Why And How I Organized A Very Successful Anti-War Rally in March of 2003

This post is an essay about a major success I had as a political activist which might actually be held against me at this point because I have become unpopular with progressives. So, this is a rare post where the personal agenda is bigger than the political agenda. Some might say it’s unfair to criticize CWP (see below) 17 years later, but A) almost everything I say here (except for the addendum) either I said back then (just not as well) or it was common knowledge among CU-Boulder progressives at the time; B) in 2005 and 2006 I said about 95% of what’s below (except for the addendum) in a massive set of documents about me or relevant to my politics that a handful of progressives read, B) I’m not using names, and C) I really should get a lot of kudos instead of criticism for this.

(when I say anti-war without saying anything more, I mean opposed to what Bush was planning and not necessarily against war in general)

In early March 2003 there was a national Day of Action to protest moves towards war with Iraq. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, I organized the rally component, something which was quite controversial among anti-war activists on campus and in Boulder. For whatever it’s worth, let me say that the main anti-war group on campus, the Coalition to Wage Peace could have handled it much worse than the way they did. I don’t know exactly what conversations took place at the meetings they had after they learned I had reserved the main rally space, but they were fairly positive about it.

I think I will start with a description of my activism in the 9 years before the rally. Between Fall of 1994 and Fall of 2002 I had done a lot of political activity at CU-Boulder (and some stuff off-campus and outside Boulder that I will sort of ignore in this explanation). About  1/8 was with (what would later be renamed) the Young Democratic Socialists in the mid-90s. That was largely about immigration and affirmative action and was slightly effective. Most of the next 1/8 was with a group I started called Students for Justice in N. Ireland and was 1997-1999 (or early 2000). For better or worse, that might have had NO effect on what progressive activists thought of me in 2003, but over all it WAS done in a very anti-racist and sort of anti-homophobic way, and was slightly progressive in some other ways (half of my NI activism is described in a post here between the paragraph “The second big thing…” and ending with the paragraph “In the late 1990s…”; Right below that section of the post is a description of my anti-racist activism). In 2000 and 2001 I swung back to mostly multi-issue progressive stuff with YDS. The biggest thing I/we did in those years was gay rights stuff. The semester before the rally, I started organizing SJNI again and A) we did one event before that rally that was anti-racist and progressive, and that attracted about 25 people, and B) we issued a statement that was anti-homophobic (for that statement and some relevant discussion, see the second half of this, starting with the paragraph “Now that that's over....”) and C) we endorsed the Coalition for Justice in Palestine. The SJNI meetings before the rally had an average attendance of about 8 people. Between 1994 and 2001, the average attendance at my N. Ireland events was 30 (it would have been higher, see the middle third of this (between the paragraphs “Going back to how much was done…” and “according to the Pew Research…”) and for everything else it was 75 (YDS-CU events in 2002 had an average of about 40 people at them, including one partly anti-war event (not the rally around Sept. 1st 2002) that attracted about 75 people).

At the 2001 National Conference of YDS in August I suffered three defeats and since that was in the context of continuing grief about my mom’s death 14 months earlier, the next semester I spent about 20 hours a day in my bedroom. Other things went wrong and it slowly became more and more of a “perfect storm” of things that were mostly personal tragedy and mostly not my fault. I had/have Tourrette’s Syndrome, OCD, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Depression, and these are all made worse by anxiety, stress, and sadness. The next semester I sort of organized the YDS chapter some although it didn’t go very well.

During the summer of 2002 there was a lot of talk about the US invading Iraq in the near future. I, and a very small YDS-CU chapter organized a rally on campus that took place around Sept. 1st in the UMC FountaIn area. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the kind of rally you might be thinking of. Even if there WAS a large crowd, we didn’t have more than a few signs for people to hold. We had about five speakers and when they all had spoken we still had about 10-15 minutes left, so we invited people from the small crowd (about 25-50 people) to speak at the mic. The speakers were great. One benefit of doing a rally there is that you might get an audience with a fair number of people eating their lunch- including people who might not normally go to a political event, but end up listening to the speakers anyway.

Although YDS-CU had a pretty successful (and student union funded) event in Nov. (at which the speaker talked about Iraq about 1/3 of the time), it was a very small chapter that I believe barely existed in the second semester of the 2002-2003 school year.

At some point in late Oct. or very early Nov. someone put up flyers and/or sent emails about a rally in the UMC Fountain area. It’s not clear who called for it. For a lot of reasons I wish it was clearer, but to a limited degree I am almost okay with that- if they didn’t want credit for it that’s okay with me (but I think there’s also an issue of taking responsibility for your actions). It involved about 30-50 people gathered relatively close together and instead of the PA system usually used, there was a megaphone (or whatever it’s called, it amplified people’s voices so everyone could easily be heard) that got passed around democratically. I only remember a small number of the comments made. The one I remember the most is where, after a woman made an anti-war statement that involved referring to herself as an American, someone told her not to identify as an American. There was another rally just like that one about 1-2 weeks later that I attended. Although considering how I ended up in some small degree of conflict with CWP I wish I was more familiar with it’s creation (some time shortly after the 2nd rally I just mentioned) and the next 1-3 rallies it organized (I went to 1-2 of their rallies). I was probably on their email list at some point towards the beginning. I must have also picked up a faIr amount of information about them when they were tabling in the student center. Lastly, I must have also gotten some info from the unofficial campus newspaper. I wish I could be more certain of these things and offer more specific examples but 18 years have passed. There’s also the fact that at various times between the Fall of 2002 and now, I have heard miscellaneous supportive things from other activists in Boulder and I don’t remember hearing practically anything critical of what I did, so I believe that what I say here about CWP doesn’t clash with what veteran activists (some of whom acted as referees between me and CWP) observed in CWP at the time.

Sometime just before and/or just after winter break I formed a LOOSE and very small alliance with a very politically visible Democratic Party progressive activist at CU-Boulder. I don’t believe he was considered a.member of the group I tried to launch but he played a role in the College Dems adopting an anti-war position. I’ll describe the name of the new anti-war group I launched shortly, but here’s what we did. An event that took place in late January or early February was a panel discussion sponsored by YDS-CU and possibly the new group. The senior College Democrat read the anti-war statement of the CU-Boulder College Dems at the beginning of the event. The speakers were either (then) current or former members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Although there was a misunderstanding as the result of the word liberal being defined one way by some progressives and another way by other progressives, 3/4 of the brief talks were pretty good.

The name of the new group is something I cringe at when I think of mentioning it to people now, as it could give people the wrong idea about my political beliefs at that time. It was Liberals Against War. The first thing I need to do is offer a definition of a liberal. My definition is very far from philosophical. A liberal is someone to the left of Bill Clinton and to the right of Elizabeth Warren. Some will say that Clinton is a liberal, but if you look at his time in the White House, he was not very liberal on social issues, he certainly wasn’t good economically and in general he was the candidate (in the 1992 primaries) of the moderate/centrist wing of the Democratic Party. His running mate in both 1992 and 1996 was married to one of the main people behind the “Parental Warning- Explicit Lyrics” stickers on certain music albums. I AM a socialist but I’m also fairly friendly to the Democratic Party and believe that sometimes, depending on various factors a fair percentage of liberals are allies of progressives. For more of my thoughts on liberals, see this.

