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Today's
Stories
April
26, 2004
Grover
Furr
Protest, Rebellion, Commitment
April
24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
April 23, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal
Dave
Lindorff
Imagination Deficit Disorder
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster
Norman
Solomon
Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?"
Cynthia
McKinney
All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization
CounterPunch
Wire
A Bitch Called Wanda
Karyn
Strickler
Sierra Club, Inc.
Hammond
Guthrie
Yellow Caked in the Face
Paul
de Rooij
Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary
of the Iraqi Occupation
April 22, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
When Terror Came to Basra: "I
Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire"
Tanya
Reinhart
The Wall Behind Disengagement
Lance
Selfa
Why is Kucinich Still in the Race?
Josh
Frank
Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq
William
S. Lind
Why We Get It Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Undoing the Latches
Robert
Jensen
Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank
John
L. Hess
The New York Times from 30,000 Feet
April
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Yeats on Iraq
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's Taliban Drug Deal
William
A. Cook
George 1 to George 2
Jack
Random
Iraq and Vietnam
Jean-Guy
Allard
Alarcon Meets the Editors
Mike
Whitney
Charade in the Desert
Bill
Christison
Only Major Policies Changes Can
Help Washington Now
April 20, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Bush and Kerry Share a Problem
Stan
Cox
Wal-Mart's Magic Numbers
Bruce
Anderson
On Listening to Air America
Joseph
Kalvoda
Czech Mate for Condi
Greg
Moses
Yesterday's Intelligence
Stan
Goff
The Democrats and Iraq
Website
of the Day
Santorum Happens
April 19, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The "Central Hand" of the
Resistance
Mike
Whitney
Bob Woodward's Imperial Trifles
Douglas
Valentine
52 Pick-Up and the 100-to-1
Rule
John
Chuckman
The Sharon Annex: Evil Does Often
Triumph
Doug
Giebel
Welcome to the Club
Rahul
Mahajan
Hospital Closings and War Crimes
April
16 / 18, 2004
Robert
Fisk
Bush Legitimizes Terror
Saul
Landau
Subverting Brazil and Cuba
Dave
Lindorff
Paying for War: $2,150 per Family
and Counting
Brandy
Baker
Fallujah's Collateral Damage
Mickey
Z.
The Left Attacks from the Right
Bruce
Jackson
The Bush Press Conference: Gott Mit
Uns
Norman
Solomon
How the "NewsHour" Changed
History
Alexander
Cockburn
Bush, Kerry and Empire
April
15, 2004
Greg
Moses
Follow the Families, Not the Script
Virginia
Tilley
The Carnage According to Gen. Kimmitt:
Just Change the Channel
Ron
Jacobs
They Coulda Been Champions of the
World: Hurricane Carter and Ron Kovic
Michael
Neumann
A Happy Compromise: Hate Crimes
Reporting in the Toronto Globe and Mail
April
14, 2004
Tom
Reeves
Return to Haiti: an American Learning
Zone
Reza
Fiyouzat
Japan and Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
What Bush Really Said
Diane
Christian
The Real Passion
April 10 /
12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Greatest Radical Journalist of His Age
Patrick Cockburn
Ambush, Kidnap, Murder: Another Day in "Post War" Iraq
Ellen Cantarow
Health Under Siege on the West Bank
Tariq Ali
Iraqi
Resistance: a New Phase
Werther
Pseudoconservatism Revisited: When God is Pro War & Other
Delicacies
Robert Fisk
Bush's War Lords to Their Critics: "Just Shut Up"
Gary Leupp
Indian Wars, Vietnam and Orientalist Fantasy
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Cont.
Jorge Mariscal
Perils of the Bootstrap
Phil Gasper
Defying Stereotypes About Death Row
Dave Zirin
Bringing the Black Freedom Struggle Into Sports: an Interview
with Lee Evans
Brandy Baker
The Revolution is Playing at a Theater Near You
Mickey Z.
