• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Release Date: Sep 28, 2010
• ISBN: 9781583229330

The Enemy Is Inertia

Anti-American Manifesto reviewed by Mark Hand (pressaction.com)

The U.S. antiwar “movement” is dead, if it ever existed at all over the past 35 years. The U.S. government and its global partners are still invading and occupying nations and violently suppressing opposition movements. And the vast majority of people in the United States and the rest of the industrialized world are doing nothing useful to stop the nation-states in which they live from committing these atrocities. Holding weekly or monthly candlelight vigils doesn’t count.

Obviously, many people on the receiving end of these military attacks are resisting because they recognize they have something to gain—self-respect and possible eviction of the invaders. In the perpetrator states, the general public has been indoctrinated to tolerate their governments’ imperial policies and heartily salute the foot soldiers carrying out the lethal missions. Decades of brainwashing by nation-states cannot be erased overnight.

The cult of the military is one symptom of a more general condition of submissiveness that afflicts populations in imperial states. At the same time, politicians and the public overwhelmingly support killing the planet, although they may not realize it, or if they do, they’d never state it in those stark terms. The “economy” and “jobs” always trump preservation of life.

There are obvious and immediate steps we could take to end the warfare state, end the poisoning of our air and water, end the ritualized killing of plants and animals. But practically everyone around us prefers business as usual.

It would be unfair to minimize the harassment faced by the small number of activists in the industrialized world who are fighting back. Police agencies and courts are ramping up the surveillance, arrest and imprisonment of activists for thinking and acting against corporate and state interests that are behind the global mayhem.

But the consequences of fighting back in the so-called Western world are currently not as harsh as the everyday horrors faced by the people who are resisting foreign invaders and home-grown dictators in Afghanistan, Iraq and large parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

In his new book, The Anti-American Manifesto, cartoonist, columnist and author Ted Rall tries to awaken the American public from its decades-long coma (at least those people who haven’t gone completely brain dead) and remind them of the righteousness of fighting back against injustice and the importance of taking steps to dismantle the corporate state’s stranglehold on our lives and the world around us.

Rall wonders what it’ll take to get people off their butts and into the streets. A great recession hasn’t gotten people angry enough. (And the economy, according to conventional wisdom, is the issue that’s supposed to elicit the strongest reaction from Americans. But if an economy in terrible distress doesn’t cause a run on pitchforks, what will?) Bailing out the banks didn’t spark Americans to rise up. Spending hundreds of billions on invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t prompt Americans to storm the White House to stop the madness.

So, what’s keeping Americans from making radical change happen? Fear is one reason. Hopelessness is another. People don’t know where to begin because they don’t see any potential for success. “The tools of state and corporate repression have become airtight, approaching 100 percent efficiency in their ability to evade the slightest consequences of their actions,” Rall writes.

But Rall still must believe it’s possible—remote, but possible—that Americans will wake up one day and attempt to wrest control of the economic and political system from the people who prefer business as usual. If he didn’t believe this, he wouldn’t have bothered to write the book, you’d think.

Few people attended Rall’s book-tour stop in Washington, D.C. Granted, it was a drizzly, weekday night, but 15 people isn’t a good turnout for a fairly prominent cartoonist and author.

Frankly, I was surprised that Busboys and Poets, the bookstore and restaurant in D.C.’s bustling U Street corridor, agreed to serve as the venue for Rall’s book talk. The store/restaurant tends to avoid anything that gives off a scent to the left of the Democratic Socialists of America or Amy Goodman.

Hearing Rall talk about how dismantling the system could get messy was particularly delicious given the portraits of MLK and Gandhi hanging on the wall behind the podium. I doubt Busboys and Poets would welcome appearances by Derrick Jensen, Peter Gelderloos or Ward Churchill, each of whom has analyzed American power structures and resistance efforts in similar ways as Rall.

Speaking of Jensen, he wrote a blurb that dominates the back cover of Rall’s book. Jensen says:

"This great book lays the foundation for the revolution we all know is necessary. This is the book we’ve all been waiting for. Pick this book up. Read it. And then get ready to fight back."

Inside the book, Rall describes how “deep-green types fantasize about a collapse scenario that will save the world without anyone having to lift a finger.” Jensen certainly could be categorized as a “deep-green type,” but, as far as I know, he’s never said the industrial world would collapse without a struggle and terrible hardship. In fact, Jensen and Rall seem to be on the same page about life on earth getting quite untidy and dark before there can be a recovery.

Rall writes: “Collapse of the U.S. government will be a multidimensional disaster. People, infrastructure, and institutions we count on will be destroyed. How will we live without water treatment plants, heating fuel, and industrially manufactured medicines?” Jensen might argue such a scenario is where we need to head in order to wean ourselves off our unsustainable industrial culture.

Most of the people who showed up for the Rall’s D.C. talk appeared to be either traditional liberals or Michael Moore lefties curious to hear from someone with the guts to write and get a book published titled “The Anti-American Manifesto.” During his talk, Rall asked the audience a couple questions. First, what’s the worst problem we, as individuals, face that “the government” could solve? Second, what’s the biggest problem the world faces today that governments could fix? Rall passed the microphone around the audience. Healthcare was mentioned a few times as the most pressing individual problem and climate change got a few votes as the top global problem.

