What Is an "Anti-Imperialist"? Re: Ramsey Clark

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Feb 21 09:19:29 PST 2003


At 9:06 AM -0500 2/21/03, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>a "patriot" and an "anti-imperialist."

What is an "anti-imperialist" anyway? Andrew Carnegie, Samuel Gompers, and Grover Cleveland -- no left-wingers -- were prominent members of the Anti-Imperialist League (Cf. <http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/ail/ailhist.html>). Arguments of some anti-imperialists were explicitly racist:

***** Imperialism -- Its Dangers and Wrongs By Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor Extract from a speech delivered at the Chicago Peace Jubilee, Oct. 18, 1898.

...If the Philippines are annexed what is to prevent the Chinese, the Negritos and the Malays coming to our country? How can we prevent the Chinese coolies from going to the Philippines and from there swarm into the United States and engulf our people and our civilization? If these new islands are to become ours, it will be either under the form of Territories or States. Can we hope to close the flood-gates of immigration from the hordes of Chinese and the semi-savage races coming from what will then be part of our own country?...

<http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/ailtexts/gompers.html> *****

Moreover, much of slave revolts, anti-colonial revolts, etc. everywhere in the world before the rise of secular nationalism and Communism were quite often uprisings of "religious fanatics" (_nothing but_ "religious fanatics" in the eyes of their enemies), who often committed massacres, sometimes including murders of children -- for example:

***** C.L.R. James, _The Black Jacobins_

...The slaves worked on the land, and, like revolutionary peasants everywhere, they aimed at the extermination of their oppressors. But working and living together in gangs of hundreds on the huge sugar-factories which covered the North Plain, they were closer to a modern proletariat than any group of workers in existence at the time, and the rising was, therefore, a thoroughly prepared and organized mass movement. By hard experience, they had learned that isolated efforts were doomed to failure, and in the early months of 1791 in and around Le Cap, they were organizing for revolution.

Voodou was the medium of the conspiracy. In spite of all prohibitions, the slaves travelled miles to sing and dance and practice the rites and talk; and now, since the revolution [of 1789 in France], to hear the political news and make their plans....

<http://www.haiti-progres.com/2000/sm000830/xeng0830.htm> *****

***** "Nat Turner's Insurrection" Thomas Wentworth Higginson

...Swift and stealthy as Indians, the black men passed from house to house, -- not pausing, not hesitating, as their terrible work went on. In one thing they were humaner than Indians, or than white men fighting against Indians: there was no gratuitous outrage beyond the death-blow itself, no insult, no mutilation; but in every house they entered, that blow fell on man, woman, and child, -- nothing that had a white skin was spared....

<http://www.wm.edu/Whitman/Dickinson/analogue10.html> *****

See, also, "The Boxer Rebellion," <http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/fists.html>; "Colonel Gordon and the Mahdi," <http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/mahdism.htm>; "How Europe Viewed the Mahdi Revolt," <http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/wsn/2001/msg01726.html>; etc.

_Only_ under Communist or anarchist or "fellow-traveling" secular nationalist leadership -- the very leadership that is often sorely lacking today in many nations -- could anti-imperialism become a (broadly) left-wing affair, in whose military struggles _attempts_ to abide by international law and uphold moral standards (please note the emphasis on "attempts") were made. It would be great if one day we could equate patriotism, anti-imperialism, and Marxism with no qualification, but such has and will never be the case. Reality is always messier and dirtier than many are prepared to acknowledge. -- Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>



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