Politics

Bill Ayers Doesn't Regret Bombings to Oppose Vietnam War

Interviewed by MSNBC

|

University of Illinois at Chicago professor Bill Ayers said Monday that he didn't regret bombing public buildings during the 1960s and 1970s.

Ayers co-founded the revolutionary communist group known as the Weather Underground, which claimed responsibility for bombing police stations, the U.S. Capitol Building, and the Pentagon. He told MSNBC that he didn't regret his violent protest against the Vietnam war.

"What I don't regret and what people intensely want me to say that I'm sorry about is destroying property, destroying war material," Ayers explained. "And the reason is because the war in Vietnam was a horrendous crime against humanity. Six thousand people a week were being murdered. And in that context, in my family, I'm a middle child of five, one of my brothers joins the Democratic party and tries to build a peace wing. One ran away to Canada. One deserted the army. These were all things that people did. What I did, I don't make much of a claim for it, but it was in opposition to a genocidal war."