LAW barely existed but was one of the sponsors of the March 2003 rally. I launched LAW because I felt like CWP was trying to win people over to the anti-war position by winning them over to the progressive movement. In a misguided attempt at being good white allies (I’m certain 95% of them were white) they adopted Mumia Abu-Jamal as an issue (although I did some stuff supporting him around 1998, a better expression of solidarity would have been supporting Affirmative Action, which I guarantee you is more popular with Black people than Abu-Jamal was at the time (the gap is even greater when you poll people of color in general (see the addendum at the bottom))). At the CWP rally I attended A) one of the speakers said that the only good war was the Civil War and B) someone (probably not a neo-Confederate) yelled “BOO!” (I couldn’t find a survey about Jewish-American opinions of the Allies, probably because no one is going to waste time on that since I’m sure that around 99% of Jewish-Americans are glad that Nazi Germany was defeated (I’m sure that 99% of Blacks are glad that the confederacy was defeated)). The guy who criticized someone for identifying as American became an active member of CWP. They were taking that approach (creating progressives) instead of convincing people that an invasion of Iraq (specifically and not war in general) would be wrong. They were not responding to the arguments being made by the Bush administration and its allies. Crucially, they were not challenging the idea that there was a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Shortly after the war began, a poll found that around 75% of Americans believed Iraq was responsible for 9/11. Although I’m embarrassed that I supported the first two years of the invasion of AFGHANISTAN, the fact is that response to 9/11 was a much more legitimate and helpful one than invading Iraq, and ignoring the desire of the American people to go after those responsible for 9/11 was just politically naive. 9/11 was overwhelmingly aimed at killing as many civilians as possible (if you think I have a racist double standard, A) go fuck yourself, B) see this and C) see the first third of this). Al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, and I can’t imagine a successful progressive response to 9/11 that wouldn’t have included either successfully convincing the Taliban to give up Al-Aqaeda, or an invasion. The invasion of Iraq was completely unjustified and unhelpful and was predictably a disaster for the Iraqi people and the region. Refuting the allegation that Iraq was connected to Al-Qaeda was necessary and doable- it was so ridiculous that Tony Blair didn’t use it in his pro-war argument. Some would say that pointing out the lack of a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda as a reason to oppose the Iraq invasion would have implied that the invasion of Afghanistan was okay. But anti-war activists could have said “invading Afghanistan was bad enough, invading Iraq is an even worse idea.” (UPDATE Feb. 2021 my recent thoughts about the US and Afghanistan are here)

So, I organized the March rally. I had organized 2-3 anti-war events in the previous 6 months and I got the main rally space reserved before (perhaps minutes before) CWP tried to do that. Almost immediately, I was asked to hand it over to CWP. I refused. I refused to let CWP co-sponsor the rally, although there was some dialogue and cooperation that I’ll describe shortly. Why did I refuse?

1. At the last or second-to-last CWP rally, a small, brief “riot” took place. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if the cops were responsible for the confrontation turning violent, I am CERTAIN that A) the confrontation was the fault of some people in CWP and B) the confrontation was completely unjustified. Rallies in the UMC Fountain area with amplified sound are only allowed between noon and 1 PM because there are a lot of classrooms nearby. Some people in CWP decided that they would not end the rally and  give up the PA system at 1 PM. UMC staff did something to end it that resulted in a CWP member, joined by others, trying to get the PA back on that involved walking towards the UMC building, and some cops. Like I said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the violence was started by the cops, but the confrontation was completely unjustified- partly because it wasn’t at any point described as a student strike, they just felt that in general rallies should have no time limit. Also, in general at the time, student groups at CU-Boulder at least 1994-2004 (probably before and after) had it better than student groups at other campuses (you didn’t need a faculty advisor, you could chalk, student government gave out lots of money with few strings attached, but they had some reasonable rules for student activism (the UMC is part of student government)) I thought a lot of people would be reluctant to attend a rally organized by the CWP and as I’ll explain, there is evidence I was right.

2. After the “riot” the UMC started to enforce a rule about scheduling rallies where you had to attend a formal meeting and promise to follow the rules. I was afraid that if I remained the lead organizer but CWP was a co-sponsor and some faction in CWP pulled the same thing with the PA system, I would be in a lot of trouble.

3. As I said, they were not trying to reach out beyond the progressive community.

4. I’ll go into why this was a good move on my part, but from the very beginning I intended to get the College Democrats to co-sponsor, and I did. IF and it’s huge if, anyone in CWP had suggested the group cooperate with the (anti-war) College Dems, he or she would have been laughed at. Even if I was the bridge between the two as the lead organizer, CWP may have refused to join the Dems in co-sponsoring the rally, and the Dems probably would have refused to work with CWP because of the riot.

Not long after I refused to involve CWP or just stand aside for them, a couple of professors invited me and a rep from CWP to sit down with them and they would assist us in working some things out. I was happy to participate. We agreed that CWP would sponsor the march after the rally and the “student strike” aspect. It was my idea to set aside two out of 10-12 speaker slots for anyone CWP chose to fill them with. The CWP rep. at one point said that they were going to refuse to cooperate with the UMC staff about the PA system (the UMC agreed to make the rally 90 minutes instead of 60). I just put my foot down and said “no you’re not,” and probably because of the presence of the two Profs. that was apparently enough.

I also agreed to attend a CWP meeting the night before the rally. As I sort of explained to them when someone asked why I didn’t just get involved with them, I felt neurologically, and intellectually and politically (slightly) impotent and knew I would get into arguments left and right with people in CWP and didn’t want to get into those fights on a weekly or daily basis. But it was just one meeting and if I hadn’t attended A) they and a lot of people would have thought I was a jerk, and B) it’s POSSIBLE that some CWP members would have skipped the rally and maybe even encouraged others to skip it as well (about 2 weeks earlier there was talk about them organizing their own rally elsewhere). So I did an okay job of briefly explaining why I hadn’t gotten involved in CWP. Also, the official but unpopular campus paper had been tipped off about how awesome I am and about 5 weeks before the rally they did a story about me. A big part of it was me criticizing CWP and probably not doing the best job of it either. Someone asked about that and I may have explained things half as well as I have in this post.

Before I describe the rally, I should say something about my brilliant move getting the College Dems to co-sponsor. First, I’ll be honest, it didn’t take any intellectual or political effort on my part. The progressive Dem leader I mentioned above had already laid the groundwork by getting the chapter to oppose the invasion. Some progressives would say it was a waste of time or actually counter-productive since it would allow the liberal (not progressive or Clintonite) Dems to mend their tattered record on war and militarism, and these progressives want to use that record against the Dems. But here’s the thing. A LOT of people who were against the war or who were very open-minded about opposing it were registered as Democrats. Having the College Dems co-sponsor the rally might have boosted attendance a little, and I’m sorry but if you combine the progressives and liberals in the DP, they vastly outnumber those progressives who just hate the Dems. Also, if we had any chance of stopping the war at that point (and we didn’t but it was the right thing to act like we did, and anti-war organizing at that point laid the basis for opposing the Occupation) we would have needed a MASSIVE majority of the DP. Having the College Dems co-sponsor raised the profile of the anti-war part of the DP within the DP.

