"the greatest country in the world" Re: Chomsky News Network

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri May 31 05:55:39 PDT 2002


At the rather huge rally (for Bloomington) that the anti-Gulf War movement here built, one of the speakers, a philosophy professor and former Marine machine-gunner in Vietnam, attacked the slogan we were using at the time (something like save the troops by bringing them home). I don't remember the details of his argument since I seldom listen very carefully to what is said at rallies, but his essential claim was that all attempts to redefine the slogans and catchphrases of the enemy tended to backfire. Or as a friend from Southern Illinois University put it back in 1969, "Opportunism is seldom opportune."

It has never worked to try to wrap anti-imperialism (or pacifism or anti-interventionism or any other opposition to state policy) in the Flag. It doesn't even accomplish anything in the short run, and it is hugely counter-productive in the long run.

Carrol

P.S. In most local coalitions one can only oppose this tendency gently. The local group (which calls itself the Bloomington/Normal Committee for Peace & Justice) is sponsoring a Gulf War vet who is part of a walk from Syria to Bagdhad carrying illegal medical supplies. We had a T-Shirt made for him to wear in case he gets any TV exposure with the local group's logo, which features red, white, & blue. I wouldn't be caught dead wearing it myself, and I did suggest the Palestinian flag instead, but did so with a smile. If the War on Terror lasts long enough and the group grows, this impulse to wrap oneself in the flag will lose its force, but there is no point in making a fuss about it now.

There is one real future danger in wrapping oneself in the flag. When it doesn't work sometimes it is not merely corrected but its adherents bounce to the other pole, as the fucking weathermen who ran down Chicago beaches waving the NLF flag and giving people 60 seconds to choose -- for or against imperialism. The response Mark Rudd got in some Milwaukee drive-in was very appropriate: someone broke his jaw.



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