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Fra: MR JAVIER BERNAL [mailto:988005350@98.lincoln.ac.uk]
Sendt: 4. november 1999 17:09
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Emne: The Internet as an anti-war tool [fwd]
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Subject: The Internet as an anti-war tool [fwd]
From: Herman de Tollenaere <hermantl@stad.dsl.nl>
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Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 17:15:47 +0100
ACTIVISTS ONLINE
The Internet has emerged as a powerful anti-war tool
JAY MOORE
The onward march of new communications
technologies has a profound impact on the way that
warfare is perceived and conducted -- and opposed. The
US Civil War, the first to be fought with the means for
killing produced by the Industrial Revolution, was also
the first extensively photographed war. Matthew Brady's
haunting images of corpses piled in front of the guns at
Antietam and Gettysburg brought the harsh realities of
modern warfare to those at home who previously
depended on charcoal sketches and word pictures. The
photographs helped to undermine some of the false
romantic notions about battlefield combat accepted by
many at the time.
The first televised war was Vietnam. Walter Cronkite,
Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley brought its horrors
into million of homes during the dinner hour, with
casualty counts, images of napalmings, body bags,
executions in the streets, and talking heads who
claimed to see light "at the end of the tunnel." Although
the Pentagon and the White House used TV to sell the
war, just as their predecessors used radio and
newspapers, the medium nevertheless helped awaken
and enlarge the anti-war movement.
The US/NATO attack on Yugoslavia was the first
Internet war. Developed by the Pentagon in the 1960s,
the Internet was intended to enable the military and
government types to communicate even during and
after a nuclear war. Today, perhaps ironically, the same
technology is being put to wide use by grassroots
organizers in anti-war and other campaigns.
For many activists, the potentials offered by the Internet
became clear in 1994 when the Zapatistas emerged out
of the jungles of southern Mexico. Even though this
indigenous movement was surrounded and forced to
retreat by the Mexican military, the savvy, enigmatic
Subcomandante Marcos broke the official information
blockade and prevented a probable military campaign of
annihilation by connecting with the outside world
through timely e-mail communiqués. A host of Web
pages launched by supporters soon followed. Now, it
seems, every guerilla and national liberation movement
and Third World solidarity organization in the First
World has its own Website and e-mail networks.
Political activists in the US and around the world have
been using the Internet to organize on behalf of death-
row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal and other political
prisoners. They've built solidarity with labor struggles,
and mobilized opposition to corporate and government
environmental threats like the exporting of nuclear
waste to a poor minority community in West
Texas and the slaughter of old-growth forests in the
Pacific Northwest. This usage has been a real "growth
industry," paralleling the growing popularity of the
Internet -- largely driven, again ironically, by commercial
interests.
The Great Equalizer
During the recent NATO bombing, Western
governments tried to control the flow of information,
hoping to put their exclusive spin on events. Even
more than during the Gulf War, the corporate media of
these "free" countries accepted this with very little
questioning. Yet, the Internet was the one big fly in the
ointment.
The media watchdog organization Fairness and
Accuracy in Media (FAIR) has documented how rarely
anti-war voices, even notable ones such as Noam
Chomsky, were allowed to appear on CNN, PBS, etc.
Nevertheless, those with access to the Internet could
easily find public intellectuals on the Left exposing the
distortions and lies of the warmakers at Websites such
as Z Magazine's. With a modest monthly circulation, Z
is hardly a threat to Newsweek or Time. But the Web
is proving to be a great equalizer. Despite a limited
budget, that one publication can potentially reach just
as many people through its on-line site as the well-
heeled bastions of yellow journalism.
The Internet makes it possible to get news directly from
the source, thus making possible more informed
evaluations of whether the mainstream media are being
truthful. For example, when the World Court issued its
ruling in the case brought by Yugoslavia against the
NATO countries to stop the bombing, Western media
put an immediate pro-war spin on the news, saying
that Yugoslavia had lost the case.
Actually, the court had only turned down Yugoslavia's
request for provisional measures halting the bombing,
pending hearings on its legality in international law. The
hearings would go ahead, and the court said it was
"profoundly concerned with the use of force in
Yugoslavia," which, "under the present circumstances
... raises very serious issues of international law."
Instead of depending on what the BBC or AP had to
say about the court's ruling, one could go directly to the
World Court's Website, where the ruling was posted
within minutes of its issuance.
