Narrated by Eunice Wong
Text Originally published 02/12/2023
Give Enough Rope - by Mr. Fish
On Sunday, February 19, I will be at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington at noon to speak at the anti-war rally, Rage Against the War Machine. There, I will be joined by Jimmy Dore, Dennis Kucinich, Ann Wright, Jill Stein, Max Blumenthal, Cynthia McKinney, Anya Parampil, David Swanson and other left-wing, anti-war activists I have shared platforms with for many years. I will also be joined by Ron Paul, Scott Horton and right-libertarian, anti-war figures whose political and cultural opinions I often disagree with. The inclusion of the right-wing has seen anti-war groups I respect, such as Veterans for Peace (VFP), refuse to join the rally. VFP issued a statement sent to me on Friday saying that “to endorse this event would have caused a huge disruption in VFP and had little effect on the outcome of the demonstration.” Code Pink asked its co-founder, Medea Benjamin, one of the nation’s most important and effective left-wing and anti-war activists, to cancel her scheduled talk at the rally.
“The left has become largely irrelevant in the U.S. because it is incapable of working with the right,” said Nick Brana, chair of The People’s Party, which organized the rally with libertarians. “It clings to identity politics over jobs, health care, wages and war, and condemns half the country as deplorables.”
We will not topple corporate power and the war machine alone. There has to be a left-right coalition, which will include people whose opinions are not only unpalatable but even repugnant, or we will remain marginalized and ineffectual. This is a fact of political life. Alliances are built around particular issues, in this case permanent war, which often fall apart when confronting other concerns. If I had organized the rally, there are some speakers I would not have invited. But I didn’t. This does not mean that there are no red lines: I would not join a protest that included neo-Nazi groups such as Aryan Nations or militias such as The Proud Boys or Oath Keepers.
My father, a Presbyterian minister who was an army sergeant in North Africa during World War II, was a member of Concerned Clergy and Laity About Vietnam, an anti-war group that included the radical Catholic priests Philip and Daniel Berrigan. He took me with other clergy, almost all veterans, to anti-war rallies. There was much in the anti-war movement that he and other members of the religious group opposed, from the Yippies — who put forward a 145-pound pig named Pigasus the Immortal as a presidential candidate in 1968 — to groups such as the Weather Underground that embraced violence. He and the other clergy disliked the widespread drug use and propensity of some protestors to insult and bait the police. They had little in common with the Maoists, Stalinists, Leninists and Trotskyites within the movement. Daniel Berrigan, one of the most important anti-war activists in American history who was constantly in and out of jail and spent two years in federal prison, opposed abortion — a stance that today would probably see him deplatformed by many on the left. These clergy understood that the masters of war were their real enemies. They understood that the success of the anti-war movement meant forming alliances with people whose ideologies and beliefs were far removed from their pacifism, abstemious lifestyles and Christian faith. When I was about 12, my father told me that if the war was still going on when I turned 18 and I was drafted, he would go to prison with me. The jolt of that promise has remained with me my entire life.
The demands of the Rage Against the War Machine rally are ones I share. They include Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine; Negotiate Peace; Stop the War Inflation; Disband NATO; Global Nuclear De-Escalation; Slash the Pentagon Budget; Abolish the CIA and Military Industrial Deep State; Abolish War and Empire; Restore Civil Liberties; and Free Julian Assange.
I know war. I spent two decades reporting on conflicts all over the globe, including many months in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, containing two million people including over a million children. I saw thousands of lives destroyed by United States military adventurism in Central America, Africa and the Middle East. Dozens of people I knew and worked with, including Kurt Schork, a Reuters reporter, and the Spanish cameraman Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora, died violent deaths.
We must halt the decades of rampant and futile industrial killing. This includes ending the proxy war in Ukraine. It includes drastic cuts to the funding of the U.S. war machine, a state within a state. It includes disbanding NATO, which was established to prevent Soviet expansion into Eastern and Central Europe, not wage war around the globe. If Western promises to Moscow not to expand NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany had been kept, I expect the Ukrainian war would have never happened.
