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such as the Man son famil y, were not pa rt of extreme left politi cal
acti on such as the Weathermen . Ra ther, those who acted under slogans
bearing even remote resembl ance to current Baader-Meinhof rhetoric
used violence in America always with a cu rious self-restrain t. T he
S. L. A. kidnapping of Patricia Hea rst had, in a bi zarre context, the
redi stribution of wealth as an immedia te obj ect. T h e Santa Barbara
ban k bombing, the deaths of S. L. A. members, the Wi sconsin and Wes t
II
th Street explosions, are not the equi valents of the kidnapp ing and
murders, let alone the hij acking of innocent passengers, whi ch h ave
been part of th e Baader-Meinhof efforts since the earl y 1970s.
T hi s distinction between political violence, which is symboli c in
character and directed primaril y at property and no t ind ividuals or
groups, and whi ch steps back, insofar as is poss ible, from face- to-face
killing and the terrorism of large innocent groups is not meant to
legitima te Ameri can radical acti ons. Rather, the self-restraint of Ameri–
can radical action in the pas t decade when compa red w ith cu rrent
German terrori st behavior refl ects differences in the preva iling tradi–
tion and understandi ng of h is tory in the two countri es sha red even by
the extremist fringes of the popul a tion.
Political violence in America, surely a signifi cant phenomenon,
has rema ined within the framework of a conserva ti ve democracy.
Historian Ri chard Hofstadter, in hi s essay " Refl ecti ons on Vio lence in
the United Sta tes," characterized Ameri ca's conserva tive working class,
its societa l resilience, and its pragma ti c resistance to those apocalyptic
visions of the futu re which breed successful revolution s. As the waning
of Ameri can radi calism in the late 1970s has demonstra ted, the violence
of the last decade remained within a traditi onal pa ttern of political
action in American history, a histo ry whi ch includes violen ce–
industri al , racial, economic, anarchi c, governmental. T he containment
of po litical violence over the past decade within the tradition of
Ameri can non-revolutionary politics was no t onl y the result of govern–
mental repress ions, organizational weakness, and lack of support
among the radi cals.
It
was also the result of demonstrable self- control
within the radical movement in the use of vio lent means.
Herbert Marcuse, in 1967, contrasted American radicals with their
European counterpa rts and described the Ameri can 's reluctance to
engage in vio lence in the cause of revoluti on . He described one
Berkeley demonstration which voluntaril y stepped back from a bloody
encounter. He recognized a traditi on of non-vio lent civil di sobedi ence
and the tendency to engage in political action within the boundary of
the concept of lega lity. T hi s behav ior is evidence of how p rofoundl y