Underground Music is Free Media: an Interview with Twiin
Ali Tonak
Get Ready for the Million Worker March
Harry Browne
Asking the Wrong Question About Richard Clarke & 9/11
Gideon Samet
The Sharonizing of America
Conn Hallinan
Remote Control Warriors
Website of
the Weekend
Taboo
Tunes
April 9, 2004
Robert Fisk
This
War's Simple Truth: Iraqis Do Not Want Us
John L. Hess
The
Non-Confessions of a Warrior Princess: Condi on the Stand
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Condoleezza's Condescensions
Christopher Brauchli
Holes in the Sky: Bush's Crazed Missile Defense Plan
Don Santina
Forget the Alamo!: Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas
William S. Lind
The 4G Warfare Seminar, Cont.
Bill Christison
9/11
Commission is Bush's New Lapdog
Website of the Day
What We've Done to Fallujah
April 8,
2004
Wayne Madsen
Rice
(and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act
Kurt Nimmo
Will
Bush Flatten Fallajuh?
Patrick Cockburn
Guided
Missile; Misguided War
Laura Flanders
Steamed
Rice
Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding
Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia
M. Junaid Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins
Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
Douglas Valentine
Echoes
of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq
Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics
April 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Those
Pulitzers!
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Deeper
into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Tet
in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?
Patrick Cockburn
Battles
Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts
Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?
Sonali Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell
Robert Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar
Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!
Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger
April 6,
2004
C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries
and Occupiers
William Blum
The
Anti-Empire Report: the Israel Lobby
Col. Dan Smith
The
Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones
Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?
Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do
Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?
Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al-Qaeda
Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight
Robert Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
April 5, 2004
John Farrell
Lessons
from El Salvador and Iraq
Robert Fisk
Bloodbath
a Bad Omen for Bush
Gary Leupp
Shiites Say No: Another "Nightmare
Scenario"
April 3 / 4, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God
Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine
Frederick B.
Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer
Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney
Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard
Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld
Quiz
Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry
Quandary
Stephen Gowans
Communists
for Capitalism?
Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
Turn ON
Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?
Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp
Website of the Weekend
Missing
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher
Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez
del Solar
A
Year Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The
Illegal Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated
US and International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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April
26, 2004
What Can We
Learn from the Teens?
Protest, Rebellion,
Commitment: Then and Now
By GROVER FURR
"Everything old is new
again"
The United States declared war on Germany
on April 6, 1917. By July the Espionage Act had been rushed through
Congress. "The law made it a crime, punishable by a $10,000
fine and 20 years in jail, for a person to 'convey false reports
or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation
or success of the military or naval forces of the United States
or to promote the success of its enemies or attempt to cause
insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the
military or naval forces of the United States, or willfully
obstruct recruiting or enlistment service." [Murray, 13-14].
The 1918 Sedition Act prohibited a person, under pain of $10,000
and 20 years imprisonment, to 'utter, print, write or publish
any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about
the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution
of the United States, or any language intended to encourage resistance
to the United States, or to promote the cause of its enemies.'"
"Those who spoke or wrote
against the war were arrested in droves. Over fifteen hundred
people were charged under these laws for the crime of expressing
an opinion the government did not agree with. One socialist,
Rose Pastor Stokes, was sentenced to ten years in prison for
telling an all-female audience that she was for the people, while
the government was for the profiteers. Eugene V. Debs, a prominent
socialist leader, was sentenced to ten years in a federal penitentiary
for a rather academic speech analyzing the economic causes of
war." The American Socialist Society was convicted under
the Espionage Act merely for publishing a book by Scott Nearing,
The Great Madness.
In addition to the Espionage
and Sedition Acts, between 1917 and 1920 many states passed laws
against "criminal syndicalism," which, according to
Eldridge T. Dowell's authoritative study, normally meant commission
of any crime "as a means of accomplishing change in industrial
ownership or effecting any political change", as in the
California statue.