To those who suffer directly from U.S. aggression, these demands are not academic and theoretical issues. The victims of this militarism do not have the luxury of virtue-signaling. They want the rule of law to be reinstated and the slaughter stopped. So do I. They welcome any ally who opposes endless war. For them, it is a matter of life or death. If some of those on the right are anti-war, if they also want to free Julian Assange, it makes no sense to ignore them. These are urgent existential issues that, if we do not mobilize soon, could see us slip into a direct confrontation with Russia, and perhaps China, which could lead to nuclear war.
The Democratic Party, along with most of the Republican Party, is captive to the militarists. Each year, Congress increases the budget for the war industry, including for fiscal year 2023. It approved $847 billion for the military — a total that is boosted to $858 billion when accounts that don’t fall under the Armed Services committees’ jurisdiction are included. The Democrats, including nearly all 100 members of the House Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Republicans slavishly hand the Pentagon everything it demands.
The rally on February 19 is not about eliminating Social Security and Medicare or abolishing the minimum wage, which many libertarians propose. It is not a rally to denounce the rights of the LGBTQ community, which have been attacked by at least one of the speakers. It is a rally to end permanent war. Should these right-wing participants organize around those other issues, I will be on the other side of the barricades.
“I supported the Rage Against the War Machine Rally from the time of its conception and I support it today, even though I will not be one of the speakers because the organization I have been associated with for 20 years, CODEPINK, urged me not to speak,” Medea Benjamin told me in an email. “The CODEPINK staff felt that my participation would hurt the group's standing with other coalitions committed to gay rights, women's rights and anti-racism. They felt that Jackson Hinkle has taken stands that are anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-feminist and Islamophobic, and they were concerned about the sponsorship of the Libertarian Party’s Mises Caucus which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, has ties to white nationalists.”
“So why do I support the rally?” she asked. “Because I am heartbroken by a war that is causing such death and destruction in Ukraine. Because I have real fears that this war could lead us into World War III or a nuclear confrontation. Because both political parties are complicit in giving over $100 billion to Ukraine to keep this war going. Because the Biden administration is pushing this war to weaken Russia instead of promoting solutions. Because we urgently need as many voices as possible, from a broad variety of perspectives, to speak out so we can be much more effective at pressuring Congress and the White House to move this conflict from the bloody battlefield to the negotiating table. The future of our world stands in the balance.”
Benjamin said although she will not speak, she will be at the rally “cheering on the speakers” and is planning a lobby day two days later, on February 21, for those who want to take their anti-war message directly to the offices of Congress. You can register for the lobby day here.
Ralph Nader, who has just founded the Capitol Hill Citizen, a newspaper focused on Congress, has long advocated a left-right coalition as the only effective mechanism to push back against corporate power. He argues that those on the left who refuse to join left-right alliances are engaging in “self-immolation.” This refusal, he says, fosters political paralysis, not unlike the paralysis in the face of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts in the 1950s against supposed Communists. Although many loathed McCarthy, the Republican establishment refused to join forces with the liberals and Democrats to end the smearing, blacklisting and imprisonment of dissidents. The left-right coalition is especially important if we are to rebuild labor unions, Nader points out, the only mechanism capable of crippling the ruling oligarchy. If we cannot reach across ideological divides, we will slit our own throats.
“A left-right alliance on issue after issue, whether it’s on a living wage, ending endless wars of aggression by the United States; whether it’s striking down hard on corporate crime, fraud and abuse; whether it’s universal health insurance is an unbeatable movement,” Nader told me when I reached him by phone. “Just think of a senator receiving ten constituents from back home and five are liberals and five are conservatives. How is a senator going to game them? How is a senator going to sugarcoat them? It’s very difficult. Any time there is a left-right alliance, as in the enactment over 30 years ago of the Federal False Claims Act to go after corporate fraud in government programs and contracts, it’s an unbeatable combination.”
