Chapter Six
Community Activists
1. On the scale of the working-class media
early in the twentieth century, see for example, Jon Bekken, "The
Working-Class Press at the Turn of the Century," in William S. Solomon and
Robert W. McChesney, eds., Ruthless
Criticism: New Perspectives in U.S. Communication History, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1993, pp. 151-175. An excerpt (pp. 158, 151, 159, 160, 162, 157):
Total
circulation [of the U.S. socialist press] exceeded two million copies before
World War I, with the Appeal to Reason
-- far and away the circulation leader -- boasting a weekly circulation of
761,747. . . .
At the turn of
the century, the U.S. labor movement published hundreds of newspapers in dozens
of languages, ranging from local and regional dailies issued by working-class
political organizations and mutual aid societies to national union weeklies and
monthlies. These newspapers practiced a
journalism very different from that of the capitalist newspapers. . . . Their newspapers were an integral part of
working-class communities, not only reporting the news of the day or week, but
offering a venue where readers could debate political, economic and cultural
issues. Readers could follow the
activities of working-class institutions in every field and could be mobilized
to support efforts to transform economic and political conditions. . . . Labor newspapers ranged from small,
irregularly issued sheets to twelve- to sixteen-page dailies that were as
large, and in many ways as professional, as many of the capitalist newspapers
with which they co-existed. . . . [W]orkers
did not passively accept their lot.
Rather, they built a rich array of ethnic, community, workplace and
political organizations that helped them to survive from day to day . . .
vibrant working-class cultures organized along ethnic as well as class lines. .
. .
To counter what
they saw as a strong antilabor bias in the mainstream press, and to secure
access to unreported labor news, editors organized a cooperative news-gathering
service in November 1919. With the
support of labor, socialist, farm-labor, and other papers, Federated Press
bureaus in Washington, Chicago, and New York dispatched daily releases,
beginning in 1920. Federated Press
began with 110 member papers, including 22 dailies. . . . By 1925, two years after the A.F.L.
[American Federation of Labor, the most conservative segment of the U.S. labor
movement] denounced Federated Press as a vehicle for communist propaganda, the
Federated Press circulated its daily 5,000-word service to 150 papers and a
supplemental weekly labor letter to 1,000 subscribers. In addition to breaking labor news, Federated
Press provided in-depth articles on industrial and financial trends, wage
levels, and corporate profits. The
service survived until 1956, when it had 53 member papers and was one of four
news services available to working-class newspapers (the other three were tied
to the A.F.L. or C.I.O. [Congress of Industrial Organizations]). But union subscribers canceled the service
after the A.F.L.-C.I.O. merger and the resulting purge of left-wing unions, and
Federated was forced from the field.
J.B.S. Hardman and Maurice F. Neufeld, eds., The House of Labor: Internal Operations of
American Unions, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1951. An excerpt (p. 188):
In
1949, Herbert Little, director of the Office of Information, U.S. Labor
Department, reported that that department had a mailing list of more than 800
labor periodicals. . . . According to
Mr. Little, "Their circulations have been estimated to total more than
20,000,000, possibly as high as 30,000,000.
Eliminating obvious duplications, such as the machinist who gets his
union's weekly newspaper, its monthly journal and the local labor papers, it is
apparent that nearly all of the 16,000,000 labor unionists in this country get
and probably read one or more labor papers.
If their families are taken into consideration, the possible readership
would be tripled.
See also chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 36.
2. Alternative Radio offers an extensive catalog
of taped lectures and interviews by many speakers including Noam Chomsky, and
is a resource about community radio generally (Box 551, Boulder, CO, 80306,
1-800-444-1977). Radio Free Maine also
offers a catalog of taped lectures by Chomsky and others (P.O. Box 2705,
Augusta, ME, 04338 (207) 622-6629). The
Z Media Institute is involved in developing alternative media of various kinds
(18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA, 02543, (508) 548-9063). The Pacifica Network of major
community-controlled radio stations includes KFCF (Fresno, CA), KPFA (Berkeley,
CA), KPFK (North Hollywood, CA), KPFT (Houston, TX), WBAI (New York, NY), and
WPSW (Washington, DC). In addition,
many other communities of all sizes have non-corporate and popularly-controlled
radio.
Z Magazine -- which is discussed in
the text of this chapter of U.P. and
in chapter 9 of U.P. -- depends for
its survival upon subscriptions (18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA, 02543, (508)
548-9063, www.zmag.org/znet.htm). Dollars and Sense is an excellent
bimonthly magazine providing "left" perspectives on current economic
affairs and exploring the workings of the U.S. and international economies (1
Summer Street, Somerville, MA, 02143, (617) 628-8411, www.dollarsandsense.org). Extra!
is Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting's useful bimonthly magazine of media
criticism (F.A.I.R., 130 West 25th St., New York, NY, 10001, 1-800-847-3993,
www.fair.org). The Nation is a liberal weekly which often has interesting material
(P.O. Box 37072, Boone, IA, 50037, 1-800-333-8536, www.thenation.com).
For
some other popularly-oriented political organizations and publications, see the
resource guides at the end of: Noam Chomsky, The Common Good, Tucson, AZ: Odonian, 1998; Noam Chomsky, Secrets, Lies and Democracy, Tucson, AZ:
Odonian, 1994; and Mark Achbar, ed., Manufacturing
Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, Montreal: Black Rose, 1994; and see
Project Censored, The Progressive Guide
to Alternative Media and Activism, New York: Seven Stories, 1999. See also footnote 6
of chapter 9 of U.P.
