The great writer Mark Twain, when Vice President of the Anti-Imperialist League, once said, “I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” That was in the year 1900.
If the recent anti-Bush demo in London shows anything, it is that dissent is coming back. If the president must behave so sheepishly in the cities of America’s closest ally, then the Iraq adventure really isn’t going well. Although there have been spirited demonstrations in the US since the start of armed conflict, they have rarely reached the size and zest of the pre-war demos. It suggests several things.
Most Americans felt funny about protesting after the armed conflict began, and many felt demoralized when the massive pre-war demos didn’t stop the government from going forward anyway. Deep in the American psyche is a nationalism that is expressed as obedience to those in power. The state depends on this instinct and draws strength from it.
The great dissenters in US life often had to do so against popular opinion. Also, they have been almost whited out of history, so that we know little of their resistance. Mark Twain was one of the most popular writers in America, and his fiction is at the heart of American literature. Yet, he was a staunch opponent of US military adventures at the dawn of the 20th century, and proudly opposed such militarism. Naturally, the establishment questioned his patriotism.
In one of his novels, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Twain gave eloquent voice to his brand of loyalty, “You see, my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing. The substantial thing, the eternal thing. It is the thing to watch over, to care for and be loyal to. Institutions are extraneous. They are its mere clothing and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags, that is loyalty to unreason. It is pure animal. It belongs to monarchy. Was invented by monarchy. Let monarchy keep it.” That’s from Howard Zinn’s Artists in Times of War, published by Seven Stories. Twain was a prominent protester against the US war in the Philippines.
Most Americans recognize the name of Helen Keller, and think of her as an exemplar of the disabled. She too was a proud anti war activist, a feminist and a socialist. The great Black poet Langston Hughes used his artistic gifts to protest US militarism abroad and racism at home. Those artists and thinkers whom we admire today, long after their passing, were criticized by the state because they dissented from government policy. They did not leave important issues like war to the likes of politicians. Dissent, to paraphrase the African American Muslim Imam and political prisoner Jamil Al Amin, ‘is as American as apple pie.’ A needless war continues to wage in Iraq, a war that never should have begun. Yet, dissent is growing. From death row, this is Mumia Abu Jamal.
These commentaries are produced by Noel Hanrahan for Prison Radio.