Sponsored by leading Republicans and Democrats, the False Claims Act amendments of 1986 have been used by the federal government to recover more than $62 billion of fraud and mismanagement funds stolen by corporations with government contracts.
“If you want to prevail on Congress to fulfill its duties under the Constitution and never engage in wars or become co-belligerents without a declaration of war by Congress — the last war that was declared by Congress was World War II, and we’ve engaged in many wars since then and are continuing to do so — you must have a left-right coalition,” Nader said. “Because there is no coalition in Congress, both Republicans and Democrats are war parties. They support a Pentagon budget that gives the generals more than they ask for. They have done this for almost eight years, most recently giving the Pentagon $48 billion more than the generals and President Biden requested, instead of giving that money for public health to prevent pandemics, death, injury and disease.”
Those who will pay the steepest price for this paralysis are those killed, wounded and displaced by the war machine, including the over 900,000 civilians killed directly, and millions more indirectly, as a result in the post-9/11 U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Pakistan. But the left, mesmerized by a self-defeating boutique activism, also pays a price. As the empire unravels, the woke left, demanding moral absolutism, marginalizes and discredits itself at a moment of crisis. This myopia is a gift to the oligarchs, militarists and Christian fascists we must defeat.
Yes Chris you are so right in this essay. We need to form coalitions with folks with similar views on specific issues. We can respectfully disagree on other issues.
CodePink dropped the ball here. Maybe this essay will make them rethink their ideological purity and realize bending in the wind of change is existential. We like Congress need to make sausage where sausage can be made.
PS thank you Chris you voice; you inspires me at so many levels.
Lol
Who determined that Jackson Hinkle is persona non grata for "the Left"? Where is solid evidence that he's guilty of various sins as mentioned in this article? I note that not too long ago he was under attack by fans of "The Majority Report," a once-great channel that lost its founder and principal voice, Michael Brooks, going on three years ago and is now unwatchable thanks to its pseudo-progressive hosts, the execrable Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland.
I can't claim to have heard every broadcast by Hinkle, but I've listened to more than enough of them to be highly skeptical of the claims that now have some leftists wanting him culled from the herd. Something smells here, and it smells of the usual suspects from TYT and others of their ilk that constantly attack Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Aaron Maté, et al.
"The demands of the Rage Against the War Machine rally are ones I share. They include Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine; Negotiate Peace; Stop the War Inflation; Disband NATO; Global Nuclear De-Escalation; Slash the Pentagon Budget; Abolish the CIA and Military Industrial Deep State; Abolish War and Empire; Restore Civil Liberties; and Free Julian Assange."
Trump's platform. What most Trump supporters want. So then, whom are the coalition blockers?
Hello Chris,
It is extremely disappointing that Code Pink has discouraged you from sharing your knowledge with some of the people who need to hear it the most. Please reconsider your decision not to speak at the event.
Those who would be upset by your association with some of the speakers will still oppose the wars, even if you do speak. Your understanding could be very helpful in educating people "we" have been adversarial with.
Thank you,
Drake
Drake Chamberlin
Media & Communication Action Project
https://m-cap.org/
Of course, what Chris has said shouldn't need to be said and in fact wouldn't have been said when leftism = supporting working class struggle. Unfortunately things have got mussed up because leftists fought against issues such as racism and sexism because those were tools used by the elites to assist them in keeping unwhite & female workers down on low wages, backed by laws which made arresting unwhites & women a simple task should they try to demand a better deal.
Same same for homosexuality - although there are a handful of notorious examples of members of the elite being busted for the crime of enjoying playing around with some other bloke's pink bits, the vast majority of men and women arrested under oppressive sex laws were working men & women. The 'client' would be let go whilst the impoverished young man or woman that was caught with them would be arrested and locked up.
How could a dedicated leftist not resist such blatant oppression of workers?
