http://alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=593&Itemid=1
Written by Michael Warschawski Tuesday, 24 October 2006
Michael Warschawski is an Israeli activist and co-founder and co-chairman of the Alternative Information Center (AIC).
>From an ethical point of view, history never stands in the same place:
if it doesn’t move towards less oppression and more justice, it moves
towards less rights and more barbarism. Paraphrasing the German
revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg, who predicted twenty years
before the rise of Nazism, “either socialism or barbarism,” we can say
today that the 21st century will be “either the rule of Right or the law
of the jungle.” It seems, however, that in the first decade of the third
millennium, the law of jungle is taking the lead.
In an article published one month ago in Haaretz, Israeli journalist and analyst Tom Segev tried to challenge the common idea that the global political context of our time is much worse than it used to be, let’s say, two decades ago. According to Segev, war, oppression and destruction have characterized the political reality of our planet during the last five decades, and nothing has changed either qualitatively or even quantitatively in the recent past. Segev goes further yet, claiming that the “clash of civilizations” is not a new phenomenon, but has been characteristic of the previous decades, though under different labels.
There can be no doubt that the four decades following WWII were not peaceful, and during this period more than 76 million human beings perished, in wars, revolutions and through mass-repression by dictatorships.* It is also true that during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the “north” conducted a colonial war against the “South,” and the “West” a “civilization war” against the eastern communist bloc.
There is, nevertheless, a qualitative difference between the present situation and the forty years that followed the victory over fascism. Three main factors limited the hegemonic aspirations of the USA following WWII:
* The existence of the Soviet superpower;
* The strength of an organized working class in the imperialist countries;
* The effects of the memory of the horrors of fascism on international public opinion, and the perceived illegitimacy of unilateralism, military aggression, etc.
Due to these factors, the big powers were obliged to maneuver under the pressure of huge political opposition (anti-colonial movements, mass democratic oppositions) and constantly needed to invent pretexts with which to provide legitimacy for their wars and acts of repression throughout the world.
However, 50 years after the victory over fascism, these constraints no longer bind the big imperialist powers—the US in particular. Unilateralism, “preemptive” wars, colonial ventures, etc., are once again legitimate, or, more precisely, no longer challenged in a way that could seriously harm their perpetrators. With the absence of a powerful opposition, the new neoconservative leadership of the Empire has been able to create a new “global discourse,” which, at least partially, has been able to conquer the minds of substantial parts of those who are the victims of the Empire.
[...]
To read the whole article:
http://alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=593&Itemid=1