For
extensive lists of links to the websites of progressive organizations and
information sources, see for example, www.zmag.org/znet.htm (includes a
"progressive internet resources directory");
www.fair.org/resources.html (includes alternative news sources, media criticism
and reviews); www.commondreams.org/community.htm (lists scores of progressive
and activist groups).
3. On 75 percent of the U.S. public supporting
a nuclear freeze, see for example, Daniel Yankelovich and John Doble, "The
Public Mood: Nuclear Weapons and the U.S.S.R.," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 63, Fall 1984, pp. 33-46 (reporting public
opinion poll findings).
4. On Gorbachev's declaration of a unilateral
nuclear test freeze, see for example, Serge Schmemann, "Gorbachev Seeks To
Talk To Reagan On Atom Test Ban," New
York Times, March 30, 1986, p. 1 ("Moscow announced a halt of its
testing program last July, asking Washington to join in").
5. The response of some of the most prominent
disarmament activists is illustrated by a three-page funding letter sent out by
the Institute for Defense & Disarmament Studies in March 1985, signed by
its director, Randall Forsberg, who deserves much of the credit for the
successes of the nuclear freeze campaign.
Chomsky discusses and quotes from this letter as follows (Turning the Tide: U.S. Interventionism in
Central America and the Struggle for Peace, Boston: South End, 1985, p.
188):
The
Institute, which "launched the nuclear freeze movement in 1980,"
accomplished what it set out to do: it educated the public to support a nuclear
freeze. But this popular success did
not lead to "a real electoral
choice on the issue in 1984."
Why? Because of "expert
opposition to the freeze," which prevented Mondale [the Democratic
candidate] from taking a supportive position.
The conclusion, then, is that we must devote our efforts to
"building expert support": convincing the experts. This achieved, we will be able to move to a
nuclear freeze.
6. Rosa Parks attended the Highlander Folk
School's 1955 School Desegregation Workshop, and in December of that year began
the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Tennessee
officials shut down the Highlander School in 1962, after it had been attacked
by white segregationists and others as a "Communist training
school." A new institution, the
Highlander Research and Education Center, was founded in its wake. Highlander had been a meeting place for
various Socialist and Communist associations, and its founders "envisioned
the rise of a radical coalition in support of an aggressive, interracial
movement of industrial workers and farmers in the South," although
"neither [its founder Myles] Horton nor any other faculty member ever took
the final step and joined the Communist party." See John M. Glen, Highlander:
No Ordinary School, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996, pp.
162-164, 54-55; Frank Adams, Unearthing
Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander, Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair,
1975.
For
a remarkable and inspiring book about Highlander and its founder, see Myles
Horton, The Long Haul: An Autobiography,
New York: Teachers College Press, 1998.
7. On the Joint Chiefs of Staff's fear of
"civil disorder" in 1968, see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 77.
8. On the "Wise Men"'s mission, see
for example, George C. Herring, America's
Longest War: 1950-1975, New York: Knopf, 1986, pp. 202-208. The author reviews President Johnson's
briefing with the "Wise Men" on March 26, 1968, and the
"tremendous erosion of support" for the war among the nation's
business and legal elite. The
"Wise Men" were Dean Acheson, George Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Douglas
Dillon, Cyrus Vance, Arthur Dean, John McCloy, Omar Bradley, Matthew Ridgway,
Maxwell Taylor, Robert Murphy, Henry Cabot Lodge, Abe Fortas, and Arthur
Goldberg; Presidential adviser Clark Clifford also was highly influential
during the period. There is additional
discussion of the economic crisis of mid-March 1968 in the 1996 expanded
edition of Herring's book at pp. 220-227.
See also footnote 77
of chapter 1 of U.P.
9. On Thomas Jefferson's view of corporations,
as well as his view of the effect of economic inequality on democracy, see for
example, John F. Manley, "American Liberalism and the Democratic Dream:
Transcending the American Dream," Policy
Studies Review, Vol. 10, No. 1, Fall 1990, pp. 89f. An excerpt (pp. 97-99):
Jefferson did not support capitalism; he supported
independent production. . . . The
fundamental Jeffersonian proposition is that "widespread poverty and
concentrated wealth cannot exist side by side in a democracy." This proposition is dismissed by liberals
making peace with the rich and coming to terms with inequality, but Jefferson
perceived the basic contradictions between democracy and capitalism. . . . In 1817 he complained that the banks' mania
"is raising up a monied aristocracy in our country which has already set
the government at defiance. . . ."
A year earlier he said he hoped the United States would reject the
British example and "crush in it's [sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied
corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of
strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. . . ."
Jefferson understood that Democracy was
problematic. But the alternatives were
rule by the rich, or a despot. "I am
not among those who fear the people," he writes. "They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued
freedom. . . . [S]how me where the
people have done half the mischief in these forty years, that a single despot
would have done in a single year. . . ."
Jefferson reminds us that democracy is impossible without a large
measure of social and economic equality.
Charles Sellers, The
Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991. An excerpt (pp.
269-270, 106):
Jefferson's
deathbed faith overcame deep misgivings. . . .
Men divide naturally into two parties, "aristocrats and
democrats," he wrote. On one side
stood "those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers
from them into the hands of the higher classes"; on the other stood
"those who identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and
consider them as the honest & safe, altho' not the most wise depository of
the public interests. . . ." He
was alarmed by a Republican Congress "at a loss for objects whereon to
throw away the supposed fathomless funds of the treasury." Soon he would conclude that these younger
National Republicans have "nothing in them of the feelings or principles
of '76." They wanted a
"single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking
institutions, and moneyed incorporations," he complained, through which
the few would soon be "riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and
beggared yeomanry."
