The Anti-Empire Report
An excerpt from William Blum’s memoir of the 1960s-1970s: West-Bloc Dissident
What our natural enemies didn’t do to us, we naturally did to ourselves, as did many of the other underground newspapers and movement groups in the ’60s: disagreements developed, factions formed, and, eventually, a split that rent the organization hopelessly in two — the left’s traditional circular firing squad.
Putting it in the broadest terms, there were two species of activists in these large dysfunctional families who kept bumping heads, here, there, and everywhere. We can call them the “politicos” and the “yippies” (subspecies: hippies, anarchists).
The politicos placed their faith in organization and in the intellect — a mass movement, “vanguard” political parties, hierarchies and leaders, heavy on meetings, ideology, and tracts, at times doctrinaire sounding, using words and ideas to convince the great middle class, if not the great unwashed. There were theories to justify these tactics, theories based on class analysis, presented with historical annotation to certify their viability; theories that Norman Mailer disparagingly referred to as “the sound-as-brickwork-logic-of-the-next-step in some hard new Left program.”
The yippies looked upon all this with unconcealed impatience, scorn, and unbelief. Said a yippie to a politico back then: your protest is so narrow, your rhetoric so boring, your ideological power plays so old fashioned….
Let’s listen to Jerry Rubin, certainly the yippies’ most articulate spokesperson:
The long-haired beast, smoking pot, evading the draft, and stopping traffic during demonstrations is a hell of a more a threat to the system than the so-called “politicos” with their leaflets of support for the Vietcong and the coming working class revolution. Politics is how you live your life, not whom you vote for or whom you support.
The most important political conflict in the United States for Rubin was not of classes, but “the generational conflict”. “The respectable middle-class debates LBJ while we try to pull down his pants.”
Is [American society] interested in reform, or is it just interested in eliminating nuisance? What’s needed is a new generation of nuisances. A new generation of people who are freaky, crazy, irrational, sexy, angry, irreligious, childish, and mad … people who burn draft cards, people who burn dollar bills, people who burn MA and doctoral degrees, people who say: “To hell with your goals”, people who proudly carry Vietcong flags, people who re-define reality, who re-define the norm, people who see property as theft, people who say “fuck” on television, people who break with the status-role-title-consumer game, people who have nothing material to lose but their bodies … What the socialists like the SWP and the Communist Party, with their conversions of Marxism into a natural science, fail to understand is that language does not radicalize people — what changes people is the emotional involvement of action.
Hardly anyone, of course, fit precisely and solely into either of these classifications, including Jerry Rubin. Much of the yippie “party line” was to be taken metaphorically, unless one’s alienation had reached the level of an alien, while most politicos were independent of any political party.
Ray Mungo, one of the founders of Liberation News Service, later wrote of LNS:
It is impossible for me to describe our “ideology,” for we simply didn’t have one; we never subscribed to a code of conduct or a clearly conceptualized Ideal Society … And it was the introduction of formal ideology into the group which eventually destroyed it, or more properly split it into bitterly warring camps.
When Mungo speaks of “formal ideology”, he’s referring to the “politicos” who joined LNS after its inception. These people, whom he refers to as “the Vulgar Marxists”, as opposed to his own “anarchist” camp …
believed fervently in “the revolution”, and were working toward it — a revolution based on Marx and Lenin and Cuba and SDS and “the struggle”; and people were supported only on the basis of what they were worth to the revolution; and most of the things in life which were purely enjoyable were bourgeois comforts irrelevant to the news service, although not absolutely barred. … Their method of running the news service was the Meeting and the Vote, ours was Magic. We lived on Magic, and still do, and I have to say it beats anything systematic.”
Mungo would have one believe that ideology is a “thing” introduced from the “outside”, like tuberculosis, that is best to avoid. I would argue, however, that “ideology” is nothing less than a system of ideas in one’s head, whether consciously organized or not, that attempts to answer the questions: Why is the world the way it is? Why is society the way it is? Why are people the way they are? And what can be done to change any of this? To say you have no ideology comes dangerously close to saying that you have no opinions on — and perhaps no interest in — such questions. Ray Mungo, I believe, was overreacting to people whom he saw as too systematic and who didn’t appreciate his “Magic”.
