www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, October 2002
YOUTH
New anti-war movement?
by Brown Douglas Now that George W. Bush has made clear to the whole world
and the UN that the question of a new war is really a "when" and not
an "if," some people are preparing for the logical conclusion of
Bush's war drive--a full-scale war on Iraq. It is crucial that the new anti-war
movement not fall into some of the pitfalls that the post-September 11 anti-war
movement fell into while opposing the rabid drive to war a year ago. The anti-war movement that came about after September 11
used, by and large, a very narrow critique of the rulers here in the U.S. I
experienced some arguments here in Memphis that I think are indicative of these
positions. Many groups were too busy trying to oppose only the actions of the
U.S., thinking that if only they were critiqued, more people would be brought
into the anti-war movement. But really the opposite happened, as we saw in
Memphis. Meetings trickled down from about 40 people to a meager four or five. AN ANARCHIST VIEW I was told by an anarchist here in a public dialogue
regarding U.S. foreign policy and September 11 in particular: "Perhaps the
American people are not innocent. They are a part of the equation in the
violence that the U.S. government dishes out. Does this mean they deserve to
die? No. But they are not innocent and if the chickens come home to roost, then
so be it. The world is an ugly place. Much of the violence originates from this
country. If it is visited back upon this country. then I can only ask how could
we think that it wouldn't?" The American people being responsible for the government's
actions and "the world is an ugly place" arguments are widely used and
mirror statements and thoughts by the influential Left theorist/intellectual
Noam Chomsky. A few student associations at the University of Memphis on Sept.
10 showed a video of a talk given by Chomsky following the attacks last year.
Chomsky's response to September 11 and Bush's war on Afghanistan was to again
and again, almost mechanically, recite U.S. government and military atrocities
historically. Throughout is a lack of a vision of the future, of what could be
and the forces that could make it happen. In the question and answer period
after his talk, he made sure to point out that "we," meaning you and I
and himself included, are responsible for everything that the government does
and in turn share the blame for anti-U.S. sentiment and actions. DEAD-END IDEAS I think that this mentality really impedes the movement
from getting somewhere. I saw it in the discussion after the video, when most
people took the ground of this society and argued for more conscious
consumerism, or the need to make an anti-war movement bigger by including
conservatives, liberals, and moderates alike. These are dead-end ideas that
won't elicit the creativity and development needed to effectively oppose the
situation we are in now. In light of the drive to war that we are seeing before our
very eyes, how can we afford to just put our energy into building something that
is bound to fall down? A "permanent war" means that the rulers aren't
going to stop, so why should we? We are limiting our effectiveness by creating
goals that don't fully challenge the very essence of this society--capitalism
and the division between mental and manual labor, what we think and what we do.
If what we want is a new society based on totally new and different human
relations, spelling out what we are for needs to become far more important.
Stating only that "the world is an ugly place" and leaving it at that
will get us nowhere. This is surely not what the students and youth have to give
to the movement. As we said in our statement "Confronting Permanent War & Terrorism: Why the Anti-War Movement Needs a Dialectical Perspective," "Our task begins by breaking from modes of thought trapped within the contours of the present, and reaching out instead for a mode of thinking which expresses the new, human society we are for. That mode of thought is dialectics, the dialectics of absolute negativity." We need to be rooted in dialectical second negation, and not to stop at a negative critique of the world so that our anti-war movement will totally and fully oppose the coming war in Iraq. |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