10. On Adam Smith's view of corporations, see
for example, Patricia Werhane, Adam Smith
and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism, New York: Oxford University Press,
1991. An excerpt (p. 125):
Smith
[had a] genuine fear of institutions, as shown in his critique of the system of
mercantilism, of monopolies, and of political or economic institutions that
favor some individuals over others.
Smith questions the existence of "joint-stock companies"
(corporations), except in exceptional circumstances, because the
institutionalization of management power separated from ownership creates
institutional management power cut loose from responsibility. Smith's fear is that such institutions might
become personified, so that one would regard them as real entities and hence
treat them as incapable of being dismantled.
See also, Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976
(original 1776). An excerpt (Book V,
ch. I, pt. iii, art. i, pp. 280-282):
To establish a
joint stock company, however, for any undertaking, merely because such a
company might be capable of managing it successfully; or to exempt a particular
set of dealers from some of the general laws which take place with regard to
all their neighbours, merely because they might be capable of thriving if they
had such an exemption, would certainly not be reasonable. To render such an establishment perfectly
reasonable . . . it ought to appear with the clearest evidence, that the
undertaking is of greater and more general utility than the greater part of
common trades. . . . The joint stock
companies, which are established for the public-spirited purpose of promoting
some particular manufacture, over and above managing their own affairs ill, to
the diminution of the general stock of the society, can in other respects scarce
ever fail to do more harm than good.
Notwithstanding the most upright intentions, the unavoidable partiality
of their directors to particular branches of the manufacture, of which the
undertakers mislead and impose upon them, is a real discouragement to the rest,
and necessarily breaks, more or less, that natural proportion which would
otherwise establish itself between judicious industry and profit, and which, to
the general industry of the country, is of all encouragements the greatest and
the most effectual.
And see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 1;
and footnote 91 of chapter 10 of U.P.
11. On the development of corporate rights by
lawyers and judges, without public participation, during the nineteenth
century, see chapter 9 of U.P. and
its footnote 35.
12. On industrial democracy having been a goal
of the U.S. labor movement, see chapter 9 of U.P. and its footnote 33
(also see its footnote 15).
13. "Resist, Inc." can be contacted
at: 259 Elm St., Suite 201, Somerville, MA, 02144, (617) 623-5110
(www.resistinc.org). "Funding
Exchange" is a national network office for progressive funding
organizations in the United States: 666 Broadway #500, New York, NY, 10012,
(212) 529-5300 (www.fex.org). For lists
of activist groups, see the political action resource guides cited in footnote 2 of
this chapter.
14. On the
violence of American labor history, see for example, Patricia Cayo Sexton, The War on Labor and the Left: Understanding
America's Unique Conservatism, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991, chs. 4, 6, and
7. An excerpt (pp. 55, 58, 65):
Labor everywhere
has "war stories" to tell, but nowhere has the record been as violent
as in the United States. . . . One
review of some major U.S. strikes puts the figure at 700 dead and untold
thousands seriously injured in labor disputes, but these figures, though
impressive, include only strike casualties reported in newspapers between 1877
and 1968; and may therefore grossly underestimate the total casualties. (During the 1877-1968 period, state and
federal troops intervened in labor disputes more than 160 times, almost
invariably on behalf of employers.) In
the seven years from 1890 to 1897, an estimated 92 people were killed in some
major strikes, and from January 1, 1902, to September 1904, an estimated 198
people were killed and 1,966 injured.
These casualties were overwhelmingly strikers killed or injured in some
major strikes and lockouts. . . . After
the adoption of some protective legislation, between 1947 and 1962, violence
and militia intervention declined, but an estimated 29 people were killed in
major strikes during the period, 20 of them in the South. By contrast, only 1 person in Britain has
been killed in a strike since 1911. . . .
Over the years, labor
espionage has been a large and profitable business. In April 1946, for example, some 230 agencies were in the
business, the largest of them being William J. Burns's International Detective
Agency, Inc. (operating in forty-three cities) and [Allan] Pinkerton's National
Detective Agency, Inc. (operating in thirty-four cities). In just three top agencies, an estimated
135,000 men were employed at one point, operating in over 100 offices and more
than 10,000 local branches, and earning some $65 million annually for the
agencies. . . . [D]uring the 1930s the
agencies charged employers an estimated $80 million a year. General Motors testified before the
LaFollette [Congressional] committee that it paid about a million dollars to
such agencies from January 1934 through July 1936. . . . The use of espionage agencies and professional strikebreakers has been
almost unknown in European and other developed democracies.
John Streuben, Strike
Strategy, New York: Gaer, 1950, pp. 300-309 (listing 143 deaths in the
United States which were officially attributed to labor-management disputes
between 1933 and 1949); David Montgomery, "Afterword," in David
Demarest, ed., "The River Ran
Red": Homestead 1892, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1992, pp. 225-228; Jeremy Brecher, Strike!,
Cambridge, MA: South End, 1997 (revised and updated edition; original 1972)(a
valuable U.S. labor history). See also
footnote 32 of this chapter; and footnote 81
of chapter 10 of U.P.
15. On the British press's reaction to the
violence of U.S. labor relations in the late nineteenth century, see for
example, Patricia Cayo Sexton, The War on
Labor and the Left: Understanding America's Unique Conservatism, Boulder,
CO: Westview, 1991, pp. 83, 100.
