To understand the state-side anti-war movement – and both the positive and negative effects that it has had on the American political scene – you have to look back to 1998 and the anti-World Trade Organisation protest that successfully shut down the meetings in Seattle. At that mobilization the US saw a resurgence in power among the left, as thousands gathered in a direct action event that caught Seattle and the WTO completely off guard. As a result of the Seattle protest, however, two new themes emerged on the American protest circuit. One that has ultimately proven to blur the focus of the movement, and another that has re-energized the left at a time when political activity was at a low ebb.

The downside, where the movement has become blurred, is found in the new organising strategies that emerged in Seattle, where any group with a progressive theme was urged to use the protest as a way to plug their own agenda. Such protests have a tendency to turn from focused events into drum circles with tie-dye vendors and vegan food stands. In the current anti-war movement, while hundreds of thousands of marches have gathered in the streets of most of the major American cities, many of those out protesting seem to have alternative agendas that tend to cause distractions instead of adding what they could to the main theme of the protest.
The upside however, is that for the first time since Vietnam people have begun to reclaim the streets of America, speaking out against a government that they say does not represent them. Also, while some elements of the movement have caused distractions, new coalitions have begun to form that will be important for the future. Most importantly, American labour has stepped up in a big way, not only providing numbers at protests, but also linking the American working class to the sometimes very middle-class peace movement.

The labour movement has surged recently, in contrast to the position of the 1980s when union density was at an all-time low. Most recently, the American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO, the US version of the British TUC) passed a sweeping anti-war resolution, helping several local unions to step up and speak out against the war. For example, in New York the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) brought out an unprecedented number of members (over 10,000) to support an anti-war march. Individual unions within the AFL-CIO have also taken it upon themselves to pass their own anti-war resolutions.

Another positive development that has become an important part of the anti-war movement is the use of direct action. In San Francisco for example, the day the war broke out thousands of protesters poured into the street to ‘stop business as usual.’ Over 2,000 were arrested in just one day as San Francisco turned into an urban mess.

The states’ reaction to the anti-war movement has varied. In San Francisco, protesters reported fair treatment by the police, but all over the country there have also been instances of severe police repression. On April 10, the New York Times reported an instance where the NYPD had been recording information on arrested protesters concerning their prior political activity, and then logging it in a database. Derided by civil libertarians as an infringement of constitutional rights, the police eventually stopped, and apparently destroyed all previously collected records. In other cities protestors have been brutalised by police overreacting to protests that numbered as small as 500-1000 people. In displays of force, riot police in full riot gear have been given the orders to ‘shoot to kill if necessary.’

The one most important product of the current anti-war movement however, is the renewal of a far-reaching global perspective among the American population. Beyond local connections and coalitions, the anti-war movement has broadened itself, reaching across the world to other countries; crossing the international borders that up until now were mostly controlled by the state. Connections have been made between the struggle in Iraq and the struggle in Palestine against Israel. Americans have reached beyond their own borders to show the world that even though their government is the biggest and most brutal imperial power around, they are not going to have it fighting in their name.

However, now that the Geroge Bush administration apparently sits poised to invade Syria and then possibly Iran and North Korea, the task facing the anti-war movement is even larger. The US was very successful in its invasion of Iraq, which only gives it more impetuous to move on. To stop this, the American anti-war movement has to keep on doing what it has done, but it also has to discard what has been ineffective. The movement as it stands will not stop the United States, but it may develop the potential to do so in the future. We’ll see.

McCarthy isn’t rounding up reds, but the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) just arrested and detained hundreds of foreign born men from a list of over twenty countries (mostly from North Africa and the Middle East) on the United States’ ‘axis of evil’ list; many only for minor infractions such as overstays on visitor and student visas.

Starting with the election of President Bush, but catapulted by 9/11 and subsequent legislation (most importantly the PATRIOT ACT), the American government has begun to rewrite the rule books, cracking down on our civil liberties and in turn opening the door for a surge in neo-conservatism across the country.

Here on college campuses we have already felt the effects of this shift to the neo-right. Last September conservative Philadelphia based think tank named the Middle East Forum launched a new website called Campus Watch, with what they termed their intent to ‘monitor’ and ‘critique’ US Middle East university programs ‘with an aim to improving them.’

The site posted dossiers on eight university professors who they claimed had expressed anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments, setting off a backlash in the academic community. Those listed, along with over 100 professors and graduate students who sent their names into the site in solidarity, immediately labelled the site as a McCarthy-type witch-hunt, and a repression of free speech.