The rally was petty good. 1,500 people were there, probably at least 95% were anti-war. I was busy with other stuff and heard practically none of the speeches. Twice there was a progressive song played. I screwed up and didn’t plan what I was going to say and probably about 1/3 of what I said was kind of stupid, but only kind of, and I’m sure the rest was good. After the rally, 200 people went on a march. At one point a CWP member suggested the low number was because of the riot. I’m sure some of the 1,225 anti-war protestors at the rally who didn’t join us for the march just couldn’t go on the march, but I’m sure around 800 of them didn’t go on the march because they didn’t want to be in a riot.

At the rally, a leader of CWP had encouraged people to go to the Engineering College (which has a lot of Defense-related stuff) and “take action.” As we were marching to that building, I told someone I knew with a hat saying he was a peace-keeper of sorts with the well-respected Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center (they may have added the word “Justice” after that date but I think they added it before, and today that’s what they’re called) about this and he said we should keep the marchers from getting in the building. I was later told it was stupid to do that, but I was concerned that A) it could lead to police attacking us, and B) it could damage the reputation of the anti-war movement. So, when he said we should stop them, I helped him. For better or worse, after making fools of ourselves for a few minutes, the marchers got in and nothing was done (no “action” was taken, we got a brief tour of part of a research/development/whatever area).

One miscellaneous thing is that a few days before or a few days after the rally, a leading member of CWP gave me a flyer. It was NOT a CWP flyer, I assure you. But it said something like “when war breaks out, people should go to the 16th St. Mall in Denver and destroy stuff.”

There is one thing that I need to address. I screwed up at one point and forgot that the rally was only 1/3 or 1/4 of that days' events. There was also the march, the Student Strike, and a series of teach-ins by Faculty And Staff Against War. There was a web-site for the national coalition of anti-war youth groups that called for the day of action and I said that YDS-CU, LAW and the College Dems were sponsoring that day’s events (I may have mentioned FASAW but I think I didn’t and I almost hope I didn’t because that would mean I was trying to deny CWP credit). That was later replaced by something saying FASAW, CWP and a High School chapter of Amnesty International.

In conclusion, I feel very good about roughly 90% of what I did. Especially getting the College Dems to co-sponsor. Also, I think I might write some poems about the Iraq War and the Occupation. UPDATE 10/11/20 Those are here and here.

**************

People of color and Mumia Abu-Jamal

Among Black people, support for Mumia was not as high as white progressives like to think. According to an article in Salon, Angela Davis and the Rev. Al Shaprton were unhappy that Black clergy in PA were not supporting Mumia. A lot of other stuff in there backs me up. The writer of the article did another piece for Salon opposing the execution of Mumia and called for a new trial.

According to a poll here, in 2002 70% of blacks supported AA and 64% of “Hispanics” supported it (that might include white Hispanics, so it might be higher for Chicana/os and Latina/os). According to an Aug. 2015 (which may be when the first poll mentioned below was conducted)  report by the National Commission on Asian-American and Pacific Islander Research in Education:                 

Support for or against affirmative action is as difficult to discern for Asian Americans as it is for all Americans. For Asian Americans, specifically, there is the issue of omission from most national opinion polls on affirmative action. One source for gauging the level of support for or against affirmative action is a multicity, multiethnic, and multilingual survey of political attitudes and behavior of Asian Americans administered by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. The results show that 63.1% of Asian Americans indicated that affirmative action “is a good thing” as opposed to 5.7% who reported that it is a “bad thing” and 18.6% who reported that it “doesn’t affect Asian Americans.” These findings are consistent with a 2004 survey of 701 Asian American college studentsattending 169 colleges and universities. This study found that 62.6% of Asian American college students disagreed with the notion that affirmative action should be eliminated. Both of these survey results are consistent with exit polls during votes on state referendums to end affirmative action. In 1996, 61% of Asian American voters rejected Proposition 209 in California, and in 2006, 75% of Asian American voters rejected Proposal 2 in Michigan.

(I think the frequent exclusion of A-As from polls about Affirmative Action might be because of the Model Minority Myth (and to enhance that myth) and because people like implying that A-As don’t support Affirmative Action and because they want to give as many A-As as possible the idea that their community doesn’t support it and create a wedge between A-As and other people of color)

I wouldn’t be surprised if a massive majority of American Indians support Affirmative Action, but they’re probably less likely to be included in these polls than Asian-Americans are, and when taking 7 college courses partly or totally about American Indians I didn’t hear anything about them being different than other non-white racial groups in terms of their opinion of AA.

As far as my statement implying that support for Mumia is lower among non-Black people of color than it is among Black people:

Chicanos. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, at some point in the last 25 years, some of them were driving Black people out of certain parts of LA. Ice-T rapped “And we gotta realize, the boys on the east side/You call em S-A's, I call em allies/Because the day that we all unite/Watch the pigs get real polite.” That’s a reference to Chicana/o East LA and directly and indirectly indicates tension between Chicana/os and Blacks. A lot of Blacks are anti-immigrant and I think that narrowly popular hostility is reflected among Chicana/os.

Asian-Americans. Around 1990 there was a lot of tension between the poor black community and the community of Korean immigrants (and probably their children) and that may have been found among the larger Korean-American community. Although I’ve been told there was a very small yellow-power movement around 1970 inspired by the Panthers, in general I don’t hear a lot about A-As being enthusiastic about what the Panthers were about.

American Indians. I wouldn’t be surprised if, as the most racially fucked over population in this country, a majority of them back Mumia.

In general, the idea that ALL people of color are in solidarity with each other is just, unfortunately, ridiculous. I got my degree in Ethnic Studies.

UPDATE 4/16/20 I did a post about Affirmative Action and the working-class here.

Sinn Fein and anti-Semitism

Recently I spent a day typing a lot of updates on this blog relevant to Sinn Fein and anti-semitism. Then, about 8 hours later when I woke up, one of the first things I saw on the Web was a story about a SF TD (MP in the South) being accused of anti-Semitism. I couldn’t fucking believe it. First, there are two more stories you might want to read (if you feel like subbing to the Irish-Times) here and here.

I was of course curious what exactly the tweets had said. Even though SF (and possibly Cronin as an individual) seems to be admitting that they were anti-semitic, I wanted to know because supporters of the Palestinians are often falsely accused of being anti-Semitic but even some of the progressive ones ARE anti-Semitic. So I found the Irish news site that broke the story. An update to their original story is here. The story that has the details of the controversial tweets is here.

First, the first article linked to says:


“She had previously made the news this past weekend when the Sunday Times reported that she had accused Israeli intelligence of interfering in the recent UK election to prevent the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister. Mr. Corbyn himself had been accused of anti-semitism in the run-in to that election.”

I haven’t followed the anti-Semitism controversy in the Labour Party very much. I DO know that one of the most outspoken critics (in terms of how big they think the problem is) of anti-Semitism in the party is also VERY supportive of the Palestinians. On the other hand, a friend who is a very solid opponent of anti-Semitism says that the accusations are pro-Israel nonsense. I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel IS involved, but at the same time the allegation about the Mossad mentioned above comes from someone who I think IS or WAS an anti-Semite.

Why do I think she is or was an anti-Semite? Let me quote and discuss each of the actually or allegedly anti-Semitic tweets.


