> No. Most Americans will not shudder at the mention of the "C-word" and
> it's the Left's inability to be more assertive in light of this fact
> that is the Left's fault. While I don't have raw numbers at my
> fingertips, let's assume that everybody under the age of 30 has never
> been exposed to anti-communist propaganda. It might be that everybody
> under the age of 35 haven't been exposed to any anti-communist
> rhetoric. I'm 38 and grew up with it, but I was 24 when the Berlin
> Wall fell. There wasn't much anti-communist propaganda around that
> time, so America has two generations that haven't been exposed to any
> form of systematic anti-communism.
I don't quite agree. The terminology has changed, to be sure -- from "communism" to "big government" -- but the reactionaries are talking about the same thing: citizens of the country uniting to fight for what they need and deserve. It's still the same fight, and ordinary Americans are still as afraid as they have been of fighting their side of the fight effectively.
> I realized this back in 1999 when I was a lone protester outside the
> NATO summit in Washington. A group of high school guys from
> Pennsylvania came by and asked me to pose with them for a tourist
> photo. This was a sea change from being a student activist during the
> 1980s when you would get more hostile reaction from people for
> advocating leftist views and protesting.
A lot of high school students seem to be so apolitical these days that these guys probably didn't understand what you were doing there.
> This is why 9-11 was such a dangerous opening for the American right.
> They can no longer rely on anti-communism to demonize leftists, but
> now "terrorists" are the new bogeyman. The extremist right is already
> trying to use anti-terrorism to link radical groups like ELF to
> liberal organizations like th Ford Foundation. I don't think they will
> be successful unless there are more 9-11 level attacks on American
> soil.
No question that the "anti-terrorist" thing is being pushed for all it is worth, but it's a little hard to denounce a government health insurance system, for example, as a "terrorist" measure, whereas slapping the "big government" label on it is no sweat.
Oh, I forgot -- these days, "big government" is fine with the Bush crowd, as long as it's paid for by borrowing from those furriner suckers who will presumably keep lending Uncle Sam money forever, not by taxing upper-class Americans.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax