| |
|
Todd Gitlin, former president of SDS and now professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, weighs in comparing and contrasting the peace movements of the 1960s and today:
The money quote: "The antiwar movement of the 60s sprang from the civil rights movement spirit, so there was already a mood of affirmation... Today's movement is springing from a every different mood—a fatalism, a kind of brooding horror about the future."
Characterizes ANSWER as representing "the fringe politics of the orthodox Old Left," which seems to me fairly accurate... says the combined membership of the groups represented by the steering committee probably totals about 100 members nationwide.
On how ANSWER became, by default, the public face of the anti-war movement: "Movements are sloppy and diffuse, and in general one prefers them that way: that is, we people who are small-D democrats don't like the sort of hierarchical command program that authoritarians embrace and find it easy to organize. Now, what means, de facto, is that the organizations that are quickest to organize nat'l demonstrations are the ones that are most hierarchically organized, and International ANSWER is one of them. So they get there first, they don't have complicated postions, they have simplistic positions, and they're in place—like an army!—to follow orders and put demonstrations on the calendar. ...."
"Opposing unilateral war is a mainstream American position right now... This is an enormous opportunity for an anti-war movement, because you don't have to be left-wing, you don't even have to be left of center ... so I think it is fruitless, in fact it's counterproductive, to organize a sort of left-wing self-celebration jamboree. You'll offend a lot of people who should be opposed to the war, and you're not going to elicit the support of mainstream politicians... I am concerned that Internationl ANSWER walks out to the speaker's platform wearing a big sign that says 'DISCREDIT ME,' and that those who don't have the interests of a decent and sensible and majoritarian anti-war movement can swat the movement as a whole by pointing the finger at these absurd and reprehensible positions."
[Jack's note: I've heard the words "decent" and "sensible" used so often by censorious conservatives that their use in this context cannot help but set off my warning bells.]
Of course, Gitlin may be qualified to criticize, because he acknowledges how the hippy peaceniks screwed the pooch way back when: "The tragedy of the Sixties is that while I think the anti-war momvement did retard the extension of the war, the movement itself committed hara-kiri—by isolating itself at the margins of American life and insulting most of the people who themselves were opposed to the war, who were, in fact, the proverbial mainstream people.... [just so] the erosion of ...convention anti-war politics, [that is] ecumenical, centrist/liberal antiwar politics means that the sectarian groups like ANSWER... loom large in a way that undermines the tensile strength, the absorptiveness of the movement as a whole."
But Gitlin, too, seems to want to have it both ways: asked if he felt like a member of HUAC, speaking out against ANSWER because of their Communist affiliations, Gitlin laughed and said, "No, I think they're actually dishonest in not wanting to own up to their politics"—just seconds after lambasting ANSWER for making the movement as a whole look bad by being so public about those very political stances.
Still, he admits, "One does not have the luxury, in political life, of choosing all of your allies."
I'll truncate here, but there's lots more worth listening to (Todd talks fast, and had 21 minutes), though not entirely relevant to this thread, including interesting thoughts on how the war in Bosnia turned a lot of liberals into "selective hawks," with the premise that American military power could be used to enforce American ideals (of tolerance and democracy), making the model for intervention not Vietnam, but World War II. Which may be worth a thread in itself... |
|
|
