Lately, when I talk to people about the political period we're in, they often compare it to the 1950s - the so-called McCarthy Era - or to the time of the Vietnam War, which also featured a wide ranging war on dissent at home. Yes, I agree. It's a bit like both, but it's also different - more like an extension of the past than a repetition, with new and even more dangerous elements.
One expanded element is the media's leading role in shaping public opinion. A tabloid news show this winter opened with the hype: "You'd better watch what you say." Then the announcer explained that these are dangerous times and expressing certain opinions can get you fired. It was very casual, another bit of info-tainment for viewers who are used to hearing that they're losing rights -- supposedly to win the war. But of course, the line is that rights are just being suspended -- like temporarily canceling a subscription. Even worse is the fact that many people are very willing to give up rights -- privacy, freedom of speech, search and seizure, most of the Bill of Rights, not to mention basic human rights, to protect themselves from threats.
So, what's happening since 9-11? The first step was an initial round up -- over 1,200 people. Prisoners were prevented from talking with lawyers. In Arkansas, a Uzbekistani woman was jailed for 40 days for being in a car with someone whose name was similar to someone of the FBI watch list. A young Egyptian who supposedly had a radio transmitter in his hotel room across from the World Trade Center was held for weeks until he turned out to be innocent. But somehow he was "persuaded" to confess before he was released. Was he tortured? It was a non-issue, news-wise.
Of the 1,200 people initially detained, none has been charged with any crimes beyond check kiting, shoplifting, or immigration violations.
And since then? Well, there's certainly been a chill in the air. People being fired for expressing the wrong opinions. Open discussions about the use of torture. Ads saying, "If you use drugs, you're aiding terrorists." A massive campaign to justify repression. And meanwhile, the government has been assembling sweeping new powers to surveil, wiretap, monitor the Internet, detain people, and conduct secret searches. Homeland Security Director Ridge calls this "a permanent condition to which Americans must adjust." Many of the ideas are coming from ultraconservative groups like the Federalist Society, which are implementing their old wish lists. Basically, the limits placed on the FBI and CIA 25 years ago are being reversed.
Beyond that, the wall between the two agencies is being broken down. The CIA now has an official role in deciding who gets targeted inside the US and what information is collected. Other law enforcement agencies MUST give the Agency access to information. Basically, both agencies can now work together on operations, including operations against domestic political groups and individuals.
What groups? Officially, they are supposed to have connections to terrorists of foreign intelligence agencies. But Atty. Gen. Ashcroft has clarified that. He said last December: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty" - I supposed that includes me and some of you - "my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists. They give ammunition to America's enemies." It's clearly a warning: the message is that this new security regime could easily be turned against almost any critic of the government.
Yet, the debate over how much freedom to sacrifice remains basically a sidebar to the war, part of our round the clock disaster coverage. The shows telegraph the message: The War Room, America at War. And the usual spin: we'd better be safe - that is, just accept the creeping implementation of police state tactics -- than be sorry.
This media trend, by the way, began with another crisis -- the hostages in Iran and, shortly afterward, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Its first spin-off was Nightline, which became a permanent fixture after launching live nightly coverage of both crises. The news route to ratings had been found -- marketing a crisis wall-to-wall, the more terrifying or horrible the better, packaging it almost like a mini-series, and endless speculation by carefully selected "experts". There's been no turning back since then.
PATRIOTS AND TERRORISTS
So, now we have a Patriot Act - and how many people have the nerve to attack a law with a name like that? But let's look at it for a minute. Actually it's the USA Patriot Act, which stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America By Providing Appropriate Tools Required To Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism." A big name for a big law -- more than 120 pages. And impossible to cover in one evening. But here's an example:
It permits the detention and deportation of non-citizens who assist in the lawful activities of groups - if the government claims they are terrorist organizations. The group doesn't even have to be officially has designated as terrorist. The burden of proof is on the immigrant, who has to prove he or she didn't know his associations might be dangerous. Basically, people can be deported for innocent associations with groups the government later chooses to label terrorist organizations.