16. On the role of state subsidies in the U.S.
economy, see chapter 3 of U.P. and
its footnotes 3, 4,
7,
8,
9
and 10;
chapter 7 of U.P. and its footnotes 38
to 44,
51
and 53;
and chapter 10 of U.P. and its
footnotes 22 and 23. See also chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnotes 4
and 5.
17. On discussion of popular democracy in the
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century revolutions, see for example, Christopher
Hill, The World Turned Upside Down:
Radical Ideas during the English Revolution, New York: Viking, 1972. Radical democrats in the seventeenth-century
English Revolution argued (p. 48):
[I]t will never be
a good world while knights and gentlemen make us laws, that are chosen for fear
and do but oppress us, and do not know the people's sores. It will never be well with us till we have
Parliaments of countrymen like ourselves, that know our wants.
The same sentiment was voiced in the American
colonies in the eighteenth century (Gordon Wood, The Radicalism Of The American Revolution, New York: Vintage, 1991,
pp. 244-245):
What alarmed the gentry of the 1760s and 1770s . . .
were the growing ideologically backed claims by ordinary people to a share in
the actual conduct of government. It
was one thing for ordinary people to take part in a mob or to vote; for them to
participate in the deliberations and decisions of government was quite another.
. . . [T]he artisans were not content
simply to be a pressure group. They
wanted to make governmental decisions for themselves, and they now called for
explicit representation of their interests in government. . . .
The traditional gentry no longer seemed capable of
speaking for the interests of artisans or any other groups of ordinary
people. "If ever therefore your rights
are preserved," the mechanics told each other, "it must be through
the virtue and integrity of the middling sort, as farmers, tradesmen, etc. who
despise venality, and best know the sweets of liberty." Artisans, they said, could trust in
government only spokesmen of their own kind.
18. Chomsky expanded on his views about
specialized expertise in government planning -- and popular democracy in
general -- in a 1976 interview on British television ("The Relevance of
Anarcho-Syndicalism/The Jay Interview," in Noam Chomsky, Radical Priorities, Montreal: Black
Rose, 1981, pp. 245-261 at p. 259):
I don't really
believe that we need a separate bureaucracy to carry out governmental
decisions. . . . [L]et's take expertise
with regard to economic planning, because certainly in any complex industrial
society there should be a group of technicians whose task is to produce plans,
and to lay out the consequences of decisions, to explain to the people who have
to make the decisions that if you decide this, you're going to likely get this
consequence, because that's what your programming model shows, and so on. But the point is that those planning systems
are themselves industries, and they will have their workers' councils and they
will be part of the whole council system, and the distinction is that these
planning systems do not make decisions, they produce plans in exactly the same
way that automakers produce autos. The
plans are then available for the workers' councils and council assemblies in
the same way that autos are available to ride in. Now of course what this does require is an informed and educated
working class, but that's precisely what we are capable of achieving in
advanced industrial societies.
19. For samples of Rothbard's vision, see for
example, Murray Rothbard, For a New
Liberty, New York: Macmillan, 1973, especially chs. 10-13. An excerpt (pp. 202, 210, 214-216, 220-221,
229, 269-270):
Abolition of the
public sector means, of course, that all
pieces of land, all land areas, including streets and roads, would be owned
privately, by individuals, corporations, cooperatives, or any other voluntary
groupings of individuals and capital. . . .
Any maverick road owner who insisted on a left-hand drive or green for
"stop" instead of "go" would soon find himself with
numerous accidents, and the disappearance of customers and users. . . . [W]hat about driving on congested urban streets? How could this be priced?
There are numerous possible ways.
In the first place the downtown street owners might require anyone
driving on their streets to buy a license. . . . Modern technology may make feasible the requirement that all cars
equip themselves with a meter. . . .
Professor Vickery has also suggested . . . T.V. cameras at the
intersections of the most congested streets. . . .
[I]f police
services were supplied on a free, competitive market . . . consumers would pay
for whatever degree of protection they wish to purchase. The consumers who just want to see a
policeman once in a while would pay less than those who want continuous
patrolling, and far less than those who demand twenty-four-hour bodyguard
service. . . . Any police firm that
suffers from gross inefficiency would soon go bankrupt and disappear. . .
. Free-market police would not only be
efficient, they would have a strong incentive to be courteous and to refrain
from brutality against either their clients or their clients' friends or
customers. A private Central Park would
be guarded efficiently in order to maximize park revenue. . . . Possibly, each individual would subscribe to
a court service, paying a monthly premimum. . . . If a private firm owned Lake Erie, for example, then anyone
dumping garbage in the lake would be promptly sued in the courts.
20. On British capitalists' discussions of the
need to "create wants" in Jamaica after the abolition of slavery in
the 1830s, see for example, Thomas Holt, The
Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, especially 44-73. This study notes that as abolition was being
prepared in Jamaica, British Member of Parliament Rigby Watson argued on June
10, 1833 (p. 54):
"To
make them labour, and give them a taste for luxuries and comforts, they must be
gradually taught to desire those objects which could be attained by human
labour. There was a regular progress
from the possession of necessaries to the desire of luxuries; and what once
were luxuries, gradually came, among all classes and conditions of men, to be
necessaries. This was the sort of
progress the negroes had to go through, and this was the sort of education to
which they ought to be subject in their period of probation [after
emancipation]."
Similarly,
John Daughtrey remarked (p. 71):
"Every
step they take in this direction is a real improvement; artificial wants become
in time real wants. The formation of
such habits affords the best security for negro labour at the end of the
apprenticeship."
