The Anti-American Manifesto [review]

The Obama Administration’s signoff on bailouts fired up the political right. The Bush Administration’s war in the Middle East ignited the political left. But for some, both leaders represent a clique that seems more intent on maintaining its position than serving basic needs. Plenty of reform movements have sought to make changes to the structure. Yet ongoing frustrations with the federal monolith have ginned up a culture of political malcontents who see little redeeming quality in a Beltway composed of lobbyists, corporations and the power-hungry. Glenn Beck, for instance, makes a handsome living on right-flavored gesticulation on Washington elites.

In The Anti-American Manifesto (Seven Stories Press, 2010), political cartoonist Ted Rall makes persuasive and intelligent arguments on many subjects, from capitalism’s failures to the futility of pacifism, to the centerpiece of his nearly 300-page proclamation, a centerpiece Beck and his compatriots are likely to duck: that a (presumably armed) revolution is needed now.

Rall offers dozens of citations and polemics about where the United States is at today. His punchy writing moves briskly, but he never loses the reader with obscure commentary. Instead, Rall keeps his analysis of the political terrain of the moment. Foreclosures, unemployment, bailouts and the lies of the Iraq War figure prominently in The Anti-American Manifesto. But unlike the James Carvilles of the world, Rall is not looking to redeem the political system to serve the people. Here, the author openly doubts that will to serve the people is even possible. His solution is to do away with the system as it exists.

The biggest and fatal flaw in Rall’s thesis — if you agree with his position on the necessity of revolutionary change — is in his misreading of the role of ideology, party and politics in actual organizing toward said revolutions.

Rall eschews ideology — as well as liberalism, socialism, anarchism, communism, etc. — as a bygone matter to the majority of people. Such positioning is not unusual. Several left currents support a generalized multi-tendency or no-tendency approach to their vision. The result is a seemingly yogurt-soft populism, where politicians and business interests are the enemy and getting them out is the goal, but without an actual clue of what do to make it happen or afterward. What the anti-ideology wing fails to understand is political economy over the last 60 years.

Right-wing political factions, bashed frequently throughout The Anti-American Manifesto, are successful in organizing because they have an ideology and a (Republican) party to fight over, mobilize people to, and push forward their political will on the population. Clearly the left does not have the equivalent in the Democratic Party. Yet history — think the Spanish Civil War among many failed rebellions — has often shown merging groups with different political goals around an agenda that does not speak openly to those goals, or worse no politics at all, is bound for failure.

The conservative political seeds Leo Strauss planted decades before have flowered in diverse ways, from the Tea Party movement to the Religious Right. Contending at points, conservatives nevertheless have been successful because they have managed to not do as Rall argues is best for aspiring revolutionaries: unite with everyone, from kindred spirits to fascists, to achieve their objectives. Instead the conservative ideology has been successful as a unifying vision that anyone can claim to be a part of. Through such self-identification, respectable forces can keep distance while in spirit sharing the same ideals with uglier shock troops. Rall proposes what is at its base a deal with the devil, and one that is likely to demoralize potential support, under a banner of victory at any cost. One could argue such tactics were successful in some struggles Rall cites — anti-colonial rebellions like that in Algeria, where a diverse movement was focused on kicking an occupying nation from its country. But the U.S. revolution Rall talks about isn’t one of indigenous people taking back their land, but of everyday Americans revolting against politicians and corporations. Theoretically, one could call corporate power an occupying army. Getting people to buy that enough to make life and death decisions? Not so much.

The Anti-American Manifesto offers many intriguing posits and puts forward a bold position in a time when most preach moderation in the face of conservative extremism. The debates it is sure to stir can ultimately only be a benefit.

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