A fundamental deception lies at the core of the peace & justice movement

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

I do try to present all sides (even if it hurts) djf


------ Forwarded Message
From: Einar Stefferud <Stef () thor nma com>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 14:35:37 -0800
To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: A fundamental deception lies at the core of the peace & justice
movement

Another view that matches my views,
but not my experience since high school,
when I saw the light;-)...\Stef

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Saturday, March 15, 2003

Opinion 

First Person: Hell no, I won't go   -   By Brian Connelly

     A fundamental deception lies at the
     core of the peace & justice movement


Call me a chastened peacenik. For the first Gulf war, I made every vigil and
demonstration in Pittsburgh (10 years before that, I was at peace rallies in
Italy against American missiles coming to Europe). I think I was wrong.
 
 
Watching people march again to give Saddam Hussein a longer lease on life, I
wonder about 1991. Perhaps if people like me hadn't been in the streets,
Bush Senior would have had the support to destroy Saddam's regime. Lots of
Iraqis would still be alive and the world would be talking about something
else. In my community, the largely liberal and prosperous 14th ward in the
city's East End, I am getting funny looks saying these things to old
acquaintances.

The first Gulf war taught me some lessons about the peace movement. For many
actors and musicians, the concerts and demonstrations are basically
self-promotion. A perfect example was last week's worldwide reading of
Aristophanes' play "Lysistrata." Two little-known actors created and
promoted the idea of the reading as a protest of the war. The two actors are
now much better known.

Peace events are good gigs for sympathetic audiences. Gets your name around.
Hollywood folk are so uniformly against Bush that the actor Harrison Ford
took to the gossip columns to squelch a rumor that he might support him.

At the time of the Gulf war, I was friendly with members of the neo-hippie
house band for the peace movement, Rusted Root. They played every
demonstration, vigil and fund-raiser in Pittsburgh. At a rally marking the
start of the bombing, the usual activists led the solemnities before the
band turned it all into a very good party. At the time, smoking pot and
dancing to greet death and destruction seemed life-affirming rather than
sacrilegious. The war made the band's career: They emerged as Pittsburgh's
most popular group (they're still popular) and the region's only platinum
seller before Christina Aguilera came along.

Peace movement events can confer righteousness and seriousness on people who
are not very righteous or serious. The idea that anyone's career suffers by
being seen as unpatriotic is absurd. Anti-war credentials are fine entrees
to the cultural and university community in Pittsburgh.

Creative hustlers are the most accessible face of the peace movement, but
committed activists organize the events. They are good organizers because
they are always organizing for a cause; the organizing seems more important
than the cause itself. A looming war just gives them a cause that other
people are actually thinking about.

I chewed over my Gulf war experience with activists while meeting the same
people covering subsequent campaigns. At the core of the peace and justice
movement, I believe there is a fundamental deception: Activists don't
actually want to stop any war or get justice. If marches did stop a war, it
would show that the government was listening. The purpose of peace and
justice activism is to show that the power structure can never listen or
change. Sincere and conflicted people become united in the idea that America
is cruel and undemocratic.

This feeling is known as solidarity, and creating solidarity is what
activism is all about. Join the struggle. And the struggle goes on: (set
italic) la lucha continua (end italic), win, lose or draw, (set italic) por
siempre (end italic). The idea that the struggle ought to accomplish
something is not the point. The causes are place names, and allies come and
go: Iraq, Chiapas, Palestine. The baleful power of America remains the
eternal issue.

Like Christopher Hitchens, I have friends who passionately believe that John
Ashcroft is more of a threat than Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.
(Ashcroft is a domestic obsession: Europeans tell pollsters that Bush is the
real threat.) Ask how many people John Ashcroft has killed and they say that
is not the point. 

A lot of friends see no conceivable rationale for this war other than taking
Iraq's oil. The idea that there even (set italic) could (end italic) be
other reasons --like that Saddam Hussein is a dangerous and uniquely
ambitious dictator with a long record of killing people-- strikes them as
unbelievable. 

Likewise Afghanistan. At the beginning of the attack on the Taliban, some
friends couldn't see why on earth we were bombing Afghanistan. "Why not bomb
Hamburg?" they said, reasoning that the hijackers had also lived in Hamburg.
Afghanistan too was surely about oil. Point out that something like 2
million people have since returned home to Afghanistan --the U.N.'s
estimate, not Bush's-- and they say that is also not the point. I don't see
what else the point could be.

My friends I love. Bush I never liked and didn't help elect. I can't
wholeheartedly cheer for a war against Iraq, right now. Few people can. But
I'm wholeheartedly against the idea that there are no compelling reasons to
end Saddam's reign before long.

Mine seems to be a minority opinion in the 14th ward. Civil conversation is
becoming a struggle. The better-paid professionals don't demonstrate; they
tell duct-tape and Bush-is-so-stupid jokes while finding the whole "evil"
thing really uncool. Genteel ladies married to retired professors express
disappointment in Colin Powell, who seemed like such a nice man. The only
place around here to find three people who support Bush is among Orthodox
Jews.

Whatever comes next, I am keeping my head low and many thoughts to myself.
Hunkering down at home, I sympathize with the long-suffering Iraqis waiting
to see what will happen over their heads. May the suffering end soon.
*
Brian Connelly is a writer living in Squirrel Hill (bc1z () andrew cmu edu).

Copyright ©1997-2003 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/comm/20030315edconn15p1.asp


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