The weakness of the anti-war movement

Nathan Newman nathan.newman at yale.edu
Wed May 19 14:55:18 PDT 1999


-----Original Message----- From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>As a matter of fact, opposition was

so strong that the Reagan Administration had to back off and resort

to using international terrorist networks like the Contras to carry

out its policies. And there were no Americans in body bags then...

I think that the notion that only dead American soldiers will

inspire a peace movement -- in other words, that people are

motivated only by self-interest -- is US propaganda. It's

intolerable for the propaganda system to concede that people might

act on moral instinct, which is in fact what they do...

I agree with both of Chomsky's points here: that mass opinion can have profound effects on American policy and that people can act on moral instinct and have such an effect.

And if such mass opinion can have the effect of circumscribing bad intervention, it can have the effect (admittedly harder at times) of pushing forward good intervention. And that good intervention can be motivated by and embody a moral instinct, not purely self-interested instinct.

So while I disagree with Chomsky on this war, I agree with the general more hopeful point he has about the efficacy of mass action, a good counter-balance to the comfortable defeatism of much of the Left.

--Nathan Newman



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