---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2002 14:35:57 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Todd Gitlin Does the Boss Man's Work
Todd Gitlin Does the Boss Man's Work
Redbaiting the Antiwar Movement
by RON JACOBS
CounterPunch
October 17, 2002
Recently Todd Gitlin, one of the establishment media's "experts" on the
Sixties, was extensively quoted in an article by Michelle Goldberg in the
online magazine Salon. The gist of Gitlin's comments (and the article) was
that the participants in the growing movement against Washington's drive
towards war on Iraq were, in essence, communist dupes. The article attacked
some of the more leftist organizers of the Not In Our Name project (Refuse
and Resist) and the bicoastal marches planned for October 26th
(International Answer) as apologists for despotic regimes and extremist
Latin American guerrilla organizations like Peru's Shining Path. In doing
so, the author (and Gitlin) ignore the broad base of the movement and the
two umbrella organizations currently coordinating most national actions and
campaigns.
Gitlin, who continues to move further to the right with each public
utterance, states that with groups like Refuse and Resist and ANSWER behind
the scenes, the antiwar movement will face the same fate as that against
the Vietnam War which, according to Gitlin disintegrated mostly because,
"As war became less popular, so did the antiwar movement," he says. "People
saw the antiwar movement as a scrod of would-be revolutionaries who wanted
to tear up everything orderly and promising about America...." To say the
least, his analysis ignores the very real fact that the antiwar movement
was under attack by the establishment media, the LBJ and Nixon White House,
and the FBI and numerous other police agencies-all of which probably had
more to do with the movement's apparent foundering than the angry rants of
the revolutionary wing of the movement. It also ignores the massive
mobilizations against the war that took place in May 1970 and for two weeks
in late April-early May of 1971 as veterans, then peaceniks, and finally
direct action protestors took over the streets of Washington, DC. In
addition, by making such a claim, Gitlin ignores the fact that the antiwar
movement in the United States and around the world had a good deal to do
with the war ending in 1975 with independence for the Vietnamese
people-their original goal.
As an historian of the Sixties, Mr. Gitlin should remember that it was
another leftist group, the May 2nd Movement (M2M)-a nationwide student
movement against US intervention in Vietnam that was organized by the
Maoist Progressive Labor Party in early 1965-that was the first national
organization opposed to US intervention in Vietnam. After the movement
developed its own momentum, M2M fell by the wayside and numerous groups and
coalitions representing diverse politics, philosophies, classes and
interests took part in every subsequent mobilization against the US
misadventure in Southeast Asia. For Gitlin to make this acknowledgement
however, would nullify his perception of the Sixties. This perception
divides the social movements of that decade into two phases: the "good
Sixties" and the "bad Sixties," with the former being when Gitlin and his
friends ran the primary radical student group-Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS)-and the latter being after this group of leaders moved on. Of
course, the lines are not as clear as Gitlin remembers them. Indeed, many
of the very same folks who were in the early SDS did not leave the
organization as it became more radical in nature, they grew more radical
themselves.
This is not said to disparage the early SDS. Without the foresight and
vision this group provided with its words and its organizing against racism
and war, it is likely that the people and countryside of Vietnam would have
been nuked and the struggle against systemic racism in all sections of the
US would have been ignored. Ironically, in light of Gitlin's "redbaiting"
comments in this article and over the past few years, it is important to
note that one of SDS' founding principles was to allow any individuals who
shared the organization's left-leaning philosophy to participate fully in
SDS activities and membership. Why ironic? Because in the late Fifties and
early Sixties it was the trend among the liberal establishment to ban
anybody associated with Communist organizations from taking part in their
coalitions and groups. Now, Mr. Gitlin and his compatriots, who whether
they like it or not, are today's liberal establishment, are replicating the
sins of their fathers in their rebuke of any group with a red tinge in the
antiwar movement. By doing so, they are doing Messrs. Rumsfeld and
Ashcroft's work.
There are serious questions regarding the umbrella organizations currently
coordinating the various national actions against Washington's drive
towards war. These are questions which should and are being debated by
activists new and old throughout the country. If. Mr. Gitlin wishes to join
these debates in a serious way, without waving his flag and his credentials
in front of us, he is more than welcome. It is not up to him and those
liberals who are offended by the more radical thoughts of those of us who
have learned different lessons from history than they to decide what the
antiwar movement will be. It is up to those who participate in it. If
history is any indication, this means the new movement against US wars on
the world will have as many ideological hues participating in it as the
movement against the US war in Vietnam did. Indeed, it already does.
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Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather
Underground.
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