On the Peace Racket

A hallmark—perhaps the hallmark—of the left's largely successful evisceration of Western democratic institutions has been its uncommon brilliance in the use and manipulation of language to twist words and phrases into a virtual caricature of their original meaning and intent. One classic example, regaining traction recently after a decade or so of neglect, is the deployment of the adjective "progressive" in the MSM.

"Progressive" contains any number of lovely, positive connotations. It's a word that makes people feel good, positive. A "progressive" idea is perceived as one that will move society forward if adopted, as opposed to the backward movement of a "reactionary" whose tendency is to oppose all "progress."

Unfortunately, 90% of the time you see this word in print, its precise translation is "socialist." The average American reacts rather badly to terms like "socialist," or, worse yet, "Communist" or "Marxist." So why not simply cover up the truth by hiding your organizational affiliation behind a much nicer word like "progressive?" Hey, it works. People have been falling for this simple deception since at least the 1930s. If you ever see the word "progressive" used in a political context, you can bet it's been used to conceal a hard core socialist agenda.

There are plenty of other words that have had their meanings utterly perverted by the organized left. "American," alas, has seen many such perversions, perhaps most notably in Norman Lear's den of socialist activists known otherwise as "People for the American Way." It's been the perfect organization for Communists and fellow travelers to disguise their true intent to subvert this country and its values. After all, with a name like that, this organization must be chock full of "patriots," right? Patriots like the Rosenbergs, no doubt.

"America," too, gets flipped for a 180. The failed hard left radio network ingenuously known as "Air America," another hotbed of hatred for this country and all the good it represents, certainly deployed the term as they tried to convince the gullible that theirs and theirs alone was the voice of true patriotism. Now essentially bankrupt, it is clear they didn't even convince their own supporters.

Another favorite of the left is the word "peace," a term that has served to conceal its often deeply violent pursuit of the socialist revolution.

Say it: peace. Hey, here's a word we can all agree on, right? Kind of soothing, isn't it? Peace. Nobody in his or her right mind wouldn't want peace to break out over our troubled world, now, would they? We want "peace" in our families, "peace" in our communities, "peace" in the world. Why don't we just "Give Peace a Chance," eh?

While "giving peace a chance" sounds like a swell idea, it's just another flavor of communist propaganda. Don't believe us? Examine the commie view of world peace right here.

Wonker experienced peace propaganda first hand many years ago when he was an undergraduate at Georgetown and became familiar with "pacifist" priest Richard McSorley, SJ. A supporter of the Berrigans and any and all radicals, the late McSorley actively encouraged students he advised to resist the draft and to protest the Vietnam War. Likewise, he also railed against the Catholic Church's "Just War" theory, making him a marginal figure among the organized clergy at that institution, at least for a time. (Georgetown's Jesuit community, even then, was slowly slip-sliding toward and embrace of "liberation theology" and "social justice," both additional cover terms for leftists hiding under their alleged Catholicism.)

McSorley, though, was onto something, a burgeoning world-wide "one world" movement of which he was but a cog. (See the "one world pledge of allegiance" here.) Under the benevolent cloak of "peace," left-wing "pacifists" were in reality yet another cadre in the service of Marxists, whose specific mission was to "prove" that the United States was, in fact, the "aggressor nation" in conflicts with the Soviet Union and its minions. McSorley's own contribution to this phony peace community was the Georgetown Center for Peace Studies. It seems, at some point, to have morphed into the school's current Center for Peace and Security Studies, a really super cover for at least part of its activities. (Web research is sketchy on this.)

With the implosion of the USSR, it was a simple matter for the left's phony, oppositional, and by now worldwide "peace movement" to transfer its allegiance to the UN, the Third World, and the European intellectual elite, all of whom still shared a common villain in the United States of America (and Israel, unfortunately, which had the bad sense to ally with the U.S. in order to avoid a second Holocaust at the hands of the Islamofascists.)