The British leaders also addressed the problem of
the fertile land that would be available to the newly freed slaves (p. 73):
Early
in 1836, Lord Glenelg [the Colonial Secretary] forwarded to all the West Indian
governors a dispatch addressing one of these policy problems. He began by noting that during slavery,
labor could be compelled to be applied wherever the owner desired. Now, with the end of apprenticeship, the
laborer would apply himself only to those tasks that promised personal
benefit. Therefore, if the cultivation
of sugar and coffee were to continue, "we must make it the immediate and
apparent interest of the negro population to employ their labour in raising
them." He was apprehensive about
their ability to do this, repeating the now familiar maxim that given the
demographic patterns of former slave colonies such as Jamaica -- "where
there is land enough to yield an abundant subsistence to the whole population
in return for slight labour" -- blacks would not work. . . . "Should things be left to their natural
course, labour would not be attracted to the cultivation of exportable produce.
. . ." Glenelg went on to
prescribe the means by which the government would interdict these natural
proclivities. It was essential that the
ex-slaves be prevented from obtaining land.
21. For other examples of capitalists' conscious
discussions of the necessity of "creating wants," see for example,
Aviva Chomsky, West Indian Workers and
the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870-1940, Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1996. An
excerpt (pp. 56-59):
[The United Fruit]
company claimed in its propaganda that its role was to instill consumer values
among its workers. . . . In 1929,
Crowther, another United Fruit biographer, explicitly explained the importance
of the spread of a consumer mentality as he waxed eloquent on the virtues of
capitalism and bemoaned the immoral effects of a subsistence economy: "The
mozos or working people [in Central America] have laboured only when forced to
and that was not often, for the land would give them what little they
needed." But this could be
changed, he explained, by infusing these laborers with the desire for upward
mobility. "The desire for goods,
it may be remarked, is something that has to be cultivated. In the United States this desire has been
cultivated. . . . American movies,
radio, and especially magazines were everywhere, and "our advertising is
slowly having the same effect as in the United States -- and it is reaching the
mozos. For when a periodical is
discarded, it is grabbed up, and its advertising pages turn up as wall paper in
the thatched huts. I have seen the
insides of huts completely covered with American magazine pages. . . . All of this is having its effect in
awakening desires."
Hans Schmidt, The
United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1971. An excerpt (p.
158):
[T]he
problem of introducing American pragmatism and efficiency involved
confrontation with basic Haitian values and ambitions regarding work and
material rewards for work. . . .
Financial Adviser Arthur C. Millspaugh stated: "The peasants,
living lives which to us seem indolent and shiftless, are enviably carefree and
contented; but, if they are to be citizens of an independent self-governing
nation, they must acquire, or at least a larger number of them must acquire, a
new set of wants" [see Arthur Millspaugh (U.S. proconsul in Haiti),
"Our Haitian Problem," Foreign
Affairs, Vol. VII, No. 4, July 1929, pp. 556-570].
Angie Debo, And
Still The Waters Run, New York: Gordian, 1966 (original 1940), especially
pp. 20-30 (classic study discussing the U.S. government's efforts to drive an
awareness of their true wants into the native population during its program of
"Indian removal" and annexation).
An excerpt (pp. 21-23):
Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, a
distinguished Indian theorist, gave a glowing description of a visit of
inspection he had recently made to the Indian Territory [in 1883]. The most partisan Indian would hardly have
painted such an idealized picture of his people's happiness and prosperity and
culture, but, illogically, the Senator advocated a change in this perfect
society because it held the wrong principles of property ownership. Speaking apparently of the Cherokees, he
said: "The head chief told us that there was not a family in that whole
nation that had not a home of its own.
There was not a pauper in that nation, and the nation did not owe a
dollar. It built its own capitol, in
which we had this examination, and it built its schools and its hospitals. Yet the defect of the system was
apparent. They have gone as far as they
can go, because they own their land in common.
It is Henry George's system [George was a nineteenth-century American
land reformer], and under that there is no enterprise to make your home any
better than that of your neighbors.
There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization. Till this people will consent to give up
their lands, and divide them among their citizens so that each can own the land
he cultivates, they will not make much more progress."
The Conference [of Eastern philanthropic
"friends of the Indians"] accepted this viewpoint, and continued to
advocate "reform" with all the earnestness of a moral crusade. Like Senator Dawes, the members based their
opposition purely upon theoretical belief in the sanctity of private ownership
rather than upon any understanding of the Indian nature or any investigation of
actual conditions. With regard to
Indians in general, their program in 1903 comprised . . . the division of the
communal holdings among the individual Indians, to be held under the same
conditions of taxation and freedom to alienate as the white man's farm. . .
. In response to this faith in private
ownership, Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act in 1887. It provided that Indian reservations should
be allotted in 160-acre tracts to heads of families, 80 acres to unmarried adults,
and 40 acres to children; and that the remainder should be purchased by the
Government and thrown open to homestead entry.
Richard Ohmann, Selling
Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century, London:
Verso, 1996 (on the escalating need for advertising commercial products at the
turn of the century). See also chapter
10 of U.P. and its footnotes 74
to 80.
22. For a review of early vilification of
Chomsky, see Christopher Hitchens, "The Chorus and Cassandra: What
Everyone Knows About Noam Chomsky," Grand
Street, Autumn 1985, pp. 106-131 (reprinted in Christopher Hitchens, Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and
Minority Reports, New York: Hill and Wang, 1988, pp. 58-77).