Both Federal statutes were
used mainly against one organization--the Industrial Workers
of the World, or IWW, and it was the aim of virtually all the
state criminal syndicalism laws as well. On the eve of the war
the IWW was in the midst of a large-scale drive, which brought
a huge increase in membership and an upsurge in strikes and organizing
activities
According to Dowell,
"The war gave to the employers
and to others opposed to the IWW a golden opportunity to associate
the syndicalist philosophy and militant tactics of the Wobblies
with violence, terrorism, lack of patriotism, pro-Germanism,
and, later, with radicalism and all the violent characteristics
attributed to the Bolshevik Revolution."
Dowell searched the many state
prosecutions against the IWW for any evidence that the union
had, in fact, engaged in violence, even in strikes, and was unable
to find any. Nor was any IWW member ever convicted of sabotage,
though many were charged.
In violation of existing laws
and of Constitutional guarantees, the Army was used to break
strikes, most notably in Spokane in 1919, to raid IWW lodges,
and to imprison workers illegally. The states and the military
used various techniques to avoid habeas corpus proceedings,
and abused the concept of "protective custody" to imprison
striking workers and organizers William Preston concludes that
all IWW strikes, whether involving "force" or not,
were considered "unlawful conspiracies" by State and
local authorities, urged on by employers and abetted by the Federal
government, notably, after its creation in 1919, by Attorney
General A. Mitchell Palmer's Bureau of Investigation, later the
FBI, and his assistant J. Edgar Hoover.
Thus the drive against "espionage"
and "sedition" was, overwhelmingly, an employer-sponsored
drive against striking and organizing workers, the most effective
workers' organizations of the day, and anyone who spoke up in
support or even sympathy with them or their views. Dowell details
how industrial and employer associations connived at the passage
of criminal syndicalist laws. He calls it "class legislation"--meaning,
legislation clearly in favor of employers as a group, and against
employees as a group, as well as against anyone who opposed the
war.
Wilson's Attorney General Thomas
Gregory stated with satisfaction, "It is safe to say that
never in its history has this country been so thoroughly policed."
The newspaper industry, the
major mass medium of the time, fell into line. Major newspapers
held membership on George Creel's "Committee on Public Information,"
which set up a virtual censorship board which, according to Postmaster-General
Albert Burleson, allowed no criticism of the war. By November
1917 both the Milwaukee Leader and the New York Call, Socialist
pro-labor newspapers opposed to the war, had been closed.
"Interfering with industry"
by slowdowns or striking, was equated with disloyalty and treason,
with spying for Germany, and with leading an insurrection or
planning to do so. Secondary and college teachers were dismissed
for statements considered "disloyal", including simple
pacifism or support for labor struggles. The New York State Legislature
closed the Rand School for Social Science by passing a bill requiring
all schools to be licensed by the Board of Regents, and then
denying it a license. Helen Gould Shepherd, daughter of millionaire
financier and "robber baron" Jay Gould, "pledged
her entire fortune to the stamping out of radicalism in our colleges."
But there was not much opposition to begin with in an academia
that had never had much tolerance for dissent or interest in
academic freedom.
Parallels
I'll concentrate on five striking
parallels between the post 9/11 situation today and that of WW1
and the post-WW1 period. They are: laws; imperialism; class oppression;
racism; war profiteering; and media propaganda.
Laws
The Espionage and Sedition
Acts are paralleled by the Patriot Act. The former two acts,
while used against espionage as well, were mainly used against
domestic dissent, especially against the militant labor movement
and those who opposed the war as an imperialist war in the interest
of capital. In the WW1 era the government broke its own laws
by using Federal troops and the Army National Guard against workers
in private labor disputes. Virtually any expression of "disloyalty"--to
be defined by local authorities at their whim--was assumed to
be "illegal." Incidentally, the Espionage Act itself,
as amended, remains in effect today.
Today the Bush regime claims
the right to selectively abrogate Constitutional Rights, as in
the case of José Padilla, deprived of the right of habeas
corpus, and of the prisoners at Guantánamo, Cuba,
entitled to but denied Prisoner of War status according to conventions
signed by the United States. As in the WW1 era, the Bush regime
claims powers far beyond even the broad powers given them under
the Patriot Act. Until recently the courts assumed the President
could, by executive order, do whatever he wanted to do, while
local authorities have assumed police can stop antiwar and other
protest actions with violence. Meanwhile in Iraq the US Army
has been used to break up Iraqi labor unions and arrest their
activists.