The site’s director is Daniel Pipes, who was dubbed an ‘anti-Arab propagandist’ by The Nation magazine writer Kristine McNeil in her article ‘The War on Academic Freedom.’ Daniel has consistently contributed to racist and xenophobic publications, such as GAMLA’s website (an organization created by Jewish settlers and former Israeli military personnel), which according to Kristine advocates for ‘the ethnic cleansing of every Palestinian as the “only possible solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict.’ University of California at Santa Cruz Professor of Sociology Paul Lubeck, one of the professors who sent his name in to the list, calls Daniel an ‘Islamophobe.’

While the Middle Eastern Forum website focuses on the broader topic of the Middle East, it is apparent that the site is primarily interested in issues surrounding Israel.

Capitalising on the upsurge in post 9/11 patriotism, Daniel tries to insert Israel into his jingoistic defence of America and its foreign policy in the Middle East. He claims that support for Israel as a democratic ally is important to counteract a new wave of both anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. As a consequence of these efforts to link American and Israeli interests, Daniel has also succeeded in linking anti-Semitism with anti-Americanism, making it un-American to criticize anything that could be labelled ‘anti-Semitic’ – which to Daniel Pipes sometimes means something as indirect as defence of Palestinian statehood.

As an indication of how post-Dubya/post September 11 policies have affected America, Campus Watch should also raise fear about where we are headed. If George Bush gets his way, and we attack Iraq, America can expect to see even more cutbacks on our civil liberties, more INS roundups, and a continuation of our move to the right. As that happens, people like Daniel Pipes will have more room to manoeuvre.

Concerning Campus Watch, we can be assured that with Ariel’s re-election in Israel there will be no end to the current conflict, and no end to strong Israeli-American ties. Daniel might get his way and the consequences of a project that targets academics might be more extreme, and reach beyond posting professors’ names on a website.

Jacob Schiller is editor of City on a Hill Press at the University of California, Santa Cruz

Where and what is America on the one year anniversary of September 11? Some people claim that the country has changed forever. Others argue that things are still the same: nationalism in America is nothing new, nor is the way the American government has chosen to use it. Think back to the war in Vietnam: terrorism has replaced communism as our public enemy number one. Communism, they said, represented a threat to our national security and freedom. Sound familiar? But what really happened in Vietnam? When it was all over, statistics revealed that a disproportionate number of working class and people of colour died in an effort to protect the interests of the American government and its corporate sponsors.

This time however, the attack took place on our own soil and we have the pictures to prove it. It’s tragic that 3,000 people died, some of whom were working class and had nothing to do with the corporate and political interests of the two main targets. This time we didn’t need anyone to tell us why we were threatened, we just needed someone to blame. But the real issue goes beyond the ‘threat’ that terrorists from Afghanistan pose to America. Besides the need to maintain a line of control in the Middle East to protect our oil interests, as time goes on, it becomes more apparent that the real war on terrorism is a tool to manipulate the American public. Susan Sontag, a novelist and social commentator immediately identified this current in the American media. In the New Yorker issue dedicated to the events of September 11, she wrote, ‘The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public.’ It’s no coincidence that George Bush’s approval rating sky-rocketed after September 11. The American public immediately forgot about the controversy surrounding the election results and threw their unquestioning support behind the president. Nobody challenged George when he declared war in Afghanistan and began to re-establish control of the Middle East. In Israel the threat of ‘terrorism,’ reinforced by America’s backing, now allows the Israeli military to commit war crimes outlawed by international treaties in the name of national security.

Within our own borders, people of Middle Eastern descent replaced African-Americans as the most persecuted people of colour. Immediately after the attacks several people who appeared to be Muslims were shot and killed by vigilantes. A few weeks later, a pilot for a major airline refused to leave the terminal until a group of people of Middle Eastern descent got off the airplane.

The list goes on. The Immigration and Naturalization Service detained and continues to detain hundreds of people who they suspect are involved in terrorist activities, holding them without charges and denying them access to council, all based on secret information that was withheld from the accused. According to an article written in the Detroit Free Press, Peter Kirsanow, a member of the US Civil Rights Commission even went so far as to suggest that the American public might demand Internment Camps for Arab Americans if Arab terrorists struck again in the United States. ‘[If there is another attack], and they come from the same ethnic group that attacked the World Trade Center, you can forget about Civil Rights,’ Peter said.

And now, one year later, George has partially won his battle with Congress to create a department of Homeland Security, which along with legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act, pose a serious threat to the civil liberties of all Americans. With midterm elections and control of the Senate on the line, it’s no surprise to see the media helping the Bush administration recreate a nebula of evil in Iraq. The war must go on. Be it in Eurasia, Afghanistan, East Asia or Iraq.