Which raises the question: what is the definition of terrorism? In the new law, it's includes the use of a "weapon or other dangerous device... to cause substantial damage to property. " The damage doesn't have to create any danger of injury. It's so broad that people protesting against the WTO who engage in minor vandalism could become targets. Or people opposing abortion who engage in civil disobedience. Or protestors at Vieques who damage a fence. Any of them can qualify as terrorist groups.
According to the Regional Community Policing Institute, a Justice Department network that gives anti-terrorist training courses, one of the possible targets for "strategic intelligence" collection is the Green Movement. It and other social justice and environmental groups are specifically mentioned in the Institute's curriculum. The idea is that Greens, or people opposing the WTO, could spawn violence or even terrorism. Earth First, Animal Liberation, the Sierra Club - the definition can cover them all.
Here's another example from the Patriot Act. It's section 411, which resurrects the McCarthy Era law known as the McCarren-Walter Act. It allows the government to prevent lawful permanent residents from reentering the country if the Secretary of State says they've advocated something that undermines anti-terrorism efforts. It doesn't have to incite a riot. It could just be a controversial speech - maybe like this one.
There's much, much more. Like allowing the CIA to create dossiers on constitutionally protected activities of Americans and eliminating judicial review. Or like government intercepts of telephone and Internet conversations without a court order. But two things to keep in mind - it's a global phenomenon, being played out across Europe, in Australia, Asia. And very little of what is happening is really new.
HISTORICAL ROOTS: 60S & 70s
The current rollback of civil liberties started almost a decade ago. Between 1993 and 1998, the FBI's budget went from $78 to $301 million. Then, in 1996, as a result of the Oklahoma City bombing, Congress passed the Anti-Terrorist Act - and who could oppose that?
The result was Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which were operating across the country long before September 11. And what were they doing? Mainly spying on the labor groups and the Left. Take Portland, Oregon, which has a task force. Police there videotaped and monitored the labor movement, including organizing by the International Longshoremen's Union. As I mentioned, some anti-globalization groups have already been defined as terrorist threats. So has online civil disobedience.
Ashcroft wants to expand the Joint Terrorism Task Forces, getting them off the guard in all 56 FBI field offices. There are also plans to increase FEMA and Justice Department funding for local police by a factor of ten, and create a $1 billion electronic communication system linking federal agencies with local law enforcement. The idea here is to cement relations between the feds and local police, something that could easily lead to the revival of local Red Squads. Actually, this process began at least two years ago, when the Justice Department offered money for new equipment if local cops identified up to 15 groups or individuals considered "potential threat elements." The motivations, says Justice, could be political, religious, racial, environment, or special interest." Essentially, they were already pushing the police to monitor dissidents in their areas. Anyone here left out?
But let's go back - to the 1960s and 70s. Some of you know about Cointelpro, the government's covert program to disrupt various groups - on the Left and the far Right - in the late 60s and early 70s. By the late 70s, anti-nuclear activists were also being targeted as potential terrorists. But even more insidious was an attempt to rewrite of the US criminal code. It was another massive bill - hundreds of pages that hardly any members of congress actually read. And it became the Nixon administration's blueprint for crushing dissent. Surviving Nixon's departure, it was ultimately defeated - mainly because it was so huge and also because a Left-Right coalition managed to stop it.
Here's one example of what it would have done: a provision called "Demonstrating to Influence a Judicial Proceeding."
Basically, it would have isolated the courts from public opinion. If an anti-war or abortion case was in progress, a group demonstrating outside the courthouse could be charged with a federal crime. Political expression could be effectively silenced. Other provisions covered labor union and anti-military actions.
That attempt to re-write criminal law - and effectively criminalize dissent -- was co-sponsored in the 70s by Strom Thurmond and Edward Kennedy. As is often the case, eroding basic rights was a bipartisan affair. The Clinton era crime bill is a case in point.
RED SCARES
Let's go back even further - to the 1940s and 50s. Then we had an anti-sedition law, the Smith Act, passed in 1946, and first used against leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. Subsequently, it was used against anyone who officials suspected of having communist sympathies. That war on dissent escalated, in part, because few people had the nerve to defend its first victims. Facing little opposition, the repression snowballed into a full-blown, and very deadly red scare.
