War. Many M19 members’ stories echo Linda’s—college activism (at schools including Cornell, Berkeley, Radcliffe and Hampshire College) shaped their far-left worldviews, and for some, their status as out lesbians put them at odds with a heteronormative, patriarchal society. …
As M19’s spree turned more and more violent, M19’s members became evermore insular and paranoid, nearly cultish, living communally and rotating through aliases and disguises until, in 1985, law enforcement captured the group’s most devoted lieutenants. After that, Rosenau writes, “The far-left terrorist project that began with the Weathermen … and continued into the mid-1980s with May 19th ended in abject failure.” …
Towards the tail end of their life cycle as a group, they really at least debated amongst themselves quite intensely the assassination of police officers, of prosecutors, of military officers.
And while it’s true that none of their bombings killed anyone, they certainly contemplated it. From the court records, [I learned that] they had these inventories of weapons and dynamite and detonation cord and Uzi machine guns, fully automatic with sawed-off barrels. They had incredible arsenals, and I guess they would probably argue that was for self-defense. But it seems like they were at least preparing for something much more kind of apocalyptic. Fortunately, it never happened. …
Despite claims by Fox News and others that Antifa activists are ‘terrorists,’ their street brawling and harassment of right-wing extremists hardly rise to the level of the left-wing political violence of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
The Jan 6 rioters, egged on and organized by the FBI, were a unique threat to democracy? There are half a dozen leftist actions in the last 50 years that were worse.
The Dems have nothing. Their policies are uniformly unpopular, and they are staring at heavy electoral defeat in upcoming elections. Jan 6 lies are all they’ve got?
