Mark Steel slams SWP members who hype the antiwar movement
Here:
"...the Stop the War Coalition began as a magnificent example of how the ideas of the SWP can influence a movement in the most exhiliarating fashion. But as the massive anti-war march receded into the past, relating to those people who went on it became more complex.
The most typical attitude seemed to be that while no one regretted going on the march, they couldn’t see that it had made any difference. But instead of analysing how to address this sentiment, the SWP seemed to repeat the tone that suited the frenetic weeks before the war. Every march and protest was depicted as a triumph. And there was no acknowledgement of the process in which Stop the War meetings and rallies became smaller, and almost devoid of anyone under forty."
Who could he be talking about?
1 comments:
Seymour's article illustrates why most people who oppose the war have been totally alienated from the official anti-war movement.
The anti-war movement fosters a dangerous illusion that governments can be influenced into changing their policies by popular protest. The reality is that policies are driven by the demands of specific interest groups under capitalism, such as the oil industry and the military-industrial complex.
Protest plays no part unless and until the protest coincides with actions that make the policy difficult and/or a change in the policy itself.
An example is the Vietnam war, where the clear refusal of US soldiers to prosecute the war with any enthusiasm coincided with Nixon and Kissinger deciding that alliance with China against Russia was a bigger and better prize than Vietnam.
Obviously people who buy into protest politics (and who are not political activists like Seymour) pretty quickly get disillusioned when protest does not deliver the hoped-for impact.
Thus, the only people who now turn up to Stop the War meetings and demos are ageing hacks, as Mark Steel points out.
Seymour and others have also tried to put the Stop the War movement on the side of terrorists who, far from trying to stop the war, are prosecuting the war and exploiting the resultant chaos to make themselves rich and powerful.
In other words, Seymour & co are supporting people who are responsible for causing much of the misery in Iraq, including shootings, blackmail, rapes and persecution of anyone who is not muslim or who adheres to the wrong brand of islam.
At the same time Seymour & co. have continuously dissed the people who are being shot at day in day out in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Anyone who is not an SWP activist feels sympathy and solidarity with these guys for they are doing a tough job and they too are victims of the conflict.
Post a Comment