23. For the Boston
Globe's reaction to the International Days of Protest, see "The Viet
Protests: From Boston to Waikiki Beach -- Cheers, Jeers, Eggs, Paint Greet Marching
Thousands," Boston Globe,
October 17, 1965, p. 1. The front page
was divided in half, with coverage of the protest under the subheading
"Those Who Walked . . ." and coverage of wounded Vietnam War veterans
under the subheading " . . .Some Who Couldn't." Photos of four wheelchair-bound veterans
accompanied the articles. This is a
description of the demonstration in Boston:
The peace rally, planned as a climax to the
well-organized march, came to grief as speakers tried vainly to make themselves
heard. A crowd of 2000 spectators . . .
were totally hostile to the marchers, greeting them with shouts of "Go
into the Army," "Fight for your country," and "Go back to
Russia. . . ."
When state Rep. Irving Fishman of Newton, a
Democrat, rose to address the crowd, he could get only nine words out. . .
. Angry shouts drowned out anything
else he had to say. . . . [I]n the
middle of it all, the Common rang out with echoes of "America the
Beautiful," "God Bless America," the national anthem and other
patriotic music.
The
reaction was even more hostile in New York City and Berkeley:
In New York, a flying wedge of spectators cracked
through police barricades and beat demonstrators to the pavement during a march
of 13,000 persons down Fifth Ave. A
gang of 35 "Hell's Angels," a notorious gang of California motor
cycle riders, swarmed through police barricades and attacked marchers at
Berkeley. . . .
[A] quart container of red paint was hurled at the
first rank of demonstrators. It
splattered over half a dozen marchers, drenching their hair, shoulders and
clothes. Eggs flying from different
directions splashed others. The
marchers walked on unsmiling as shouts of "Treason, Treason!" came
from spectators on the sidewalk. . . .
Men and women were brought to the pavement by flying tackles and punches
before police could restore order.
See
also, "LBJ Deplores 'Peace' March," Boston Globe, October 19, 1965, p. 1.
Chomsky
remarked in his 1967 essay "On Resistance" (American Power And The New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays,
New York: Pantheon, 1969, pp. 370-371):
After the first
International Days of Protest in October 1965, Senator [Mike] Mansfield
criticized the "sense of utter irresponsibility" shown by the
demonstrators. He had nothing to say
then, nor has he since, about the "sense of utter irresponsibility"
shown by Senator Mansfield and others who stand by quietly and vote
appropriations as the cities and villages of North Vietnam are demolished, as
millions of refugees in the South are driven from their homes by American
bombardment. He has nothing to say
about the moral standards or the respect for law of those who have permitted
this tragedy. I speak of Senator
Mansfield precisely because he is not a breast-beating superpatriot who wants
America to rule the world, but is rather an American intellectual in the best
sense, a scholarly and reasonable man -- the kind of man who is the terror of
our age.
24. One commentator summarized the so-called
"Faurisson affair" as follows (Milan Rai, Chomsky's Politics, London: Verso, 1995, pp. 131-132):
[Chomsky]
regards academic freedom, and the freedom of expression, as absolute values,
important in themselves. For such
reasons, he "supported the rights of American war criminals not only to
speak and teach but also to conduct their research, on grounds of academic
freedom, at a time when their work was being used to murder and
destroy." He later conceded that
this was a position "that I am not sure I could defend."
Chomsky's most
famous defence of academic freedom was in relation to the "Faurisson
affair," when Robert Faurisson, a professor of French literature at the
University of Lyons, was deprived of research facilities and driven from his
position for denying that gas chambers were used to kill Jews under the
Nazis. A court later convicted
Faurisson of the crime of failing his "responsibility" as a
historian, and "de laisser prendre en charge, par autrui, son discours
dans une intention d'apologie des crimes de guerre ou d'incitation à la haine
raciale," among other charges [i.e. letting others use his statements as
an apology for war crimes or an inducement to racial hatred]. Chomsky, in the company of hundreds of
others, signed a petition in 1979 deploring this infringement of academic
freedom. Subsequently he wrote a short
essay on the need to defend freedom of expression, which was used without his
knowledge as the preface to a book about the gas chambers by Faurisson. Chomsky's critics used these actions in defence
of Faurisson's civil rights to smear Chomsky as a supporter of Holocaust
denial.
For
samples of the English-language defamation campaign in the "Faurisson
affair," see for example, Werner Cohn, The
Hidden Alliances of Noam Chomsky, New York: Americans for a Safe Israel,
1988. An excerpt (pp. 1-2):
[T]he fact that he also maintains important
connections with the neo-Nazi movement of our time -- that he is, in a certain
sense, the most important patron of that movement -- is well known only in
France. . . . [D]enials have not
prevented [Chomsky] from prolonged and varied political collaboration with the
neo-Nazi movement. . . .
One characteristic of Chomsky's political writings
that does raise immediate questions about his judgment is his obvious animus
toward the United States and Israel. He
occasionally says bad things about most of the governments of the world but it
is Israel and the United States for which he reserves his extraordinary
vitriol. Chomsky is careful not to
justify Hitler explicitly but his writings create the impression that the Nazis
could not have been any worse than the "war criminals" of the United
States and Israel today. Moreover, and
this is indeed curious, almost all references to Nazis in his books turn out to
be denunciations of Nazi-like
behavior on the part of Israelis.
Nadine Fresco, "The Denial of the Dead: On the
Faurisson Affair," Dissent, Fall
1981, pp. 467f. An excerpt (p. 470):
You, Noam Chomsky,
believe in the existence of the gas
chambers: but is this mere opinion . . .?