“Israel have taken Nazism to a new level, by showing they can get away with it.”

This is the most solidly anti-Semitic of the tweets. Calling Israel Nazi is anti-Semitic. First, a friend points out that some Jews do that. That’s different. It’s fairly comparable to black people in America using the n-word. Here are my thoughts about this:

1. It's not too different from calling people of color in America racist.
2. You can call Jewish people fascists, but not Nazis.
3. If you want to say that Israeli policy towards the Palestinians could shift towards the genocidal, fine, but don't call them Nazis (for info about how horrible Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is, see this and many of the articles you’ll find here).
4. If you absolutely insist on comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, write a detailed, argumentative, well-documented 10,000 word essay, not a tweet.

From the Gript story: “Deputy Cronin once responded to a message containing an image of a large number of monkeys sitting at computers by saying that she had thought it was an image of the inside of the Israeli embassy.”

The Israeli embassy represents a fairly democratic state and the tweet was four years before the controversial “Jewish Nation State” law was adopted. Although this fairly democratic state is also engaged in something colonial, it, for better or worse is defined as the Jewish State. Many would say that’s the problem and I kind of agree (I will soon do a post about that and related matters (UPDATE 3/8/20 That post is here) and for those of you who think I am a hypocrite because I’m an Irish republican, see the brief essay at the bottom of this post), but it is 80% Jewish and although, yes this is also a problem, the State is politically even more Jewish in terms of who has power. The Jewish population in Israel is roughly between 35% and 44% of the world’s Jewish population and probably another 30%-38% (that is, a large majority of Jewish-Americans) identify with Israel (and probably 50-75% of the rest of the world’s Jewish population identify with Israel). And the best Cronin can do is the tweet described above. It shows a complete lack of willingness to take the Jewish population seriously and treat their representatives with some respect. An embassy is more a representative of a State (in the European sense) than a Government. So it’s not Netanyahu she’s making fun of. I am saying something similar to what I said in item #4 when I discussed calling Israel Nazi, but I certainly find substantive criticism of Israel much more acceptable than calling it Nazi, it's just that this tweet was not substantive criticism.

The next example of anti-Semitism is something she  re-tweeted that I almost dismissed as misunderstood by her critics- I thought it couldn’t have been anti-Semitic because it criticized Hitler. It said, according to Gript, that Hitler was a pawn of the Jewish-founded Rothschild bank. Not only was the bank owned by a Jewish family, it is frequently referred to by people who are definitely anti-semites. The thing is, this claim is saying that Jews were responsible for the Holocaust or POSSIBLY is saying that the Holocaust didn’t happen.

According to Gript.ie and some of the screen shots they show in their article, she believes strongly that banks control the world and at least once mentions a bank owned by the Rothschild family. She also tweeted that “those wars were instigated and funded by banks.” There is an anti-Semitic stereotype of bankers as Jewish and Jews as bankers. I don’t know what the stats are about religion and bankers, but if you look at a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, only 44% of Jewish-American households had a yearly income of $100,000 or more. Yes, that is higher than other religious groups, but how many bankers don’t earn A LOT more than that? I mean, if a banker’s household is earning $100,000 a year, they must be a a horrible banker. And even if we focus on those Jews earning as much as successful bankers earn, what about all of them who get rich from various other businesses such as retail, manufacturing, real estate, Hollywood, the media, etc? Also, you need a college degree to be a banker, and to one extent or another (depending on the bank and how senior the position is) you need a graduate degree, and I’m sure many people at the very top have a Ph.D. According to the PRC, in 2016, 59% of Jewish-Americans had a college degree. Ahead of them were Hindus at 77%, and Unitarian Universalists at 67%; tied with Jews were Anglicans at 59% and right below them were Episcopalians at 56%, and of course all the other religious groups and Atheists were below that. First, like I said, to one extent or another you need a graduate degree to be a banker. Second, finance is only one of roughly 100-150 degrees available in America. Anti-Semites would say that there is some kind of strong integration among Jewish people that connects the bankers and the non-banker (ridicuously vast) majority. Even during the Nazi era there was division among Jews. A minority wanted to fight, another minority collaborated or supported collaboration or advocated for it, and most were passive. Look at voting in America. In recent decades about 2/3 of those who vote vote Democratic, about 1/3 vote Republican, and although Jewish voter turnout is a little higher than it is with the general population, that still leaves a lot of Jews staying home. And on Israel there are similar divisions. In 2013 (according to the PRC), only 70% said they feel “very” or “somewhat” attached to Israel. According to a 2020 poll of Jewish-Americans (described in an article here (the Times of Israel is only slightly pro-Israel and publishes so many articles that expose what I call Israeli Apartheid that about half the articles I link to from my post about that are in the TI)) commissioned by the Jewish Electoral Institute:

Only 32% of Jewish voters characterized Israel as “one of the most important” issues to them in the upcoming election. Of far greater concern to Jews are healthcare, medicare and social security, and gun safety.

Although 91% said they were generally pro-Israel, 56% identified themselves as “critical” of the Netanyahu government, a government which had the support until recently of a majority of MKs (MPs) and which might possibly be returned to power with a similar majority of MKs.

The article describes some more results of the poll, in reference to Trump:

Fifty-one percent said they supported his Israel policies; 39% said they didn’t. A slightly larger majority (52%) said they approved of his decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty of the Golan Heights.

The US Jewish community appeared much more divided on Trump’s decision to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which roiled the White House’s relations with the Palestinians. Whereas 45% approved of the move, 42% said they were opposed to it.

American Jews are similarly split on a dimension of the president’s peace plan that would allow Israel to annex the existing West Bank settlements: 44% approve of that policy and 40% disapprove of it.

Although this is anecdotal, I’d like to address the idea that Jews with a lower income somehow benefit from the wealth of those bankers who ARE Jewish. I have lived in Boulder, CO my entire life. As you may know, Boulder is an expensive place to live, it has always been more expensive than the county that surrounds it, and recently it has gotten very expensive and the supply of affordable housing is insufficient. I think that most of the Jewish people I have known who either work in Boulder or who I went to high school with, live/lived outside Boulder and I’m pretty sure it’s for financial reasons. 

I’m not sure if I just addressed some of what leads people to become anti-Semitic, but I think I may have.

Crucially, an aspect of this is the idea that bankers are central to capitalism. I’m not an economist or business school graduate, but I think the role of bankers in capitalism is slightly if not significantly exaggerated by people who generally like capitalism but (probably) don’t like Jews. The bankers are coordinating capitalism and the flow of capital, but are not making decisions about wages, benefits, working conditions, unions, etc. They don’t make decisions about whether or not to shift production to low-wage areas. They don’t make decisions about what to produce. I’m not saying that it’s impossible for them to make decisions about loans based on their agenda (and apparently they play a major role in urban development), but I think this is exaggerated. They want to make the loan so they can make money on it by collecting interest, and once the loan is made I seriously doubt they’ll make a negative decision if the company recognizes a union, for example- I’ve never heard of that happening and I have been a socialist for 25 years (and I doubt that hardly any businesses would take a loan whose terms involve the absence of a union because if they lose a certification election, they default on the loan). Investors do that sort of thing, and although banks are to one degree or another part of that community, they are not all of it. Unions invest, individuals invest, corporations invest, pension plans invest, non-profits invest, etc. This hostility towards banks also implies that they are inherently capitalist and do nothing good for society, communities and individuals. I have tried to find out if anti-Semites are known to also attack credit unions, an institution which I have no problem with at all. If they ARE hostile to credit unions because they extend their stereotype about Jews and bankers to them as well, that just proves beyond any doubt that they are motivated not by any hostility towards capitalism, but simply bigotry. And, although this might fuel anti-Semitic hostility towards credit unions, here and there and maybe more often than that, Jews have organized credit unions.