Just as I knew instinctively that I wasn’t a Quaker or a pacifist, I knew I wasn’t a yippie, hippie or anarchist, which didn’t mean that I couldn’t enjoy and even take part in some of their antics. Jerry Rubin was mistaken in my case, as in many others — language, spoken and print, had played a major role in my radicalization; equally indispensable had been the sad state of the world, but it was language which had illuminated and brought home to me the sad state of the world and proffered explanations for why it was the way it was.
During the American Revolution, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the first few months of 1776, used language suffused with both reason and emotion to argue powerfully the case for independence, to strike convincingly at one of the greatest obstacles to separation: American veneration of royalty; and to point out that beyond the politics and legalities of the conflict, the colonies were sources of profit the crown would never voluntarily relinquish. This message clarified the revolution for thousands of confused rebels who had been debating points of law with London. Imagine if Paine had been a yippie instead of a politico — his primary message might have been to pull down the king’s pants.
It was the movement’s politicos who stayed the course, continuing to be activists well past the ’60s, while Rubin’s long-haired beast and Mungo’s Magic people — lacking the convictions of their courage — could more likely be found in the ’70s sitting cross-legged at the feet of the newest-flavor guru, probing interpersonal relations instead of international relations, or seeking fulfillment through vegetarianism, “the land”, or Rolfing. By the ’80s they had evolved into yuppies.
Notes
1. New York Times, August 10, 2003
2. Frances Fitzgerald, America Revised (1980), pp.129, 139
3. Foreign Policy, “State Department Innovator Goes to Google“, September 7 2010; Washington Post, June 24, 2011
4. Washington Post, June 19, 2011
5. Washington Post, October 23, 1999
6. Washington Post, April 14, 2004
7. United Press International, July 26, 2007
A QUESTION OF SANITY
The Western media for quite some time has utilised Gaddafi’s eccentricities to portray him as mad.
In reflecting on how this war in Libya has progressed, I, however, have reason to doubt the sanity of some Western leaders.
The war has been advanced by mainly three NATO nations, America, France and Britain.
Obama, while bombing Libya has professed that this is not a “war”. With stunning linguistic gymnastics, the war has somersaulted from the feet first “war” to a head over heels “support” mission and merely an “intervention”. I must now conclude that if I dislike my neighbour and start throwing Molotov cocktails on his roof and stones into his windows, I am not at war with him, but in an effort to have him remove from the neighbourhood, I am involved in a support mission and have merely intervened across the fence into his property. Sounds like a defence, then once I run it, I would have provided the Judge a good reason to order a psychiatric examination.
Sarkozy, for his part, is faced with a UN Resolution which prohibits the supply of arms to Libya. He then in seeking to enforce the UN Resolution supplies arms to the rebels, while professing to be upholding that UN Resolution. Candidate number two for mental status assessment.
In Britain, by parity of reason, one must assume that if a community took up arms, set up its own central bank, professed itself the new legitimate government of the UK, then for consistency, David Cameron, would simply fold his arms and direct that the British army not suppress the rebellion? Absolutely, because, no doubt, he would have to be politically consistent with his conduct in Libya – now, would he? On the 1st of July, and after 3 months of bombardment of Libya by NATO, several thousand people have marched in the streets of Tirpoli in support of Gadaffi, yet in the words of Cameron:-
“As I’ve said, we will help fulfil the UN Security Council [resolution] – it is for the Libyan people to determine their government and their destiny. But our view is clear – there is no decent future for Libya with Colonel Gaddafi remaining in power. [The world cannot] stand aside while this dictator murders his own people.”
So, there are no equivalent public mass rallies in Benghazi of any size, and yet Gadaffi’s own people come out in mass support of their leader, but we cannot forget what Obama said:-
“Muammar Gaddafi has lost the legitimacy to lead and he must leave,”
and that Cameron and Obama are of one mind.
