A
Nation Divided, With No Bridges Left to Build
The Vast Gulf Between US Pro- and Anti-War Movements
by Robert Fisk
Dissident Voice
February 16, 2003
The
show was over, recorded for one of those nice liberal local American TV cable
channels – this time in Texas – where everyone agrees that war is wrong, that
George Bush is in the hands of right-wing Christian fundamentalists and
pro-Israeli neo- conservatives.
Don
Darling, the TV host, had just turned to thank me for my long and flu-laden
contribution. Then it happened. Cameraman number two came striding towards us
through the studio lights. "I want to thank you, sir, for reminding us
that the British had a lot to do with the chaos in the Middle East, " he
said. "But I have something else to say."
His
voice rose 10 decibels, his bare arms bouncing up and down at his sides, his
shaven head struck forward pugnaciously. "Yeah, I wanna tell you that the
cause of this problem is the fucking medieval Arabs and their wish to enslave
us all – and I tell you that it is because we want to save the Jews from the
fucking savage Arabs who want to throw them into the sea that we are about to
fuck Saddam." There was a pause as Don Darling looked at the man, aghast.
"And that," cameraman number two concluded, "is the fucking
truth."
Darling
called to the studio manager. "Where does this man come from?" he
demanded to know. The lady from the University of Texas – organiser of this
gentle little pow-wow – advanced on to the studio floor in horror: "Who is
this person?" I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. All of a sudden, our
nice anti-war chat had been brought to a halt by a spot of redneck reality.
There really were right-wingers out there in the darkness who really did want
George Bush to zap the Arabs. I asked the guy his name: "Gregg
Aykins," he said. "And the FBI can do nothing to me if you give them
my name."
It
was a telling moment, a symbol of the vast gulf of reason between the pro- and
anti-war movement in America. They don't talk to each other. And if they do,
neither comprehends the other. Like the endless chat programmes on Pacifica
Radio and all the smaller liberal talk shows from Boston to LA that serve up
inedible dollops of anti-Bush, anti-Republican rant, there is simply no contact
between the intellectual "elite" of the left and the less privileged
Americans who work with their hands and join the military to gain a free
education and end up fighting America's foreign wars.
At
a seminar at the University of North Carolina, I listened to a group of
professors and senior lecturers and "activists" debating how to
influence the "path to war". "What we've got to do is to reach
out to mainstream press and bridge-build to other activists," a lady with
long grey hair announced, reading a list of proposals – all couched in the
language of academic discourse that ensures her message is incomprehensible
outside academia – which she wished to discuss.
Quite
apart from the irredeemable nature of the "mainstream" press – The
New York Times, The Washington Post and the rest are far too busy carrying more
Iraqi horror stories from "intelligence sources" than reporting the
American anti-war movement – the lady's desire to "bridge-build" with
fellow "activists" was all too familiar a theme.
The
people with whom these liberal academics should be building bridges are the
truck-drivers and bell-hops and Amtrak crews, the poor blacks and the cops
whose families provide the cannon fodder for America's overseas military
adventures. But that, of course, would force intellectuals to emerge from the
sheltered, tenured world of seminars and sit-ins and deal directly with those
whose opinions they wish to change.
When
I made this very point at Harvard and several other universities, I was told,
rather patronisingly, that these people – the phrase was almost identical – had
"so little information" or are "not very informed". This
is, in fact, untrue. I have heard as much sense about the Middle East from a
train crew en route from Washington to Georgia and from a waiter in a St Louis
diner as I have from the good folks of North Carolina.
Black
Americans, for example, are uninhibited in their sympathy for Palestinians
under occupation. But when I told a lecturer in Austin that I had asked hotel
staff and air crews to turn up to my lectures on the Middle East and America –
and that all had come – I was treated with a kind of weird amazement,
puzzlement that I should bother to ask such unpromising material to think about
the Arab-Israel conflict mixed with faint pity that I should ever expect them
to understand.
Sometimes
I rather suspect that the anti-war left in America likes being in a permanent
minority. I mean no disrespect to the Noam Chomskys and Daniel Ellsbergs and
Dennis Bernsteins; they fight, amid abuse and threats, to make their voices
heard. Yet I have an uneasy feeling that many on the intellectual left are
fearful that America will lose its next war amid massive casualties – but are
even more fearful that America may win with minimal casualties.
Perhaps this is unfair. But as long as America's
anti-war movement talks to itself rather than to others, it is going to go on
being surprised when the Gregg Aykinses emerge from the darkness with their
hatred and venom intact to support George Bush's forthcoming war in Iraq.
Robert Fisk is an award winning foreign correspondent for The Independent (UK), where this article first appeared. He is the author of Pity Thy Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (The Nation Books, 2002 edition)