Wishing to teach the intolerant French a lesson, Chomsky incessantly
refers them to their own classics, specifically to Voltaire [who wrote: "I
detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to
continue to write"]. I cannot help
but be annoyed (in a manner entirely irrational) by the fact that in this
Faurisson affair, which, admittedly, has a little something to do with
anti-Semitism . . . Chomsky chooses as a model someone who in 1745 wrote about
the Jews: "You will not find in them anything but an ignorant and
barbarous people who have for a long time combined the most sordid avarice with
the most detestable superstition."
Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "A Paper Eichmann?," democracy, April 1981, pp. 70f. An excerpt (pp. 94-95):
What
is scandalous about this petition [that Chomsky signed] is that it doesn't for
one moment ask whether what Faurisson says is true or false; and it even
describes his findings as though they were the result of serious historical
research. Of course, it can be
contended that everybody has the right to lie and "bear false
witness," a right that is inseparable from the liberty of the individual
and recognized, in the liberal tradition, as due the accused for his
defense. But the right that a
"false witness" [i.e. Faurisson] may claim should not be granted him
in the name of truth.
Martin Peretz, "Washington Diarist," New Republic, January 3, 1981, p.
38. An excerpt:
I mentioned
Chomsky in this space with reference to his apologetics on behalf of the
Honorable Pol Pot. . . . His latest departure
from linguistics . . . [is] Chomsky's little epistle in Faurisson's defense. .
. . On the question . . . as to whether
or not six million Jews were murdered, Noam Chomsky apparently is an agnostic.
Peretz then further claims that Chomsky denies freedom
of expression to his opponents, referring to Chomsky's comment that one
degrades oneself by entering into debate over certain issues -- apparently
reasoning that if one refuses to debate you, they constrain your freedom. Peretz is careful to conceal the example
which Chomsky cited when making this comment: the Holocaust.
For
the context of Chomsky's remark about "degrading oneself by entering into
debate over certain issues," see Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays,
New York: Pantheon, 1969. An excerpt
(pp. 8-9):
During these
years, I have taken part in more conferences, debates, forums, teach-ins,
meetings on Vietnam and American imperialism than I care to remember. Perhaps I should mention that, increasingly,
I have had a certain feeling of falseness in these lectures and
discussions. This feeling does not have
to do with the intellectual issues. The
basic facts are clear enough; the assessment of the situation is as accurate as
I can make it. But the entire
performance is emotionally and morally false in a disturbing way.
It is a feeling
that I have occasionally been struck by before. I remember reading an excellent study of Hitler's East European
policies a number of years ago in a mood of grim fascination. The author was trying hard to be cool and
scholarly and objective, to stifle the only human response to a plan to enslave
and destroy millions of subhuman organisms so that the inheritors of the
spiritual values of Western civilization would be free to develop a higher form
of society in peace. Controlling this
elementary human reaction, we enter into a technical debate with the Nazi
intelligentsia: Is it technically feasible to dispose of millions of
bodies? What is the evidence that the
Slavs are inferior beings? Must they be
ground under foot or returned to their "natural" home in the East so
that this great culture can flourish, to the benefit of all mankind? Is it true that the Jews are a cancer eating
away at the vitality of the German people? and so on. Without awareness, I found myself drawn into this morass of
insane rationality -- inventing arguments to counter and demolish the constructions
of the Bormanns and the Rosenbergs.
By entering into
the arena of argument and counterargument, of technical feasibility and
tactics, of footnotes and citations, by accepting the presumption of legitimacy
of debate on certain issues, one has already lost one's humanity. This is the feeling I find almost impossible
to repress when going through the motions of building a case against the
American war in Vietnam.
For
other remarks about the Holocaust in Chomsky's early writings, see Noam
Chomsky, At War With Asia: Essays on
Indochina, New York: Pantheon, 1974 (quotation from a 1970 essay). An excerpt (p. 307):
[O]ne cannot
compare American policy [in the Indochina wars] to that of Nazi Germany, as of
1942. It would be more difficult to
argue that American policy is not comparable to that of fascist Japan, or of
Germany prior to the "final solution." There may be those who are prepared to tolerate any policy less
ghastly than crematoria and death camps and to reserve their horror for the
particular forms of criminal insanity perfected by the Nazi technicians. Others will not lightly disregard
comparisons which, though harsh, may well be accurate. Nazi Germany was sui generis, of that there is no doubt. But we should have the courage and honesty to face the question
whether the principles applied to Nazi Germany and fascist Japan do not, as
well, apply to the American war in Vietnam.
Noam Chomsky, Peace
in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood, New York:
Vintage, 1974, pp. 57-58 (the Zionist case "relies on the aspirations of a
people who suffered two millennia of exile and savage persecution culminating
in the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history").
For further discussion of the "Faurisson
affair," see for example, Christopher Hitchens, "The Chorus and
Cassandra: What Everyone Knows About Noam Chomsky," Grand Street, Autumn 1985, pp. 119-125; Brian Morton, "Chomsky
Then and Now," Nation, May 7,
1988, pp. 646-652; Noam Chomsky, Réponses
inédites à mes détracteurs Parisiens, Paris: Spartacus, n/d; Noam Chomsky,
"The Faurisson Affair: His Right to Say It," Nation, February 28, 1981, pp. 231f. An excerpt (pp. 232-234):
I have taken far more controversial stands than this
in support of civil liberties and academic freedom. At the height of the Vietnam war, I publicly took the stand that
people I believe are authentic war criminals should not be denied the right to
teach on political or ideological grounds, and I have always taken the same
stand with regard to scientists who "prove" that blacks are genetically
inferior, in a country where their history is hardly pleasant, and where such
views will be used by racists and neo-Nazis.