The Socialist Workers Party, by the way, was also one of the prime targets during the 60s Cointel program. And it's again a target today, perhaps a harbinger of what's ahead. Last October, the Socialist Workers candidate for mayor of Miami was fired by Goodwill Industries. The reason, according to the plant manager was that Michael Italie's "views of the US government" were contrary to those of the company. Not much goodwill there.
But let's keep moving back in time - and the point is that the current crackdown is just the latest expression of a very long pattern - so, let's go back to the period following World War I. We had a sedition law then as well. This one was called the Espionage Act. Passed in 1917, it was a weapon to silence anyone who opposed the war, conscription, or the political status quo. The result? Illegal raids, massive deportations of immigrants, even lynchings of anarchists, socialists, members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and union militants.
I've been doing some research on that period for a play that will focus on both the crackdown of 1919 and the Haymarket affair, which foreshadowed it 33 years earlier. In 1919, the Supreme Court said that the Espionage Act didn't violate the First Amendment. Under that ruling, Eugene Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for interfering with the draft. In July, a bomb exploded in front of the home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.
In September, more than 1000 Boston policeman walked off their jobs. A few weeks later, 350,000 steelworkers struck. They were demanding an average workweek of 68.7 hours. Basically, a labor uprising was underway. Big Steel began to break the strikes, with military assistance.
In early November, 400,000 miners join the steelworkers on strike. Six days later, under orders from the Attorney General - the one whose house was bombed -- Justice Department agents raided leftist headquarters in more than a dozen cities. Thousands of people were arrested or detained. The crackdown climaxed on November 11 in Centralia, Washington, when employer thugs and American Legionnaires attacked the IWW Hall during an Armistice Day Parade. Perhaps unwisely, the Wobblies defend themselves with guns, and four men are killed. Those arrested were denied legal counsel, and for ten days an angry mob gathered outside the jail. The public, in general, was indifferent -- or worse, hostile. By the end of the year, the authorities had picked up 249 aliens of Russian birth, and deported them to Russia. Over the next month, 4000 more people were rounded up, held in seclusion fore long periods, brought into secret hearings, and ordered deported. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Another result of this crackdown was the creation of a General Intelligence Division within the Bureau of Investigation and the appointment of J. Edgar Hoover, to head it. That was the beginning of the FBI. Within a year, Hoover claimed to have the names of 200,000 radicals in his files.
HAYMARKET IMAGES
Finally, Haymarket - the moment that changed - and set back - the labor movement for decades, and etched the image of foreign radicals as violent terrorists into the American psyche. For those who don't remember, it happened in Chicago in 1886. At the time, Chicago was the most radical city in the US. It was rapidly industrializing, and experiencing massive immigration. Working conditions were terrible, and health and welfare problems were being ignored. The city had a larger German population that most cities in Germany. Along with them, Czechs, English, and Scandinavians dominated the blue collar work force.
To the mainstream press, the immigrants were outsiders, communists, socialists, and worse - anarchists - meaning to most people at the time that they were enemies of all law. Many radicals accepted the labels as badges of honor. And many were reaching the conclusion that peaceful change faced violent repression. They certainly had evidence. Strikes and peaceful demonstrations were being disrupted by heavily armed police, who beat and sometimes killed unarmed people. Businessmen were creating private armies, and newspapers were calling for a crackdown. In some respects, it resembles the current anti-globalization movement. Press reports even describe some of today's protesters as "violent anarchists" and outsiders.
In response, some movement leaders advised workers to arm themselves, and even to consider dynamite a means of self-defense. A fatal miscalculation.
On May 1, 1886, across the country, 300,000 workers laid down their tools, calling for a shorter work week. In Chicago, 40,000 people went out on strike. Three days later, during a confrontation between strikers, scabs, and management goons, several people were killed. And the following night, during a protest rally, someone threw a bomb into the crowd, killing several policemen. Precisely the excuse the establishment wanted. The outcome was one of the most shameful moments in US legal history - a show trial in which eight people, mostly self-proclaimed anarchists, were convicted for what they believed and said. None had anything to do with the bombing, but four of them were hung anyway.
