There's been a lot of poeple voicing concerns of whether an Anti-Globalism action (and that's how I've always understood it; not Anti-U.S., not Pro-Islamic Fundamentalism, but a movement towards reclaiming western democracy from the laizais fairre, corporate capitalism that by global implementation seeks to run rampant over the sovereinty of the nations of the world) is appropriate in the wake of the attack on the U.S.. And so come the predictable responce calling those who are concerned "sunday liberals" "weak in their resolve" and so forth. "house ni**ers", if you will.
I worry about this rigid vehemence and the consequences going back into battle with that mindset. There's no question that we must go back into battle, the war that we in the U.S. will be engaged in, whether we have a say or not, will enrich the the institutions of profit over people like every other war. But how many of us are going to show up and hammer the crass one-liner of spiting and ridiculing the upswing in patriotism home? How many can't wait to march down a street lined with bloated, naive AmeriKKKows waving flags and (god forbid) praying, hoping that one of them will have the temerity to yell, "If you don't like it, get the hell out of the country", so that you may "educate" them with a bunch of anarcho-leftist gobelty-gook that they'll have no more understanding of than they do of the true nature of U.S. forein policy? How many of us are going out there to provoke such responces by wearing an inverted flag or the flag of Iraq? How many will show up and set the tone of their own participation to the tone the most self-rightious in the crowd so they can feel assured that others in the movement view them as "real" fighters (squash that; 99.999% of the industrial world stays home and watches TV while their liberties are being assaulted. If you show up, you are a "real" freedom fighter.)? I hope we can have a day of action devoid of this juvenile shit. But while my main concern is over the tone of critique, I think it would be intellegent to separate our critique of U.S. foreign policy from our critique of U.S. economic policy altogether, if just for this upcoming action. If you want an anti-war demo, organise one. I'll show up at that one too. No, I got it. I'm an Uncle Tom. Right. But the reality of our movement is that at present we are presented to the public, those teeming millions of "bloated, naive AmeriKKKows", by the corporate media as an inconsequential rag-tag of misguided libbys. We can continue to effectively promote our ideals and grow our movement from that vantage. But it only takes one protester to contaminate our anti-corporate retoric with rhetoric critical of the U.S. foreign policy feindery that led to this attack for us all to be painted as "Pro-terrorist sympathisers dancing on the graves of the thousands that lay in the rubble of our nation's greatest symbol of prosperity". We don't even need to court that kind of shitstorm. Everyone related to the general movement wonders whether it will survive this debacle. Here's at least a mine in the road we know we can steer clear of.
Those who have their teeth sharpened to make the crassest most vitriolic anti-American statements, those who are laying out their most anti-establishment pre-torn fishnets and culling through their 7" collections looking for the most effective way to show middle-americans that they are rebels, should take a look at who they intend to alienate and turn against them. Those soccermoms and K of C lodgers, for better or worse, are the lumpen masses we seek to liberate