This of course is far removed from $1000 a seat charity balls and the like which appears to be the focus of many feminist and gay rights organisations nowadays, which any self-respecting leftist would stay a kazillion miles away from, unfortunately too many have not done that, they've done the opposite. That is they have leapt aboard the charity ball, faux auction gravy-train and ditched all the real elements of leftism while still claiming, falsely I must add, to be leftists when they are nothing of the kind.
This is the type of leftism politicians like because the donations from the elites are always far better from a single elite donor than from a single worker - much fewer calls are required.
I have no time for any of it, as if when the United Auto Workers went on their prolonged sit-in strike they went around the factory saying to individual striking workers "Would you let your daughter marry a black man?" "No! well you can go we don't want your strike power" and "Hey you over there how do you feel about blokes wearing dresses?" "What! You don't like it, you may as well go back to work too - damn scab."
The notion is ludicrous yet that apparently is what the mob of poseurs who support the Dim party and feed off its leavings demand nowadays.
I would not be in the least surprised to hear Code Pink's funding was directly threatened should Medea or Chris elect to speak at this rally.
The englander version is even more precarious as the two venues that were announced chickened out on the basis of threats from both sides of Parliament, plus the ticket system was done over by a massive DDOS attack.
The mere fact that these marches for peace have been so threatened should get people flocking to attend them, but in the current climate of fear I unfortunately, suspect they will not.
People need to be thinking "The more that the forces of darkness are doing to try and discourage me, the more the opposite effect kicks in ie, the more I want to go."
P.S. Jackson Hinkle is a leftist. He supports working class causes to the hilt but his reluctance to jump on some of the more asinine bandwagons promoted by the noveau left has caused pieces of his rumble spiels to be taken out of context in the fight to knock him over cos as far as these turkeys are concerned they say who/whats left & isn't. No surprise that class politics are forgotten by them.
I feel conflicted and so sad that Chris Hedges won't be speaking at the anti-war rally. The most articulate and believable person with the most power to influence public opinion - won't address the crowds? Nor is Medea Benjamin an icon of the anti-war movement, because she disapproves of right-wingers at the rally... Nor is Scott Ritter, another key figure who has been 'cancelled' by organisers.
To me, the absence of these three important figures can and will be used by the pro-war government as an endorsement of the Ukraine War. They WILL argue that "Silence is Approval."
I find the arguments provided by Chris in this post for an alliance of left and right for a common cause (very valid), and his decision not to speak at the rally, deeply contradictory. The justification of aligning to Medea Benjamin isn't a valid one, in my view. I condemn Medea Benjamin's posture and "blackmail" of Chris regarding this rally.
I deeply admire and respect Chris, but I'm appalled by this decision.
I thought policy making, "Politics" works when people stand together on issues. If you can't stand with someone in support of a common goal because they don't measure up to your "Standards" you are of little use when it comes to real conflict. (Wouldn't want you in my foxhole.) Moral standards are your own, you have no right to demand others believe as you do. Let's end this war!
The People have a choice, to sit on their asses and do nothing with the spread of Corporate Fascism and accept the slavery that will be imposed upon then, or claim their right to individual sovereignty and freedom from such insanity, by actively refusing to support, in any manner the Corporate State.
We have become complacent. Is it because we are lazy, and just like letting them decide how we will live? Or is it because the Cabal has had a proactive agenda of brainwashing the public and private sectors with propaganda designed to cause a certain response. The two-party system is a complete failure in terms of supporting the will of the people. The system as a whole has failed the people and is not worthy of their trust. The two areas where the government has excelled is creating war, and lying to the people-about everything.
