The Same New World:

Antiauthoritarian Politics after September 11

by Cindy Milstein

Most of us will always remember where we were when we first heard the news,
first saw the unreal images, on that morning that can only be called, quite
inadequately, a tragedy. There is no erasing the memory of what happened,
just as there is no bringing back the dead. September 11 will always be a day
to be condemned.

It will also mark a juncture in history. The list grows increasingly long
by the hour: a lengthy war allegedly sanctioned by, in Bush's words, "the
collective will of the world"; racist attacks on Muslims and Arabs; the
gutting of civil liberties; patriotic flag waving and media-sponsored
jingoism; new subsidies for the rich and further degradation for the poor;
and much more.

Those of us on the antiauthoritarian Left also face the snapping shut of
the space we worked so hard to create; a space that allowed for dissent, but
also utopian impulses and even concrete possibilities. While there is clearly
no comparing the despair this causes us to the tremendous anguish of those
whose friends, colleagues, and family members perished in the explosions, nor
the exacerbated suffering of Afghan civilians, these are trying times indeed
for anarchists. The ills of globalization that appeared so sharp on September
10 seem to have disappeared, and with them, the reason for a radical social
movement. Or perhaps there are simply more important concerns now, and so
what little space still remains has quickly been filled by a predictable,
though needed antiwar activism, opportunistically latched onto by the
authoritarian Left.

But glimpsed from a certain angle, the newly altered global terrain after
the September 11 suicide strikes is not so different after all. The hijacked
planes speeding into the twin symbols of capitalism only helped accelerate
political, social, and economic upheavals already swiftly underway. Towers
may have tumbled, but the process made up of a constellation of phenomena
bundled under the term "globalization" moves forward at a mind-bogglingly
renewed pace, forging new forms of domination even as it affords openings.
And given the tenacity of barbarism—from terrorism to militarism, from
internationally networked fundamentalists to the international "community" of
statists and capitalists—struggles to draw out the liberatory potentials
within globalization appear even more imperative.

This means assessing not so much the changed world, crucial as that is,
but the not-so-changed one that confronts us after the "attack on America."
And not simply to reclaim the offensive that had the G8, IMF/WB, and WTO on
the run. (As long ago as it now seems, the most powerful governments on earth
basically lost the legitimacy to meet in their own cities, much less
publicly, after Genoa; the IMF/WB scaled back their fall meetings months
before the planned direct actions even came near the streets; and the WTO is
still scurrying for cover this November in a country without much pretense of
democracy.) We must size up the same new world in order to regain our voices
as antiauthoritarians, as a counterpoint to the cacophony of the doublespeak
of nation-states, worn-out rhetoric of most leftists, and patriotism of the
populace and media. Only by understanding the complexities of the world, both
the heightened sameness as well as disconcerting newness, can anarchists
again serve as voices of conscience.

What follows are some tentative thoughts, far from answers and further
still from solutions, along two intertwined yet divergent paths. That's all
that seems possible right now, given how confusing conditions remain; any
answers would seem pat or flat, any solutions too easy and thus meaningless.
As anarchists, finding our way again, much less the ground beneath our feet,
must be slow, steady, and well reasoned, especially if it is to resonate with
society at large.

The Path of Least Resistance

Wall Street shut down, for the longest period in its history. On any other
day, in the context of a widespread social movement, this would have been
cause for celebration. But it was impossible to feel joy given the
circumstances. This is the paradox at the heart of the film Fight Club. The
alienation that we in the glittering consumer society of the West feel—at
least those of us fortunate enough to have material plenty—can go in either
libertarian or fascistic directions. Either may bring transnationals to their
knees, but the means are quite different and the ends even starker. As Fight
Club implies, a world opposed to or ultimately even outside of capitalism
could look equally ugly, equally violent.

No one can really say why the suicidal hijackers of September 11 targeted
the World Trade Center and Pentagon, but it's safe to venture that it had
something to do, at least in part, with the unease caused by a world in
transition. (That in no way justifies the means used, nor in all likelihood,
the equally brutal and authoritarian ends.) Yet ironically, rather than
slowing or halting the dizzying transformation known as globalization, the
one-two punch aimed at the great symbols of capitalism and militarism has
only increased its velocity, and from an antiauthoritarian perspective, sent
it in the wrong direction.

The tectonic shift known as globalization, still so difficult to define,
is in large part about a shift in power relations. It is a shift that is far
from settled. As globalization breaks down all sorts of barriers—social as
well as spatial, real as well as virtual—it carves out a world just as open
to the free flow of resistance as of capitalism. Capitalism's internal
compulsion to continually expand is greatly helping to remap the world as one
without borders, but so too are the growing bonds of solidarity between the
earth's displaced, dispossessed peoples. The powerful and powerless are both
influential in this globalizing process; at the same time, both are also very
much at its mercy. Because as old divides crumble, up for grabs is where and
with whom power will ultimately reside once the world is fully
globalized—"power" here referring to what and who will ultimately decide the
shape of that fully globalized world. Thus is globalization creating a power
vacuum.

