The Despair of the Peace Movement

 

Being gullible, childish and ill-informed, many Westerners of a progressive bent are brainwashed and therefore their analysis of the world is poor.  From those hopeless intellectual failures who have always seen any criticism of Israel as anti-semitism, to those liberal (or liberal influenced) types who believe that the unsavoury character of some opponents of the Washington DC imperialists makes defending them, or seeing things from their perspective, as "supporting" them.  (Protesting the invasion of Iraq equals supporting Saddam Hussein.  Criticizing the occupation of Afghanistan makes you a Taliban lover.  Condemning the starvation sanctions on North Korea means you embrace Kim Jong Un.  And so-on and such-forth ["Putin puppets" "PRC-puppets"].)

We have had a two-year war between NATO and Russia (using Ukraine as a proxy) that has and will have many opportunities to create a nuclear holocaust.  We have rising tensions between the USA and its allies against China that could likewise lead to a nuclear world war.  We have had 400 days of genocide in Palestine that Netanyahu has expanded against Lebanon and Iran in a desperate attempt to drag the USA into a war against his [Netanyahu's] enemies.  (Any such conflict could also drag in Russia or China.  At the very least it would see millions dead and an economic collapse that will increase the desperate anger of many people around the world adding enormously to the rise of fascism.)

And where is the peace movement?  Canada's stupid political establishment (both the Liberals and the Conservatives as well as our media and policy leaders) are full-throated supporters of all of this nonsense.  Indeed, Canada is providing both diplomatic and military support for Israel's genocidal slaughter of the Palestinians.  The Canadian peace movement must recognize Canada's direct complicity in this madness and should act accordingly.

Instead, we have the same old silliness.  Pointless marches and idiotic chanting.  Patting ourselves on the back for at least "doing something" and writing our social media posts and reading our articles.  Our almost total ineffectual presence is hardly, if ever, mentioned.

Here's what I said four years ago:

Regardless, the prospect of World War III has produced a flicker of life in the West's moribund peace movement. Don't expect it to last. People are always bitching that I'm so negative. I, conversely, bitch about how progressives and leftists are deluded shit-heads wedded to masturbatory outbursts of stirring rhetoric while being short on proposing solutions or making their actions match their brave words.

The peace movement has been slumbering because those who tend to organize it and those who tend to show up at its rallies all have this dull sense of the futility of their actions. They don't consciously realize (and will never consciously admit) that gathering in a public place for an afternoon to wave signs and shout things has about zero influence on the insane mass murderers they say they're trying to influence.

...

But what hasn't changed is that teams of organizers working for a couple of weeks or a month to organize a peaceful rally, and hundreds (or even thousands) or ordinary people showing up at these peaceful afternoon rallies are still completely ineffectual at influencing the decisions of powerful murderers who are accountable to a very few oligarchs in the Military-Industrial-Complex (and other coteries of scum). This uselessness will soon make itself undeniable and the peace movement will go back to sleep. (Sleeping the sleep of the righteous, knowing that they demonstrated their opposition to this evil, even if it had zero impact.)

That is more true today than it was then.  We should be ... Well, of course, a sustained reading of my narcissistic blatherings here will document my growing disillusionment and bitter resignation with "The Left."  A real peace movement would dispense with the childish notion that since Putin is a bad man who invaded Ukraine, that we must pretend that NATO didn't provoke him.  We must pretend that it is sane to think that just because the USA would never tolerate what it expects Russia, or China or Iran or any other targeted country to tolerate, it is nonetheless up to those targetted countries to act as if their foreign policy is directed by Saint Francis of Assisi.

The USA is declining as a hegemon.  This is just a fact.  A very real, important fact.  It has financialized its economy and it is now bloated and hollowed out and prone to implosions due to its fragility and corruption.  Blinkered short-term greed helped China to industrialize and become a genuine economic rival.  Arrogance and delusion prevented the USA from seeing the self-reliance that Putin created in Russia.  Demographics has made the USA a gerontocracy.  Far too many of the USA's politicians are staying in their positions when they're clearly senile.  It is lashing out, trying to preserve its dominance by destroying rivals in moves as self-defeating as Zelensky's invasion of Kursk.  These gambits in Ukraine and Taiwan and Palestine are signs of desperation, not strength.

A genuine, effective peace movement would have educated the Canadian public about this reality.  It would have forced its opinion makers into the mainstream media.  It would be holding massive rallies and shutting down the war-making economy and there would be a real struggle for war-mongers to spew their garbage the way Trudeau and Polievre and Joly are doing.