This is a short document, published by the House
Committee on Internal Security, better known under its original name, House
Un-American Activities Committee. The “house” in question is the House of
Representatives of the United States Congress.
The document is dated 15 February 1974. Just 11 days earlier, a bizarre terrorist group had abducted Patty Hearst in California. The House Committee was asked to swiftly publish a report containing all available information on the terrorists. It wasn't much, just 13 pages. The leader of the “Symbionese Liberation Army”, one Cinque, is mentioned only in passing in this study, since virtually nothing about him was known at the time. Today, much more information on this colorful gang is available.
Still, I found the Committee report interesting. But then, I haven't bothered with the SLA and the abduction/brainwashing of Patty Hearst before! I assumed that the SLA were lumpens with only a tenuous connection to the radical left, being some kind of quasi-religious cult or simply a band of criminals.
According to this study, several prominent members were middle class and college graduates. They had been involved in Maoist-related activism and had connections to the Venceremos Organization (VO), which called for armed struggle in the United States. But yes, a lumpen orientation is present, since the future SLA cadres were heavily involved in outreach efforts to prisoners through the so-called United Prisoners Union (UPU), a front for the VO. The UPU are said to have established contacts with “The Polar Bear Party”, a split from the Aryan Brotherhood, an inmate crime gang. The Polar Bears, who were originally White supremacists, were supposedly won to the Maoist perspective of the VO! Contacts with Black and Mexican convicts had also been established.
The cultish element is also present, since SLA's symbol (a seven-headed cobra) is said to be derived from Hindu-Buddhist sources. It could be a “naga”, a snake-spirit. The SLA itself claimed that the cobra was Egyptian in origin, and signified God and life…
It's not entirely clear whether any of this should be taken seriously, and inevitably there were people on the left who suspected the “United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army” to be agent provocateurs for the government. That's hardly likely, though, since the SLA members were either gunned down or imprisoned. Perhaps Cinque and his band of clueless drones were exactly what they seemed to be: the most “spaced out” and Charles Manson-esque left over of the New Left…
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