Authoritarians and antiauthoritarians alike have stepped into this vacuum
in a struggle for very different notions of how decision making should be
structured. Those presently in command obviously have a greater advantage.
But because the power struggle takes place within, not outside, the
globalization process itself, everyone is forced to play by the new rules
being created by a globalizing world. These rules mandate such strategies as
mobility, flexibility, openness, networking, and cooperation. Our old
mind-sets, however, haven't caught up to these new rules, and hence it is
difficult to see that even the powerful are destabilized. This is the unease
of globalization even for a superpower as preeminent as the United States,
the nation-system central to creating a globalized world yet vulnerable to
being unraveled by the very process of getting there. Two examples from the
new "war on terrorism" will hopefully suffice here: the open borders–closed
borders dilemma, and the need for international cooperation before launching
strikes against, for now, Afghanistan.

Long before the eleventh of September, as far back as the mid-1940s and
certainly since the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the nation-state as a
tightly bounded entity has been in decline. International bodies from the
European Union to the Hague Tribunal are helping to capture more and more of
the "traditional" functions of individual states at the supranational level.
Certain states benefit and others lose out in the short run, but all states
must increasingly forfeit elements of their autonomy in this new world
community. A related, though different breaking down of the national
boundedness of capitalism has taken place, and supranational corporations and
financial institutions are now the norm. This upward consolidation of
governance and economics, to name just two key spheres, has made borders
between countries and even continents increasingly irrelevant.

Yet unlike capitalism, which happily assists in tearing down walls in
order to grow, borders are necessary for states if they are to remain a
distinct set of institutions with powers all their own. In short, if they are
to remain a distinct state. As quickly as the globalization process
irrevocably chips away at borders, then, states must just as quickly engage
in keeping up appearances that they do, indeed, control their own territory.
For this patina of control is what makes the difference being legitimacy and
illegitimacy for states. When individual countries are forced by a
globalizing world to ease border restrictions, they must maintain this
illusion of control by promoting and/or signing agreements that ratify what
is, to a certain extent, already the on-the-ground reality.

And so seeming paradoxes abound. The U.S. government promulgates an
agreement to fling open borders throughout the Americas to trade, and is even
willing to consider a quasi-citizen category for Mexican "guest" workers in
the United States, but (vainly) tries to stave off border crossings for
illegal drugs or immigrants, or for those anarchists who wanted to join the
Anti-Capitalist Convergence in Quebec last April. This paradox has only been
accentuated since September 11. For instance, it is now much more difficult
for U.S. citizens to get back into the States after visiting Canada, but Bush
is trying to do an end run around activists by getting Congress to agree to
fast-track the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas—to patriotically show
those terrorists they can't stop business as usual (which, of course, they
haven't). As globalization congeals into a globalized world, however, this
contradiction will likely be resolved as borders blur and perhaps even
dissolve. Unfortunately, such a "no borders" campaign is a frightening
prospect when waged by nation-states—the victor potentially being competing
networks of suprastates or even a one-world government monopoly.

But that is the possible totalizing world of tomorrow. For now, another
example of the post–September 11 acceleration in this blurring of borders
relates to policing. The terror perpetrated on U.S. soil brought the world
home. It is, of course, a positive development that Americans now realize
they are part of humanity. Yet Bush and company would have us believe that
means there is now "no place to hide," neither for terrorists nor us many,
lowly civilians. Or more precisely, everywhere is now a potential hiding
place, everyone a possible suspect, for September 11 showed that fear and
terror know no borders. They don't tell us that states, too, also have no
safe refuge. They would rather have us think that if the earth is indeed
everyone's home, we must defend it against intruders, and that means calling
the police. Anticapitalist activists know full well that "domestic" police
like the FBI had already gone global to lend a hand against protesters in
Prague; and Dutch and German police in one small region recently built a
station that straddles both their countries' borders. What might have been a
gradual process, though, has now been telescoped since the suicide attacks.
"Homeland security" involves European NATO planes policing U.S. skies; police
"wiretaps" will follow individuals across borders rather than staying put on
a phone. Enter the age of the supra–police state.

The processes of globalization still place limits even on these new forms
of domination, at least for the moment. Cooperation is one of the restraints,
for cohabitation on a globalized planet necessitates that we—the "we" running
the gamut from police to states to fundamentalists to leftists—get along out
of mere survival. Such global "cooperation" could already be seen in relation
to flows of capital; national currencies giving way in Europe to a regional
one, the Euro, are just one instance. But the war on terrorism ushers in a
heightened sense of cooperation, in this case between nations. The U.S.
government can no longer get away with being the world's police. As one part
(albeit still a major one) of what's becoming a police world, it too must now
seek out and actually get moral and material cooperation from a plurality of
states, nominally democratic or not. "An attack on one is an attack on all,"
affirms NATO in a grand subversion of the Wobbly slogan. "Not in our name,"
chant peace activists in the United States, but "our name" is much larger and
more dangerous than simply "America." And much more complex. This global war
will involve a consensus much harder to combat in that it stretches across
cooperating states, not between competing ones, in a battle against "rogue
nations" and stateless "evil."

