Mark Rudd was one of the big names in the white, student, self-denominated revolutionary shock troops of the 1960s. He came to prominence in the spring, 1968 occupation of Colombia University when it was occupied for several weeks and a loud, deluded, small group of people were convinced, absolutely convinced, that revolution was right around the corner. Belatedly, Rudd has owned up to his part in bringing down the exciting, participatory, inclusive movement growing out of the Civil Rights movement, and replacing it with elite, privileged, arrogant intimidators. As he says now, there was a direct line from Colombia to the Weather Men.

In a memoir published last year, Rudd reveals how vindictive and secretive he was, serving as a back-up for a pal who burned years of research by a young professor he felt was a “hypocritical liberal.” And then they both kept it a secret. Revolutionary act, indeed.

SDS has always denied responsibility for burning Ranum’s papers. For more than 38 years, Rudd didn’t correct the record. Then, suddenly, he confessed, saying that only he and Jacobs—who died of skin cancer 12 years ago—knew who burned Ranum’s papers, and that both had kept it a secret from the rest of SDS. In a 2006 speech at Drew University, Rudd issued a lengthy apologia, not only acknowledging complicity in the arson but also taking the blame for the strategy that he believes destroyed the New Left.

“As I make this disclosure to you, I find it quite shocking, as I’m sure you do. Setting a fire in an occupied building is a very ugly deed. … Continuing to hide this crime, for it is that, serves no end other than obscuring the complicated fact that the roots of Weathermen ran all the way back to Columbia. At Columbia we felt ourselves at war, and once war is declared, the limit on tactics and weapons gets blurred very quickly. So does the definition of participatory democracy, on which SDS prided itself, since it was J.J. and I who made this decision alone, without democratic consultation of any sort.”

Rudd’s speech went largely unnoticed. It wasn’t until his memoir, Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen, was published last year by HarperCollins that it became widely known that Rudd had given Jacobs the OK to set the fire.

Chronicle of Higher Education

I wonder what Rudd thinks about Ranum’s prediction during those days, now?

Ranum told the university’s oral-history project about a month later… “I held over their heads, as dramatically and forcefully as I could, the possibility of a counterrevolution at Columbia, and I said that the United States is a fundamentally liberal society but with politically conservative, authoritarian elements, and that, rather than accept a radicalized university, the society would snuff out the university—and that I for one would prefer the existing state to the totalitarian state which a counterrevolution would bring about.”

Though he might have been wrong in the details — Columbia isn’t snuffed out– he was right in the broader sweep — the counter-revolution has been growing for decades. Torturers won the presidency, and still parade their pride. Anti-government rhetoric is high and threats against government workers are common. Great public universities are no longer supported as they once were. Anti-intellectualism is unembarrassed at its own ignorance and is proving itself adept at organizing the emotions of significant numbers of people.

As Rudd knows now, decades too late: “once war is declared, the limit on tactics and weapons gets blurred very quickly. So does the definition of participatory democracy, on which SDS prided itself, since it was J.J. and I who made this decision alone, without democratic consultation of any sort.”

[thx Joyce Cole]