[Peace] [Peace-discuss] What we're up against

[Brussel, Morton K]

Another activist pacifist is the prolific David Swanson. Writings on http://davidswanson.org/

—mkb


On Dec 16, 2017, at 7:53 PM, C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com<mailto:cgestabrook at gmail.com>> wrote:

<wagingnonviolence.org<http://wagingnonviolence.org/>>
Why Nicholson Baker is a pacifist

Anyone who makes even a modest habit of speaking out against war in public soon runs up against the inevitable, supposedly unanswerable question: What about World War II? (We have a whole category devoted to it.) It’s meant to be the ultimate stumper. This was the “good war,” wasn’t it, the war waged by the “greatest generation” against the evil incarnate of Hitler and imperial Japan? There was simply no other choice before the forces of goodness and truth but to leap into the single most deadly undertaking in all of human history. Right?

That won’t work if you’re talking to Nicholson Baker. In an extraordinary cover story in this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine, “Why I’m a Pacifist: The Dangerous Myth of the Good War,”  Baker explains how learning about World War II was actually a big part of what made him a pacifist in the first place. “In fact,” he writes,

the more I learn about the war, the more I understand that the pacifists were the only ones, during a time of catastrophic violence, who repeatedly put forward proposals that had any chance of saving a threatened people. They weren’t naïve, they weren’t unrealistic—they were psychologically acute realists.

His thinking began drifting this way during the Gulf War, and continued to evolve through the sequence of American military operations since. In the Balkans, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in talk about bombing Iran, he noticed that World War II kept coming up. It kept being used to justify one war after another. Every new enemy only had to be painted as another Hitler to ensure public support.

By 2008, Baker published Human Smoke, a book that collects documents, newspaper reports, and notable utterances during the lead-up to World War II, revealing how determined the Allied leaders were to fight at any cost. But, because of its form, we don’t get much of his own voice in that book. “Why I’m a Pacifist” is a chance to hear more directly from Baker himself about how he came to the conclusions that he did about the war.

I was so thrilled with the essay that the moment I put it down I wanted more, so I wrote to Baker with some questions about what he’d said. Our exchange was as follows:

WNV: Why did you decide to write Human Smoke the way you did, and why now write about World War II again as you do in Harper’s?

NB: Human Smoke deals atomistically with the beginnings of the war because I thought that was a good way of conveying the confusion and sadness of what was going on. You have to pause and think moment by moment in order to feel the gradual disintegration of civil restraint. The book stopped at the end of 1941. The Harper’s piece mostly concentrates on events from 1942 on, and it’s an effort to take up one big question: Were the pacifists right in calling for an immediate negotiated peace?

WNV: Why do you say at the outset of the essay that you don’t expect most people to be persuaded? Is pacifism really such a lost cause?

NB: No, pacifism isn’t a lost cause—in fact, most people, even generals and headbanging bar brawlers, act peaceably most of the time, or we’d get nothing done. “I’m not going to kill you” is basic to all cooperation. But during wars, pacifists are often in the minority and their arguments (so I’ve found!) make people really mad. Over time, these same people may and often do change their thinking, but it isn’t going to happen all at once. An inductive “nonviolent” approach to argumentation sometimes helps.

WNV: What do you think American pacifists can do now, or should have done, to stop wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya?

NB: American pacifists made heroic efforts to end those wars, using every channel available. They deserve our thanks. Afterward, when more people acknowledge that a military attack was a mistake, it helps to go back and see who really understood what was going on. I find it incredibly moving to see how right they were. Being able to stop a war isn’t the only reason for protesting a war. You may fail, but you still want to get it on record that there was an obvious better way as it was happening. The objection to any war has to be steady and constant, and one way of objecting is to re-examine historical touchstones. I wrote Human Smoke and “Why I’m a Pacifist” to recall, as others have, that the war resisters of World War II offered paths out of the horror at the time. Their steadiness and belief in reconciliation can help us now. We need new heroes. I’d rather think about Jessie Hughan, Abe Kaufman, Dorothy Day, Rabbi Cronbach, or Vera Brittain than Winston Churchill.

