One Bummed Out Peace Activist
Mon, Mar 21, 2005 at 3:34:29 pm PST
Here’s a hilariously impotent tantrum by an over the hill Seattle “activist” named Ira at Indymedia, nearly indistinguishable from an Iowahawk parody: Why Isn’t the Movement Against US Imperialism Stronger By Now? (Hat tip: Photios.)
When Iraq was invaded two years ago, activists had some optimism that the movement against imperialist war would grow fast. After all, weren’t these demonstrations of gargantuan size attracting militant young activists who, you’d imagine, might decide even at this early phase of the struggle to dedicate their lives, as some of us did in earlier eras, to radical social change?
It’s not clear what has become of them. Do they suffer from burnout (as many of us in the movement do from time to time)? Did they assume that Saturday’s marches and rally in Seattle wouldn’t be radical enough for them? I’m heartened that these events actually occurred, but I for one was bummed that more than 5000 or so didn’t show. You can’t blame these low number on the rain, not in this town. If we are to play a role in accelerating the growth of this force, we’d better sort out what political views we need to promote within it and what views we need to, frankly, oppose.
One absolutely critical component to US imperialism’s ever expanding world empire is a docile population on the home front. A movement that has enough power to be massively socially disruptive poses an enormous impediment to the ruling class. Here’s my fantasy for Seattle, for example: imagine 20,000 to 50,000 people sitting down around the Federal Building for, oh, say, a day or two in order to shut it down. Many of you who witnessed the WTO protest here in 1999 know that this sort of thing can actually be accomplished. The threat, or perhaps even the inevitability, of this sort of event occurring is the reason that there not yet a draft (at least officially). On the other hand the piddling showing of people in the street on Saturday—not just in Seattle but across the US—will allow imperialism to reinstitute the draft that much sooner.
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