All three leaders are, of course, on a “humanitarian mission”. And to implement same, one drops bombs relentlessly on the Libyan people, who then come out in mass support of their leader and demand that the NATO bombing stops. But, as we know, Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron are all great humanitarians and thus they shall not relent from the humanitarian bombing for accomplishment of the noble humanitarian mission of removing the leader who over a million people want, while insisting that a leadership that no one ever heard of before – is installed in power to uphold the democratic wishes of the Libyan people.
Who really needs to consult the psychiatrist, Gadaffi, Obama, Sarkozy, Cameron or the masses of Libyans who marched in Tripoli ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHVDIMP-l80)?
P.S. I note now that you tube is busy, yet again, blocking the videos showing the size of the pro-Gadaffi demonstrations. Of course, we have freedom of expression here in the West.
( http://www.globaljusticeonline.com)
Thanks to Ye & my Respect to You!!! De-facto, morons, idiots & criminals have occupied Power around Entire World.
Long Life to You, William.
I have something to suggest on this topic and before I’m bashed as some zombie drone for the US Government, just take a minute to see how my shoes fit. I have spent time in the intelligence community and I have deployed overseas. I try to take the time to learn as much about a subject as I can before I make my determinations but after spending time in other countries I realized that its is overly complex with so many moving parts that the more you experience the less you know. Excuse my informality but I don’t see this as a formal forum anyway. There are a few things I have to refute outright regardless of their purpose or meaning:
1. We have been fighting in Africa, South America, and Asia covertly and overtly since the 1990s. No need to blame Obama here, this has been part of the operational tempo for a long time. I am not going to speculate on the motivation or purpose of any of those efforts.
2. Radical extremists do not single out America as the only target of choice. Its just that it makes headline news in America when the attack is in America. Other notable countries that have been attacked by extremists and much more often than our own: France, Germany, Russia, India, Philippines, Japan, China, and England. The list goes on for days and realistically we are on the low end of attacks when compared to some of those countries. However, plenty of American civilian lives were indiscriminately ended by extremists on September 11.
Here is how I look at our efforts in the middle east right now. I am not discussing Afghanistan and Iraq for the reason that they are not the same as the current conflicts taking place throughout the middle east. Those were regime changes, not revolutions.
I think its interesting the author brings up the American revolution but does not point out the strong similarities between our revolution and the ones being conducted in the middle eastern and Africa over the past few months. Thomas Paine did the same thing that social networking sites have done in the modern age, he created a dialogue between every man, woman, and child in the American Colonies. That is what the freedom of information being provided in middle eastern countries has done for the people there. They now have dialogue and know they are not alone in their quest for a better life. I’m not talking about being able to enjoy watching dancing with the stars either. I mean like basic human rights that we enjoy in the west.
The question that hasn’t even been asked here is how did we do it back in 1776? Well let me tell you we didn’t do it by ourselves. The American colonial army was beaten back in almost every conventional battle they fought in. There was no funding for food, blankets, weapons, or warfighting material. General Washington himself questioned whether the cause was lost at times in his memoirs. It was the interference by a foreign power that made us successful. The French provided not only a naval blockade to prevent supplies from reaching the British army on American soil, but also supplies, food, weapons, and training to the American militias. This eventually turned the tide of the war and made us our own country.
Why do these people not deserve the same support as we were offered back then?
As Bob Dylan(?) sang “Times they are a-changing). We all now have no excuse for not knowing the truth.
Mack: I see your point about helping people to achieve a decent standard of living free from oppression.
The trouble with America is it is addicted to oil and money. I would say that if addicts cannot kick the habit they are to be avoided and if they use foul means to satisfy their addiction they have to be contained.
It is only the most naive therefore who believe that the Americans are in Libya for the good of the Libyan people and not for oil or the billion of Libyan assets “frozen” by the Americans.
Poor structure and analysis. Is this guy a professional writer?
Excellent writing with good consceince as a decent human being.
Ghadaffi ,may be mad ,but as well crazy like a fox,here in the united former 13 colonies we chose to fight for our own freedom,while we had pricless help from france we fought the war ourselves on our own shores,We must not become involved in the internal affairs of this mans politics.