The actor Mel Gibson, clearly an anti-Semite, once said that all wars were the fault of Jews. Even IF there was more than the tiniest amount of truth to the stereotype about Jews and bankers, I would have to say, even as a socialist, that wars are not always solely the result of economics (and as I said, there are more components to capitalism besides banks). Imperialism is of course almost always present and there is an economic dimension to that, but there is also right-wing nationalism, racism or some other kind of bigotry. There is often support for war among the military (who often have great influence while a decision to GO TO war is being made), and that is almost always independent of capitalist beliefs and/or the defense industry. I won’t go anywhere near an exhaustive survey of war, but here are my thoughts on some wars.

1. The “American Revolution.” Although I’m not happy with the European settlement that preceded it or the westward expansion that followed it, the colonists had legitimate, non-capitalist complaints against London. I suppose some would say that the British effort in that conflict was for the benefit of banks, and there’s probably some truth to that.
2. The American Civil War. Yes there was an economic dimension, but there was also a great deal of principled opposition to slavery on one side and racist support for it on the other (yes that racism was encouraged by capitalists, but the most direct explanation for popular opposition to abolition was racism).
3. World War I. This was incredibly imperialistic and nationalistic, although I think the racist nature of that nationalism was almost nil. There was militarism. This may have been a war that could be largely attributed to bankers.
4. World War II in the Pacific. I’m not real familiar with what I call Japanese Imperialism (you could also call it Japanese Fascism). There was an economic dimension, although I’m not sure to what degree it was for the benefit of capitalists. There was undoubtedly militarism, possibly even more so than was the case with the Nazis (these Imperialists believed in what you might call a ridiculously negative and fascist warrior code that included killing prisoners or treating them much worse than the Nazis treated POWs of WESTERN Allied states). There was incredible racism towards other Asians (remember that race is socially constructed; I did a few google searches and it seems that at least MANY Japanese have light skin; Apartheid South Africa, for economic reasons, classified Japanese as White and I don’t think it was JUST economic; they were allied with Nazi Germany; I read about how an American white supremacist music label would receive a lot of orders for CDs from Japanese people who considered themselves the “white men of the East”). Although some powerful people in the United States may have primarily been worried about Japan as an imperialist rival, and FDR pursued a foreign policy that put us on a collision course with Japan, A) Japan WAS doing bad stuff, B) FDR was NOT a solid capitalist, C) Pearl Harbor was attacked, D) FDR may have allowed it to happen so that he could go to war with Germany (see below).
5. World War II in Europe. Although the Nazis were sort of capitalist and capitalists supported them, they were driven much more by bigotry, militarism, imperialism, (a crude, populist) anti-Communism and a reverence for power and strength and violence. I’d say roughly the same thing about Italian fascists, with less anti-Semitism and perhaps a little closer to socialist instead of NATIONAL socialist. The Soviet Union fought largely because they were going to be destroyed, although there were certainly some genuinely anti-fascist tendencies in Moscow (if you believe they were more than tendencies, what about the non-aggression pact between Moscow and Berlin that lasted until Germany invaded?). The British were certainly an imperialist and capitalist power at the time, but they were also a liberal democracy and recognized Nazi Germany for what it was in terms of authoritarianism and expansionism. And shortly after the war the British Left/Center-Left won a massive electoral victory, so I think most of the people at every level were motivated by a left-wing opposition to fascism. The United States quite possibly allowed a situation to develop where they would go to war with Nazi Germany. Yes, America was a capitalist and imperialist country, but once again, it was also a liberal democracy, and there seemed to be a massive center-left/left minority in the years leading up to the war and during the war, and FDR was just to the right of that (although as President he was fairly disappointing when it came to racial justice and equality, his wife was not and that’s not totally irrelevant).
6. Vietnam. The Vietnamese had been fighting for independence from the French (and briefly the Japanese) for decades and wanted a united, communist nation-state. I’m not real familiar with Vietnamese communism but banks are not inherently capitalist, and I just did some searches and apparently, for better or worse, there are almost zero Jewish people there. The United States was certainly motivated in part by capitalism. JFK and LBJ were economically to the right of FDR and Nixon certainly was. But there was also a conflict between a block of liberal (and often social) democracies and a block of communist countries that, whatever the progressive value of their social, economic and foreign policies, were authoritarian. Although the US introduced the nuclear weapon to the world, and aimed missiles at the USSR, there were a bunch of them aimed at the US.
7. Israel. Conflicts involving Israel are not anywhere near as much the fault of Jews as many people think. First, although Zionism is very flawed in multiple ways (See this) and I have serious problems with what happened to the Palestinians, the seizing and settlement of lands beyond the pre-1967 borders and states defined by ethnicity and/or religion, Israel’s Arab neighbors wanted in the past to DESTROY Israel- not in the sense that a one-state solution would “destroy” Israel, but in the sense that Jews would be driven into the sea. And this was just decades after the very flawed pacifistic response of European Jews to the Nazis contributed to 2/3 of that population being killed. As far as American fuel for Israel’s behavior towards its neighbors, see some of the material in this post. As far as an alleged Jewish role in the Bush administration’s decision to invade and occupy Iraq, see what I’ve said about support in America for Israel, and consider what I wrote elsewhere on this blog:

Bush's reasons for invading Iraq were many, Israel was a small part of it. There was the opportunity to give lots of money to corporations in multiple ways, the strong desire for using the US military that most GOPers have, the desire to teach the world a lesson in terms of what the US will do to them if they piss off D.C., the desire for oil, the idea of democratizing the Middle-East. I also heard something about it being connected to countering the growing strength of the Euro. It's possible they half believed that stuff about WMDs and Al-Qaeda. Israel was a small part of it.

I’m going to end my discussion of war there.

I believe that TD Raeda Cronin was an anti-Semite. The relevant tweets were made about 6 years ago, and she has apologized. In connection with what I write here (the first article I link to in that post is not relevant, but the rest of that post is) I’m not against the idea that SF should expel her or at least have her stand down as a TD, but I’ll continue to support SF even if they don’t. As I sort of prove here, SF is against anti-Semitism. I did this post largely because the controversy gave me a chance to discuss anti-Semitism among progressive supporters of the Palestinians, and to combine the anti-bigot part of this blog with the Ireland/N. Ireland part of the blog.

**********************

I’ve referred twice to my concern about Israel being officially called The Jewish State and being defined by ethnicity and/or religion. Some would call me a hypocrite because I’m an Irish republican. So let me explain this. Don’t call me a hypocrite. You will lose every time you try that.

