The Gatekeepers of the So-Called Left

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http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/articles/40

BY CHARLES SHAW - Last February United for Peace and Justice, the largest representative coalition within the American "anti-war movement", emerged from their second annual Assembly with a 2005 "action plan" that effectively caged the "anti-war" debate exclusively within the Iraq conflict to achieve partisan ends on behalf of the pro-war Democratic Party and their Neoliberal corporate benefactors. Their "action plan" refused to address any of the core issues of US Foreign and Defense policy, which are the root causes of a pervading culture of war and militarism that has taken over the nation in the years since WWII.

These decisions are part of a larger pattern of "regulated resistance", a system by which dissent is carefully managed and constrained by self, overt, or covert censorship; denial-based-psychology; fear of personal or professional criticism and reprisal; and pressure from powers above including elected officials and those establishment foundations which flood millions into the not-for-profit activist sector.

This establishment money, and the access it grants, has caused many ostensible resistance leaders to suddenly and dramatically abandon long-held ideological positions and shift their behavior towards doing what can clearly be seen as the bidding of those in power whose views and values are in direct contravention to the established mores of peace and justice movements throughout history.

These "resistance leaders" of the "Left" act as "Gatekeepers"—influential "progressive" figures who use their resources and visibility to regulate the debate, tactics, and rhetoric of the "anti-war" and other "progressive" movements.

The Gatekeepers of the So-Called "Left"
"The press is the hired agent of a moneyed system, set up for no other reason than to tell us lies where their interests are concerned." — Henry Adams
In his shocking investigative report "The Left Gatekeepers", journalist Bob Feldman researched purportedly "Left" activist and media organizations that receive substantial funding from large establishment foundations with known ties to the CIA, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and even the much-maligned Carlyle Group, the arms dealing "investment fund" featured in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, of which GHW Bush, the Saudi royal family, and, at one time, the Bin Laden family, are all equity partners.

The Foundation structure is used by these organizations to funnel corporate and personal wealth into the policy-making process. Foundations are tax-free, and contributions to foundations are deductible from federal corporate and individual income taxes. The Foundations themselves are not subject to federal income taxation, and they control hundreds of billions of dollars of money that would normally go to pay these necessary taxes.

Feldman asks, "Are the interests of the people being served by 'dissidents' who are being subsidized by the agencies of the ruling class whom they should be exposing? What does this say about the motivations behind the Left establishment's ideological warfare against conspiracy researchers, and their adoption of an increasingly watered-down analytical view which fails to look closely at the inner power structures and conspiracies of the ruling elite?"

Many of these "dissidents" Feldman describes are members of the UFPJ Steering Committee, and he specifically cites prominent peace activist Medea Benjamin, and Leslie Cagan, the renowned anti-nuke activist who is now UFPJ's National Director.

Disproportionate Influence and a Profound Conflict of Interest

Medea Benjamin and Kevin Danaher co-founded the international human rights organization Global Exchange 17 years ago. In that time they have been consistently clear and outspoken with their views on war and Neoliberalism—more commonly known as corporate globalization. Because of their combined intellectual acuity and renowned fearlessness, Benjamin's media savvy, and the access they have been granted through some of their more prominent benefactors such as the MacArthur Foundation and billionaire financier George Soros, they have come to command a high level of visibility in progressive politics.

Benjamin has fast made a name for herself as a leading figure in the "anti-war movement" with well-publicized media stunts at the Republican and Democratic Conventions, disruptions of FCC and Congressional hearings, and frequent trips to the Middle East to showcase the suffering of the Iraqi and Afghani people. She also benefits from her proximity to well-known "progressive" leaders, celebrities, and journalists. Alongside her Code Pink Women for Peace, and Danaher's Green Festivals, Global Exchange has come to command a significant market share in the larger peace and justice community, reaping enormous "street cred" within the activist world.

Benjamin also wields a disproportionate amount of weight within the Green Party of the United States, having run for Senator of California on their ticket in 2000, and within the anti-war umbrella group United for Peace and Justice, where she sits on their Steering Committee and is arguably their most influential member. As testament, Benjamin and her Global Exchange/Code Pink cadre were the authors of three of the five proposals passed by UFPJ at the February Assembly.

But during the 2004 Presidential campaign, Benjamin's message and tone began to shift dramatically into what came to be known as the "ABB" movement—Anybody But Bush. She and eighty fellow prominent leaders who once formed the one hundred-thirteen member "Nader 2000 Citizens Committee" put forth a petition urging anti-war Nader not to run, and instead threw their support behind pro-war Democratic Party candidate John Kerry. At the Green Party National Convention in Milwaukee last June Benjamin campaigned heavily for "safe-state" candidate David Cobb, who was also unabashedly ABB and even initially pledged not to run in swing states, though he now denies it. Benjamin cajoled Greens into neither nominating Nader nor giving him the official endorsement he and running mate Peter Camejo had publicly sought from the party.

The pro and con arguments of ABB have been argued exhaustively, and many do not find the issue relevant any longer. But they are relevant when considering just how UFPJ became ABB and has since found itself embroiled in partisan politics working to attack exclusively the Bush Administration and their competing Neoconservative movement, despite the fact that American war policy is a bipartisan program.