Its up to the lybian people to muster the courage,the will and the support of thier people either to opose or stand with this man.
It should be no buisness of ours,it is not a good idea to be forcefully imposing our will upon them,decideing to what purpose or form of government they wish to live,anymore Than it would have been right for cuba to decide the fate of american politic.
I am in the notion of supporting free government who vote to stand with the U,S. to allie to protect each others soviergnty,from tyrannical governments,but lybia even if it mustered every man ,woman and child to arms ,could not in reality threaten even one of our coastal un inhabited barrier islands or that of it smallest ant population.
It is my philosophy that even were we to have to park every private vehicle in america cause the lack of petro or its affordability is it worth one life to make it a exception to this doctrine.
We continue to attack and destroy large cities in other nations to teach them a lesson as not to insult or attack our intrests only to pay for the damage we inflict with no consaquence to the actions of the people that wronged us.
Nation building should and desparatly needs to be done here domestically not abroad supporting the employment of our enemies.
If we wish to survive the 21st century the we must change our tactics or suffer
Obama knows that the terrorist organizations that are determined to be the oposite of americas best interest is the driving force behind the rebels,but hesupports thier cause,if this dont make you sit back and scratch your head in bewilderment then nothing will,because the obvious would mean nothing short of treason to americas interest.
You see “government” per se and “business” as we understand these concepts have become mingled beyond perception. In a sense the American government is not the problem, the problem is those with business and racial interests who have invaded the government.
Really, what we are seeing is a type of coups, a silent type instigated by money, threats, and if necessary, elimination of those who stand in the way. It is the method of racketeering. These infiltrators throw their cash and media support behind the candidates who are most likely to do their bidding, and ever-increasingly today, they run their own candidates and place in offices the same willing sorts. In this way, elections in our country are no longer about which person is best to tun the country, state, or city, and having the people vote on the best contenders; rather, elections today are about which candidate can raise the most money and get the most press, instigated by those Big Business moneys and interests.
On the surface then we seem to be rolling right along. The problem is, all our elections are in this way fixed. SO far advanced, I dare say, that the next President of the US or Prime Minister of England has already been decided. When “Communism” (actually state capitalism, the direction the US is headed towards, q.v. almost 1 in 2 receives a government check of some kind each month) was at its peak in the old Soviet Union elections were held in pure democratic fashion. Yes, all the candidates were of the “communist” party, but voters had at least a half a dozen choices. Considering the difference between a “liberal republican” and a “conservative democrat” is slim to not available, in reality we vote for 1 of 2 choices, those who got the most media attention. Not too hard to manipulate that. Whoever wins, they win.
Now the military, like the government, is also operating under idealized premises. We have our bloody nose in doggone nearly every nation, we say, to promote freedom, and, as some have commented here, to better their ways of living. And it is my guess that most of the soldiers and their commanders believe with the same blind faith. But here, too, the infiltrators have a say: those who sell weapons, those who lend money, those who build and rebuild, those who peddle merchandise, those who seek new markets and to otherwise make a fast buck. They are the ones who want these wars.
The analog is Christianity. over 80% of Americans claim to be Christians, a religion defined by peace, love and certainly not killing. On point of fact, though, over 80% of inmates, soldiers, and congressmen are also Christian in name. Those who support war, and killing, and violence, and so on, are not really Christians at all. They are just wearing a label.
And it is the same with the military and government. Instead of using peace and diplomacy to further relations, establish trust and good will, our fine premises such as freedom, liberty, opportunity, and fairness have become subordinated to Big Business interests, weapons production and dissemination, land reconstructions and contracted enterprise. Under our flag and using our resources certain men and corporations are getting rich.
To think this is a bipartisan issue is to make a grievous error. And one sad side-effect is that you now have Americans and English who “hate Muslims” and “want wipe them out” being bred to think this way, making a military draft unnecessary. This is erroneous and morally bad education, as bad if not worse than the carnage to which such thought leads.