Did 9/11 destroy a growing left movement in the U.S.A?

[howblackisyourflag]

With happenings like the massive protests in Seattle in 99, and other large anti-globalisation movements in the west, was there a growing movement that was about to become significant?

And did 9/11 dampen this anger down severely? So much so that even after 8 years of bush its nowhere to be seen? At least not in an organised fashion.

Especially since a lot of people who consider themselves progressive actually consider Obama to be great as well so things are still on stall.

Opinions on this?

[The Douche]

It didn't really make the movement smaller, but it did make people tone down their confrontational tactics in many cases.

Also, the anti-war protests were much larger than anti-globalization ones. But the groups who lead the anti-war movement were all reformist or not pushing politics hard to enough to help people move from democrat to anti-capitalist.

Most people are in denial about Obama if they support him, I can't tell you how many times I've heard "he hasn't had the time yet, just wait it'll happen".

[RED DAVE]

Yes. Between the Gore sell-out of 2000 (Left support of Gore and Gore's refusal to confront the Republicans) and the acceptance of repression and bourgeois hegemony after 9/11, a growing Left was certainly dampened.

RED DAVE

[Widerstand]

I'd say terrorism-scare has done a good job at diverting from the more pressing issues.

And, to my knowledge, pretty much every Obama supporter is either in denial or uninformed. Or just not progressive to begin with. I mean, he did the healthcare reform - for US standards pretty progressive, I admit. Maybe that's a bit eurochauvinist of me, but Obama isn't all that progressive to me. His foreign policy especially is more or less a continuation of Bush's NSS.

[Raúl Duke]

Also, the anti-war protests were much larger than anti-globalization ones. But the groups who lead the anti-war movement were all reformist or not pushing politics hard to enough to help people move from democrat to anti-capitalist.
I'm under that impression as well, the deal was that the media later marginalized them or sometimes perhaps focused on more local anti-war protests that would obviously have less people.

Although to be quite frank, I wonder what happened to the anti-war movement post-2008. It's like they fell off the radar ever since Obama got elected.
I believe that perhaps this election plus the appearance of the tea party soon after "destroyed" momentum.

Perhaps it has something to do with that mentality Cmoney mentioned...since a lot of the anti-war movement was all wrapped around the idea that "if we just put a Democrat in charge the war will end soon/immediately." History shows that it doesn't matter who's in charge, war ends when the US wins or when they can't win. After all, Vietnam ended with Nixon (Republican) and there was a troop surge during LBJ (Democrat) tenure as president.


Most people are in denial about Obama if they support him, I can't tell you how many times I've heard "he hasn't had the time yet, just wait it'll happen". That shit annoys me. Can't they just see that politicians are crooks, it's fucking obvious?


I mean, he did the healthcare reform - for US standards pretty progressive, I admit.Hahaha, not really. Those in the US who wanted healthcare reform wanted something like Canada's healthcare system or really anything like in Europe as long as it worked, was free, etc. Instead we got something that sounds like offering a "captured market" (i.e. mandatory to buy health insurance) to private health insurance companies.

It was between that and those who thought single payer and/or public health care is socialism...the current reforms appeals to a non-existent "middle-ground."

[RadioRaheem84]

Even though I dislike Christopher Hitchens, he is right on the money when he says that the "left" in this country capitulated to Clintonism in the 90s. Apparently, Clinton shifted the Democratic Party further to the right and solidified a whole movement of center right liberals.

After 9/11, this country has gone pretty right wing with people afraid to be liberal-baited and red baited.

[ContrarianLemming]

Did 9/11 destroy a growing left movement in the U.S.A?

It spurred it on, easilly.

[chegitz guevara]

There was a growing movement up to 9/11. 9/11 pretty well pulled the rug out from underneath it. It never really recovered, and then the 9/11 Truth movement took what was left and sent it off the rails into cuckoo land.

I wonder what Red Dave is smoking, because the left didn't support Gore in 2000. Millions of people voted for Nader, and it cost Gore the election, along with the GOP committing massive election fraud in Florida, and Gore's refusal to fight for our right for our votes to be counted fairly.

The Iraq invasion did breathe new life into the movement, but it was promptly co-opted by the Democrats. Even the fucking Green Party helped channel the movement into electoral support for Kerry.