Which is where HazZzMat picks up the story (and this entry's headline) as brilliantly advanced by expatriate American intellectual Bruce Bawer who writes, in the incomparable City Journal, about the "peace racket."

We need to make two points about this movement at the outset. First, it’s opposed to every value that the West stands for—liberty, free markets, individualism—and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values. Second, we’re talking not about a bunch of naive Quakers but about a movement of savvy, ambitious professionals that is already comfortably ensconced at the United Nations, in the European Union, and in many nongovernmental organizations. It is also waging an aggressive, under-the-media-radar campaign for a cabinet-level Peace Department in the United States. Sponsored by Ohio Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich (along with more than 60 cosponsors), House Resolution 808 would authorize a Secretary of Peace to “establish a Peace Academy,” “develop a peace education curriculum” for elementary and secondary schools, and provide “grants for peace studies departments” at campuses around the country. If passed, the measure would catapult the peace studies movement into a position of extraordinary national, even international, influence.

The Peace Racket’s boundaries aren’t easy to define. It embraces scores of “peace institutes” and “peace centers” in the U.S. and Europe, plus several hundred university peace studies programs. As Ian Harris, Larry Fisk, and Carol Rank point out in a sympathetic overview of these programs, it’s hard to say exactly how many exist—partly because they often go by other labels, such as “security studies” and “human rights education”; partly because many “professors who infuse peace material into courses do not offer special courses with the title peace in them”; and finally because “several small liberal arts colleges offer an introductory course requirement to all incoming students which infuses peace and justice themes.” Many primary and secondary schools also teach peace studies in some form.

Bawer proceeds to link this socalled movement to its roots among the hard left intelligentsia in Europe. Thus neither he, nor we, will find it surprising that

...it’s America that is the wellspring of the world’s problems. In the peace studies world, America’s role as the beacon of opportunity for generations of immigrants is mocked, its defense of freedom in World War II and the cold war is reinterpreted to its discredit, and every major postwar atrocity (the Gulag, the Cultural Revolution, genocide in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan) is ignored, minimized, or—as with 9/11—blamed on the U.S. itself.

And don't imagine that the effects of this kind of relentless propaganda aren't dangerous and profound:

Warblogger Frank Martin described his visit to the military cemetery at Arnhem, in the Netherlands, where a teenage guide said that the Allied soldiers “were fighting for bridges; how silly that they would all fight for something like that.” Martin was outraged: “I tried to explain that they weren’t fighting for bridges, but for his and his families’ freedom.” That teenager articulated precisely the kind of thinking that peace professors seek to instill in their students—that freedom is at best an overvalued asset that can hinder peacemaking, and at worst a lie, and that those who harp on it are either American propagandists or dupes who’ve fallen for the propaganda. In March, Yusra Moshtat, an associate of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, and Jan Oberg, director of the foundation, wrote that “words like democracy and freedom are deceptive, cover-ups or Unspeak.” And in a 1997 speech at a Texas peace foundation, Oscar Arias, ex-president of Costa Rica and founder of his own peace foundation, described the American preoccupation with freedom versus tyranny as “obsolete,” “oversimplified,” and above all “dangerous,” because it could lead to war. In other words, if you want to ensure peace, worry less about freedom. Appease tyranny, accept it, embrace it—and there’ll be no more war.

That’s the Peace Racket’s message in a nutshell—and students find themselves graded largely on their willingness to echo it. For while the peace professor argues that terrorist positions deserve respect at the negotiating table, he seldom tolerates alternative views in the classroom. Real education exposes students to a range of ideas and trains them to think critically about all orthodoxies. Peace studies, as a rule, rejects questioning of its own guiding ideology.

Bawer's article is profound. It's a major, meticulously researched explication of a specific subset of the propaganda threads we've tried to explore here, but have rarely explained, alas, with such power and clarity. If you care at all about our freedom and our way of life, you need to read the whole thing. Warning: You'll be very upset.