Much of the grassroots activism against the
US/NATO's war of aggression against Yugoslavia was
organized with the help of the mechanisms provided
by the Internet. Communicating the latest news,
sharing organizing tips, and debating strategy through e-
mail and "lists" saved time and money once devoted to
attending innumerable (and often interminable) coalition
meetings.
Potentially, it also could obviate the need for quite so
many hierarchical decision-making structures. People
who couldn't travel to meetings in the past due to job
conflicts or poverty are now more able to participate.
Instead of duplicating work, activists in one area can
use the Web to download leaflets and posters produced
elsewhere, making local modifications as needed and
quickly getting them on the street.
Refuting the Spinmeisters
In earlier "modern" wars, soldiers who found themselves
in opposing trenches sometimes reached out and
fraternized with the enemy. Seeing that the other guys
weren't demons who had to be killed simply because
they spoke another language or were subjects of
another government could have a very radicalizing
effect. Consequently, it was heavily frowned upon by the
command structures. This is one of the reasons why
war has grown more technological and impersonal.
Today, bomber pilots rain down death from 15,000 feet,
while technicians launch cruise missiles on targets from
hundreds of miles away.
Yet, the Internet is helping civilians, if not soldiers, to
"fraternize" with "the enemy" despite the barriers
erected by opposing governments. Like others, I have
several e-mail correspondents in Yugoslavia, people who
reached out to explain what was really happening in
their country and their terrible experiences during the
bombing. To hear directly and quickly from someone
about spending the night huddled in a bomb shelter
brings the war home across thousands of miles and the
cultural gap that separate us. Attending an anti-war
demonstration now has a new, more personal
motivation.
Yugoslav individuals and NGOs also created effective
Websites, with photos and video of NATO's notorious
"collateral damage" and "mistakes." Several sites
reported minute-by-minute news from the fronts, using
volunteer e-mail and telephone correspondents to track
planes from take off in Italy to the moment they
unloaded their bombs. There were also immediate
reports on SAMs fighting back and civilian casualties.
Needless to say, the authorities didn't appreciate this
sort of eyewitness reporting, which undermined the
ability of NATO's spinmeisters to manipulate and
control the public's access to information that was
potentially embarrassing to the "war effort." Thus,
NATO also targeted the communications infrastructure
throughout Yugoslavia and even threatened to pull the
satellite plug that connects Yugoslavia to the rest of the
vast Internet. Fortunately, the lines of people-to-people
communication remained open and available.
Changing Perceptions
My own favorite war Website was the collaborative
creation of two elderly women living in Belgrade and
one of their daughters in Los Angeles. They called it
"Sisters Under Seige." The sisters e-mailed or
telephoned the younger woman and she uploaded their
accounts of the previous day's experiences -- from what
it was like to go food shopping under wartime
conditions to the horrors of discovering that a friend
may have been killed in the bombing. The women also
used their site to link to anti-war commentaries and
promote peace activities around the world.
The Internet is by no means a substitute for more
traditional, tried and true methods of reaching out with
leaflets, vigils, and sit-ins, or various forms of
"propaganda of the deed." Access to the costly
hardware and hookups that make it possible to use the
Internet for organizing is definitely skewed by race and
class, and somewhat by gender, although those
limitations are being mitigated in many places through
the greater availability of public access computers.
Nor is the Internet an agora in the same way as a
public square or shopping mall, where people from very
different backgrounds and with varying levels of
understanding share the same physical space.
Although the Internet includes many kinds of people,
it's much more subdivided by interest and identity
groups that may or may not communicate with each
other. It seems best at linking those who already have
some interest, not for reaching the unconverted.
Nevertheless, during NATO's war it provef to be an
important and valuable new organizing tool, with
potentials still in the process of being realized. The way
we perceive war -- and oppose it -- won't be the same
again.
-- Jay Moore teaches history at the University of
Vermont. He is the creator and moderator of "Jay's
Leftist and Progressive Internet Resources Directory,
www.neravt.com/left/ . Websites mentioned in this
article include Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR),
http://www.fair.org/ ; Z Magazine, www.lbbs.org/ ;
World Court, www.icj.law.gla.ac.uk/ ; Sisters
Under Seige, www.keepfaith.com/ .
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