The Espionage and Sedition
Acts were mainly used against workers' struggles. The semi-Marxist,
class analysis of the IWW and the Socialist Party was considered
"treasonous". That is, "patriotism" and "loyalty"
were openly defined as loyalty to employers, i.e. to capitalists,
and to whatever the President did. I submit that "patriotism"
is widely understood the same way today.
World War I was a purely imperialist
war, a struggle among the capitalists and financiers of Germany,
England and the U.S. for markets and colonies. In the 1930s the
Nye Commission hearings disclosed that Pres. Wilson's own advisors
had told him that, unless the US declared war on Germany, England
would be unable to buy more from American industries, while American
banks' loans to England and France would be in danger of default
if Germany won the war. The Allies' Secret Treaties, published
right after the War by the Bolsheviks and reprinted by communist
groups in Western Europe, proved that the major aims of the European
combatants was grabbing land from one another.
Today's wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq are, equally clearly, imperialist wars. The term "empire"
is now routinely used by the mainstream mass media in the US--and
of course abroad -- to refer to post-9/11 US foreign policy.
A scant two years ago it was never used in that way! With the
excuses of "fighting terrorism" and "destroying
Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq completely exposed,
the Bush / Blair regimes are trying to cloak their aggression
by christening the invasion of Iraq "a war to defend democracy."
On April 2 1917 Woodrow Wilson told Congress the coming war was
"to make the world safe for democracy." Instead it
is more and more clear that the war is a grab for oil, and the
political power that control over this essential resource can
bring. In short, it's a war of inter-imperialist rivalry, as
was WW1, and the imperialist rivals--France, Germany, China,
Russia, and large parts of the British elite--understand this
very well.
The Wilson Administration and
local governments declared war on striking workers. The Bush
regime has relentlessly attacked the living standards of all
employees, waging what economist-columnist Robert Krugman has
called "class warfare" against workers in favor of
employers and the rich generally. Under the smokescreen of "fighting
terrorism" the Bush regime has pushed through cutbacks in
Medicare, huge cuts in public education, and restrictions on
women's rights to health care, while deliberately building in
such heavy budget deficits that even future Democratic administrations
will claim they are "forced" to reduce social welfare
spending even further. Conservative columnist and former editor
A.M. Rosenthal called the milder Reaganite attacks on social
welfare "class warfare".
Imperialist war meant a bonanza
for finance and industrial capitalists after 1917, with US factories
arming France, England, and until February 1917, Russia against
Germany, and American financiers making huge loans to the Allies,
especially England. Today the giveaways to favored corporations,
like V.-P. Cheyney's Halliburton, in Iraq, and to outright theft
of billions by big Bush supporters like Enron, remind us that
war profiteering is another form of class warfare of the rich
against the working population. It's a transfer of resources.
The immense costs of the wars are socialized--i.e. paid by taxpayers,
mainly working people, since corporations and the wealthy are
given large tax reductions, even in wartime--but the profits
of the war are privatized. War is the original "socialism
for the rich."
Racism
Germans were dehumanized during
WW1, portrayed in government-produced posters as gorillas, apes,
less-than-human killers and rapists.
From 1917 to 1920 leftist non-citizens--meaning,
mainly labor activists -- were demonized in the US, over 300
finally being deported. Since most of these were from Eastern
Europe, as were most immigrants at the time, this demonization
took the form of racism against Slavs and Eastern Europeans,
including Jews, who were said to be lower in intelligence, lazy,
and anarchistic. Right after the war "intelligence"
tests were invented to demonstrate the "inferiority"
of Eastern Europeans and Jews, leading to the passage of racist
immigration laws in 1924 and 1925 that set immigration quotas
according to the population as it was in 1890, before most of
the Eastern European immigration had taken place.
