>The Independent
>February 17, 2003
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> The show was over, recorded for one of those nice liberal
>local American TV cable channels ú this time in Texas ú where
>everyone agrees that war is wrong, that George Bush is in the hands
>of right-wing Christian fundamentalists and pro-Israeli neo-
>conservatives.
>
>Don Darling, the TV host, had just turned to thank me for my long
>and flu-laden contribution. Then it happened. Cameraman number two
>came striding towards us through the studio lights. "I want to thank
>you, sir, for reminding us that the British had a lot to do with the
>chaos in the Middle East, " he said. "But I have something else to
>say."
>
>His voice rose 10 decibels, his bare arms bouncing up and down at
>his sides, his shaven head struck forward pugnaciously. "Yeah, I
>wanna tell you that the cause of this problem is the fucking
>medieval Arabs and their wish to enslave us all ú and I tell you
>that it is because we want to save the Jews from the fucking savage
>Arabs who want to throw them into the sea that we are about to fuck
>Saddam." There was a pause as Don Darling looked at the man, aghast.
>"And that," cameraman number two concluded, "is the fucking truth."
>
>Darling called to the studio manager. "Where does this man come
>from?" he demanded to know. The lady from the University of Texas ú
>organiser of this gentle little pow-wow ú advanced on to the studio
>floor in horror: "Who is this person?" I didn't know whether to
>laugh or cry. All of a sudden, our nice anti-war chat had been
>brought to a halt by a spot of redneck reality. There really were
>right-wingers out there in the darkness who really did want George
>Bush to zap the Arabs. I asked the guy his name: "Gregg Aykins," he
>said. "And the FBI can do nothing to me if you give them my name."
>
>It was a telling moment, a symbol of the vast gulf of reason between
>the pro- and anti-war movement in America. They don't talk to each
>other. And if they do, neither comprehends the other. Like the
>endless chat programmes on Pacifica Radio and all the smaller
>liberal talk shows from Boston to LA that serve up inedible dollops
>of anti-Bush, anti-Republican rant, there is simply no contact
>between the intellectual "elite" of the left and the less privileged
>Americans who work with their hands and join the military to gain a
>free education and end up fighting America's foreign wars.
>
>At a seminar at the University of North Carolina, I listened to a
>group of professors and senior lecturers and "activists" debating
>how to influence the "path to war". "What we've got to do is to
>reach out to mainstream press and bridge-build to other activists,"
>a lady with long grey hair announced, reading a list of proposals ú
>all couched in the language of academic discourse that ensures her
>message is incomprehensible outside academia ú which she wished to
>discuss.
>
>Quite apart from the irredeemable nature of the "mainstream" press ú
>The New York Times, The Washington Post and the rest are far too
>busy carrying more Iraqi horror stories from "intelligence sources"
>than reporting the American anti-war movement ú the lady's desire to
>"bridge-build" with fellow "activists" was all too familiar a theme.
>
>The people with whom these liberal academics should be building
>bridges are the truck-drivers and bell-hops and Amtrak crews, the
>poor blacks and the cops whose families provide the cannon fodder
>for America's overseas military adventures. But that, of course,
>would force intellectuals to emerge from the sheltered, tenured
>world of seminars and sit-ins and deal directly with those whose
>opinions they wish to change.
>
>When I made this very point at Harvard and several other
>universities, I was told, rather patronisingly, that these people ú
>the phrase was almost identical ú had "so little information" or are
>"not very informed". This is, in fact, untrue. I have heard as much
>sense about the Middle East from a train crew en route from
>Washington to Georgia and from a waiter in a St Louis diner as I
>have from the good folks of North Carolina.
>
>Black Americans, for example, are uninhibited in their sympathy for
>Palestinians under occupation. But when I told a lecturer in Austin
>that I had asked hotel staff and air crews to turn up to my lectures
>on the Middle East and America ú and that all had come ú I was
>treated with a kind of weird amazement, puzzlement that I should
>bother to ask such unpromising material to think about the
>Arab-Israel conflict mixed with faint pity that I should ever expect
>them to understand.
>
>Sometimes I rather suspect that the anti-war left in America likes
>being in a permanent minority. I mean no disrespect to the Noam
>Chomskys and Daniel Ellsbergs and Dennis Bernsteins; they fight,
>amid abuse and threats, to make their voices heard. Yet I have an
>uneasy feeling that many on the intellectual left are fearful that
>America will lose its next war amid massive casualties ú but are
>even more fearful that America may win with minimal casualties.
>
>Perhaps this is unfair. But as long as America's anti-war movement
>talks to itself rather than to others, it is going to go on being
>surprised when the Gregg Aykinses emerge from the darkness with
>their hatred and venom intact to support George Bush's forthcoming
>war in Iraq.
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