Next, Rall asked the attendees if they thought there was a significant chance the U.S. political/economic system would do what was necessary to have a positive impact on these issues. About a third of the attendees raised their hands. Based on responses from his book talks in other cities, Rall noted that D.C.-area residents are the most optimistic about the nation’s political and economic systems—hence, the low turnout for a talk by an author who’s promoting the dismantlement of those systems.

The moral of the story—and it’s an obvious one—is don’t count on Washington serving as a strong recruiting ground for any movement aimed at steering the United States off its suicidal course. As the nation’s political center, Washington’s day-to-day operations are focused on keeping the system as healthy as possible and fending off any destabilization attempts. The city serves as a large reeducation camp where any person who dares to say the system is rotten to the core is read the riot act by liberals and leftists who fear the state will grow even more repressive if too many people rock the boat.

Jon Stewart’s upcoming Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington, also known as the Million Moderate March, and Stephen Colbert’s companion March to Keep Fear Alive represent a triumph for the reeducation camp leaders who hope to see tens of thousands of people on the National Mall rallying in support of keeping Americans from getting too angry. As the organizers of the unrelated Million Molotov March, scheduled for the same day as the Stewart/Colbert event, state:

"Being moderate in a time of ongoing wars, economic collapse, and increasing hatred against immigrants is ridiculous. Do we want a more moderate occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan? A moderate amount of deportations? Only a moderate amount of homes being foreclosed? Stewart and Colbert are hosting a carnival of the absurd on the National Mall, so we say: embrace absurdity!"

As for tactics and plans, in more than one chapter, Rall applauds the decentralized work of groups such as the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front and says more activists should be following their model. But liberating mink or burning down an SUV dealership isn’t enough, Rall says.

“Freelance violence will always play an important role in attempts to overthrow a power structure,” he writes. In Nazi-occupied Europe, for example, such acts built up support by demonstrating action was possible. “But these slightly-more-than-symbolic acts are secondary at best,” he says. “These can never prove decisive in the struggle.”

Some people who’ve followed Rall’s work over the past 10 years will probably view a book about dismantling the U.S. political and economic systems as coming out of the blue. With this book, he transforms himself from an outspoken yet traditional American leftist into a revolutionary agitator who recognizes there’s no hope in the nation’s destructive system. Some people may view Rall with suspicion because he appears on the “dismantle-the-system” scene practically out of nowhere, espousing programs that are radically different than the potential strategies and solutions he was promoting not too long ago.

Toward the end of the book, Rall explains he wasn’t always a radical (of course, few of us can say we we’ve fought the system since our teenage years). As recently as six years ago, Rall wrote a book titled Wake Up! You’re Liberal! in which he scolded leftists who romanticize revolution. “Revolutionaries rarely rule; revolutionary principles rarely become law,” Rall wrote in the 2004 book. “Once you shake things up, the uncertainty principle goes into overdrive. If possible, it’s better to reform than to revolt.” (emphasis added)

Boy, how Rall has changed his tune on the value of “revolution” and “revolt”! He still fully endorses the “uncertainty principle” in his new book, although he now believes it’s not a deal-breaker. He argues it’s up to revolutionaries to be prepared to fill the power vacuum during the period when the state collapses and uncertainty is rampant. An even better scenario, though, would be for activists “to step into the breach before the current system collapses; if we fail, even worse forces will replace them,” Rall says.

Rall says he hated the title of Wake Up! You’re Liberal. “I didn’t say that I was a liberal—just that you are. Which is still probably true,” he writes in The Anti-American Manifesto. “But I have concluded several times throughout my life that nothing short of the radical actions I call for in this manifesto would be sufficient to save us, our nation, and the world with its plants and animals—and I have been afraid to say so.”

What led to Rall’s political transformation? Was it related to his employment situation, when he got laid off in April 2009 from his job as an executive editor at United Feature Syndicate? Rall writes in The Anti-American Manifesto: “My boss, Lisa, had been trying to harass me into quitting for months: insulting me at meetings in front of my colleagues …, assigning me Herculean tasks she knew I couldn’t perform …, attempting to humiliate me by making me do shit work previously assigned to entry-level employees.”

It sounds as if Rall’s experience at United Feature Syndicate was extremely painful, and one that further opened his eyes to how large corporations often mistreat their employees. Did this experience radicalize him on the issue of corporate wrongdoing?

Or perhaps, Rall had always held the radical beliefs expressed in The Anti-American Manifesto and getting laid off from his full-time corporate job at United Feature Syndicate emboldened him or created a situation in which he had less to lose by getting his “revolutionary” manifesto published.

You may trust Rall’s reasoning behind his conversion or you may think his call for “revolution” reeks of a cry for attention. But either way, The Anti-American Manifesto stands as a polished polemic against the modern American warfare state and the liberals and leftists who protect it through their obstructionism.

Rall is a clever and entertaining writer. And if you’re put off by the book’s title and his calls for revolution, let it be known that Rall doesn’t want to be the next Bob Avakian. And he’s doesn’t write in inaccessible Marxist jargon.

“We need to stop turning our anger into ourselves or against one another, while gobbling pills to keep sane,” Rall writes. “We need to direct the anger against its source: the people and institutions that are enslaving us. No one can enslave you without your consent. We are our own wardens. We can leave our prison any time.”

Perhaps a better title for the book, and one that could have served as a natural sequel to his 2004 book, would have been: “Wake Up … You’re Alive.” Essentially, Rall’s “manifesto” is a comprehensive and well-researched call for people to stand up and fight back.