The Chicago 7 Are Back

Is it just a coincidence that Netflix’s new movie “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is coming out now? It’s about the anti-war radicals who were tried for starting the riots in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention. It mocks the judge and police. It lionizes the leftists tried for conspiracy. Coincidence or not, the film is airing as America prepares to try a new generation of rioters who struck during an election.Netflix’s movie certainly offers a template for mocking authority. It is directed by Aaron Sorkin and features a brilliant cast — Abbie Hoffman is played by Sacha Baron Cohen, Tom Hayden by Edward Redmayne, Attorney General Ramsey Clark by Michael Keaton, William Kunstler by Mark Rylance, and the judge, Julius Hoffman, by Frank Langella. Bobby Seale, who was granted a mistrial, is played by Yaha Abdul-Mateen II.What the movie illuminates, at least to us, is the gulf between the leftist leaders of the anti-war movement and the GIs who levied the actual war. The Veterans Administration reckons that 2.7 million GIs appeared in Vietnam between 1957 and 1975. Some 47,424 GIs fell in combat in Vietnam, and another 10,785 died in the theater. The VA lists 153,303 as having been wounded. None of the Chicago 7 defendants was among them.The thing to remember about these GIs is that vast numbers of them were proud to have appeared in arms for their country. And that they managed to defeat a brutal foe backed by the Soviet Union and Red China. And that Vietnam was on the road to being a free country when the anti-war movement turned Congress, which abandoned not only the fight but our Vietnamese allies themselves.“The Trial of the Chicago 7” is devoid of any appreciation of this side of the story. It credits the claims of the anti-war activists that their fury against the war was animated by support for the GIs themselves. Five of the seven tried in Chicago were convicted of conspiracy. All were found in contempt of court, as was Bobby Seale. Yet all the charges were thrown out by riders of the 7th Circuit.In the climactic scene of “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Judge Hoffman chooses Tom Hayden to speak for the group in a pre-sentencing statement (in the actual trial, several spoke). In the film, everyone seems to think that Hayden will try to find a middle way. Instead, he starts to read from a list of names of the 4,752 GIs who fell in Vietnam in the course of the trial. It’s a moving but misleading scene.It’s part of the big lie of the Left — that the anti-war movement was about saving our GIs. We know it’s false because of how many American combat troops were in Vietnam when Congress cut off aid to free Vietnam and forced an end to the war. The answer is zero. Our GIs had already been pulled out. It turned out that what the anti-war movement sought was the abandonment of Free Vietnam to the Communists.At one point in the movie, Abbie Hoffman is asked what would be his price. “To call off the revolution?” Hoffman asked and then replied, “My life.” In real life, the individuals who actually did give their lives for our GIs were other GIs themselves, like a Marine, PFC Oscar Austin, of Nacogdoches, Texas. During the trial in Chicago, he was in Vietnam at an observation post near Danang.Suddenly, it was attacked by North Vietnamese forces using grenades, satchel charges, and small arms. When Austin saw that a member of his unit had fallen unconscious, he leapt from his foxhole. Under enemy fire, he raced to assist his fellow Marine. When he saw an enemy grenade hit the ground, Austin leaped to absorb the explosion. Then Austin did something — we’ve written about it before — impossible to imagine.Austin ignored his staggering injuries and turned to examine the Marine he’d sought to help. An enemy soldier aimed a weapon at the wounded man. Austin then threw himself between the two and “in doing so was mortally wounded.” That is from the citation for the Medal of Honor that America bestowed posthumously on Private Austin, who will be remembered for generations after the Chicago 7 are finally forgotten.

The Chicago 7 Are Back

The Chicago 7 Are Back

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