On Wed, 18 Jun 1997, Bill Bartlett wrote:

> Robert G Goodby wrote:
>
> >Really, I think in many cases the "instincts" of the militia people are
> >sound, as is much of their analysis--it's the conclusions they draw from
> >these that are often faulty and morally bankrupt. They have, however,
> >arose in a political context in which radical/left influence in minimal,
> >as a result of the obvious domination of the media, academia, etc. by
> >elite interests and the persistent inability of the "left" to effectively
> >organize.
>
> If the left suffers from a "persistent inability" to effectively organise,
> its pointless to blame their lack of influence on the media, or academia.
> You can't really expect the ruling class to take pity and help us out.

I don't disagree. And, of course, this inability is relatively
recent--most notable over the past 25 years or so--and "the left" needs to
take a good share of the blame. I'll never forget attending an anti-Gulf
War organizing meeting and having it degenerate into a shouting match
between white and black members over who should take the lead in
organizing; the meeting ended in acrimony, and many of us left to go out
and do the best we could as individuals, and some simply threw in the
towel. I remember thinking how Bush would have chuckled.....

Acknowledging our failings in this respect, I'd still think the media and
academia play a role. The media most obviously in their role as corporate
information managers, imposing limits on debate that Chomsky describes so
well. It's difficult to organize when 99% of the communication media is
controlled by the opposition. And academia, surely, play a role by
convincing the young and idealistic that the problems of the world are so
complex that their understanding is best left to the "experts" in the
secular priesthood of academe, and most recently by promoting the
crippling doctrines of postmodernism which deny objective, knowable
reality; one can hardly fight oppression if it's conceived of as only a
state of mind. Academics (and I'm speaking as one) have done a marvelous
job of cloaking the study of society in a rarified world of elevated
jargon and discourse that is largely unintelligible and inaccessible to
"average" people". The publishing output of academe, proliferating in a
growing collection of second-string journals whose primary function is to
provide venues for publication in the quest for promotion and tenure,
represents an insular, closed discourse--and guarantees that most of the
social resources devoted to the study of society be used in a way that
doesn't threaten the established order. But of course Chomsky critiques
this much more effectively.....

In my own experience, I've found that the brightest and most politically
inclined students come out of the university convinced that the world is
full of injustice, but that the problems are so complex, intertwined, and
ultimately huge that there is no obvious place to begin to unravel them.
The social system is a Gordian knot, with all the swords held by the
powerful if indeed by anyone. Consequently, they retreat into extremes of
philosophical relativism and ennui, and suffer through their enormous
feelings of alienation as individuals estranged from any larger community.

I try and argue that while the problems of the world are doubtless complex
and overwhelming, this has always been so to some extent--yet, history is
littered with inspiring examples of progressive action that bring about
genuine improvements. If one were to look at racism in America circa 1960,
it would appear to be a huge, complex, and entrenched problem--deeply
embedded in the culture, reproduced in the economy and by existing
political structures, rooted in 500 years of history. But the activists of
that day didn't throw up their hands in despair because it was too massive
and metastasized. Instead, they picked some of the most obvious and
specific manifestations of the beast (e.g. segregated lunch counters and
public transportation) and attacked them vigorously. The results rippled
throughout the country, and indeed the world, and shook, at least for a
time, the foundations of unjust and illegitimate power.

The same can be done today, I think. The proliferation of corporate
tyranny in the age of globalization getting you down? Get a few
like-minded people to join you in an information picket at your local Walt
Disney outlet, informing the public about Disney sweatshops in Haiti and
elsewhere. Poking one's finger in the eye of the powerful is always a
useful and productive exercise, and simple to do.

But don't expect this kind of behavior to be promoted in academia.
Academics, enjoying moderate amounts of privilege and status, are loath
to do anything to risk losing that (exceptions, of course, exist--see the
interview with Howard Zinn in the latest Progressive). More and more,
however, the university functions as a socialized job training center for
private capital, passing on the costs of worker training to the students
and the public, and ensuring that nothing is taught that really threatens
established order. At my university, for instance, we offer over 120
courses in different facets of business management--and not a single
course on how to organize a labor union.