Leslie Cagan's Pacifica Foundation is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which was recently taken over by what has been described as a "Right Wing coup"), the Rockefeller-funded Working Assets group, and the ubiquitous George Soros. Like PBS, the Pacifica Network recently went through a takeover drama where a cabal of Board members attempted to sell the station off to center-mainstream corporate interests. Cagan is also reportedly connected to the right-wing Ford Foundation, which funnels money to her through a Lesbian advocacy group known as Astraea.

Peace Action, which describes itself as "the nation's largest grassroots peace group" that "gets results," is funded in part by a Working Assets grant. Both Peace Action and Working Assets gave UFPJ a combined total of $45,000 for their 2003 operating budget (the last year UFPJ published their financial statements, something they are required by law to do annually). UFPJ also received a $151,000 grant from the Funding Exchange, a network of social justice foundations throughout the United States that gives money to progressive organizations.

What outrages many of those within the activist community who are aware of these funding sources is that these so-called "dissidents" would consent to take money from these foundations given the long and voluminous history they have as part of the war-making establishment.

In his book Trading with the Enemy, Charles Hingham documents how both the Rockefeller and Ford fortunes were enhanced in part through collaboration with Nazi Germany, the Rockefellers by selling the Nazis oil through the Standard Oil Company, and the Fords by selling the Nazis tanks through subsidiary corporations (note: the only industrial infrastructure spared in the Allied bombing of Germany was the Ford Motors plant near Cologne). Both Standard Oil (eventually Exxon, Mobil, and Amoco) and the Ford Motor Co. made huge profits from Defense contracts following WWII. Since 1950 a Rockefeller has held a prominent leadership position in the Council on Foreign Relations, and David Rockefeller was cofounder of the Trilateral Commission. Both organizations helped craft the "Carter Doctrine" of the late 1970s which stated that the US would heretofore intervene militarily to protect its oil supply from the Middle East.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has been the historical driving force behind such bedrock institutions of corporate globalization as the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization (WTO), and NATO, and which Esquire magazine referred to in 1962 as "that part of the Establishment that guides our destiny as a nation." In 1950, the Chicago Tribune published a story on the CFR in which they stated, "[the members] have used the prestige that their wealth, their social position, and their education have given them to lead their country towards bankruptcy and military debacle. They should look at their hands. There is blood on them—the dried blood of the last war and the fresh blood of the present one."

Billionaire George Soros, who refers to himself as a "progressive philanthropist", has since 1995 been part of the arms-dealing Carlyle Group, in which he has invested a reported $100 Million, and has substantial stock holdings in weapons manufacturers Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. He is a member and former Director of the CFR, and is a member of the enigmatic Bilderberg Group, a collection of approximately 1300 of the world's richest and most powerful figures in business, banking, media, military, and government, who meet once a year in extreme secrecy and under almost unfathomable security, and whose official purpose and actions remain a mystery, spurring a deluge of wide-ranging speculation.

The 353-member American contingent of Bilderberg is a bipartisan cavalcade that includes Paul Wolfowitz, David Rockefeller, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, Vernon Jordan, Melinda Gates, Bill Clinton, and Alan Greenspan. It is long argued and well documented that the mission of this organization, working in conjunction with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, is to manipulate world governments and economies to promote a global, capitalist agenda commonly referred to as the "New World Order". These supranational bodies seek to dismantle national sovereignty (through mechanisms such as "Free Trade" agreements) in favor of a one-world government which primarily upholds the rights of corporations and the wealthy over the people.

This connection begs the question: How much influence does Soros and his ilk have over Benjamin et al, and, by proxy, the "anti-war movement"? Is this relationship the reason Benjamin has dropped the anti-Globalization rhetoric and instead become immersed in partisan wrangling over the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq? Is this the reason she has adopted a "blowback" stance with regards to 9/11 and the resultant "War on Terror"? At the UFPJ Assembly, Benjamin abstained from voting on the 9/11 Truth proposal, and afterwards explained her abstention by claiming she was "afraid a vote for the proposal would mean that UFPJ would have to work with certain 'difficult people' involved in the 9/11 Truth movement."

It is unfortunate Benjamin cannot bring herself to work with "difficult" people (even though it is doubtful she is even aware of just who is and is not a recognized credible member of 9/11 Truth). Because of the nature of 9/11 research, it sadly finds itself constantly infiltrated by the proverbial kook and various degrees of disinformation, but Benjamin and UFPJ have taken an all-inclusive, monolithic view of this very complex and diverse movement. It is even more unfortunate, and some might argue tragic, that personal foibles take priority over justice for the families of 3,000 people killed on that fateful day in September, and the hundreds of thousands killed in the name of the "War on Terror" as some form of retribution for 9/11. Unless, of course, it was not a personal foible that influenced her decision to abstain, but something more direct, such as a mandate from her funders, the threat of some form of professional backlash or reprisal, or simple peer disapproval.

