The Power-Serving Myth That Anti-War Protests Make No Difference
Posted by M. C. on February 20, 2023
Noam Chomsky said “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state” because over the centuries those who seek large-scale power over other humans have discovered that dominating people psychologically is more energy-efficient than dominating them with brute force, and is far less likely to see them wind up on the business end of a guillotine blade. If you can simply trick a profoundly unfree populace into thinking that they are free, you don’t have to waste any further energy wrestling their freedom away from them.
Thousands of people from across the political spectrum gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC to protest US militarism, proxy warfare and nuclear brinkmanship in Ukraine on Sunday.
I’ve been seeing some people try to downplay the numbers on social media, but footage from the Rage Against the War Machine rally makes it clear that attendance was in the thousands; people who were there place the number at around three thousand.
This is significantly better attendance than any other American anti-war demonstration in recent years that I’m aware of. It’s nowhere remotely close to the historic numbers people demonstrated in to protest the war in Iraq, and it’s nowhere remotely close to what it should be for an issue of such existential importance.
But it’s a start. Maybe the start of something good. The ANSWER Coalition has a March on Washington scheduled for March 18th for the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion demanding “Negotiations not escalation” in Ukraine and an end to US militarism abroad. We shall see if this thing continues to pick up steam.
One criticism I hear of anti-war demonstrations is that they don’t make a difference. “Millions of us marched in opposition to the Iraq invasion, and they did it anyway!” is a common sentiment.
While it’s true that demonstrations failed to stop the invasion of Iraq, if you look at the US war machine’s actual behavior following that war, it has clearly been reacting defensively to public opposition.
If anti-war protests made no difference, the US empire wouldn’t have completely abandoned full-scale ground invasions after 2003 and switched to sneakier, less effective means of warfare while launching unprecedented narrative management systems to suppress anti-war sentiments. They abandoned Bush-era Hulk Smash ground invasions in favor of drones, proxy warfare, covert ops and sanctions because enough people rose up and said “NO” to make them afraid of the masses beginning to wake up and begin turning against them and their institutions.
And now people are even beginning to protest the proxy warfare. I guarantee you that’s making our rulers nervous about the possibility of losing the ability to effectively dominate the world with violence and coercion, and even losing the ability to continue to rule us.
These things very clearly and obviously make a difference. The only reason Syria and Iran remain sovereign, unabsorbed governments, and the only reason the imperial body count isn’t much higher today, is because enough people put their foot down and said “NO” to that kind of war.
ANSWER Coalition @answercoalition
8:04 PM ∙ Feb 15, 2023188Likes65Retweets
Our rulers pour so much effort into manufacturing consent because they absolutely require that consent in order to rule. Their worst-case nightmare scenario is the emergence of a large, robust movement of people saying “NO” to the imperial war machine, because military violence and the threat thereof is the glue that holds the empire together. It’s bringing public consciousness to the very most important aspect of the empire, which also happens to be the very least defensible.
Be seeing you
MCViewPoint 
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