Last week in the music class we listened to and discussed post 9/11 political music. Two of the selections were Tom Morello's "The Road I Must Travel" and Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)." Morello plays with Rage Against the Machine and is a political activist who founded Axis of Justice with Serj Tankian of System of a Down.
Toby Keith's song was part of a wave of post 9/11 "patriotic" themed country music. Back in 2004 NPR broadcast a segment showcasing the divisions between country artists.
Students had no trouble identifying the nationalist rhetoric in Keith's song or the fact that Morello's video identifies him with his favorite historical agitators. Morello's video flashes quotations from Frederick Douglass, Che Guevara, Joe Hill, Emma Goldman, Huey Newton, Subcomandante Marcos, Malcolm X, and Mohandas Gandhi, but almost none of my 26 students (almost all seniors) had heard of any of these activists except for Malcolm X and Gandhi. With all of the right wing accusations of the left slant in the academy,you'd think the students would already have those quotes burned into their biceps as tattoos.
College students' lack of "civic literacy" made the news last September, but most college profs were aware of the problem long ago. Probably it would be a good idea to mandate more teaching of history in K-12 and the universities, but I don't really think that will produce any dramatic changes in what students know. The students (and non-students for that matter) most interested in history, it seems to me, are those who see themselves as history makers. Wanting to make history (especially as regards social justice issues) gets them excited and interested in the historic struggles of the past. Those least interested in history are those for whom history is over: the world is the way it is, you really can't change anything even if you wanted to, and so you just make the best of what's available.
Toby Keith's video can't be embedded but you can see it here.
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"Those least interested in history are those for whom history is over: the world is the way it is, you really can't change anything even if you wanted to, and so you just make the best of what's available."
You can hardly blame them. I would guess most anyone my age, growing up on the Internet, watching the news, yes, even learning history has the overwhelming sense that on the really BIG issues, like the ones we only talk about in philosophy anymore, attempts at change are now largely futile and when change does happen, it largely happens TO us. I still have my fingers crossed, but these are pretty dark times for big ideas.
I hear you Archi, but has there ever really been a good time for big ideas? If we were having this conversation in 1807 something like abolition would be a big idea, but it would still be a very long time before we'd see the end of chattel slavery in the states and many other abuses and oppressions. Probably if we could talk to any of those icons cited in Morello's video, they'd all say they lived in a time hostile to big ideas and change; i.e. they lived in a time just like now.
Doesn't it seem, though, that the technique and philosophy of these past history makers is no longer effective? It does to me.
Well, let's for the sake of argument call the philosophy of these history makers "collective action." Let's call the technique "organizing people at the grassroots level."
I think that philosophy and technique are as effective as ever. They are also as difficult as ever to put in place, but for different reasons.
"Back in the day," collectivism and local organizing were actively disrupted by government and/or other institutions of power. The FBI's COINTELPRO program (1956-1971) is a good example of an active attempt by government to destroy social movements.
Without question, government and other institutions of power are still in the business of disruption (the PATRIOT Act is just the most obvious example of modern "anti-terror" tools that can be used to intimidate social justice organizers). But I think today collectivists are in a Pogo universe: "We have met the enemy and he is us." Some believers in collectivism put all their energy into working with establishment political parties that are quite hostile to the collectivist spirit; others cannot or will not work with anyone who disagrees with them on an issue, and so on.
The list of things that the so-called collectivists do to undermine themselves is at least as long as what government does TO them.
If a change of government group gets going in Oshkosh, perhaps it will be a good test case of what we are talking about.
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