WNV: What business does a novelist have to write on matters of war and peace anyway?

NB: Tell that to Tolstoy.

—.

On Dec 16, 2017, at 6:32 PM, John W. <jbw292002 at gmail.com<mailto:jbw292002 at gmail.com>> wrote:


On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 5:24 PM, C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com<mailto:cgestabrook at gmail.com>> wrote:

Would this strike you as a reasonable defense of WWII in Europe?

“…German war-making antedates Hitler, and Roosevelt, and indeed the birth of modern Germany. War-making is a permanent and immutable characteristic of human nature.  German imperialism is a bit more recent, but not much.  It's a continuum.  And imperialism in general characterizes every militarily strong civilization since there were nation-states.  Even earlier, if you include the Roman Empire, Ghengis Khan, etc.”

My question is not rhetorical. See Nicholson Baker, "Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization” (2008).

—CGE

There's rarely a defense for war, and never for imperialism.  But German imperialism and the notion that Germans were somehow a superior "race" certainly predated Hitler.  He didn't invent it; he merely carried it a step further.

What has been much more surprising is how Germany has reinvented itself in such a progressive way since World War II.  But don't hold your breath.  Neo-Nazism lurks just barely beneath the surface in Germany, just as it does in America.  The pendulum will swing again, and man's brute nature will reassert itself.




On Dec 16, 2017, at 5:08 PM, John W. via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net<mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:


On Sat, Dec 16, 2017 at 4:02 PM, C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com<mailto:cgestabrook at gmail.com>> wrote:

How should the good fight go on? Does Hedges tell us? It’s clear that deploring Trump’s character  is not the way.

The US political establishment - who have provided us with 40 years of war and accelerating inequality, in both Republican and Democrat administrations - are using Trump (the weakest president since Coolidge) as a boogeyman to insure the maintenance of those policies.

He was elected in part because of his occasional criticism of them, and that was enough to terrify the neocons.

Johnstone, although perhaps not writing in a Ciceronian style, points that out clearly.

Anti-Trumpism is being used "as a deliberate ploy to manipulate what remains of the American political left into the pro-neoliberalism, pro-war ‘center’ …  the Democratic party is able to herd the political left into supporting pro-war, pro-oligarchy candidates and agendas…"

That’s what must be exposed, and opposed. Trump is not the problem: US war-making is. —CGE


Except that U.S. war-making antedates tRump, and Coolidge, and indeed the birth of the Republic.  :-/  War-making is a permanent and immutable characteristic of human nature.  U.S. imperialism is a bit more recent, but not much.  It's a continuum.  And imperialism in general characterizes every militarily strong civilization since there were nation-states.  Even earlier, if you include the Roman Empire, Ghengis Khan, etc.




