does the anti-war left have a cultural bead on what just happened?

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The following are all from ZNet over the last two weeks, a broadly anti-war and anti-capitalist website and resource. The piece vary in tone: starting – same as everyone – from shocked and basically kneejerk on the day to maybe more thoughtful and useful as the days pass. The thing I find bothers me isn’t the basic pol-economical analysis so much as the language – as in, who do most of these writers think they will convince who DOESN’T ALREADY BASICALLY AGREE? And am I wrong and a decadent liberal for thinking that matters? Perhaps unsurprisingly Chomsky is by some way the most original: I think the fact that he holds so many on the left in total uncritical thrall is a problem, but (some 20 years after I read The New Mandarins) I’m still glad he’s around. (Pilger on the hand might as well be employed by MI5 to drive waverers back into the rabid war camp. He’s SUCH terrible writer: yes a dogged brave journalist, but a ropey and sentimental political analyst and sometimes *whispers* just not that bright, y’know...?)

― mark s, Wednesday, 26 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I’ve got some more toxic and wacky stuff I may get up at the weekend. I had loan of these pages from Scott Woods, sometime poster and lurker at ILE, mighty webmaster at the great rockcritics.com when you’re chasing hppier topics

(You’ll have to scroll down a bit to find some pieces... )

MICHAEL ALBERT: Calamitous Perspective
NOAM CHOMSKY: . Quick reaction
Bernie Ward talks to Phyllis Bennis
DAVID McREYNOLDS, WRL: Statement on September 11 Attack
ROBERT JENSEN: Sept 11
ROBERT FISK: Atrocities may be designed to provoke America into costly military adventure
JEFF SOMMERS: Blowback!
BRIEF PREPARATORY NOTE
JOHN PILGER: Inevitable ring to the unimaginable
EDWARD S. HERMAN: Folks Out There Have a “Distaste of Western Civilization and Cultural Values”
RUSSELL MOKHIBER and ROBERT WEISSMAN: Respond to Violence: Teach Peace, Not War
TAMIM ANSARY: The Belly to do what needs to be done
BRIAN DOMINICK: The Greatest Argument Against War
ERIC MARTIN: The Panic Button
PERVEZ HOODBHOY: Black Tuesday: The View from Islamabad
MICHAEL ALBERT: Perceiving the Situation
GEORGE MONBIOT: The Need for Dissent: Radicalism is retreating, but it’s more necessary than ever before
LAURA FLANDERS: Welcome to the Warnacular
MICHAEL T. KLARE: What Kind of War?
MICHAEL ALBERT and STEPHEN R. SHALOM: September 11 And Its Aftermath Q&A
The United States and Middle East: Why Do They Hate Us? (chronology)
A CALL TO ACTION FOR PEACE
MICHAEL ALBERT and STEPHEN R. SHALOM: Five Reasons Not to Go to War
NOAM CHOMSKY: Composite Interview 2
MICHAEL ALBERT: Peace Movement Prospects
EDUARDO GALEANO: The Theatre of Good and Evil

― mark s, Wednesday, 26 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i just wanted to say bravo to mark for actually posting all those links.

actually commentary to follow when i've had time to read some.

― jess, Wednesday, 26 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Start a goddamned blog already Mark. Then lots of people who don't read ILE may stumble onto your helpful collation and research.

― Josh, Wednesday, 26 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(yeah, sorry it is a bit like summer vacation homework: esp. given the thread question...)

(good penmanship WILL be taken into acct!)

― mark s, Wednesday, 26 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

don't apologize. sincere thanks for putting this all together.

― fritz, Wednesday, 26 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Increasingly disenchanted with leftist responses to the 11 September attacks characterized by those Znet pieces; ie select the aspect of US/Western foreign policy least to your liking and critically analyse everything through that prism, be it Israel, corporate power, oil, support for corrupt govts or whatever. Perhaps its because I've been a 'fundamentalist' (of the Christian variety) but there is little comprehension of how the non-secular mind works and little or no understanding or insight into the radical islamic movement and its thinking. Seldom will you hear from anyone a references made to the repeated horrors inflicted in Algeria by Islamic extremists. Baader- Meinhof's infantile campaign of terror attracted similar 'blame the capitalist system that provokes this' reactions. Not good enough.

― stevo, Wednesday, 26 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The onion's take on the 'war against terrorism':

the onion

― stevo, Wednesday, 26 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Key to expanding scope = linking of questions of layoffs & attacks on civil liberties with war moves. Provides axis for drawing in of those otherwise indifferent.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 26 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I haven't read a lot of this myself, but I've generally found the leftist slant to be reasonable in that it's (fittingly hysterically) calling attention to the horrible still-possible: id cards, flight marshalls, law 'adjustments.'

― scott w, Thursday, 27 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

war is like butter " Tastes good but makes you fat"

― Mike Hanle y, Thursday, 27 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I noticed the Chomsky interview had the cleverly-worded question, "Explain how hegemony creates hatred of America". Even your prone-to-acid-flashback summer school teacher could do better than that.

― dave q, Thursday, 27 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think that the far left wingers need to be cautious about jumping on any bandwagon and blaming the pro-war feeding frenzy on right wing. I'm not saying this has happened, I'm just wary of it. Because there have been a lot of right wing sources who are saying the same cautionary things that the left wing have. Perhaps a fortuitous alliance is in order?

― Jack Redelfs, Thursday, 27 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Good point. It occurred to me in bed (after posting above last night) that there are no doubt commentators on the right issuing the same warning signs as the lefts, I just haven't seen any of them yet.

