Wednesday, October 16, 2002

This Week the Media Discovers the Anti-War Movement and Salon Lays an Egg Why is it during the week the media suddenly discovers the anti-war movement, Salon has to print the dumbest article of the bunch.  Here is an unscientific tally. Economist -  cover story on the war about the war (subscription) Boston Globe: Profile of anti-war activist (page 1) New York Times:  Seeds of Protest Grow on College Campuses (page 1) Los Angeles times:  Veterans of past wars protest going to war with Iraq (registration) Washington Post: Antiwar Protests get Louder (page 1) Salon:  Peace Kooks by Michelle Goldberg (premium) The problem I have is that Goldberg’s article was a gratuitous slap at the intelligence of the majority of anti-war protesters that reminded me of the worst of the college Leninists, back when I was one. The gist of her article was how terrible it was that the poor anti-war protesters were being organized by people like the fringe Revolutionary Communist Party or the International Action Center who had a radical agenda and positions that most liberal democrats may not like.  So What!! At the end of the Vietnam war the biggest problem of the left was that after capturing the popular will, the left dissolved into a sea of factionalism.  The basic premise of the factions was the 19th century Leninist view that only a small band of political visionaries could actually see the correct political path, and their job was to bring along the “masses”, who in effect were considered dumb and unreliable.  As the number of visionaries with different “correct” paths grew, they ended up fighting each other rather than capitalizing on the political victory of the withdrawal from Vietnam. Goldberg’s point, along with Todd Gitlin, who seems to be reliving some type of factionalist fantasy, is that the factions are the story and that when ordinary people wake up and find that they are sitting next to –dare I say the word—Communists, they will run in horror.  This is ludicrous.  The other stories either documented various types of personal commitment, or as in the Economist, argued that the antiwar protests were misguided or ineffective.  But if they were so ineffective, how come the final House of Representative tally against the war was 135, rather than the 50 or so that many politicians had confidently predicted.  For anyone with actual experience organizing against the war, or generating mail to congressional representatives, the fact that there are radical factions involved in the peace movement is irrelevant.  At this point, we will take all the visibility we can get.  The movement has no leadership, and because it represents a widespread and deep national feeling of caution about the war, it is likely to coalesce around leadership provided by leftist or progressive democrats, if and when they emerge from hiding. The reason Goldberg’s article was so bad was that it missed an important story for some ridiculous fluff that even sounded like old fashioned red baiting.  The important story is not the reincarnation of the factions of the 1970’s left, but rather the efforts of hundreds of thousands of people to make political sense of their lives by connecting their day to day experience of work and environmental degradation with the larger issue of corporate control and America’s role in the world.  This effort is not being driven by 19th century ideologies—but by the same impulse that gave rise to the environmental movement, and to some of the feelings against globalization.  What is driving the hundreds of people whom I work with is 1) disgust at the dishonesty of our political leaders, 2) the conviction that corporate power has taken over the political process, denying most citizens a voice, and 3) a yearning for a cooperative, rational, respectful and non-belligerent approach to solving problems domestically and abroad.  This is the total opposite of the political demagoguery and hypocrisy that passes for politics today. The RCP, the various communist groups, Shining Path Guerillas etc. are totally irrelevant to this process, and Goldberg makes a fool of herself and Gitlin for thinking that they are important.  Salon has many readers far more sophisticated about these issues than its writers—and unless the object was to shock and stir the pot, it seems senseless to even have printed this article. 11:28:49 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2002 Toby Sackton. Last update: 12/26/2002; 9:30:55 PM.