> On Dec 16, 2017, at 2:20 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net<mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:
>
> Upon reading this, carefully, I find it overwrought, hyperbolic, to the point of being deceptive. Not that I have any wish to defend the policies rendered by the Dems and friends on matters of war and peace, and more generally the effects of the U.S.(struggles for world hegemony) upon the rest of the world. It is all frighteningly abysmal. But the good fight must go on, as Cris Hedges emphasized at the end of his remarkable, if overlong, address to a Sanctuary audience. .
>
> —mkb
>
>> On Dec 16, 2017, at 11:38 AM, C G Estabrook <cgestabrook at gmail.com<mailto:cgestabrook at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Anti-Trumpism Is Anti-Progressivism In Disguise
>>
>> The usual Clintonite pundits are crowing triumphantly about their narrow, expensive victory over a spectacularly awful candidate in Alabama yesterday, effectively claiming that this vindicates the way they’ve been ignoring everyone to the left of John McCain since the election. I don’t care about the Democratic party enough to write an entire article about how this is yet another sign that its leadership has no intention of ever moving even a single inch to the left in any way that matters, but I’d like to share a few thoughts on the general big-picture trend in US politics that this is a part of.
>>
>> When I say that anti-Trumpism is anti-progressivism in disguise, I don’t mean to suggest that Trump is progressive in any way, shape or form, nor do I mean to suggest that his administration isn’t advancing many legitimately toxic policies which must be ferociously opposed. By anti-Trumpism I mean the blinkered, frenzied “ZOMG LITERALLY HITLER” cult which prioritizes impeachment of the sitting president above all else and at any cost, and by anti-progressivism I mean it’s being used as a deliberate ploy to manipulate what remains of the American political left into the pro-neoliberalism, pro-war “center”.
>>
>> The campaign against Roy Moore was simply a microcosm of this general “vote for us because we’re not that scary boogieman” good cop/bad cop game both parties have been extorting the American public with for generations. Like Trump, Moore was a scandal-saturated slob who represented some of the most pernicious aspects of the GOP, and, though his opponent Doug Jones campaigned as a centrist who would work with Republicans, he was still viewed as better than Moore by enough people to win an election. This extortion scheme forced the people of Alabama to choose between a senator who would help move US politics far to the right and someone who would help move US politics only somewhat to the right, and they voted in self-defense, not because they liked Jones but because they feared Moore.
>>
>> This is a perfect illustration of how anti-Trumpism is being used on a much larger scale. By constantly masturbating the absurd narrative that Donald Trump is simultaneously (A) crazy, (B) stupid, (C) a secret Nazi and (D) a treasonous Kremlin agent, the Democratic party is able to herd the political left into supporting pro-war, pro-oligarchy candidates and agendas. In the same way they used “But Roy Moore!” to win support for an imperialist corporate whore, they will use “But Trump!” to win support for their neoliberal neoconservative extortion scheme at every turn.
>>
>> Whenever I point this out I get a bunch of Democratic party loyalists telling me “We can walk and chew gum at the same time! We can work to impeach Trump while advancing progressive causes!” No you can’t. You can’t and you don’t. When it came time to fight the DNC’s illicit, charter-violating installation of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders they “But Trump!”ed you into conforming. When it came time to support a third party they “But Trump!”ed you into conforming. When it came time to demand a massive overhaul of the DNC they “But Trump!”ed you into conforming. When it came time to demand a full investigation and restitution for the Democratic party’s misdeeds and manipulations exposed by WikiLeaks they “But Trump!”ed you into conforming. Every meaningful movement toward economic justice has been muted and marginalized since the election by “But Trump! But Trump! But Trump!” while the Republicans march the country further into corporatist oligarchy, and this scheme will continue for as long as it continues to work.
>>
>> As long as the American left allows fear of Trump to determine the way it thinks and votes, the American left will be completely neutered. When this boogieman is out of office, they’ll simply elevate another one just like they did with Trump, probably one that’s even scarier since the last one was so effective. If they can’t beat that one they’ll use him to herd the left into the center, just like they’re doing now.
>>
>> There’s a pipe dream in the DemEnter school of thought that progressives will be able to stage a takeover of the Democratic party beginning in 2018, but as long as the cult of anti-Trumpism, impeachment and Russiagate continues to dominate the way Democrats think and vote, this simply will not happen. 2018 will not be a year in which Berniecrats shore up influence over the Democratic party, it will be a year in which Democrats are “But Trump!”ed into supporting the so-called “center”, which only gets to call itself that because its massive corporate funds and media influence have enabled it to become a mainstream force.
>>
>> You cannot have your impeachment/Russiagate crusade and also move US politics to the left, progressives. You cannot. What you are trying to do isn’t like walking and chewing gum at the same time, it’s like trying to walk in one direction while taking a jet plane in the other direction at the same time. Keep supporting the impeachment/Russiagate narrative and you’re just handing the ranchers an easy day’s work as you march yourselves all straight into the slaughterhouse. They will “But Trump!” you into conformity until you stop letting fear and corporate narratives rule your minds and start pushing for what you truly want for yourselves instead.
>>
>> --– Caitlin Johnstone <medium.com<http://medium.com/>>


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