September 13, 2019 ▸ History

Episode 416: The Weather Underground: Bombs, Commies, and Orgies

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we look at the ultimate left-wing radical group from the 1960s, the Weather Underground. The WGO, or simply the Weathermen detonated 25 bombs in the US in only seven years. They blew up a bomb at the U.S. Senate, the Pentagon, and the New York Police headquarters. They tried to burn down the house of a member of the US Supreme Court, and they really hated one particular statue.

Originally, the Weather Underground was a violent branch of a national student group called the Students for a Democratic Society. Their original goal was to help end the war in Vietnam and to bring social and economic equality to the poor and minorities. However, after a heated national meeting, the Weathermen took over the group and made it much more dangerous. They aligned themselves with groups like the Black Panthers, learned how to stage a revolution in Cuba and North Vietnam, and started to make explosives.

The Weathermen declared war on the United States, and after bad politics, they went underground, severing their ties with the student groups. Within a few years, key members were on the FBI’s most wanted list, and they were rightfully branded a terrorist group. They had strange ways of recruiting their white middle class members. One was called “Jailbreaks” where they’d go into high schools (sometimes topless) and storm classes to tell the youth that the curriculum was corrupt and to peel students out of the class and into the streets. Another was drugs. Drugs and orgies. So many orgies, until the STDs started to spread, and people got weird about sexual jealousy.

But in the background of all of this was a truly radical group. Where did they unleash their Days of Rage, and how many of them were arrested and shot? Why did they always go after police? What happened with the FBI illegally perusing them using COINTELPRO, and how did this affect the arrest and conviction of the Weathermen? What was the “Wargasm,” and how many of their own were killed in a failed bombing attempt? Oh, and what caused them to break Timothy Leary out of jail and smuggle him out of the country, and what might this have had to do with John Lennon? Listen, laugh, learn.

Visit our Sources:

https://time.com/4549409/the-weather-underground-bad-moon-rising/

https://timeline.com/weather-underground-smash-monogamy-b109c96597ff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Rage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_High_School_Jailbreaks