And perhaps the greatest insult to injury is that she is now raising money for the (somewhat oxymoronic) Progressive Democrats of America. As Ralph Nader's running mate Peter Camejo wrote in an open letter to the Green Party, "In the fund appeal for the PDA [Benjamin] says the PDA is not the Democratic Party. It is like saying the Panama Canal is not Panama."

The Failed Obligations and Inexcusable Denials of the "Left" Media

To offer a clear portrait of how "regulated resistance" works within the "Left" or "progressive" media, consider their steadfast refusal to report on or organize around two of the most important incidents in modern American history as pertains to our present situation—possible US government involvement in 9/11, and the relationship between the Bush family and the Nazi regime in Germany.

Sins of Omission and Distortion: 9/11, and the Rubber Stamp

As mentioned throughout this article, the first and perhaps greatest failure of the "anti-war movement" is the shameful irresponsibility the "Left" has shown by their refusal to challenge the "official" story behind 9/11.

Bob Feldman writes:
Not surprisingly, the rank and file didn't buy into the hype—nor were many convinced by the gatekeepers' offhand, passionless calls for an official investigation. Interest in alternative 9/11 reporting continued to grow, and by the time that members of 9/11 victim's families began publicly demanding an end to the government cover-up and even mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times were admitting that the lack of an independent investigatory commission was "extraordinary," the Left media gatekeepers backed down and adopted a new tactic of silent stonewalling and tacit support for the official story.
Despite widespread and well-documented critiques that even "War on Terror" apologists acknowledge, the corporate media has never once challenged the "official" story. Instead, they gleefully lapped up the Osama theory fed to it by the Bush Administration while the fires at Ground Zero were still burning, and in the 18 months between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq settled comfortably into its role as "Bush handmaiden and peace movement disciplinarian."

But the absence of any challenge to this story from the "anti-war movement" is frankly disturbing on a level that supersedes even the craven behavior of the corporate media. Although the "Left" has no compunction attacking Bush and his Neoconservative cabal, it consistently fails to see how the ongoing bipartisan validation of the "official" story is the license the US Government takes to continue their imperial ambitions through the chimera known as the "War on Terror", and by proxy, the corporate neocolonialism occurring across the globe.

The 9/11 Truth movement got a fledgling chance to make its case to the "Left" on May 26th, 2004, when, Amy Goodman, host of the flagship Progressive news source Democracy NOW!, agreed to host prominent theologian David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11. Her decision followed a long and relentless "Waking Amy" campaign organized by Emanuel Sferios of the 9/11 Visibility Project.

However, at the last minute, Goodman abruptly and without explanation changed the format of the show from an interview to a "debate," and brought in long-time "anti-conspiracist" Chip Berlet. Berlet is not an expert on 9/11 research, and his group, Political Research Associates, is an alleged "Left" organization that is funded in part by the Ford Foundation. (It is interesting to note that "Chip" Berlet's full name is John Foster Berlet. He was named after John Foster Dulles who, with his brother Allen, designed the CIA for Harry Truman in 1947, and played a prominent role in smuggling Nazis into America to help build the post-WWII American "Defense" and Intelligence apparatus).

Despite their being a virtual laundry list of inconsistencies to the "official" story, and documented proof of government cover-up activity, the final product, "The New Pearl Harbor: A Debate On A New Book That Alleges The Bush Administration Was Behind The 9/11 Attacks," focused almost exclusively on a handful of weak speculations made by French researcher Thierry Meyssan, not Griffin, about aspects of the Pentagon strike. This well-worn tactic known as the "straw man argument" is used by detractors to attack and undermine the weakest part of an alternative theory in order to dismiss it and alienate the public from the larger issue. If a journalist with otherwise flawless research happens to have one bad assertion, the 90 per cent he or she got right is generally ignored in favor of attaching the person to their one misstep. This tactic presupposes in a "deductive" argument that the theory is only as strong as the weakest link. Berlet tried to discredit Griffin by associating him with Meyssan, even though Griffin stated clearly on the show that his book merely compiled information from other researchers in order to raise questions that made a solid case that the "official" was simply implausible.

By only choosing to focus on the most difficult theories to believe—regardless of their potential merit—Goodman and Berlet completely missed the point. Griffin stated quite clearly on the program: "There are all sorts of possible theories as to what happened. You don't have to come up with an alternative theory to show that the 'official' theory is very problematic."

Berlet countered by saying, "It's not good to believe in conspiracies that cannot be proven by available evidence." But this principle does not take into account the prevalent role of cover-ups in these types of operations (such as this one being perpetrated by the US Government), which prevents potentially enlightening evidence from ever being examined. Some more notable examples include the total failure of air defenses and the role of hijack-based "war games" exercises taking place that morning, the admitted controlled-demolition of Building 7 which had to have been pre-wired, all the steel from the Twin Towers which was immediately shipped to China without being studied, all the video footage of the Pentagon strike which was promptly seized by the FBI (even though disclosure would have put an end to all the wild "no plane, missile strike" theories of Meyssan and others), and the notes from the now infamous closed-door Bush/Cheney "visit" with the 9/11 Commission, which were promptly confiscated. . . "

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Berlet's approach to discrediting "conspiracy theory" reinforces what can be called the "disbelief" factor, as in "I just can't believe that the Bush Administration/US Government/Americans/people would do such a thing!" Although this knee-jerk emotional response is understandable and easily explainable within the context of human psychology, it does not amount to a logical defense of the "official" story. In the absence of any substantive debate, another psychological factor operated alongside the "disbelief" factor: As Griffin states, "the Bush administration created a halo over 9/11, so it became not only unpatriotic, but almost sacrilegious to raise any questions." The "anti-war movement" and "Left" media, ostensibly dissident by nature and thus obliged to question, instead pulled right into lockstep with the government and corporate media, rubber-stamping the "official" version of events.

