Criticism, Violence and Roosting Chickens
by:
Richard D. Wolff, Truthout | Op-Ed
Protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement in Zuccotti Park in New
York, Nov. 15, 2011. (Photo: Marcus Yam / The New York Times)
The 99 percent offered criticism of the 1 percent. They exposed and
made clear what most Americans know. They struggled peacefully to inform
and mobilize public opinion. They won huge numbers of hearts and minds.
The 1 percent in the US did what their counterparts in Tunisia, Egypt,
Bahrain, and so on did earlier this year. First, they tried to deny the
99 percent the media access needed to reach the people. That failed.
Then, they tried scattered police intimidation and pressure to stop the
criticism. That failed. Then, Democratic Party operatives tried to
convert the Occupiers to become Obama enthusiasts for next year's
election. That failed, too.
So now, the weapon of criticism wielded by the 99 percent suffers the
counter criticism of violence by servants of the 1 percent. No one will
miss which side resorted to organized, massive violence so early and so
unnecessarily in this conflict. As in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere,
having failed to win hearts and minds, US government agencies cover
their failure by resorting to violence. Chickens raised abroad return
home to roost as they often do. Consider the image: New York Police
Department machines and personnel destroy the free library that had
functioned so well in Zuccotti Park.
New York has acquired newly renamed mayor: Mubarak Bloomberg. Situated
atop the 1 percent, he gave the order to "clear and clean" Zuccotti
Park. This mayor, who presides over some of the world's filthiest
tunnels and stations - that daily threaten the public health of millions
of subway riders - suddenly acquired an obsession with cleanliness in
the small Zuccotti Park. This mayor - whose city handles garbage by
piling it in bags on the street that forever break and scatter their
contents across the streets - wants us to believe he is concerned about
public safety.
Will the failures that renamed New York's mayor spread to yield a
Mubarak Obama too? Or will the Arab Spring - so blithely praised by
Secretary of State Clinton as "freedom struggles" - resurface here to
confront the Clintons with their hypocritical complicity in repression
policies at home?
The deepening economic inequality, the moneyed corruption of politics
and the collapsing fortunes and prospects of the mass of Americans: none
of those basic conditions and causes of Occupy Wall Street have been
addressed by Bloomberg or Obama. Instead, they seek to repress those who
expose and oppose those conditions.
Meanwhile, the system that keeps reproducing those conditions - a
capitalism becoming increasingly intolerable - loses more bases of
support. In times like these, the criticism of weapons risks losing to
the weapon of criticism. Will the Arab Spring be reborn as the American
Winter?
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
No one will miss which side resorted to organized, massive violence so early and so unnecessarily in this conflict. As in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, having failed to win hearts and minds, US government agencies cover their failure by resorting to violence.
ReplyDeleteThe 1% have a visceral fear of 300 millions great unwashed hunting them down with pitchforks and candles.