[The Douche]

The anti-war movement really was massive for a while, hundreds of thousands came to DC in 2006, and there were protests in every major city and many small towns. But UFPJ (dominated by CPUSA) encouraged people to turn to the democrats and ANSWER (dominated by PSL/WWP) failed to openly provide and alternative to the democrats. WCW, much smaller, and explicitly an RCP front, made virtually no attempt to politiscize the anti-war movement. Plus most the organizations were constantly competing against each other to be the "leaders". Now only ANSWER is left and they can't draw anywhere near the kind of influence they used to 4 or so years ago.

Despite Obama's promises to continue and escalate the war people still elected him as an anti-war candidate. So they don't know where to look now.

[Red Commissar]

I really think it did from what I observed.

Then when the anti-war feeling and demonstrations against Bush's actions got into an upsurge, these were unfortunately guided by leaders who put their faith in the election of a Democratic president (as was mentioned earlier). We did not have the presence to effectively guide these movements as our own, with all their tremendous energy and outpouring of emotion. So it was inevitable these movements were taken over by groups that were working with Democratic politicians.

Unfortunately these people only saw political struggle in the context of social matters, they wouldn't dare try to think of a system beyond capitalism, because from my experience many of them thought the current system worked fine, it just needed to be "fixed".

And when 2008 came and their lord and savior Obama came down from the heavens, they put their faiths in him to change the world. Obviously he hasn't done so and like cmoney said, there are unfortunately people who think that he hasn't had a "chance" to do what he wants.

The only thing remotely beneficial from recent events is the constant use of red baiting by Republican politicians. While it reflects a poor state of American political discourse, I think it has also had the effect of good people, wondering just what it is and are not satisfied by what the talking heads tell them, to pursue what socialism means on their own. And a slight chance that might lead them to us.

[Konstantine]

There was growing sentiment against the war and Bush's corrupt practices, but 9/11 sort of "brought the people together" and made them forget their differences. Though this is normally a good thing, in this case, it made the leftist movements sort of "fall back under" oppression and made them stay silent.

Then as the movements slowly picked up after they realized they were in a losing war at best, completely illegal war at worst, his holy majesty Obama bin Laden came down from the heavens to "change America for the better" ("Yes we can!" reversed is "Thank you Satan!", by the way :blink:) and hopefully restore the economy. Of course, he hasn't done shit, though I think his intentions were somewhat good, but he was hindered by a corrupt Congress, and the American people in the middle of economic panic once more. However, this is a good thing. It isn't until people realize the futility of capitalism and its corruption that they decide to revolt.

"The greater the challenge, the greater the reward." - Thomas Paine.

[RadioRaheem84]

Unfortunately these people only saw political struggle in the context of social matters, they wouldn't dare try to think of a system beyond capitalism, because from my experience many of them thought the current system worked fine, it just needed to be "fixed


This pretty much defines the "left" in general in this country.

[RadioRaheem84]

It also brought about books like this to discredit the left in the eyes of the public:

http://www.amazon.com/Unholy-Alliance-Radical-Islam-American/dp/089526076X

Funny, how there was never an "unholy alliance" between the radicals Islamists and the right wing during the 80s?

[The Douche]

So it was inevitable these movements were taken over by groups that were working with Democratic politicians.


These movements were founded by those people, and they used extremely authoritarian methods to maintain control of their movements and prevent revolutionaries from getting to involved. ANSWER and WCW being the exceptions, but ANSWER didn't push politics hard enough (though did better than UFPJ) and WCW, well, the RCP is just washed up.



There was growing sentiment against the war and Bush's corrupt practices, but 9/11 sort of "brought the people together" and made them forget their differences

:confused: The war started after 9/11. 9/11 was the justification for the invasion of Afghanistan, how could people have been against the war before 9/11?

[BLACKPLATES]

I wouldnt call the HCR the democrats passed progressive, even by american standards.. it a "market based" reform, so called. kind of like solving unemployment by mandating by law that all unemployed find a job, or pay a fine. its a terrible law.

[Konstantine]

:confused: The war started after 9/11. 9/11 was the justification for the invasion of Afghanistan, how could people have been against the war before 9/11?

Desert Storm.

Wasn't popular for all.

[The Douche]

Desert Storm.

Wasn't popular for all.

Desert storm was 10 years before OEF and 12 years before OIF. There really is not much correlation between the two, and you do realise the George H. W. Bush (president during desert storm) was not the same guy as George W. Bush (president during OIF/OEF)...

The left movement which helped to build the anti-war movement was definitely the one that came out of anti-globalization movement, not the relatively tiny one which opposed desert storm.