Griffin did end up writing a lengthy response to Berlet's misleading critique, but the damage had already been done. Goodman never really inquired beyond the "straw man" arguments Berlet kept pounding, and no other "Left" media outlet with the audience of Democracy NOW! has touched the story since.

It is important to note that Democracy NOW! was awarded a $75,000 Ford Foundation grant in 2002 "to continue incorporating the aftermath of the September 11th attack into future broadcasts," and received a further $150,000 from Ford in 2004.

Emanuel Sferios says the Ford Foundation does not have to explicitly tell Democracy NOW! how they want 9/11 to be covered. He explains that "Democracy NOW! will simply self-censor, because they want future money from the Ford Foundation. It's also important to note that Amy Goodman coined a new, pejorative phrase to dismiss the 9/11 Truth Movement. She is the first in history, as far as I know, to refer to us as a "conspiracy theory movement."

The most glaring irony in all of this is that it was Goodman herself who uttered these words:
"I think the media has reached an all-time low in this country. And that is a terrible violation of what our profession is supposed to do. We are supposed to hold those in power accountable. We're not supposed to cozy up to those in power, not supposed get the perks of the powerful. We are supposed to be there to, if not keep the politicians honest, show what's going on. And it is very serious now because we're talking about wartime... And when the media acts as a conveyer belt for the lies of the administration, we not only are violating our responsibility, but those lies take lives."

Furthering these sins of omission regarding 9/11 is the "Left's" refusal to address any of the voluminous evidence uncovered by controversial journalist Michael Ruppert in his book Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.

Ruppert's investigation, the most thorough of any effort thus far including the Kean Commission, has been publicly attacked more than any other independent effort, which for many is a testament to its effectiveness.

In what seemed like a coordinated effort, David Corn and Norman Solomon, purported "Left" journalists, through The Nation and Pacifica Radio, repeatedly pilloried Ruppert for almost two years before his book was released—without once addressing the evidence presented. The sum total of their response to Rubicon was to engage in a series of ad hominem attacks portraying Ruppert as mentally unstable. Although Ruppert is an impassioned, domineering, even frequently alienating character with a classic type-A personality (perhaps he could be described as "difficult"?) who has very little patience for those who question his work, he is anything but insane, and his personality is not all that different from many of the personalities we have been discussing. What is never taken into consideration when discussing his "psychology", however, is that Ruppert has a lot of reason to be sensitive about the issue of government corruption and malfeasance. Multiple attempts have been made on his life for trying to expose CIA and LAPD complicity in the South Central crack-cocaine trade. Anyone familiar with the history of disinformation tactics will recognize the Corn/Solomon attacks as a tried and true method of discrediting not only an author or researcher, but an entire line of investigation.

It should be noted that the MacArthur-funded Nation, for which Corn is a staff writer, has ties back to the CIA and its former director William Casey, and the Manhattan Institute, and Chief Editor Katrina vanden Heuval's father was involved in "Operation Mockingbird", a CIA project originating in the early days of the Cold War to buy influence behind the scenes at major media outlets and put reporters on the CIA payroll. Solomon is the Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington and is the ostensible head of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting), funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, Working Assets group, and the Shumann Foundation.

A Story That Would Outrage Anyone—But No One Knows About

The "Left" has also consistently refused, on any level, to report or act on the established connection between the Bush Family and the Nazi Party during the 1930's, 40's, and early 50's.

John Buchanan, the charismatic, relentless independent journalist from Miami wrote about his inability to get any mainstream media source to pick up his New Hampshire Gazette story, "Bush—Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951" in his 2004 book, Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media, and the Religious Right.

Even though Buchanan's reporting was based on facts that came directly from declassified official documents currently in the National Archives, not one single mainstream news source agreed to even look at the government documents, which chronicled the long history of collaboration between Bush's grandfathers Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker, Prescott Bush's employer A. Averell Harriman of Brown Brothers Harriman, and Nazi industrialist and financier Fritz Thyssen. Between 1942 and 1951, under the "Trading with the Enemy Act," the US Government seized 33 Bush-Harriman-Nazi businesses and client assets. But instead of facing a firing squad for treason during war time, Prescott Bush pocketed $1.5 Million from the liquidation of the first and largest of the 33 businesses, the Union Banking Corporation, principle investor in the Silesian-American Corporation which used slave-labor from the Auschwitz concentration camp for mining in Poland. None of the principles in the deal were ever brought to justice.

