“Che is dead, and so is his relevance,” proclaims Sacha Feinman in last Friday’s Argus. Sacha makes the excellent point that a healthy movement must develop new strategies and tactics. But his willingness to reject decades of anti-imperialist experience is just another example of the shortsightedness he laments. I was appalled by the droves of students falling over themselves to praise the half-soused bigotry of Christopher Hitchens at last Monday’s debate. But past struggles remain just as relevant as ever if we are to understand and defeat the ultraright and their war machine.
Despite what the Argus editors call a “nuanced” and “credible” performance, Hitchens’ argument was surprisingly unoriginal. Sacha is quite correct to label him a neoconservative. Indeed, Hitchens’ defense of the Iraq War adhered to the official line set forth by the Bush administration in almost every respect. He held fast to the myth of a nefarious, doomsday-like WMD threat, for example, even long after the White House has distanced itself from such a position. And his rhetoric of spreading the benign American gift of “freedom” and “democracy” was just a repetition of the same old imperialist trope.
I agree that a cogent analysis of the neo-cons is needed; it is a heterogeneous movement, with internal divisions and important disagreements with other ultra-right elements that we can exploit. But, as Dr. Parenti argued, it is also worth pointing out the continuity of objectives among ruling elites.
Hitchens and his friends at the Project for a New American Century are nothing new. Over 100 years ago, Rudyard Kipling advanced his theory of the “white man’s burden” to justify the spread of superior English “civilization” into India and Africa. Now we have neocons attempting to impose their unique gift of “political and economic freedom” wherever they deem fit. But, if some on the left would listen to Che and other communists instead of dismissing them, they would know that “freedom” is always concrete. The question is not whether we should have abstract things like “freedom” or “human rights.” Rather, we must ask: freedom and human rights for whom?
Under what conditions are these political and economic “freedoms” imposed? And who benefits from them?
Despite the democratic-sounding rhetoric from neocon expansionists, their notion of “political and economic freedom” provides more rights for giant corporations and the socio-economic status quo than it does for the vast majority of the Iraqi population. And their belligerent, unilateral tactics only strengthen the very fundamentalist insurgency that frightens us all. Chauvinists like Hitchens are not progressive in the least; and their abstract slogans and paternalist impositions do nothing to benefit the victims of their supposedly altruistic designs.
Not surprisingly, most neocons have their roots in the pathologically anti communist element of the left. Hitchens began his grand narrative of the spread of American “freedom” with the collapse of Soviet communism in 1989, praising that year as a watershed moment in the history of “democracy.” But, as the past 15 years have shown, the collapse of communism only brought in its train a devastating resurgence of exploitation, poverty, corruption and fascism. I do not wish to romanticize the past. At the same time, though, it is just as absurd to hail the “liberation” of Iraq as a step forward for democracy as it is to call post-communist Russia a beacon of egalitarianism and human rights. Those of us who pay the price, in poverty and blood, for such “progress” are no better off.
In “The Assassination of Julius Caesar,” Dr. Parenti quotes the famous conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter: “Rome was governed by that policy which pretends to aspire to peace but unerringly generates war, the policy of continual preparation for war, the policy of meddlesome interventionism. There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies. And if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil minded neighbors, always fighting for breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs.”
Schumpeter wrote that in 1919 about a 2,000 year-old empire. Sure, the “battlefield” has been rearranged. But the underlying forces remain the same.
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