Whatever one thinks of Faurisson, no one has accused him of being the
architect of major war crimes or claiming that Jews are genetically inferior
(though it is irrelevant to the civil-liberties issue, he writes of the
"heroic insurrection of the Warsaw ghetto" and praises those who
"fought courageously against Nazism" in "the right cause"). I even wrote in 1969 that it would be wrong
to bar counterinsurgency research in the universities, though it was being used
to murder and destroy, a position that I am not sure I could defend. What is interesting is that these far more
controversial stands never aroused a peep of protest, which shows that the
refusal to accept the right of free expression without retaliation, and the
horror when others defend this right, is rather selective. . . .
It seems to me something of a scandal that it is
even necessary to debate these issues two centuries after Voltaire defended the
right of free expression for views he detested. It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the
holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers.
Asked
years later in an interview if, in retrospect, he would not have written the
statement on freedom of speech which was included as a "preface" to
Faurisson's book -- without Chomsky's advance knowledge -- Chomsky responded
(Noam Chomsky, Chronicles of Dissent:
Interviewed by David Barsamian, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1992, p. 264):
If you ask me, should I have done it, I'll answer,
yes. In retrospect, would it have been
better not to do it, maybe. Only in the
sense that it would have given less opportunity for people of the Dershowitz
variety [Harvard law professor, discussed in footnote 27
of this chapter], who are very much committed to preventing free speech on the
Arab-Israel issues, and free exchange of ideas.
I don't know.
You could say on tactical grounds maybe yes, but that's not the way to
proceed, in my view. You should do what
you think is right and not what's going to be tactically useful.
For
comparison with reactions to the exposure of Nazis in George Bush's 1988
election campaign and to the Reagan administration's opposition to a Holocaust
education program, see chapter 2 of U.P.
and its footnotes 37, 38
and 39.
25. For samples of the defamation campaign
concerning Chomsky's writings on Cambodia, see for example, Stephen Morris,
"Chomsky on U.S. foreign policy," Harvard
International Review, December-January 1981, pp. 3f (and the exchange of
letters in the April-May 1981 issue).
An excerpt (pp. 4, 27, 30-31):
Once the evidence of Indochinese Communist behavior
began to accumulate . . . [Chomsky's] response was to deny the evidence of
repression. . . . The work under
review, The Political Economy of Human
Rights . . . is the most extensive rewriting of a period of contemporary
history ever produced in a nontotalitarian society. . . .
[T]he moral climax of the Chomsky-Herman book [is]
their apologies for Pol Pot. . . .
[F]or the entire period since 1975 Chomsky has devoted an enormous
amount of his time to the task of trying to discredit accounts of repression in
Indochina, while promoting accounts which paint a more benign picture of the
new orders. . . . [The] revelations of
horror stirred Professor Chomsky to write in defense of Pol Pot. The 160 pages of The Political Economy of Human Rights which deal with Cambodia
represent the most recent and extensive effort in this vein. . . . [Chomsky and Edward Herman] are totalitarian
political ideologues, with an intense emotional commitment to the cause of
anti-Americanism. Operating on the
principle that "my enemy's enemy is my friend" they have
wholeheartedly embraced the struggle of two of the world's most ruthlessly
brutal regimes [i.e. Cambodia and Vietnam].
Fred Barnes, "My Change Of Heart: Coming around
to the noble cause," New Republic,
April 29, 1985, pp. 11-12. An excerpt
(p. 12):
Who
among [the leaders of the antiwar movement] has been willing to suggest that
the murder of a million or more Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge might have been
averted if American military force had not been removed from Indochina? If any of them spoke out that way, I missed
it. But I did hear Noam Chomsky seek to
prove the Cambodian genocide hadn't happened.
Geoffrey Sampson, "Censoring 20th Century Culture: the case of Noam
Chomsky," New Criterion, October
1984, pp. 7-16 (and see the exchange of letters in the January 1985 issue, and
commentary on it in Alexander Cockburn, "Beat The Devil," Nation, December 22, 1984, p. 670, as
well as the exchange of letters in the Nation
on March 2, 1985, p. 226); Leopold Labedz, "Under Western Eyes: Chomsky
Revisited," Encounter, July
1980, pp. 28f (an article which, together with many inventions and
falsifications about Chomsky's stance on the Cambodian genocide, also is
notable for its apologetics for the Western-backed atrocities in East
Timor). Chomsky points out with regard
to Labedz's article (Necessary Illusions:
Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1989, p. 383
n.31):
That
the lies were conscious in this case is indicated by the fact that the journal
refused to permit a response that exposed the falsifications point by point, so
that the article can therefore be quoted, reprinted with acclaim, etc. It is standard for dissidents to be denied
the right of response to personal attacks, and it is reasonable to suppose that
in such cases the journal recognizes the need for protection of fabrications
that would be all too readily exposed if response were not barred.
Chomsky
and Edward Herman stated their thesis in the opening pages of their chapter "Cambodia,"
in Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, After
the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology --
The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume II, Boston: South End, 1979,
pp. 135-136, 139-140:
[I]n the case of Cambodia, there is no difficulty in documenting major atrocities and oppression, primarily from the reports of refugees, since Cambodia has been almost entirely closed to the West since the war's end. One might imagine that in the United States, which bears a major responsibility for what Francois Ponchaud calls "the calvary [i.e. crucifixion] of a people," reporting and discussion would be tinged with guilt and regret. That has rarely been the case, however. The U.S. role and responsibility have been quickly forgotten or even explic