This story should have resurfaced every time one of the Bush men ran for or was appointed to public office. Instead, it was spun relentlessly, and eventually buried. Only The Guardian of London eventually picked up on this story in one subsequent article nearly a year later titled, "How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power".

Buchanan goes on to say:
"Perhaps more troubling, and certainly more surprising, not even left-leaning media, 'alternative media' outlets, or media watchdog groups would touch the story. The Bush-bashing editor of the Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and her assistant Peggy Suttles, both declined to pursue the story... Don Hazen, a founder of alt-media online syndicate, Alternet, also refused to report the story... Norman Solomon, a regular op-ed contributor to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post, initially agreed to help get the story out "to the world" until he discovered that his four bread-and-butter newspapers had all turned down the documents... Later, even the Center for American Progress, a George Soros-funded liberal think tank in Washington—headed by former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta—would refuse to acknowledge or help expose the Bush-Nazi connection."
(Ed's note: Alternet also refused to consider this article for publication).

Although history tends to ignore it, the United States' rise to global dominance was largely made possible by former Nazis who were smuggled into the country during and after the war to work in secret weapons labs, and lay the foundation for what would become the controlled mass-media. Nazi scientists invented the technology for the jet engine, the ballistic missile, the nuclear bomb, and other classified weapons and surveillance technologies that both the Americans and the Soviets appropriated for use in the Cold War.

These parent companies of the Left Gatekeeper foundations became part of what Dwight D. Eisenhower coined in his farewell address the "Military-Industrial Complex," which since the end of WWII has expropriated an estimated $15 Trillion in American taxpayer money for "Defense" spending. That, as author Joel Andreas notes, "is more than the amount of money spent on all the existing man-made wealth of the US: that is every building, highway, park, factory, car, and what have you."

CONCLUSION: The Death of Authentic Resistance

Michael Novick of the Anti-Racist Action network has been around a long time, and has a list of bona fides pages long. He has seen many an organization come and go, and he believes that the 501(c)3/NGO/not-for-profit corporate model has been the death of popular movements and authentic resistance.

"Such organizations vacuumed up the flotsam and jetsam of the resistance movements of the 60s and 70s, gave them paid staff positions, and neutered them. This was true long before the emergence of the current round of the 'anti-war movement'. It happened to the women's movement and the Black and Chicano liberation struggles as far back as the 70s. In the late 80s, most of the anti-racist projects that sprung up to deal with the first wave of Neo-Nazism went the board and staff, grant-writing model, with the result that they lost both their militancy and their anti-establishment spark, making them politically irrelevant. Most went out of business as other vogues took precedence with funders."

There is no doubt that this madness must stop, and yet, where is the "anti-war movement" here when we need them most? Not reading this article, for sure, even though it was written for those who would attack just-cause critics of the "anti-war movement", those who lament that they have no other funding options and who can bring themselves to rationalize taking blood money, those who put their own names and careers ahead of the people they purportedly represent—and for all those who recognize this hypocrisy and want something more, something better. Though it is difficult and may require sacrifice and even dismantling this corrupted system, we must look at how our movements come to dance with the devil, and turn into the very things that we once so despised

To view the complete "Left Gatekeepers" chart go here.

Pt. 1 - Is it possible to change the system when you are the system?
http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/articles/30

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Charles Shaw is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Newtopia, and has been deeply involved in the anti-war movement since the bombing of Afghanistan. Newtopia Magazine is a member group of United for Peace and Justice.

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http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/articles/30

Regulated Resistance: Is it possible to change the system when you are the system?

Articles / Feature Article
Posted by cshaw on Apr 26, 2005 - 01:06 PM
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by Charles Shaw

Does the American “anti-war movement” really have the ability to bring about change when they are closely monitored, financed, and regulated by the same system they purport to oppose? (pt.1 in a two-part series)

 BY CHARLES SHAW - In February of this year, <strong><em>United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ)</em> [1]</strong>, a coalition of more than 800 peace and justice groups throughout the United States, <strong><em> held their second annual Assembly</em> [2]</strong> to hear and vote on proposals for a 2005 “action plan.” With the war in Iraq fast approaching its second anniversary, and the larger “War on Terror” crossing its third and half year, close to 500 delegates from 275 member groups traveled to St. Louis in the hopes that the “anti-war movement”—which emerged with unprecedented speed and size just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in the Spring of 2003—could be resuscitated. Despite impressive beginnings, the movement as a whole has yet to make any significant impact on US policy, or achieve any lasting public resonance. More disturbing is the fact that since Bush’s victory in November, it has gone completely MIA.

One week after the election, the US launched a massive, sustained offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which absolutely leveled the metropolis of 350,000. Virtually everyone in the “movement” knew this offensive was a forgone conclusion should Bush be reelected (though few understood that the offensive would likely have gone ahead regardless of who won). Yet, despite this foreknowledge, the streets of America remained empty. In San Francisco, the usual hotbed for anti-war activism, barely 500 people showed up to a demonstration organized by the local chapter of <strong><em>International ANSWER</em> [3]</strong>, and endorsed by Global Exchange & Code Pink, the two most prominent activist groups in the Bay Area.

