WHY HAS THE PEACE MOVEMENT FAILED?
February and March saw the largest mass protests across the world for more than a decade. Millions marched in Europe - especially Britain, Italy and Spain - followed by hundreds of thousands more across the Middle East right through Turkey to Pakistan and even Indonesia. Even in the USA the Churches opposed the war; in Britain, support for the anti-war demonstrations was fashionable among the London elite; in France, Belgium and Germany the demonstrators and the governments were at one; tentatively at first, and then emboldened by mass demonstrations in Europe, Arab regimes sanctioned public demonstrations. But as the war started, the peace movement was split - losing momentum in Europe, just as it was mobilising people in Egypt and Java. Atrocities outraged Arab publics, but only demoralised the European critics. Public opinion in the UK swung from majority opposition to the war to overwhelming support for the invasion.
Of course, the protesters may still claim the scalp of one European leader, Aznar of Spain, whose moral support for the Coalition was unpopular with 90 per cent of the population; in the Arab world, the experience of political protests may expand the possibilities for dissent (though a humiliating defeat of Iraq would also have a demoralising effect). But pointedly, the peace movement lost the initiative to the war movement once the shooting started. The war leaders predicted that support would harden when the conflict began, but that is to misunderstand what has happened. It is less that support has hardened than cynicism towards the political process has been confirmed by the lack of a coherent alternative.
The great weakness of the peace movement was that it lacked ideological independence from the political establishment. In the US, Britain, Spain and Italy, the movement shared an underlying paranoia about the supposed threat emanating from the Arab world. It seemed that the protestors' strongest suit was to play upon fears of a backlash of terror that military action would provoke. This caught the imagination of a public already predisposed to dread 'Islamic terrorism'. But despite the correspondence with popular attitudes, the weakness of this appeal is that it had the same emotional pull as the war drive, and tended to create a consensus that the Arab world was a threat to the West (which it is not). The dispute between the anti-war movement and the war coalition amounted to a tactical question of how to deal with the threat, mollification or action.
Tragically, the war party seemed to offer a more practical alternative than the peace party. According to research by the Carnegie Mellon University for the Pentagon, Americans were mostly anxious about terrorism, but those who were angry and wanted to see military action tended also to be those who were most optimistic about the future (WEEK 18 August 2002). Though both sides are deluded about the threat, the argument for military action at least offers the prospect of action to deal with it, whereas the peace party could only counsel more UN inspections.
Beyond the Coalition countries, in Europe the peace movement was reduced to the status of cheerleaders for conservative leader Jacques Chirac, and the otherwise unpopular Schroeder government. As the European leaders accommodate themselves to the Coalition's regime in Iraq, the peace movement will be sidelined. In the Middle East the demonstrations have a more urgent character, but the likelihood that this will turn into a revived anti-imperialist upsurge is unlikely - more the stuff of European fantasy than Arab reality. The terrible slaughter of Arab volunteers by coalition forces in an Iraqi training camp is tragically symbolic of the fortunes of Arab nationalism.
UN-BRITISH ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE
Militant Muslim cleric Abu Hamza, evicted from the Finsbury Park mosque by the Charities Commission after a police raid and occupation there, is to be the first person to lose his citizenship for Un-British Activities under the new Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act. The Act permits the Home Secretary to take away the British citizenship of anyone with dual citizenship who is acting against British interests. Calling Hamza a 'big mouth', Home Secretary David Blunkett accused him of acting against Britain. This week the Home Secretary also laughed off Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, suggesting that the reason for their non-appearance will be an interesting subject for debate after the war.
-- James Heartfield
http://www.heartfield.demon.co.uk/james1.htm