This is the story of the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army, her subsequent radicalisation and recruitment into the SLA, and the subsequent bank robberies, shootings and kidnappings, including her eventual capture and trial. It's a fascinating story, recapturing a period in recent American history when the counterculture was producing urban guerrillas and the FBI seemed hopelessly inadequate.
This is a typically American piece of reportage which follows the story step by step, offering little pen sketches of each of the major participants (and there are quite a few) in such a way that the main thrust of the narrative is never disrupted. Most of us will know how it ends ... but that doesn't matter. The writing is so clear and the narrative is so strong that it is page-turning reading. It becomes manifest that over the period of a few weeks Hearst was transformed from a rich student into a revolutionary; she may have initially seen this as a way to stay alive but the author makes it clear that she had ample opportunities to escape once she became a full member of the SLA so the defence of duress couldn't hold.
So was she brainwashed? Her transformation happened very quickly (she was kidnapped on February 4th 1974, she joined the SLA on March 31st, participated in a bank robbery with a loaded gun on April 15th, and shot up a street on May 16th) with little coercion, and, once she was on remand and realised her legal peril, it was reversed equally quickly. Perhaps it serves as a warning how any one of us, given the circumstances, can change a whole outlook on and way of life.
Indeed, all of the members of the SLA had similar stories. Only one, the leader and only African American (in a group that purported to fight for the rights of African Americans but was disowned by the Black Panthers) was a career criminal. The others were actresses and students who moved from idealistic political activists, such as prison visiting, to acts of terrorism almost by accident. They seem to be playing at revolutionaries with their rambling manifestos and their military-style drills and their noms de guerre. In many ways they were hopeless. When they tried to destroy a safe house full of evidence linking them to an assassination they forget to leave the windows open so the fire, staved of oxygen, goes out. When on the run, they are tracked down because they leave an envelope of cash (to pay a parking fine, which has the address of where the infringement occurred) in a getaway car. Bombs fail to go off, bullets are sprayed around causing no injuries (or guns go off accidentally, killing people). These were rank amateurs but they were heavily armed and, even though they numbered only nine at their maximum, created terror.
As often with books like this, the 'seven steps' rule means that names can be dropped. For example, before becoming a revolutionary Angela was a drama student working with Kevin Kline. The Reverend Jim Jones who subsequently brainwashed hundreds of his cult followers into committing mass suicide wanted to be involved with the food giveaway demanded as a ransom for Ms Hearst.
Selected quotes:
- "DeFreeze was almost the opposite of a master criminal; he was most inventive in finding ways to get caught." (Ch 3)
- "They believed that sex was a basic human need, like food or shelter. Like those other necessities, sex should be shared in an egalitarian manner. ... This, in any event, was the theory. Predictably, the sexual merry-go-round had failed to maintain harmony within the house. Sexual tensions and rivalries among the comrades were epidemic, especially in the claustrophobic confines." (Ch 9)
- "In and around San Francisco, the music stopped when the 1980s arrived. There was, essentially, no more counterculture; the term became obsolete. Radical outlaws like the members of the Symbionese Liberation Army ... virtually disappeared altogether." (Aftermath)
June 2023; 339 pages
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