Most rationalized the poor turnout by claiming the movement was “saving its energy for the Counter-Inaugural Protests.” It was believed by activists and <strong><em>even by FEMA</em> [4]</strong> that the protests would be the largest and most volatile since the reelection of Richard Nixon in 1972. But instead, the Counter-Inaugural became an organizing boondoggle, and in the end an anemic gaggle of less than 10,000 protestors showed up in Washington, DC. The Inauguration itself turned out to be one gigantic Republican hootenanny with over 400,000 fur-clad Bush supporters turning out to hail their Chief. So innocuous were the protestors that Bush backers actively harassed and on a few occasions even physically attacked them in the street.

Even though the hard core members of the anti-war movement had been protesting for three and a half years—since the days following 9/11 when the Bush Administration leapt immediately and, some argued, recklessly into war mode, audaciously proclaiming “a war that will not end in our lifetime”—it was clear that whatever the “movement” was doing, it wasn’t working. It sadly had become the proverbial tree that falls in the forest, unseen, unheard, and unheeded. By the time the UFPJ Assembly came around, it was clear that time had come to consider radical new possibilities.

Unfortunately, the Assembly was far from radical. What emerged from that conclave was <strong><em>a benign and puzzling collection of campaigns</em> [5]</strong> utterly lacking in passion, outrage, or threat. There was really no way to explain such politically correct palaver as “Presenting the Cost of War to Local Communities”, and “Supporting Clergy and Laity”, and tacit lip service was paid to <strong><em>a series of fourteen other proposals</em> [6]</strong> which UFPJ stated they “will support through website publicity, email announcements, and/or other similar means.” Some of these, such as War Tax Resistance, Counter-Recruitment campaigns, and Direct Actions on SUV manufacturers for contributing to oil dependence, are substantially more important, more powerful and, many would argue, more necessary tactics than letting the local priest know you’re down with his peace efforts.

I spoke with many attendees who left the Assembly wondering what had happened to the “resistance” in the resistance movement, and why the “anti-war movement,” in its present incarnation, is not addressing the root causes of our war policies.

Janice Matthews, a mother of six from Kansas City, Kansas, two of whom are draft age, has been involved with the <strong><em>9/11 Truth Movement</em> [7]</strong> since its inception more than two years ago. She and seven colleagues attended the Assembly to present a campaign to raise awareness of the government cover-up of the real facts behind the September 11th attacks. She believes that the proposals that were adopted at the Assembly speak pretty clearly to the direction of UFPJ and, more importantly, their seeming lack of willingness to accept or participate in any risk.

“It was a contingent of mainly middle-aged, middle-class Liberals who chose very safe, mostly easy proposals,” Matthews said, “and rejected the more powerful and potentially more ‘dangerous’ proposals—the ones that might have had a real impact. It also seemed like they alienated the youth contingent by flatly rejecting all the Direct Action proposals. I fear this will come back to haunt the movement.”

It was über-activist David Solnit who helped meld eight individually proposed Direct Action campaigns into one comprehensive “People Power” proposal. Solnit (who is so well-respected The Simpsons did an episode which parodied a composite of him and Julia Butterfly Hill called "Lisa the Treehugger") disagrees with Matthews, even though his proposal was voted down.

“Those of us who brought the ‘People Power’ proposal did not expect it to pass for a number of reasons,” Solnit said. “But felt we had achieved our goals of raising the discussion of strategy and of a people power approach that moved from influencing to asserting power.”

Jim MacDonald of DAWN (the DC Anti-War Network) rebuffs Solnit’s acceptance of UFPJ’s refusal to adopt Direct Action plans. “I see a contradiction between pressuring Congress and nonviolent resistance because the rationale used for engaging in nonviolent resistance (especially nonviolent civil disobedience) is the belief that democracy and the democratic process are broken. I believe that one should always engage in negotiation rather than resistance if one still has the slightest hope. But many of us who engage in nonviolent resistance believe that the system is hopelessly broken, and do not believe that it can be remedied at all.”

People’s strategies of public opposition…are in my opinion unlikely to succeed until they expose the unjust secret arrangements and deals on which these official policies are based. The US political establishment, seemingly unassailable on its surface, becomes more vulnerable when the private, covert, and sometimes conspiratorial origins of what passes for public policy are exposed. — Peter Dale Scott, Oil, Drugs, and War

In social movements, such tactical conservatism is often linked to an underlying unwillingness to address root causes. At the UPFJ Assembly, this tendency played itself out in the marginalization of the “9/11 Truthers.”

Even though Matthews knows that she and fellow 9/11 Truthers are not popular people, that people say derogatory and mean-spirited things about them and the work they do, call them “crazy” and “conspiracy nuts” or just plain “freaks,” and make the ubiquitous snide remarks about tin foil hats when they are not around, she thought that they’d get at least a fair shake, considering that 9/11 is the lynchpin for the entire “War on Terror.” But despite meticulous research, well produced media presentations, and reams of compelling evidence that shows, at the very least, significant holes in the “official story,” Matthews soon learned that when Truthers do speak up, more often than not they find themselves marginalized out of the public debate.