During this time, newspapers developed a visual interpretation to go with the word anarchist: A long-haired, obviously foreign man, wild eyed and holding a lit bomb in one hand. That became the official take on foreign-born radicals. Connecting xenophobia with fear of violence, publishers waged an effective disinformation campaign - one of the nation's earliest - that engraved an "un-American" and dangerous image in the nation's consciousness. As the media learned then, fear works. It paralyzes people, preoccupies them, and softens them up for just about any government response.
For labor, the cost of Haymarket was enormous. Mainstream labor never again embraced a truly radical program, and sometimes has even been an accomplices to repression. There was also a deep impact on national attitudes. Like the current terrorist scare, the Haymarket bombing sparked rage, blind fear, and a willingness to accept almost anything to regain a sense of security.
Again and again since that time, whenever the establishment has been able to exploit a tragedy or some act of violence, basic rights have been undermined. It doesn't always last, but there has been long-term damage - and not only for the immediate targets. The damage is to the whole idea of free expression, freedom of association, and the right to assemble. And without these rights, democracy eventually becomes little more than the freedom to shop and make choices between politicians about as different as Tide and New Improved Tide.
NEXT UP
So, what's next on the government's plate? The turning of the US military into a domestic force. For starters, the Pentagon plans to create a new position - a regional command in chief for what's called the Northern Command - this actually means the US itself. The move continues a trend that dates back at least 20 years - the militarization of the southern border area in the name of another war: the War on Drugs.
Right now, 1,000 Marines are being trained for US duty. They'll probably be assigned to various FEMA regions. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is looking at how to get around the Posse Comitatus Act, which has prohibited the military from operating at home since 1878. And who's doing the looking? A Pentagon Homeland Security Coordinator, Army Secretary Thomas White, a former Enron official. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has already studied the issue, and, predictably, has concluded that Posse Comitatus is probably obsolete and certainly can be waived, thus removing any barrier to using US troops against citizens.
WHAT TO DO?
Well, first we need to convince people that basic rights matter. At this point, most don't even remember what's in the Bill of Rights. And even if they've heard of freedom of speech, many think it's something we'll just have to do without until we feel safe again - whenever that is. This points to an important task - a massive re-education program on what freedom really is. It sounds obvious, but even progressives tend to neglect civil liberties as a central organizing principle - until their own rights are threatened. We've got to go beyond self-interest and convince millions of people that basic rights are crucial for everyone - not just options we can choose to take or discard depending on how safe we feel.
Further, we have to reclaim the language. That means challenging the loose use of words like patriotism and terrorism. In Gaza and the West Bank, for example, Palestinians never use the phrase "suicide bombers." They're resistance fighters. In this regard, we're up against massive forces of propaganda - in other words, corporate media. Obviously, we need our own media, and must become much better at framing the debate. For example, what is real security, and can we really obtain it through a costly vigilance that borders on paranoia?
On the other hand, we also have to find some common ground with those who are captives of fear. It's not enough to say they're being lied to, or to take some high moral ground. We need to cultivate compassion, and to listen as much as we speak.
We also need to project a more convincing analysis. Yes, politically-motivated violence is a real and growing threat, just as genocide is. There's no point in denying it. But a war on terrorism - like the nuclear arms race, waged for 40 years in the name of anti-Communism - will ultimately be a war without winners. As long as the retail terrorism of desperate extremists is met with the wholesale terrorism of the US and its allies and client states - it's still madness. That's M.A.D. -- mutually assured destruction.
Finally, I think we need to confront the pervasive atmosphere of fear with a narrative of hope that is inspiring and convincing, bold and inclusive, attractive and honest. That's easy to say, but very hard to sustain. To do it, we must first convince ourselves that a better future is still possible. That despite the violence of capitalism and the violence of fundamentalism, that human solidarity and real freedom can - and often do -prevail. It won't be easy, but the weight of history - not to mention justice - is on our side.