― scott w, Thursday, 27 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Christopher Hitchens: The Fascist Sympathies of the Soft Left

― stevo, Friday, 28 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

1: Garland's "political" cartoons are retarded
2: I' gunna bet that CH *DOESN'T* actually say exactly what that coverline says he says, and indeed is somewhat dicked off abt it (cf eg his Guardian column on Tue).
3: Can you get thru to the piece itself from here, Stevo? My pooter took so long to unveil the Spec's hideous "Palladian" logo and crappy page architecture that I'm not gunna bother going further unless I know I'll actually get somewhere

― mark s, Friday, 28 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The link worked for me mark, can understand why CH isn't too happy but what did he expect?

― stevo, Friday, 28 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Or rather might not be too happy with it, + I'm sure he won't like that Garland cartoon either. I sympathise with his exasperation though hearing too many voices muttering sotto voce 'well, really, the Americans had it coming didn't they?' + viewing the attacks as the outcome of some third world freedom fighters going too far, in the same spirit as the anti-globalisation protesters. This whilst those who butchered 6,500 people two weeks ago belong to the same ideological movement as those who; hacked 412 people to death in Algeria in 1997; machine-gunned tourists in Luxor; topple walls on gays in Afghanistan + ban women from appearing in public unless accompanied by a male. If the much abused term 'fascist' isn't entirely accurate it isn't that wide of the mark.

― stevo, Friday, 28 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

no: i don't disagree w. you abt applicability of word "fascist" to the taliban (i already called em semi-feudal semi-fascist myself somewhere on ile)

nevertheless: owner of spectator = conrad black = bigwig ideological confrere of berlusconi, political bedmate of ital neo-fascists ho-hum; guardian and/or nation FAR better platforms for this kinda piece?

(i shall try and access the actual piece via work computer, which is not so slow)

― mark s, Friday, 28 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Of everybody I would least like to be stuck in a lift with, Dave Brown of the Independent would top the list. "Towelheads?" Fuckhead.

― dave q, Friday, 28 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No doubt Boris Johnson + co enjoyed printing a left-liberal journo of repute attacking fellow leftists (espec. Chomsky). Yes Conrad Black is reprehensible + no respecter of press-freedom (openly attacking the otherwise gormless Taki for once having made some barbed anti- US/Israel remarks). 'The Spectator' though, for all its blazered buffoonery, has occasionally produced some decent journalism eg Charles Glass on the Middle East. However bad the company, + current ownership, suggesting CH is pitching his tent with the likes of Black + Berlusconi by writing for it seems to me a little harsh.

― stevo, Friday, 28 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

stevo: all i meant was, if CH wants his position to be given best serious consideration by said soft left libs, he in fact makes this a somewhat LESS likely by tossing it in from this particular angle (ie they'll probably respond merely to the spec's cover, and not the article's detailed substantive points) (which i shd perhaps check out myself before long hem hem)

also of course CH has v.v.v.bad personal history with Black, as is pretty well known (eg Black announced his purchase of the Spectator in the 80s IN ORDER to quash gadfly Hitchens SPECIFICALLY). So left-inclined commentators will pick up on bridges apparently having been rebuilt in re this line taken?? (right, now i'm gunna actually find and read the piece itself)

― mark s, Friday, 28 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(find = scroll down a teeny tiny bit, i now discover!! oops! tho this gives perhaps SOME IDEA how ancient and slow my home computer is: i waited quarter of an hour for fucking garland to finish downloading then the page froze and I stopped bothering)

― mark s, Friday, 28 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It's the exact same article that was in The Nation . Different headline, tho'.

― Kerry, Friday, 28 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Responses to Hitchens.

Evasive, prickly responses that say to me that — whatever substantive points individual replies may contain — the ZLeft really really really doesn't grasp exactly how much 9/11 changed things politically, across the board. Responses that will surely delight the uncritical faithful, but somewhat dismay anyone not yet convinced of the eternal unimpeachable seamless rectitude of the established anti- war slebs: not least because the language of these replies directs such utter deep implicit scorn at the unconvinced... Way to build a mass movement, guys.

OK: as per J.Kortbein's suggestion, my rad pol-blog exists, and mostly from now I'm gunna pursue this stuff (the solipsistically inflected political obsessions of mark s) there rather than here (in my muji backpack I find: my big black stole, stole in fact from RS, don't tell; a green furry pencil case; empty pkt Wrigleys peppermint extra sugarfree gum; Destroy all Monsters; London Review of Books, response to WTC issue). Only gimme a day or so to make it nice (or indeed operative).

― mark s, Sunday, 30 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

the eternal unimpeachable seamless rectitude of the established anti- war slebs = quote of the day. Responses to be read + mulled over. 5000 attended rally in A'dam this afternoon against the 'New War'. They held a minutes-silence for the Sept.11 victims.

― stevo, Sunday, 30 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The venerable Chomsky seems in denial "Evidently, Hitchens cannot mean what he said about this topic. We can therefore disregard it." Utterly unconvincing.
Edward S. Herman's smug little rant evidently enjoys dishing out invective and contempt: preaching to the converted. Albert ploughs a similar furrow, though with more subtly.
Tariq Ali's piece at least attempts to engage with the 'fascist' accusation and examines the motives of the attackers. "(T)o explain is not to justify" , sure, but some do come perilously close to shifting blame, at the very least they need to sharpen their arguments.

― stevo, Monday, 1 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What's everyone's take on Robert Fisk?

― dave q, Monday, 1 October 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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