“We submitted a proposal which summarized how 9/11 impacts the issues UFPJ and all their member groups take on regularly and therefore why it matters to them. We really asked for very little—simply that UFPJ publicly acknowledge the need for a real investigation into 9/11. Some of the members individually were very kind to our faces, and heaped lots of praise and bluster on us for our ‘courage’ and the ‘importance’ of our work, but in the end I don’t think they had any intention of taking us seriously. The fact that ‘second-tier’ proposals like ours, which didn’t ask for much in the way of UFPJ resources, were not even allowed into debate in the general Assembly didn’t help. Worse still, without even hearing pro and con statements or having an opportunity to ask questions about our proposal, it was voted down.”

Matthews colleague Gabriel Day believes those delegates who voted against 9/11 Truth did so because they only will let themselves believe in the safe "blowback" theory of 9/11, which asserts that the US was attacked solely by radical Islamic fundamentalists because of its policies in the Middle East, and that the Bush Administration chose to “hijack” this catastrophe to serve their own purposes, but had no idea the attacks were coming, nor had any complicity in organizing or facilitating them.

“This approach completely ignores mountains of evidence pointing to government foreknowledge and even potential complicity in the attacks,” said Day. “[UFPJ] are more concerned with ending the current hot conflict in Iraq and still fail to see the huge potential to derail the whole PNAC war machine by exposing the criminal, treasonous acts of 9/11.”

Rejection is something Matthews and her ilk have grown used to in this work. For strength, she has latched on to a quote by Michael Rivero which she thinks sums up the individual public resistance to 9/11 Truth:

“Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one’s self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.”

“Our issue took thought, reading, education, questioning,” Matthews says, airing a long, painful sigh. “‘Pressuring Congress & Elected Officials to Bring the Troops Home’ (one of the five proposals that passed) doesn’t take any thought, any courage, or outside-the-box thinking and is very easy to vote for. It also takes no effort to get your membership to ‘go along’ with it.”

In the end the UFPJ assembly appeared to have more in common with the recent Republican and Democratic conventions than it did with the now infamous 1969 SDS conference in Chicago. That loose analogy had been drawn on a few occasions preceding the gathering, owing to the crucial dilemma in which the “movement” now finds itself. It was, to many, a cliquish, backslapping exercise in self-adulation by the ruling elite of the “movement” within a rote setting where everything was predetermined and stage-managed. This was reflected not only in the tepid proposals passed by the Assembly, but also by the fact that “Steering Committee” membership turnover was nominal at best, even though the previous leadership had failed to make any sort of lasting impact on the American consciousness, and the “movement”, as stated earlier, was floundering in obscurity.

Looking at the UFPJ 2005 “action plan” to end the war, one is reminded of the passage in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where eternity is described as a mountain of sand the size of Ireland, over which every million years a bird flies, swooping in to remove one single grain. But the question no one seems to be asking is, why did they approve such a milquetoast plan of action? What, if anything, was influencing their decisions?

****

For a growing number of activists and concerned citizens, the American “anti-war movement” should not be only about protesting our one unpopular war in Iraq. It should be about bringing an end to this Leviathan known, speciously, as the United States Department of Defense (DOD), specious because it has a peculiar understanding of the word “Defense”. With an annual budget of almost half a trillion dollars, the United States <strong><em>funds a global garrison of scores of overseas military bases in 130 of the 191 member nations of the United Nations</em> [8]</strong>, fleets of air and water craft which control air space and shipping routes, a battalion of classified technology satellites with the ability to read a wristwatch, a standing army of 1.7 million of the most heavily armed professional soldiers on earth, and <strong><em>an arsenal of 10,600 nuclear weapons on 15 minute alert</em> [9]</strong> which have the capability to destroy the world a dozen times over.

The US is presently engaged in two hot wars in Central Asia, and plays a significant military role in the ongoing conflicts of Colombia, Georgia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Horn of Africa, which includes Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Sudan. It is currently engaged in diplomatic warfare against Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela, and a hot conflict with one or more of the above is by all accounts imminent. The DOD routinely engages in arms deals with other nations in service of the weapons industry, which are used to foment civil wars and transnational conflicts and secure the illegal drug trade. The US also exports military training in “advisory” roles, generally a euphemism for providing intelligence and Special Forces support to indigenous armies.

And in what is perhaps the most contentious issue, the US gives somewhere in the neighborhood of $11 billion annually in direct and indirect military aid to Israel, which the Israelis have used to build the fourth largest armed forces on earth, a secret stockpile of an estimated 200 nuclear warheads, and to continue the 38-year-old brutal occupation of Palestine. This aid, and the ongoing diplomatic cover the US gives Israel in the United Nations, is the bedrock of anti-American hatred in the Middle East, yet it goes largely misunderstood in the American public, and is intentionally censored by the “anti-war movement” <strong><em>due to the strong pro-Israeli interests of the Democratic Party, their corporate benefactors, and the mainstream media, which plays a substantial role by intentionally misreporting and distorting news emerging from the Occupied Territories</em> [10]</strong>.

Recently, the US has consented to sell big-ticket arms to both India and Pakistan, irrespective of the fact that, of all the potential wars facing the world today, this one is considered the most likely conflict to end in a nuclear exchange.

