Page
1
Page
2
Page
3
Page
4
Page
5
Page
6
Page
7
Page
8
Page
9
Page
10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page
14
Page
15
Page
16
Page 17
Page
18
Page
19
Page 20
|
Warring with conscience Continued from previous page 8
My partner found the Socialist Party first and ordered up pamphlets and
books – for both of us it was a revelation – for her it was a “where
has this been for so much of my life” moment. I was a bit more in the
“Yeah! But . . .” camp, but fascinated and intrigued non-the-less. She
applied to join and was accepted, and she encouraged me to join too,
but I’d seen the questionnaire (her answers she refused to show me and
only revealed them after I’d also applied and been accepted) and had
one particular concern. The principle of non-violent action was and is
a challenge, I get really mixed up about it. The logic is clear to me,
I know (from limited personal experience) that jaw-jaw is better than
war-war; violence solves nothing in the long term. Nation states like
the US, UK, Russia and others have been dishing out violence in one
form or another for years, yet for all their sophistication and
technical superiority in firepower and delivery systems they were
defeated in Vietnam, in Kenya, and Afghanistan; in Iraq and Afghanistan
the greatest war machine in history is going down to defeat and taking
its junior partners (UK and NATO) with it. Even where they appear to
triumph in the short term, one by one their fiefdoms have, or are
crumbling as people; ordinary people face them down and assert their
human rights to life and liberty.
The Global Economic Colonialists are less safe now than ever in their
history and no spurious War on Terror will change that. So, I do
understand that violence is counter-productive. Non-violent resistance
in the face of the overwhelming violence wielded by the enforcement
agencies of Global Capital appears noble but futile. Equally futile is
violent resistance which invites greater and greater retaliation. I
don’t have an answer (even Gandhi and Martin Luther King believed that
there could be occasions when force would be necessary to avert a
greater evil), just that persistent old gut reaction that says that
“it’s better to die standing up and resisting than to die on your knees
in submission”. Then came a flash of memory from a book I’d read years
ago - Joseph Heller’s – Catch 22 “it’s better to live on your feet than
to die on your knees”. True - but in order to live, to really live we
cannot allow ourselves to remain as vassals to another man or to a
system that decrees the world and all that is in it is the property,
not of humankind but of a few individuals and corporations. Violence
demeans, debases and dehumanises us. To throw down one evil, corrupt
system using the very same policies and tools of that system is to
replace one monster with a necessarily greater one.
When the UK joined the US to wage total war on the poor benighted
people of Iraq I found that many formerly rational folk became morally
unhinged; they began talking about still being against the war but
having to “support our boys and girls in uniform”. Why? If the war was
wrong before it began, if using overwhelming power to grab the oil
reserves of a sovereign nation was immoral before the fact, why has
that changed? Our “boys and girls” are professionals, they do what they
do for money not Queen and Country, like I and my comrades once did,
they left their morals at the door of the “Careers Office” to do the
bidding of the bosses, the elites. If my own experience is anything to
go by, they don’t actually care very much what the public back home
thinks. Some apologists will argue that just as in the US there is
economic conscription in the UK, that there is little or no choice,
that the Army is better than the dole or sweat-shop wages filling
shelves or burgers. Is it? It can appear better only if you let your
morals become ‘their’ morals; only if you are prepared to bury your
higher instinct to care for and protect your fellow human-beings and
subsume yourself to the creed of the mercenary. There is always choice,
even in our conditioned and controlled societies.
I get angry when I learn more of what’s going on in Iraq or
Afghanistan, when I manage to see through the suppression of
information by governments and their cronies in the media. The violence
of starvation and deprivation of basic human needs burns at me . . . I
feel violent and very un-socialistic towards the perpetrators of these
injustices, these murders, maimings and indignities. I have irrational
wishes that the resistance fighters of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, in
fact from just about anywhere will triumph over the Powers of Global
Darkness. Then I get angry at myself for being so irrational and out of
control, what we have now is bad enough, compounding it with an equal
evil would really have the lunatics taking over the asylum.
When I eventually submitted my application to join, I thought I knew
the answer the Party was looking for but knew that I had to be honest
and express my reservation. I doubted that the party would want a
member who did not appear to fully accept and embrace the principle of
non violence, so was amazed when the letter of acceptance came
accompanied by a thoughtful and empathetic note from one of the
committee who also struggled with this question. He suggested some
reading materials and I found more for myself. Slowly the pieces began
to fall into place; pacifism did not imply acceptance, non violent
action was just that – action without violence.
So, how to channel this angst in a creative way . . . Well, I use the
information that is so disturbing to me to inform, to disturb and to
take down the walls of complacency and indifference that surround so
many in the comfortable, pampered, developed Western world. I let my
anger and passion show through – clearly, and now I refuse to let
anyone get away with their prejudices or complacency unchallenged. I
don’t make trouble any more, and I better recognize my bouts of
emotional immaturity for what they are, yet I still have the smoke of
battle in my nostrils – my enemy now is that self-same complacency,
indifference and prejudice and my weapons are ideas and concepts that
have yet to have their day. I haven’t “signed up” any new members yet,
but I’m finding more and more folks who are amazed to learn, when once
the veneer of consumerism is stripped away and we get down to basics,
that the core values that most of us share of fairness, justice,
respect are really the core values of socialism and that socialism is
not what they thought is was. If nothing else, there are a lot more
people out there whose brains do not switch off or pass over without
thinking whenever they see or hear the word socialism or learn of the
endless crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of freedom that
is nothing but a cover for the hegemony of Global Capital. There are
even those now, who jump in before I do to correct or challenge a bit
of misguided thinking and then add “Isn’t that so, Alan?”
Drip – drip – drip! One drop at a time . . .
When the
subject has refused allegiance,
and the officer has resigned his office,
then the revolution is accomplished.
Henry David Thoreau
Alan
Fenn
Next page 10
|
