Forgotten violence of 1960s radicals included nearly 5 bombings per day

And in an 18-month period between 1971 and 1972, it happened 2500 local bombings On US soil – at a staggering rate of nearly five per day.

For many Americans, this fact is shocking. In the popular imagination today, we remember the politics of the 1960s and 1970s as a mostly harmless expression of youthful idealism: Woodstock, long-haired hippies, flowers, peace signs, and tie-dye T-shirts.

But that was not the feeling among most Americans who were actually alive during that era. In 1968, in the wake of increasingly urban riots Violent disturbances on campusA Gallup poll showed that four out of five Americans believe that law and order have collapsed in the United States.

A protester reacts as law enforcement officers deploy smoke bombs to disperse people gathered outside US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Portland, Oregon, October 5, 2025. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

The truth is that left-wing extremism in the 1960s and 1970s was more violent—and sometimes more lethal—than the modern narrative suggests. It is whitewashed today, largely because the extremists themselves (along with their allies and comrades) have invaded the mainstream liberal institutions that make up our popular memory.

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The rehabilitation of the extremists of the 1960s is particularly striking in light of the massive violence they inflicted on America. As Brian Burrow wrote in the introduction to his influential history Days of Rage::

“[T]Smuggle bombs into skyscrapers and federal buildings and detonate them coast to coast. They strike inside the Pentagon, inside the US Capitol, in a courthouse in Boston, in dozens of multinational corporations, in a Wall Street diner packed with lunchtime diners. People are dying. They rob banks, dozens of them, launch raids on National Guard arsenals, and Assassination of policemenIn New York, in San Francisco, in Atlanta. There are deadly shootings, daring prison breaks, illegal government intrusions, and scandal in Washington. “This was a slice of America during the turbulent 1970s.”

At the heart of this violence was the Weather Underground, a revolutionary leftist group that issued a “declaration of war” against the US government in 1970. In a short time, the group embarked on an unprecedented campaign. Bombing campaignspecifically targeting the major symbols of American national life. On March 1, 1971, they detonated a bomb on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol. In May 1972, they bombed the Pentagon; In January 1975, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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These were not simple hippie protesters. The weathermen were fierce, determined fighters. In March 1970, three members of the group died in a townhouse in Greenwich Village while doing so Build a bomb Intended for a military party at Fort Dix – a military base in New Jersey where dozens of noncommissioned officers will attend with their loved ones. The police found 57 pieces of dynamite, complete bombs, detonators and timing devices from under the rubble. The only reason there were no mass casualties is because the device exploded prematurely.

However, despite all this, the leaders of the Weather Underground gang continued to work at law firms, major non-profit organizations and Ivy League universities. Over time, they will even begin the political career of a future President of the United States.

Cathy Bowden, a Weather Underground activist, spent 23 years in prison for her role in the 1981 Brink’s truck robbery in New York, in which her accomplices executed two policemen and a security guard in cold blood. She was granted parole in 2003; By 2013, she was an assistant professor at Columbia University and a resident scholar at New York University School of Law.

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Cathy’s son, Chesa Boudin, was elected district attorney of the far-left San Francisco district in 2019, with the financial backing of George Soros.

While his mother was in prison, Chesa was adopted and raised by Weather Underground co-founders, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorn. Ayers became a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2008, he was elected Vice President for Curriculum Studies at the American Educational Research Association. Dorn went to work at the upscale law firm Sidley & Austin, and was later hired as a professor at Northwestern University School of Law — where she taught for more than 20 years.

Barack ObamaHis first campaign event, which launched his 1995 run for the Illinois Senate, was held in Ayers and Dorn’s living room.

The uncomfortable truth is that left-wing extremists lost the street war, but their worldview won the war that matters most to America’s elite institutions. The New Left of the 1960s did not disappear into obscurity. It controlled the country’s systems of education, law, philanthropy, media and mass culture.

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Today, the offspring of groups like the Weather Underground can be seen on the streets of cities like Portland and Chicago, throwing Molotov cocktails at cops and federal agents. (often with the support of the same institutions that their predecessors conquered). In more ways than one, we live in the world that the 1960s created.

America stands at a turning point. We endured years of left-wing riots, attacks and bombings, and a series of assassination attempts that culminated in the death of… Charlie Kirk.

But we’re not in 1970 anymore. In fact, it’s not even 2020.

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In less than one year that Pres Donald Trump After he took office, his administration—working with its Republican allies in Congress—dismantled DEI bureaucracies, attacked left-wing ideologues in public schools and higher education, and turned off the spigot of federal taxpayer money that had funded the left-wing NGO-industrial complex for decades. As we speak, they are preparing to take unprecedented (but long overdue) action against terrorists and left-wing militants on our streets.

The radicals of the 1960s failed to overthrow America by force, so they set about taking it over from within. If the “long march of the left through institutions” has been the defining political project of the past fifty years, then the right’s task in the coming years must be: Restore those institutions For America. Finally, that mission began.

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