During WW1 Blacks served in
the American military in large numbers, and were exposed to Europeans,
mainly French, with far less racist attitudes. Upon their return,
an incipient "civil rights movement" in which Black
soldiers were prominent was met with a campaign of officially-sponsored
or tolerated race riots and lynchings across the US.
Today racism against Muslims
and Arabs are dehumanized; their customs, beliefs and religion
deemed "inferior", so the Iraqis specifically and Arabs
generally need "the West"--read: the US and Israel--to
"teach them democracy." "Racial profiling",
a technique perfected against Black Americans and people who
look Hispanic, is turned against anyone of Muslim appearance,
who are demonized as "terrorists."
Media Propaganda
Every work on the Red Scare
stresses the importance of the press's role in promoting government
and employer propaganda. With the war officially over in 1919,
George Creel, as former head of the Committee on Public Information
the informal Chief of War Propaganda" of the US, wrote in
Everybody's Magazine: "Just as every untoward incident was
credited to the German spy system, so was every disaster, every
manifestation of unrest ascribed either to the IWW or the Bolsheviki".
According to media historian Michael Schudson, the New York Times
described WW1 as "the first press agents' war," and
historian Jack Roth has called the war "the first modern
effort at systematic, nationwide manipulation of collective passions."
Nothing could have been more persuasive than the war experience
in convincing American newspapermen that facts themselves are
not to be trusted. In the war and after, journalists began to
see everything as illusion, since it was so evidently
the product of self-conscious artists of illusion.
Dowell concludes:
A deliberate policy of distortion
and suppression of the news and of misrepresentation of the facts
would be difficult to prove, but a more unreal picture of the
IWW could scarcely have been presented had such a policy been
deliberately and maliciously employed. [38]
Today liberal media critics
like Jeff Cohen, Norman Solomon, Edward Herman, and even Paul
Krugman of the New York Times complain about the obtrusive
bias the press shows towards President Bush and his policies.
Abroad--say, in the UK--the press itself is even more frank,
a recent article in the London Observer titled "Lessons
in how to lie about Iraq" [Aug. 17 03] being but one example
among many. In reality, the mass media are in fewer, and wealthier,
hands than ever, even relatively small media companies being
valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, so it's no mystery
that they still portray the world through with an employer's
bias.
Lessons
The lessons we should draw
from the similarities between the wave of repression during and
after WW1 and that today are obvious but, to many, unpalatable,
because they impel us to discard habits of political thought
that are deeply ingrained. Here, in my opinion, are a few of
the most important ones:
1. Like WW1, the Afghan and
Iraq wars make the class nature of government and government
policy much clearer--so clear that even mainstream journalists
are suddenly writing about "class warfare" of the government
against the working population, and about a supposedly new American
imperialism (it's not new, just so unmistakable that it can no
longer be denied).
Anyone reading the histories
of the Red Scare of the WW1 period can see that these historians
recognize that the laws against "espionage" and "sedition"
were mainly applied in a class-conscious way against labor militants
and against workers' collective action against exploitation.
Wars give employers and governments greater scope to attack collective
rights faster. Even those dissenters who were punished as individuals
in schools, for example, protested the war for its anti-working
class nature.
2. We can't understand what's
happening if we see the Patriot Act as a government attack on
"individual" or "civil rights". The individual
cases are test cases; it is mainly an attack on all working people,
which includes white-collar workers, including those of us in
education, who, unlike our predecessors during WW1, are increasingly
unionized.
3.These wars remind us that
the government has never been a defender of the working population,
and has never defended, but always tried to restrict, the rights
of most of its citizens. Wartime gives employers, through the
government, greater scope to attack the rights and living standards
of the working population much faster. The more dramatic repressive
moves come against those who resist--the IWW then, protestors
today, including some union members in the recent Miami FTAA
protests. But these are the "tip of the wedge"; the
purpose is to repress and intimidate all, by making an example
of a few. Likewise with the Bush regime's selective deprivation
of basic Constitutional rights applied to only a few American
citizens: it is a "trial balloon," to be used in future
against dissidents more generally as needed.
