{"id":1711107,"date":"2022-10-26T06:30:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T10:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1711107"},"modified":"2022-10-26T06:33:53","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T10:33:53","slug":"where-has-the-antiwar-left-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/where-has-the-antiwar-left-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Has the Antiwar Left Gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">12<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhere-has-the-antiwar-left-gone%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1711107&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/GettyImages-56089494.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">On Feb. 15, 2003, 14 million people poured into the streets of 800 cities worldwide to oppose the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It was a preemptive response to the preemptive war hatched by Bush administration, and according to the\u00a0<em>Guinness Book of World Records<\/em>, it was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ips-dc.org\/february_15_2003_the_day_the_world_said_no_to_war\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the largest protest ever in human history<\/a>. Yet the 2003 protest was also a swan song of sorts: the movement that gave rise to it is now all but defunct\u2014namely, the antiwar left.<\/p>\n<p>Two decades later, as U.S. hawks press for relentless escalation against nuclear Russia, and as European leaders unfailingly toe Washington\u2019s line, there is no major movement of the left to channel dissent. Nor are there commanding antiwar figures comparable in stature to the likes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Labour M.P. Tony Benn, who spoke for the movement in 2003. Old antiwar groups, like the ANSWER Coalition, are either silent or struggling to be heard.<\/p>\n<div class=\"o-ad o-ad--center  js-ad\">\n<div class=\"o-ad__border\">\n        <span class=\"o-ad__border-label\">Advertisement<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Some two-dozen House progressives on Monday called for diplomacy, but antiwar leftists who championed the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders and The Squad must surely be disappointed, as the few elected socialists on Capitol Hill dutifully\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2022\/05\/12\/qdsd-m12.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">voted &#8220;Yes&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0on one massive Ukraine military-aid package after another. Some veteran left-of-center restrainers, meanwhile, such as former Ploughshares Fund boss Joe Cirincione, sound downright Kristolian, what with the calls to smoke out a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Cirincione\/status\/1583471802176925696\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cpro-Putin axis.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The post-9\/11 atmosphere of pro-war conformity has returned\u2014only, instead of dour \u201csecurity moms,\u201d it\u2019s enforced by irony bros with Ukraine flags and pronouns in their bios. As I noted in these pages soon after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, the same simplistic moral binaries that had been used to demand obeisance to the Covid regime were transferred to the war. Suddenly, progressives who were supposed to be post-nationalist became the most ardent nationalists, prepared to ignore even the most unsavory aspects of Ukrainian nationalism. Meanwhile, the street theatrics that used to be hallmarks of left-wing antiwar agitation are now used to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/715642\/calling-for-no-fly-zone-over-ukraine-artists-launch-hundreds-of-paper-planes-at-guggenheim-museum\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">promote no-fly zones<\/a>\u00a0(i.e., World War III).<\/p>\n<p>Were leftists always this uncritical of the claims of NATO and the military-industrial complex? Was the early post-9\/11 era a grand hallucination? What changed? The answer proffered by defenders of the progressive status quo is that there has been no change at all. The left was right to oppose America\u2019s unjustified wars after 9\/11, just as it is right to oppose Russia\u2019s war of aggression today.\u00a0<em>Sancta simplicitas!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But this is painfully glib. A progressive can condemn the Kremlin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine without signing up for the everything-but-troops response adopted by hawks in Washington and London. Yet that is exactly what many on the left have signed up for. Flooding Europe with weapons, fighting Moscow to the last Ukrainian, contemplating another endless war, fantasizing about inflicting a \u201cstrategic defeat\u201d on the Russians, potentially at the cost of a nuclear exchange\u2014all this runs contrary to progressive principle, if anti-imperialism and anti-militarism remain progressive principles.<\/p>\n<p>The real answer lies elsewhere. Three explanatory factors stand out:<\/p>\n<div class=\"o-ad o-ad--center  js-ad\">\n<div class=\"o-ad__border\">\n        <span class=\"o-ad__border-label\">Advertisement<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The first is the shifting nature of the American and Western way of war. As Yale Law School\u2019s Samuel Moyn documented in his illuminating book\u00a0<em>Humane<\/em>, published last year, precisely by seeking to bring war within the ambit of liberal norms, the United States has made it possible to wage more war with a clean conscience. To this fact we might add the shift toward proxy wars fought by foreign clients and mercenaries, rather than \u201cour boys (and girls).\u201d This has removed the domestic sting of armed conflict\u2014again, making it easier than ever to call for escalation without feeling unduly bothered by the thought of unclean hands.<\/p>\n<section class=\"c-subscribe-email\">\n<div class=\"l-container\">\n<div class=\"c-subscribe-email__wrap\">\n<h4 class=\"c-subscribe-email__heading\">Subscribe Today<\/h4>\n<h5 class=\"c-subscribe-email__subheading\">Get weekly emails in your inbox<\/h5>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p>Second, there is cultural progressives\u2019 conquest of America\u2019s security apparatus (along with most other elite institutions). It is true that the business end of American empire has been \u201cwoke\u201d for a very long time\u2014that is, it has always reflected the liberal cultural preferences of U.S. elites,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/americanaffairsjournal.org\/2021\/11\/the-cia-and-the-new-dialect-of-power\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">as the writer River Page has brilliantly argued<\/a>. Still, there is something genuinely novel about our moment, when the CIA publishes recruitment videos touting intersectional spooks with Latinx grievance politics and anxiety disorders worn as badges of honor. The counterculture of yesteryear has fully come to dominate the culture, but this has come at a price for old-left commitments. You take over the Pentagon, and you own the thing; that means you operate it, and operating it means waging war.<\/p>\n<p>And whom do you wage war against? Here, we come to the third factor: the recasting of non-Western powers like Russia and China as reactionary forces to be stamped out by U.S. and Western power. Whatever remained of the Vietnam left\u2019s cynicism about the dark undercurrents of American power in relation to the non-Western world is now gone. The world \u201cout there\u201d is bestrode by avatars of patriarchy and repression, who\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sepahi_h\/status\/1584112651440771072\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">impose modesty on women<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/09\/27\/world\/asia\/china-abortion-limits.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">restrict reproductive freedom<\/a>, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/12\/31\/opinion\/china-masculinity.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">limit LGBTQ representation<\/a>. Similar elements are resurgent back home. Progressives are confronted with a single battle line: the Dnieper flowing into the Potomac, and enemies foreign and domestic blurring into each other.<\/p>\n<p>Against these belligerent and apocalyptic tendencies, it is up to the rest of us, including the remnants of the old left, to resist the logic of total ideological war, of conflicts waged to advance simplistic moral binaries. In doing so, we might take up one of the great slogans of the 2003 protest: \u201cNot In Our Name.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Feb. 15, 2003, 14 million people poured into the streets of 800 cities worldwide to oppose the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It was a preemptive response to the preemptive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1711110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1711107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1711107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1711110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1711107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1711107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1711107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}