Intimidation and Domestic Terrorism at UNC Chapel Hill

Glenn Reynolds links this morning to an article that hits close to home, an apparent campaign by radical campus leftists at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill to destroy a campus group via threats of violence:

Is a major state university going to let radical groups silence a legitimate college organization and drive it off campus through a campaign of violence and intimidation?

That is just one of the important questions raised by the most recent incident involving the UNC-Chapel Hill student organization Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) and a coalition of radical leftist groups. Some of the radicals are connected to the school, such as the UNC chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), while others are community-based and have no affiliation with UNC.

According to a Raleigh News & Observer report last week, anonymous flyers appeared on the Chapel Hill campus that provided the name, photograph, phone number, and home address of the YWC's faculty advisor, emeritus professor Elliot Cramer. The flyers asked, "Why is your professor supporting white supremacy?"

Nikhil Patel, the current YWC president, perceived an implied threat in the flyer. It was not the first time that the radicals used this approach to intimidate the YWC. At a YWC event in April that was violently disrupted by radicals, they directed the following chant at YWC members and in particular, last year's YWC president, Riley Matheson: "Against racists, we will fight. We know where you sleep at night."

Violence and the political left is nothing new, especially violence from the SDS.

And there is the possibility that the threats of violence from this generation of SDS radicals may have "teeth" provided by an SDS radical of days gone by with a violent past.

Until several years ago, Howard Machtinger was the Teaching Fellows Director at UNC's School of Education. Prior to his academic career, Machtinger was best known for his activities as an active member of the SDS and it's more violent domestic terrorist offshoot, the Weather Underground. A recent article called Time Bomb in the San Francisco Weekly News alleges Machtinger was one of the bomb builders for the terrorist group, and alleges that he and Bernadine Dohrn were behind the Feb. 16, 1970 Park Police Station bombing that killed SFPD Officer Brian McDonnell.

Machtinger, 63, still lives locally in Durham, NC and remains politically active.

I'm not alleging that Machtinger is building bombs for the UNC-CH Students for a Democratic Society or is training a new generation of Weather Underground terrorists, but his past associations indicate a man willing to go to extremes to push his ideology, and his proximity to the UNC group and his ties to the campus make it reasonable to wonder if his influence plays a role in the recent threats that may drive Youth for Western Civilization off of UNC-Chapel Hill's campus.