[Comrade Marxist Bro]

9/11 didn't destroy a growing left movement because there wasn't one. The Seattle protests were nice, but they were a one-of-a-kind type of event -- a serendipity, prompted by the WTO conference there.

Aside from that, there simply was no sign of life on the left before the upsurge in anti-war sentiment after 9/11 -- unless you are seriously willing to count the few items of marker-graffiti on New York City payphones 2000 that exhorted passersby to "Vote Socialist" as evidence of an increasing political struggle.

IMO, the left certainly wasn't in any better position prior to September 11, although the fortunes of the Democratic Party did dip somewhat for a few years afterward. (Albeit this coincided with a post-9/11 boost for more radical groups, since more people were now thinking about war, imperialism, and the true agenda of the American establishment. All of that wasn't nearly as much the case before 9/11 -- if anything, the radical left has been more noticeable in the period since.)

Hell, it was a "Texas conservative" (George W. Bush) who won the presidential battle in 2000 against a very moderate VP Al Gore.

(On a side note, that so many voters then visibly turned to Barack Obama as the "anti-war" candidate in 2008 clearly speaks volumes about the bakruptcy and frustrations of the political process in the United States: consequently, the anti-war movement has been largely dead here since all the Democrats involved managed to get their own man to take the reins of power in the White House.)

In short: the left was pathetic and remains so.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Well IMO the left was rebuilding prior to 9/11 and it was very exciting and it was also all over the map politically. I was working on a campaign for day laborers at the time and I had a meeting that night where basically everything was put on hold indefinitely. There was also a S20 protest planned or something like that which was supposed to be one of those big mobilizations, but it never really materialized. So the terrorist attack definitely had a concrete effect organizationally and in disorienting people. Also keep in mind that immediately the natural shock and concern after the attack was transformed from above into jingoism and nationalism and so it was very uncomfortable to be a leftist with a bunch of burned up American flags (I actually had one in my back yard at the time :D - it was from my anti-American day party of 7/4/2001) when everyone else was waving flags from every orifice that could support the stick from one of those mini-flags.

But I don't think that ONLY 9/11 caused the emerging new new left to retreat. There were many political problems with the young movement (mostly because of its youth) that made it not withstand the sudden change in political climate. For one thing, one of the popular ideas in the anti-globalization movement was that States and traditional warfare had become irrelevant next to the power of the multi-national corporations. The hard-left (us) didn't buy that, but much of the general movement did wholeheartedly. So if your view of capitalism separates the capitalist economy and the capitalist state and reduces everything to simple profit-motive and corporate greed, then "the Afghanistan war" is quite confusing because it is overwhelming state-power with not direct and obvious profit for multi-national corporations.

Had the new new left developed deeper level of politics, then the entire anti-globalization movement would have seamlessly shifted gears to an anti-war movement - as the most political did (us and the best of the "progressives").

As Red Dave pointed out, there were other weaknesses before 2001 as well such as the way the some Nader supporters and Nader himself ran scared when they were accused of "spoiling the election" rather than strongly make a point on principle. The fact that the liberals used Bush's victory as a stick to corral progressives back into the Democratic fold - the same fold that was then happily and 99.9%-unanimously supporting the wars and the justifications for the wars.

There were many weaknesses that meant that the left couldn't survive a sudden political change... had 9/11 not happened, the left could have developed a deeper political understanding or these weaknesses could have lingered and caused the movement to sputter and stall anyway, we will never know.

[durhamleft]

the cia did it to fight communism!

[Jimmie Higgins]

the cia did it to fight communism!Don't be silly. Everyone knows the Queen of England did it in order to ruin Lyndon LaRouche's day!

[durhamleft]

Don't be silly. Everyone knows the Queen of England did it in order to ruin Lyndon LaRouche's day!

I think you may be onto something here comrade!

[Proletarian Ultra]

I wouldnt call the HCR the democrats passed progressive, even by american standards.. it a "market based" reform, so called. kind of like solving unemployment by mandating by law that all unemployed find a job, or pay a fine. its a terrible law.

I don't want to go too far defending it, but HCR establishes that from now on healthcare is a matter of social solidarity in the US.

The bill was a fucking joke, but that's an important precedent.

[chegitz guevara]

I don't want to go too far defending it, but HCR establishes that from now on healthcare is a matter of social solidarity in the US.

The bill was a fucking joke, but that's an important precedent.

I don't know about that. It was tied to enserfing us to the insurance industry. We are required, by law, to give our labor, in the form of money, to them.