As I was reading Charles M. Brown's article "Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist" the other day, I found myself thinking about other high-profile (but unrepentant) "peace activists" who have been in the news lately. Naturally, Rachel Corrie was among them. But mostly, I was reminded of the maelstrom of discontent that is Charlotte Kates.
If there are five distinct themes that can be distilled from Mr. Brown's essay, they would be these:
1. Anti-Sanctions activists appropriated rhetoric and ritual from the Vietnam War era without regard to its utter inapplicability to current events;
2. Anti-Sanctions activists in general had little or no knowledge of the history, culture or politics of the people whose welfare they purported to promote;
3. Anti-Sanctions activists were more than willing to allow themselves to be used as the propaganda tools of a ruthless regime and an oppressive dictator in exchange for the privileges of exclusive audiences and photo-ops that provided ammunition for their "cause";
4. Anti-Sanctions activists were content to compromise their own values as well as the welfare of the alleged objects of their beneficence in order to maintain the "integrity" of their "message"; put another way, they were less concerned with the suffering of the Iraqi population than they were with attacking U.S. foreign policy, an attack that ultimately became an end in itself; and finally
5. Any challenge to or deviation from the appointed script results in derision and alienation, making constructive criticism or reform from within virtually impossible.
Every one of these points, of course, could be made with equal accuracy about today's "peace movement" in general and the ISM in its various incarnations in particular. Even more interesting, though, the mindless willingness to be manipulated, the sacrifice of self respect and personal integrity for the "cause," the deliberate rejection of "unhelpful" knowledge, all remind me of the constraints often imposed on their members by religious cults.
I've long suspected that extremist ideological movements and religious cults tend to attract the same sort of person. It's that need to feel they have exclusive access to "the truth," and the conviction that this knowledge makes them "special," and that they share this "specialness" with a tightly-knit group of fellow "insiders." Powerful stuff for needy people.
So it was no big surprise to discover that Charlotte Kates is (or at least claims to be) a disaffected Scientologist. I say "claims to be" because the Scientologists and their allies (for what their word is worth) now accuse her of having been a deliberate plant, working in collusion with their "enemies." That may be, but this account sure sounds like the confession of a reformed believer to me and, once again, reading it, I was struck by the similarities between the cult she's left and the one she now leads.
Like I said, powerful stuff for needy people.
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You can verify some of Charles Brown's old anti-sanctions activities here. And you can also check out his former friends in Voices in the Wilderness, where you'll find that they don't yet seem to realize they have "lost their cause" (they're still promoting "war tax" resistance and other fun stuff).
And, to further the point, I see Meryl's written a new ISM exposé (my but she recovered fast!) inspired by a pretty scathing fisk of ISM's latest whine festival over at Sha!. (I now see that even more discussion of ISM's latest antics has popped up here and here and here and, well, a lot of other places, too.)