After the War of Independence in Ireland, in 1920-1925 the South became what was called a “Free State.” Its independence from the UK was limited. For example, members of Parliament had to swear an oath to Queen. The 1937 Constitution created the position of President and the first President was a Protestant. Presidential terms are normally seven years and someone can serve two terms. In the 1970s there was another Protestant President for about 2 years before he died. So out of nine Presidents, two were Protestant. As far as the 1937 Constitution and Catholicism, it’s true that early drafts emphasized Catholicism and the Catholic Church, but there was GREAT opposition to that. The final draft of the relevant section recognized the existence of the main Protestant churches in Ireland, as well as the Jewish religion, and it recognized “the special position” of the Roman Catholic Church “as the guardian of the faith professed by the great majority of the citizens.” This special place for the Catholic Church was done away with in 1972. The ban on divorce was done away with in 1995. There were of course homophobic laws (only in 1993 was homosexuality decriminalized) and the constitution had to be amended in 2015 to allow for gay marriage (there wasn’t anything in the document about “a man and a woman,” but still, only in 2015 was it amended to solidly legalize gay marriage in a country where a law could be more easily overturned by politicians if the country drifted to the right) and abortion is 99% illegal there, but there is plenty of homophobia and pro-life politics among Protestants, Jews, Muslims, etc. (also, although the Catholic Church is in two ways sexist, that can be exaggerated, and in recent decades, FREQUENTLY the Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) has been a woman and between 1990 and 2011 the slightly powerful position of President of Ireland was held by women, one of whom went on to be the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights)

Is Ireland defined by ethnicity? Until about 20 years ago the South was almost literally 100% white, and there weren’t many non-Irish white people (in the last 20 years there has been bigotry that sort of resembles racism towards, for example, Poles). In 2004 there was an Amendment to the constitution that eliminates birthright citizenship for people born to parents who are not both citizens of Ireland. But if one parent is a citizen, they get citizenship. Also, although naturalization has been restricted, it’s still possible and it’s still fairly easy for citizens of the European Community, although that could be interpreted as racist, but I don’t think they had much of a choice as a member of the EU. First, the parties in Ireland I primarily support (SF and Irish Labour) opposed it as racist (and also as being in conflict with the Good Friday Agreement). Second, although I couldn’t have said this until recently, the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland for the last few years was a man named Leo Varadkar, whose father is Indian. Also, he’s an openly gay man. I don’t like him or his party (Fine Gael, who are sort of socially liberal but sort of pro-British and in love with capitalism). According to wikipedia, he was a government minister between 2011 and 2017 when he became Taoiseach. Between 2007 and 2011, when FG were in Opposition, he was a  Spokesperson (shadow minister?). The Irish language is recognized by the Constitution as the first official language and English is recognized as the second. A lot is done to promote the former, but practically everyone practically always speak the latter and everything official is available in both languages. The British came very close to stamping out the Irish language (and they WERE trying to).

The South is not comparable to the Jewish State. And SF doesn’t want a United Ireland to be any more Catholic or Irish than the South is now. The second half of this (starting with the sentence “A lot of people…”) talks about the former, and most of this deals with the latter.

Babylon 5 Reviews L

Years ago I did what you might call “reviews” of Star Trek episodes. I mostly just briefly noted what progressive politics were involved and sometimes used that as an excuse to talk about similar situations in reality.

Last year I finally watched all five seasons of Babylon 5, another sci-fi show, one I had thought of watching once in a while stretching back a couple decades. It isn’t as political or as progressive as ST but there’s some good stuff there- in fact, on one issue, a progressive take on the working-class and/or labor movement, B5 is better than ST. Because there is so little progressive material, I’m going to do one post for every four episodes reviewed, and only mention the episodes that have some progressive political stuff. I might ignore some of the more minor and/or less unique stuff about conflict resolution because from what I remember, it’s very common in this series. Also, although less so than is the case with Star Trek, multiculturalism is a big part of Babylon Five and I will also only be commenting on that when it goes further than usual. There are issues raised about telepaths- I’m going to completely ignore stuff about telepaths when reviewing these episodes. I also will probably say nothing about the conflict with the evil race the Shadows- sure, I could say Trump is as evil as they are or compare them to Nazi Germany, but that’s kind of silly (I’m sure there is nothing political about the Shadows, they’re just evil, like the Borg or the Empire). And I might skip most of the stuff about the conflict between B5 and the Earth government- I don’t remember it involving stuff like a strong capitalist agenda or racism or something.


**Season 5, Episode 1 “No Compromises”** See this for a plot summary.

This is partly about the inauguration of the President of the Interstellar Alliance. G’Kar reads the Declaration of Principles (which he wrote). He talks about freedom and inclusiveness and the right to pursue reforms within the IA (and probably member worlds as well).

When he has Sheridan place his hand on what in America would usually be the Bible, he uses a  book that is a compilation of the first page of every holy book of every race that has joined the Alliance. Although in the Declaration of Principles he DOES mention the inclusion of atheists, I’m still not totally in favor of using ONLY holy books in the swearing-in ceremony. But if I ignore that, what he did with that compilation is pretty cool.


**Season 5 Episode 3 “The Paragon of Animals”** See this for a plot summary.

A big part of this episode is about how to build the Interstellar Alliance (it’s pretty obvious the writers were inspired by Star Trek). Sheridan and most of the other main characters want members to sign a Declaration of Principles but for various reasons that have nothing to do with the substance of it, they refuse. Garibaldi, who sort of comes out as more right-wing than left-wing, says that some use of force is needed first to demonstrate what the IA can do. Sheridan is reluctant but soon finds himself needing to do it as a situation develops with a race that want membership in the IA. It turns out that the victimizers of the planet are aligned with a de facto member of the IA and Sheridan uses this (as well as successful martial and political maneuvering in the crisis) to convince the others that signing the Declaration of Principles is necessary. Setting aside for a moment how things worked out, I largely disagree with Garibaldi. Sheridan shouldn’t have been pressured to find a fight in order to get the Declaration signed. If an opportunity to fight in that situation doesn’t present itself, you shouldn’t go looking for one (at the very least because you can be accused of CREATING a crisis for your benefit politically) and starting out with principles by itself isn’t that bad.


**Season 5, Episode 4 “A View From the Gallery”** See this for a plot summary.

In general this is supposed to be from the viewpoint of B5’s working-class, but it doesn’t say much about life for workers in a capitalist system- for example, although B5 is a pro-union show, it doesn’t say anything about unions. That part of the episode is not a waste of time, it just could have been a little more political.

The main political thing is a brief discussion of how, in war, captured enemy wounded should be treated. Dr. Franklin strongly advocates for treating them as well as possible- that is, as well as friendly wounded should be treated. Although I can imagine supporting a war against an enemy state or organization I hate, their captured wounded should be treated well. It’s the right thing to do, and might affect how the enemy treats captured wounded soldiers. (on a related point, I DO accept that in some cases prisoners can't be taken and they have to be killed (i.e. units that are behind enemy lines, or the IRA in N. Ireland), but it really should be the norm).

** Season 5 Episode 5 “Learning Curve”** For a plot summary see this.

There are 2-3 political items in this episode.

