>I read this report by Cynthia Cockburn, and was struck at how her
>blanket denunciation of violence ended up being a polemic not so much
>against war, as against anti-war protesters.
the pacifism is certainly grating, but this is quite separate, in my mind at least, from any critique one might have of the opposition to the war. there are significant differences between anti-war protestors. we have different emphases, analyses, and if you criticise mine, then i would not for one minute suggest that you were criticising 'anti-war protestors' as a whole. i do not know what the demos in the US or Europe are like, but here in australia, the antiwar protests are *now* entirely serbian nationalist events with a heavy presence from the orthodox churches. to discuss the reasons for this and the reasons why this is a problem, in particular a problem for the opposition against the war, is i think important.
>I agree with Cockburn that there is nothing progressive in Serb
>nationalism. But I feel that it is clear that the greater threat is
the
>violence of Nato. Greater in fire-power, influence, importance,
>initiative, money. There is nothing wrong with prioritising the
demand
>to stop the bombing, and certainly nothing violent about it.
I think you're deliberately slipping the arguments from the article. I don't recall her claiming that there was anything wrong with *prioritizing* a call for NATO to pull out, quite the opposite. what she objected to was that this was the only slogan allowed, that any discussion of the dangers of Serbian nationalism (and they are real dangers for those inside, and now just outside, the borders of Yugoslavia) is met with hostility inside the antiwar mobilizations. even in a pragmatic sense, let alone a principled one, we need desperately to break out of the separation between 'anti-NATO and 'anti-milosevich'. the anti-war protests here are increasingly marginalised affairs, and the commercial media increasingly frames the protests in terms of 'these people' bringing 'their ancient hatreds here'; not to mention the ease with which the war is increasingly viewed in either/or terms. there is no possibility of generating a widespread opposition to the war in these terms, and this is becoming more and more obvious.
Angela --- rcollins at netlink.com.au