Will The Real March Please Stand Up?

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Sep 24 12:32:18 PDT 2002


Nathan Newman wrote:


>I just think the world "imperialism" is an analysis stopper-- it's a word
>from 100 years ago that applied to a very different global political system;
>the present system may be similarly unequal but its structure is very
>different, so it just doesn't convince many people to use the same term.
>The overthrow of Saddam is NOT seen by most people as on the same moral
>plain as the suppression of Gandhi and other anticolonial struggles.

Could you, just once, make an argument without invoking tendentious binaries like this? Saddam is a pig. The world is full of pigs. But that doesn't mean they have to be roasted with B-52s.

The word "imperialism" isn't an analysis stopper. There are plenty of words that euphemistically serve that function - e.g., "globalization," a word that means and explains nothing, but seems to satisfy many people as if it meant and explained something. What you really mean is that it's an unpopular word - that all those wonderful pwogwessive Democrats and Sweeneyites don't want to hear it. Now I wouldn't necessarily use the word before every audience. But even though imperialism today is different from the 19th century kind, that doesn't mean the underlying concept - the domination of weaker nations by strong ones - is obsolete. And the Bushies are clearly trying to assert U.S. power not merely over the Middle East but over the U.S. supposed allies - look at the treatment Germany's getting from this crew of thugs. If we can't say these things out loud, we might as well just give up.

Doug



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