ELI LAKE: It’s 1968 All Over Again.

After 1968, a few student radicals formed the Weather Underground, a domestic terrorist organization responsible for a string of bombings of throughout the early 1970s. It’s too soon to say whether organized political violence—like that of the Weather Underground or other groups such as the Symbionese Liberation Army, which kidnapped and brainwashed heiress Patty Hearst—will follow if Trump is elected. What is known is that radicals are already planning street disruptions in Chicago this year. While the Vietnam War galvanized the left in 1968, this year it’s the war in Gaza. No Americans are fighting, but the U.S. has armed Israel’s defensive war after Hamas invaded the Jewish state on October 7, massacring 1,200 people.

The Free Press attended one of the workshops planning these disruptions. The plan is to organize marshals who will stand between demonstrators and the police. These marshals, however, are not there to keep the peace. One of the organizers told activists at the meeting, “We do not dissuade or push back against direct actions or disruptions.”

The political implications are clear. A violent convention next month that reminds Americans of the horrors of 1968 will seal the fate of a damaged Democratic presidential campaign. The party is already in the midst of a political civil war over whether President Joe Biden has the stamina or acuity to run for reelection. It’s hard to imagine any candidate, let alone an 81-year-old man who looks every year of his age, surviving this maelstrom.

It’s impossible to imagine even a younger and heartier Joe Biden making the Secret Service pause so that he could shout “FIGHT!” to the audience that just witnessed his near-assassination.