First, some stuff about diversity. The Interstellar Alliance’s military component, the Rangers, were traditionally just minbari and humans but are now allowing members of other races to join. The lone representative of the Pak’ma'ra seems to be without potential because of certain characteristics of that race. But Delenn realizes those characteristics can be useful in certain jobs that Rangers do. She says something about how they can learn from humans and how we benefit from diversity (I'm not sure what she means exactly, but I think it might be at worst a flawed statement in favor of diversity).

Second is the legacy of the Earth Civil War. The new captain (largely) in charge of B5 was on the government’s side and clashes with Garibaldi. She says that, unlike the anti-government side, she didn’t believe in firing on her own ships- as if it was just those led by Sheridan who did that. It’s not clear to me who started the shooting but I watched some of two earlier episodes and it seems like it was the government (there were also two episodes where anti-government ships were reluctant to attack government ships until they had to). Captain Lochely also talks about how the military doesn’t create policy and how she believes in the chain of command, and how her opponents tore up the constitution. But, even if there was some reasonable doubt concerning the allegation that the President had his predecessor killed so he could replace him, there is no doubt that he dissolved the Senate and earlier was eroding democracy through the McCarthyist Night Watch organization.

Babylon 5 Reviews E

Years ago I did what you might call “reviews” of Star Trek episodes. I mostly just briefly noted what progressive politics were involved and sometimes used that as an excuse to talk about similar situations in reality.

Last year I finally watched all five seasons of Babylon 5, another sci-fi show, one I had thought of watching once in a while stretching back a couple decades. It isn’t as political or as progressive as ST but there’s some good stuff there- in fact, on one issue, a progressive take on the working-class and/or labor movement, B5 is better than ST. Because there is so little progressive material, I’m going to do one post for every four episodes reviewed, and only mention the episodes that have some progressive political stuff. I might ignore some of the more minor and/or less unique stuff about conflict resolution because from what I remember, it’s very common in this series. Also, although less so than is the case with Star Trek, multiculturalism is a big part of Babylon Five and I will also only be commenting on that when it is more significant than usual. There are issues raised about telepaths- I’m going to completely ignore stuff about telepaths when reviewing these episodes. I also will probably say nothing about the conflict with the evil race the Shadows- sure, I could say Trump is as evil as they are or compare them to Nazi Germany, but that’s kind of silly (I’m sure there is nothing political about the Shadows, they’re just evil, like the Borg or the Empire). And I might skip most of the stuff about the conflict between B5 and the Earth government- I don’t remember it involving stuff like a strong capitalist agenda or racism or something.

**Season 2 Episode 6 “A Spider in the Web”** See this for a plot summary.

There is one political aspect that definitely needs to be mentioned and a couple others that are also worth mentioning.

First, an Earth businessman comes to B5 to do some negotiating for a business effort on the Earth colony of Mars. Captain Sheridan is asked by an Earth Senator to spy on him. Their conversation I think is worth quoting in full (at the very least SOME of what was said is important enough to be quoted):

Senator Voudreau: Captain Sheridan.

Sheridan: Senator, what can I do for you?

Senator: Taro Isogi, chief executive of FutureCorp. has arranged a meeting on Babylon 5 with Amanda Carter, a representative of the Mars Provisional Government. Carter is an outspoken advocate of mars independence and we suspect FutureCorp. is conspiring with her to finance another rebellion on Mars Colony.

Sheridan: Do you have any proof?

Senator: We know FutureCorp desperately wants a foot-hold in space. An exclusive trade and services agreement with Mars would give it to them, if they could move the current Mars conglomerate out. Many of the members wanted to pull out after the last rebellion. Another would have them running like river rats.

Sheridan: I understand your concern. But there’s not much I can do about it. I have no authority over corporate negotiations. Babylon 5 is neutral territory. Any race can negotiate here without interference, even our own.

Senator: This is a possible threat to Earth Alliance security Captain and as such we are asking you to check it out. nothing official. just keep an eye peeled and an ear open. and report anything of interest to me.

Sheridan: with all due respect senator my duties as commander of B5 don’t include spying on civilians.

Senator: these are volatile times, Captain. practicalities are more important than principles if lives are to saved. I’ll expect to hear from you soon.


I think this illustrates that the Earth Alliance is imperialist towards Mars, although I believe the conflict and background to the conflict is probably similar to what happened with Britain and the 13 American colonies. It also may be a sign that the Earth Alliance was becoming openly undemocratic after the coup that happened at the end of the first season (that is, they might be behaving less democratically than they were before the coup (that might seem like a stupid statement, but as some readers might not know, the coup took place when the President was killed in an APPARENTLY accidental explosion- it wasn't SEEN  as a coup by hardly anyone, but viewers know that the then-Vice President was responsible)). It seems like security must be spying in some of their investigations, which if done when a judge with very high standards for that sort of thing says they can, would almost definitely be okay with me. In general, and in this specific case, I like what Sheridan has to say about neutrality and civil liberties on B5. The Senator seems willing to spin ridiculous conspiracy theories about Mars if they help Earth retain control of that planet.

There is also some other talk about the cause of Martian independence. The Earth businessman believes that his plans will make Mars self-sufficient and that will lead to independence non-violently. I’m not sure how true that sort of thing is (in reality or on this show). I guess it would make Mars less dependent on Earth, but I haven’t gotten the impression that Earth opposes Martian independence because Mars is not self-suffient (although if the problem is partly about convincing more residents of Mars to support independence, than I guess less economic and developmental dependence on Earth would help). And economic development might possibly make Earth less willing to leave Mars, if that development would mean more tax revenue, for example.

Some relevant facts about the North of Ireland:

1. I read once or twice that one reason the British and Unionists retained Counties Fermanagh and Tyrone when N. Ireland was formed is that a four county statelet wouldn’t be economically viable.

2. On a related note, a lot of people in the 1960s believed that new economic developments in the North would result in equality and a decline in sectarianism but it got worse. Part of what led to that is that the old NI-based and Unionist-owned companies were being replaced by foreign firms who didn’t care what someone’s religion was. Which meant that Protestant workers benefited from discrimination and sectarian attitudes in general less than they used to. They did not take that change lying down.

3. Lastly, some of the government actions of the Unionists in the 1960s (those which were in conflict with the modicum of movement towards equality) involved shifting development away from equality for Catholics. They cut a railroad to Derry; when they wanted to place a new university in the West they choose largely Protestant Coleraine instead of largely Catholic Derry (Coleraine is also pretty close to the East); and when an expert on development suggested a new city in the West they instead developed one just outside the Belfast area.


**Season 2 Episode 9 “The Coming of Shadows”** See this for a plot summary.

When the leader of the Centauri (Emperor Turhan) comes to B5, G’Kar (the Narn Ambassador) tries to get him banned by Sheridan. We hear that the Centauri occupation of Narn (which lasted about 100 years and ended about 15-30 years earlier) involved the strip-mining of the planet and the death of 100,000 Narn (and that may have been just one incident). Sheridan points out that while Turhan’s FATHER was responsible for that occupation, the Emperor was trying to make amends with the Narn. Sherdian seems to understand that what happened to the Narn was horrible, but encouraged G’Kar to start a dialogue with Turhan. When Sheridan refuses to ban the Centauri leader, G’Kar plans to assassinate Turhan. Before he has the chance, the Centauri is taken to the med lab and within hours is dead. G’Kar learns that he came to B5 to apologize to a Narn (specifically G-Kar, a governmental official) for everything his people did to the Narn. Specifically he said: “We were wrong. The hatred between our people can never end until someone is willing to say 'I’m sorry' and try and find a way to make things right again. To atone for our actions.”

