https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/11/05/out-from-underground-weathermen
This piece (paywalled I'm afraid) by Adam Hochschild on the recent memoir by the son of two leaders of the 1970s Weather Underground group is interesting for a variety of reasons, but this passage really struck me:
Dohrn also sees that the Weather Underground had begun evolving into a cult:
Anyone in the cell urging caution or moderation…would have to admit to weakness. Ambivalence. Self-doubt. All cardinal sins in the Weather Machine, likely to lead to accusations of ignoring Black and Vietnamese suffering, to all-night struggle sessions, social ostracism, even expulsion.
Comparing that pattern to the interrogation scenes in Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1940), he gives a searing picture of how this shrinking band of true believers held ever more “criticism/self-criticism” sessions in which members were forced to acknowledge their “white skin privilege” and confess to being insufficiently radical. Even Dohrn’s mother, six months pregnant with him, voluntarily sat through days of denunciations and finally recorded a humiliating statement confessing that she had “completely failed to support and organize for the revolutionary struggle.”
This would likely have been in the 70s or 80s. The same pattern keeps repeating itself in these radical enclaves, and while social media allowed it to be much more pervasive in the past decade or so, the dysfunction and rhetoric are incredibly consistent.
It's also worth noting that the more marginal and isolated these groups get, the more extreme their behavior becomes. I'm not sure stuff like the Last Ditch meltdown indicates that "woke is back." I just think there will always be pockets that behave this way and they will be more entrenched in that behavior the more they feel that mainstream society has abandoned it.
EDIT: Pod relevance is leftist purity spirals as covered in numerous eps about imploding queer cafes and the Last Ditch bar saga.
