|
CounterPunch
October
17, 2002
Todd Gitlin
Does the Boss Man's Work
Redbaiting the Antiwar Movement
by RON JACOBS
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 1971as 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.
Ron Jacobs
is author of The
Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground.
He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
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