The American people appear to have willingly acquiesced to a prevailing social culture of war and militarism, reflected in the biased reporting of corporate media and a flood of television, film, and <strong><em>corporate promotions</em> [11]</strong> glorifying the military. The domestic impact of these war policies has had a devastating impact on federal social programs and state assistance. Moreover, with the Patriot Act and Department of Homeland Security, civil liberties and Constitutional protections have found themselves undermined, putting our very freedom in jeopardy.

This glaring policy disaster on the part of the leadership of the “anti-war movement” was discussed in an article by Virginia Rodino that appeared in Dissident Voice, <strong><em> “How US Anti-War Activists Can Help Topple the Empire”</em> [12]</strong>:

The first implication is to simultaneously build an anti-imperialist movement, as we build the anti-war movement. An anti-imperialist movement will situate within our present work US military endeavors since World War II, and give our movement a history and theoretical foundation which is today in a weakened state. Deconstructing imperialism will also allow our movement to identify with current domestic crises, and give us the theoretical tools to identify and build broad coalitions with the masses of working people in the United States who also suffer from imperialism through such projects as the War on Drugs, union-busting, the prison-industrial-complex, and the two-corporate-party electoral system.

The anti-war movement must develop an understanding that the war in Iraq is linked inextricably to the entire neo-liberal project. As New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman has unequivocally stated in an analysis cheerleading Madeline Albright’s State Department, "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist—McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps."

Rodino is a member of the UFPJ Steering Committee, and was compelled to put a disclaimer on this article clarifying the opinions stated therein were “solely her own.”

This omission of anti-imperialist rhetoric, and Rodino’s forced disclaimer, speaks volumes to the present political climate, where it is “suicide” to challenge the legitimacy of the Leviathan. Americans have watched the Democratic Party becoming more and more unabashed about their support for the bloated and ever escalating “Defense” budget, and have stood in befuddlement as Democrats come out of the closet in droves regarding their support for the war in Iraq and developing conflicts with Iran and Syria. Listening to Howard Dean, Hilary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden, Carl Levin, or even Barak Obama these days, one is hard pressed to differentiate between their rhetoric and that of the Neocons. Even ostensible “progressive” heroes like Barbara Boxer, John Conyers, Ted Kennedy, and Dick Durbin are mum on the Empire question.

And lest we all forget, the Democrats ran a pro-war candidate for President last year, and odds are they will run a pro-war candidate for President in 2008. This, to say the least, has presented a fundamental paradox within the “anti-war movement.”

UFPJ’s most notable achievement—the half-million strong march during the RNC—was done under the slogan, “We Say No to the Bush Agenda!” But it’s clear war is not just the Bush agenda, it is bipartisan Foreign Policy, as the Democrats have signed off on every dime Bush has bilked from the American people.

Eric Ruder, reporting on the Assembly for the Socialist Worker wrote, “Throughout the weekend, no one addressed the elephant in the living room—the decision of leading members and forces in UFPJ to campaign for John Kerry. For most of last year, the antiwar movement was at a standstill—even as the potential audience for antiwar opposition increased, and the US occupation was shaken by the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and a growing Iraqi resistance.”

Perhaps a smaller elephant to consider is how UFPJ got away with its surreptitious campaigning for Kerry when it is prohibited by law from doing so, under the very not-for-profit rules that keep it from adopting a more appropriate radical anti-imperialist, anti-war agenda.

Two things become have become readily apparent. The first is that it has been clear for some time that the Democratic Party is not particularly interested in peace. So long as the “anti-war movement” remains in bed with the Democratic Party, regardless of whatever dubious claims they make about the anti-war sentiments of “the rank and file” of the party, they will never be permitted to address the legitimacy of the Leviathan.

The second is that Iraq truly is a huge and magnificent pissing match between the two ruling parties and their respective corporate benefactors. This schism can more properly be described as two competing forms of Neoliberal expansionism. And they are fighting it out any way they can, including flooding millions of dollars through various establishment foundations down into the not-for-profit activist sector, where a few, highly visible members of the “progressive left” have imprisoned the “anti-war” debate inside Iraq like an ideological Abu Ghraib.

Next week: Who and What are “The Gatekeepers of the So-Called Left”?

________

<strong><em>Charles Shaw</em> [13]</strong> is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Newtopia, and has been deeply involved in the anti-war movement since the bombing of Afghanistan. Newtopia Magazine is a member group of United for Peace and Justice.
 

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Links in this article
  [1] http://www.unitedforpeace.org
  [2] http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2675
  [3] http://www.internationalanswer.org
  [4] http://fema.gov/emanagers/2005/nat011305.shtm
  [5] http://meetups.radicaldesigns.org/proposals.php
  [6] http://unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2773
  [7] http://www.911truth.org
  [8] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/global-deployments.htm
  [9] http://www.brook.edu/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/50.HTM
  [10] http://www.mediaed.org/videos/MediaRaceAndRepresentation/PeacePropaganda
  [11] http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/04/wal-mart-sells-marine-corps.html
  [12] http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Apr05/Rodino0414.htm
  [13] charles@newtopiamagazine.net