Time will prove that we have been living a lie and that true life is nothing like we have been witnessing The National Security State and its Secrecy should immediately place in the minds of every American, suspicion of the reason behind the secrecy. In a country that has always claimed transparency, secrecy cannot be allowed. Only in very special circumstances can one justify some degree of secrecy. Because when you have the degree of secrecy we have, then you get the National Security State which will cost the people trillions and it is not necessary in a Democracy one would think. Except that this is NOT a Democracy. It is A Secret Society based Nation. JFK told us that. Sen. Daniel Innouye told us the same. Yet no one was listening. Payola and corruption helped turn heads away, and others who kept looking were eliminated. This is the way our government works. And when scientists try to embark on new inventions etc. they are shut down by the educational institutions that are owned by the Cabal, most notably the Ivy League group that threatens loss of tenure if someone is practicing true science. Not the pseudo science offered by the main stream type, supported by the likes of Neil Degrasse Tyson whose ego and arrogance is larger than Manhattan, a classic shill for the Cabal.
The people know in their hearts that something has been grossly wrong for a very long time simply due to the fact that the will of the people never gets implemented as policy, yet war and deception always continues, just like NASA always denies the existence of any possible ET life in the Universe, knowing full well that the universe is teaming with life much of it humanoid. The lies are now being exposed, and the truth will come out in full glory. And humanity will lean the biggest lesson of all time, and hopefully never repeat it again.
I struggle with the Left, as most leftists seem to be University Educated individuals working in environments where they have little contact with the working class, and very little understanding of what is important to the working class. As a result, they go down every rabbit hole in the name of the working classes, while not understanding that the working classes do not share their values.
I remember having a conversation with a homeless man (working class background) where he explained why people who break the law should be locked in prison forever. There was no point in trying to discuss why he could not expect justice if ever he were charged with a crime, because what he knew was that in his experience victims of crime did not see justice done. It was the lack of justice being done by the system that incensed him.
The working classes find solace in hard work, family & church. Things that the educated elites seem to look down on, while talking endlessly about Marist Theory. The working classes fight the wars that the educated classes start. For the working classes, they are fighting for home and family. For the educated the wars are about power, control, and maintaining their position in the world.
If this divide is to be breached, the left has to get out of their sheltered environments, and spend time with the people they purport to represent. They need to learn what the working classes actually value, and not what they think they should value.
Thank you Chris for laying out the path forward so clearly and passionately. The strategic and pragmatic course is to find some common ground with those we may find distasteful or repugnant. There’s no other way.
so true and important as always
Exactly! The eloquent Counseling Psychologist-author Meredith Miller says #WeThePeople, #AllOfUs are victimized by the “covert psychological abuse” (aka #gaslighting”) #NEARLY ubiquitously broadcast over our ostensibly #PublicAirwaves by our perpetual war-profiteering imperium’s longtime CIA infiltrated, divisive, corporate CONtrolled “Big Media.“ The journalistic malfeasance by our late 4th Estate, now 5th Column bipartisan #PowersThatBe supporters of the #MilitaryIndustrialComplex parallels Reverend Hedges’ description of us as the most deluded (“ILLusioned”) population the world has ever known. Yet, to disillusion #NEARLY anyone anywhere, is to incur the wrath of the victim. Educated folks know this phenomenon has a name: Stockholm Syndrome. The “Big Brother” abusers, zioCons & limousine liberals alike, “operantly”CONdition us into co-dependency by trickily provisioning us, the DIMinished “Middle Class,” with minimally sufficient “pan e circensus” (bread & games) to keep us a quiescent #SilentMajority. Well, we know #SilenceIsComplicity. So, it’s High Time we form a “left-right” coalition, as ya’ll say. Ours is a #NewUnitedFront for #FreeingTruthAndReconciliation (ref. John 8:32 & #NelsonMandela) and it’s nothing short of our Country’s 3rd Great Awakening to the fact #GodIsLove (period! ref. 1 John 4:8). Ours is a strictly nonviolent #RevolutionOfAwareness (ref. Bollyn.com). We’re American Revolutionaries for honest & sincere #ChangeWeCanBelieveIn; away from “foreign entanglements” because #WarIsHell, literally (ref. #Lincoln & #Sherman, respectively). We’re #INDEPENDENTS!
Respectfully,
LewWelge.com
#CREATORS (Conspiracy Realist Educator Activist Truther Organizer Reader Socializers)
Damn I love his writing