| Submit your comments on this article |
| Fifth Column |
| Naomi Klein doesn't think antiglobo is 9-10 |
| 2001-10-22 |
Many political opponents of anticorporate activism are using the symbolism of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks to argue that young activists, playing at guerrilla war, have now been caught out by a real war. The obituaries are already appearing in newspapers around the world: "Anti-Globalization Is So Yesterday," reads a typical headline. It is, according to the Boston Globe, "in tatters." Is it true? Our activism has been declared dead before. Indeed, it is declared dead with ritualistic regularity before and after every mass demonstration: our strategies apparently discredited, our coalitions divided, our arguments misguided. And yet those demonstrations have kept growing larger, from 50,000 in Seattle to 300,000, by some estimates, in Genoa. Perhaps the children should think real hard about what they're really doing. Playing at "intifada" against all grown-ups everywhere could easily land them in the same soup as the real intifada crowd. A terrorist is a terrorist, regardless of his aims. A riot is a riot, regardless of motive. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |