[Mb-civic] Scapegoating the Protests

Sat Aug 28 13:29:33 PDT 2004

For sure Hayden would write thus. He was very much involved with what went
on in Chicago 1996.
See my article about this in the Journal of the website.
http://www.michaelbutler.com, Secrets>Journal>Politics

Scapegoating the Protests

By Tom Hayden, AlterNet
 Posted on August 26, 2004, Printed on August 28, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/19677/

What is the basis for the spreading assertion that anti-war protests at the
Republican convention will help Bush? According to one observer, the
protests may become "the Ralph Nader of 2004," implying that an August
confrontation in New York will shift swing voters to the Republicans in
November. A former New Left leader warns protesters to worry about street
images of New York tipping the balance in the West Virginia general
election. The media never asks the protestors themselves what they think of
the war, or how they have managed to build the largest anti-war movement in
history, only whether their behavior will help elect Bush.

The evidence for blaming the protestors is thin, since close elections hinge
on multiple factors that might impact one or two percent of the vote. The
reasons for the current concerns are rooted deeply in the conventional
understanding of Chicago 1968 and the Nader/Green Party campaign of 2000. In
both instances, the protestors have been blamed for Republican victories.
But a clear assessment of 1968 and 2000 suggests that any single-factor
interpretation is driven by subjective needs, such as scapegoating.

I (lamely) supported Hubert Humphrey over Richard Nixon as a lesser evil. I
(passionately) supported Al Gore in 2000. But I do not blame protestors for
either outcome.

The media-engraved memory of 1968 is one of police-bashing groovy long-hairs
in the Chicago streets. But it is well to remember the realities that were
not televised. First, the Democratic Party chose to escalate the Vietnam War
and alienate the youthful protest movement and supporters of Eugene McCarthy
and Robert Kennedy. The Democratic president authorized the police tactics
that August, which were desribed as a "police riot" in the official Walker
Report review. The Democratic nominee supported the police against the
protestors.

The margin of difference in November 1968 was a fraction of one percent.
Many on the left that year, still furious, either did not vote or voted for
a minor-party alternative to Humphrey. It would be accurate to say that
their defection threw the election. But it is accurate but not fair, since
the argument ignores what caused the alienation and how the Democrats could
have addressed it by turning toward peace.

A few weeks before that election, Humphrey, trailing badly, gave a speech
declaring his independence from Lyndon Johnson and proposing peace talks in
Paris. Immediately, Humphrey's poll numbers started to climb vertically. But
Richard Nixon worked frantically behind the scenes to dissuade South
Vietnama's Nguyen Van Thieu from joining the Paris talks before the
election. NIxon succeeded, and Humphrey lost by a handful of votes.

There is no objective certainty, but Humphrey's momentum could have
succeeded if his break from Johnson had come earlier. Other factors that
could have determined the outcome are never mentioned at all, for example,
if George Wallace had taken one more percentage point from Nixon.

The outcome instead was blamed on "Chicago '68," on the young people who
passionately stood up against the war and the police tactics, were gassed,
bloodied, arrested, and falsely accused of communist conspiracies.

Why? Because scapegoating functions to shift blame from the powerful to the
powerless, from the comfortable to the marginal. As far as I know, no
national Democratic leader  nor the party  has ever taken responsibility
for what happened in that year when the party lost its soul and direction.
Instead, "Chicago '68" has become a metaphoric lesson about the dark side of
protest, not that of power.

The raw feelings about Ralph Nader have intensified since 2000 among
millions of Democrats, even including myself. In one sense, Nader is much
more responsible for electing Bush  perhaps twice  than the street
protestors of 1968. Nader and the Green Party, after all, went on proudly
campaigning to take votes away from Al Gore even when polls showed his vote
would impact the result.

Nader has failed to acknowledge or take responsibility for his part in the
debacle, in part because he is defensive but also because he rejects the
single-factor blame game. Indeed, the Socialist presidential candidate David
McReynolds won thousands of votes in Florida in 2000, yet was never
mentioned in the postmortems. Nor is the fact that Al Gore lost his home
state of Tennessee, for example.

I remain angry at Nader to this day, but wonder why he has become the
exclusive focus for Democratic rage and revenge? Is it not because
scapegoating involves a shifting of blame from oneself, or from a shared
context, to an alien Other? Is it because it is so much easier to purge the
scapegoat than reform the political culture that gave rise to his dissident
voice?

The same questions now arise surrounding the Republican convention in New
York. Even before the convention, protestors are warned of the consequences
of their protests. Since it is predictable that Bush will improve in the
polls following the convention, it is also likely that the protests will be
blamed.

Another scenario is plausible, that loud protests at the convention will
damage Bush's already-tarnished claim to be a uniter, not a divider. Voters
are likely to reject a president who, having needlessly brought death and
disorder to the U.S. standing in the world, would needlessly provoke
disorders at home in a second term.

I believe John Kerry is open to persuasion by the pressure of a mass
movement, while George Bush is not. But Kerry has positioned himself as
favoring military occupation until Iraq is "stabilized." John Edwards has
gone farther, declaring that Kerry will achieve "victory" in Iraq. Kerry is
taking an incredible gamble that every single progressive, and every
undecided vote tormented about Iraq, will vote for Kerry instead of Nader or
not at all. Bush may neutralize Kerry in the debates by asking the tough
question: What would he do differently in Iraq now? What will Kerry say to
the wavering voter? Will he find himself in Humphrey's situation, offering
too little, too late?

At this point, Bush's approval ratings are low, and Kerry's campaign is not
making the progress it might. Kerry still has a good shot of winning, but
clearly there still are many ways for the Democrats to lose. Blaming the
peace protestors is not one of them.

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