Female Terrorism in America: Past and Current Perspectives by Jonathan Matusitz & Elena Berisha

Author:Jonathan Matusitz & Elena Berisha [Matusitz, Jonathan & Berisha, Elena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Terrorism, Law Enforcement, History, United States, 20th Century, 21st Century, Political Freedom
ISBN: 9781000192063
Google: _Yn1DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 53215847
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-09-17T09:13:31+00:00

Gut check

Another method of radicalization to terrorism was the “gut check.” In fact, all members of the Weather Underground were required to subjugate themselves to “gut checks.” Gut check was another tactic used as a test of loyalty to the organization’s principles. It was a peculiar practice of guilt and shaming that pushed and forced Weather Underground members into radical thinking. During a gut check, a Weathermen member was impudently called out by the other members until he or she would finally admit that he or she was racist, privileged, and partly responsible for the oppression of others. It was a form of hazing. A gut check could last between two hours and two days. One former member interprets the gut check approach as a mental test that asks, “Are you man enough to stick your head in the lion’s den?”83

Weatherwoman Cathy Wilkerson said that she endured a two-day gut check in which she was forced to repudiate her remarks, made in print, that questioned the patriarchal mindset of Students for a Democratic Society.84 It was a method of press-ganging members who refused or hesitated to take part in violence to disavow their old selves and risk the possibility of arrest, harm, or death.85 In Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen, Mark Rudd (2010),86 who confessed that he was “afraid of violence” and “no fighter,” recalls the content and nature of the gut check:

If you don’t do it, you’re a coward. If you don’t do it, you’re not thinking of the Vietnamese. You’re a racist because the Blacks have to live like this in the ghetto all the time. And you’re worried about getting arrested?! And you’re worried about getting hit by a cop over the head with a billy club?!

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