4. Imperialist War Abroad is
accompanied by Class Oppression At Home, because these are different
facets of the same thing: the pursuit of profit under capitalism.
Thanks to the Cold War, and ultimately to the very Red Scare
at issue here, we have all been taught that it is "illegitimate"
to see that capitalism is based, not on law and rights, but on
exploitation; that imperialism is the name given to the more
advanced stage of capitalist exploitation of other countries;
and that imperialist war has historically been the inevitable
result of capitalist competition between states.
We need to recognize something
the Socialists, anti-war radicals, and IWW members, understood
90 years ago: that this war is not primarily a war against "terrorism",
against a brutal ruler the US used to support with open hand,
but against
* the peoples of the Middle
East
* the rulers of the other major
industrialized countries;
* us--the American working
population. The war is not a war to "secure our freedom"
or to "make us safe against more 9/11 type attacks".
Rather, it's a war to raise the level at which we are exploited,
and to get us to pay the costs, in blood and money, for a war
that Halliburton and big oil will profit from. This war is a
war against us--the working people of America--just as the First
World War was.
Finally, a few thoughts about
what is to come. Many of us long for a return to the "golden
age", sometime in the not-too-distant past--the 1960s? or
maybe any time since the 1930s--when "things were better."
During and after WW1 many people--mainly the better-off--longed
for a return to the "better time" of the late Victorian,
or Edwardian, era. It didn't happen the, and it's not going to
happen now.
Patrick Henry said: "I
know no way of judging of the future but by the past."
Edmund Burke wrote: "You can never plan the future by the
past." Both are true. Historical periods echo and parallel
each other, but history is not mere continuity.
In the view of many, we are
well into a qualitatively new period, and we must employ parallels
and analogies of the past with care. After WW1, the only thing
that was predictable with confidence was another world war--WW2.
There's no WW2 on the immediate
horizon, because militarily there is no other power or combination
of powers equal to the United States. Compared to WW1, 9/11,
the Afghan and Iraq wars, terrible as they are, are very minor
events. Yet the Bush regime immediately undertook a very harsh
domestic response, both in the Patriot Act; in an acceleration
of its program of sharp attacks on the standard of living of
working Americans; and in police repression of dissent, as recently
in Miami; and in the draft of "Patriot Act II", enactment
of which would complete the conversion of the US into a police
state.
The history of imperialism
unmistakably suggests that small wars lead, eventually, to large-scale
wars of tremendous destruction and huge loss of life. Quite simply,
the US cannot remain "top dog" forever. Some combination
of other major imperialist powers will challenge it, and sooner,
rather than later. Much harsher attacks on the standard of living
of the American population, through the destruction of what remains
of a weak network of social welfare benefits, will accelerate.
Protests will grow, and so will repression. Like our ancestors
of the period of WW1, we are descending into a very dark period.
Today, however, the US does not have a militant working-class
movement to lead the fight for more rights and higher wages.
It seems that things will get
much worse, both internationally and domestically, before they
get better. In 1908 Jack London, Socialist and novelist, published
The Iron Heel, in which he predicted a period of capitalist-led
war, terror and repression lasting several centuries. During
the Red Scare his novel won new readers; to many it seemed prescient.
Allowing for fictional exaggeration, London simply predicted
that things would get worse for working people for a long time
before they get better.
In London's novel too, a better
world eventually came about because of a protracted and violent
mass resistance struggle. I can offer no more hopeful scenario.
It's time for us to wake up, get organized, and fight back.
I hope you will all come to
the Delegate Assembly* meeting and support the Radical Caucus's
resolutions against the Patriot Act, the language of war, and
military expenditures, and the emergency resolution against the
imposition of "patriotic" criteria for Federal Title
VI funding. And after you do, I hope we all go back to our campuses
and communities, and organize with others to meet the onslaught
to come.
* This paper was delivered
at the Modern Language Association (MLA) meeting in San Diego
in December 2003.
Grover Furr teaches English at Montclair State
University in NJ and is active in the Radical Caucus of the MLA.
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