In response to a set-back for his political associates in a domestic Centauri political battle, Molari has his allies the Shadows attack and defeat a Narn colony which is subsequently occupied by the Centauris. Right before he learns that the Centauri were responsible for the attack, G’Kar does try some dialogue with Molari. G’Kar forsees another genocidal occupation of Narn planets by the Centauri. The likelihood of it being genocidal is confirmed when the latter initially refuse to allow the civilian population to leave the colony. Molari actually says they’ll be kept busy, and when the Minbari ambassador suggests that means labor camps, Molari actually responds by saying they’ll just be getting re-training! That’s practically an admission that they were planning the creation of labor camps (Molari agrees to let the civilians leave when Earth threatens to send in observers who will investigate what is happening to them and exactly what happened with the initial attack). At roughly the same time, the Narn declare war against the Centauri.

Lastly, there’s one bit of civil liberties when Sheridan expresses alarm at the possibility that his staff eavesdropped on diplomatic communications. I can only imagine how he’d respond to what the American NSA has done.

Even without hindsight knowledge of Turhan’s intentions, I think Sheridan had a good idea encouraging G’Kar to attempt a dialogue with him. Assuming Turhan didn’t believe that the Centauri deserved an apology from the Narn, what he said about reconciliation between the two races was good. At the end, I think that the Narn were not only justified but correct in declaring war on the Centauri- as they explained in G’Kar’s statement, they won’t allow another 100 years of genocide. It’s an even better statement when seen in the context of Molari’s admission that Narn civilians would be used as forced labor.


**Season 2, Episode 10 “GROPOS”** See this for a plot summary.

There are about seven political aspects to this episode. It’s set against the background of an Earth military force waiting on B5 for orders to help one side of an alien civil war.

1. As part of the preparations for the attack, B5 is given a major weapons systems upgrade. Sheridan sees conflict between that and B5 being a place for peace-making. It reminds me of a quote of Einstein’s that you can’t simultaneously prepare for and prevent war. I don’t embrace it whole-heartedly (I’m not a pacifist and believe that as horrible as I’m sure it is, war is sometimes necessary, and/or helpful, and/or justified) but I think there’s a fair amount of truth to it. As I’ve said elsewhere on this blog the “posture” of the US military is sort of saying “don’t fuck with us” to most of the world. The thing is I think in that situation some people will WANT to fuck with us (I know there are other reasons for hostility to the US, but I think that’s part of it).

2. Sheridan learns that Earth is helping one side of the alien civil war so that they can have a presence in that part of space, a part that is strategically close to the front line of the war between the Centauri and the Narn. In an earlier conversation the assault force commander says that with the Narn-Centauri war going on the other alien races will get more aggressive. This seems fairly militaristic on the part of Earth. I also wonder if you could call it racist towards the other alien races that will allegedly get more aggressive because of the Narn and the Centauri. It SOUNDS like it MIGHT be a legitimate concern considering what I’ve seen in movies about bar brawls starting. On the other hand, I believe it’s been established that Earth is xenophobic.

3. We are reminded that B5’s doctor refuses to do exobiology work for the military when what they want are better ways to biologically or genetically wipe out alien life. In fact most of the conversation in which he explains that to his Marine father in this episode is a good example of human racism- from his father. He doesn’t pull any punches when he lets his dad know how offended he is by that.

4. There is a minor hate crime committed by a few Marines against the Minbari ambassador. They harass her for appearing part-human, surround her with her back against a wall and threaten her before another Marine intervenes.

5. The arrival of six large transports for the Marines required the dock workers to work a lot more than usual, and Sheridan has Ivanova arrange for paid time off for them as compensation for their extra work.


**Season 2, Episode 11 “All Alone in the Night”** See this for a plot summary.

There are two political issues here that are basically about the role of the military in politics.

We learn that traditionally the 9-member governing body of the Minbarri is divided between the three castes on Minbar, with the warrior, religious, and worker castes each getting 3 seats. When Delenn is replaced (because they disapprove of the transformation she went through), it is by a member of the warrior caste instead of someone from her own religious caste, thus giving the warriors 4 seats out of nine. She expresses serious concern about this. The new member from the warrior caste argues that since they are the ones who fight the wars, they should have greater representation than the workers or the religious caste.

I certainly don’t think there should be any formal expansion of power that the military have in relationship to government policy. To a large degree I think influence by the military here in the US depends on who the elected civilian leaders are and how THEY feel about the military- do they unquestioningly agree with whatever the military says about foreign policy and war? And for better or worse, the fact is that when vets run for office a certain section of the population give them a few extra points for being vets (and sometimes that involves some votes for PROGRESSIVE, anti-war vets). Although I would love to see free college education for everyone who gets accepted to a college in this country, for now people in the military get a lot of help paying for college. And then there are other things like veterans’ medical benefits, Memorial Day, etc. So it’s not like our society doesn’t recognize, for better or worse, the sacrifices made by service men and women (sometimes for a good cause but usually not (that statement is referring to ALL of the history of the US)).

There was an interesting episode on the TV show “The West Wing” in, I think, the first season. There is a violent incident involving people who are Arab and/or Muslim and might be called terrorists. The President’s personal physician, a Navy doctor, is killed. In the Situation Room the military propose some kind of minimal armed response against a state that might be partly responsible (I think it may have been Syria). The President demands something more aggressive, so the senior military officers leave and then return to the White House with a proposal that would be very bad for the civilian population of part of Syria (much worse than it would have been under their earlier proposal) and get the President to accept the earlier proposal. (I can’t remember if this was before or after the President started acting in line with his very liberal-progressive principles, but in any case it was weird because he had those principles)

The second issue is the existence of people in the military who are either progressives and/or believe very strongly in democracy in the face of some degree of authoritarianism. We learn that since Earth President Santiago was assassinated (the official line is that it was an accident) a resistance has developed in the military and Sheridan is part of it and brings his Executive Officer Ivanova, security chief, and B5’s head doctor into the conspiracy. It’s said that Santiago was a friend of B5, but we also know that he was budget-cutting, xenophobic, and isolationist which might have meant anti-war although I don’t think we can be sure of that (he was also possibly anti-labor). But apparently his replacement is worse- after the Narn-Centuari war starts he is quite ready to get into inter-stellar fights without any apparent progressive ideas guiding that (although I lean heavily towards non-violence, it IS possible for force to be used for progressive goals and as I watch the show I would be less concerned about the new President of Earth if he were guided by progressive values); we can probably assume he is continuing the budget-cutting, that he is probably an opponent of Martian Independence, and that he is xenophobic. As we see in the 3rd and 4th seasons, there is a Civil War on Earth over the legitimacy of Santiago’s successor.

I’m not going to cover more than .001% of this subject, but I think there are progressives in state military organizations (i.e. the US Army). I knew a democratic socialist who joined the military to pay for school. In the mid-1970s a fascist dictatorship in Portugal was overthrown by elements of the military who then gave up power and a democracy was created.