This is a small, still shadowy part of the world emerging after September
11. It is a changed world, perhaps, but only because the changes already
underway were so fast-forwarded as to appear as something completely new. The
same new world's novelty, however, lies in its ability to throw everyone and
everything off balance. Old assumptions have indeed been shattered, but they
were shattered long before September 11, and unless we carefully shift
through the rubble, we will find neither cause nor effect.

The Path of Renewed Resistance

The Statue of Liberty shut down, for the longest period in its history (other
than for renovations or repairs). If we are supposedly returning to "normal,"
if the U.S. government is allegedly defending the liberties that make this
country exemplary, why protect Liberty Enlightening the World, as she's
officially called, from the public? It's only one statue, and a contentious
one at that, but what better symbol of the irony of the war on terrorism to
guarantee "enduring freedom" than its continued closure?

For this statue was intended to stand for "universal political freedom";
it was meant to welcome all peoples of the world into a purportedly
democratic society. The fact that unlike the stock exchange, this icon has
still not been able to be reopened makes plain the U.S. government's values.
And certainly, there are many in the United States who share the government's
increasingly nativist, undemocratic sentiments.

But there are many others who don't. Witness those moments on
9-11-2001—and there were many—when people didn't fulfill notions of humanity
as greedy, xenophobic, or power hungry. When voluntarism along with numerous
acts of kindness were as overwhelming, if not more so, a response. When the
senseless deaths of that morning made many turn both inward to reflect on the
meaning of their own lives, on how they contribute to society, and also
outward to explore other cultures, religions, histories. And when many people
recognized just how fragile concepts like "freedom" and "democracy" are, even
if those notions are hollowed out or often false in these United States.

It will be, and indeed it has been, difficult for people to get back to
normal, especially when "normal" is defined as shopping and returning to
work. The genuine emptiness of life-before-September- 11 has hit hard for
many, particularly in contrast to the genuine community most felt in the days
just after the attacks. Millions have (re)turned to religion, others to
friends and family; some to a peace movement. They have sought company and
values in a world that now seems lonely and valueless, and many long for an
ethical orientation that is about a greater good than chasing the American
dream.

All that meets the ear, however, is a deafening silence. People are at a
loss for words as well as ideas to explain September 11 and beyond. The
silence is so deep that it will be harder than ever to break, especially
since we too have been quieted. Cries of "U.S. imperialism" or "imagine
peace" have just as abrasive a ring as "God Bless America" in the stillness
that now engulfs both unity and dissent. It is a silence that must end, but
only when we are ready to serve as insightful, articulate voices not afraid
to speak truth to the powerful, not fearful of playing with unending
contradictions that may defy simple responses, not in a hurry to work through
the complexities that are today's scared new world.

For there is a world stuck between the bin Ladens and George Bushes of
today desirous of something better. But there must be something better to
consider. That means making sense—from a libertarian Left perspective—of
fundamentalism, the war of terror as well as war on terrorism, supranational
alliances, and a host of other phenomena connected to and sometimes separate
from the process of globalization. It also means taking account of these new
global dynamics in our praxis. Such a renaissance of thought within anarchist
circles will allow us to re-create the space we struggled so hard to build
prior to September 11, for we will have something profound to say and hopeful
to offer. Only from this place of critical thought can we again press ahead,
even if by baby steps, as educators and agitators.

Since September 11, antiauthoritarians have defied media stereotypes by
exhibiting patience, grace, and great sensitivity. Canceling the long-planned
direct actions against the IMF/WB in Washington, D.C. during a period of
collective mourning is just one of the many recent acts that offer a hint of
our ethical orientation and prefigurative politics. It is "diversity of
tactics" coming to maturity. Now we must broaden this notion in the days
ahead, reaching out to those newly politicized and newly touched by world
events in ways we might not have imagined or embraced only a long month or so
ago.

We know that any move toward peace must understand that peace did not
reign prior to September 11, that peace can never be approximated without a
struggle to continually root out domination while providing alternatives. We
know that a peace movement can't operate as if the world were
pre-globalization. The best sort of antiwar movement would be one that sees
itself as an extension, indeed an expansion of the anticapitalist,
antistatist struggle that preceded it. The best sort of movement for peace
would be one calling for a free society of free individuals.

Our project is, and must be, the same today as it was before the horrific
acts of violence on September 11 and retaliatory ones since October 7.
Cooperation between heads of state in a war against terrorism must be
contrasted to mutual aid between peoples in a struggle against authoritarian
rule, be it by states or self-appointed martyrs. The evisceration of civil
liberties calls more than ever for a libertarian alternative. A widening
circle of ethnically motivated attacks begs yet again for a substantive
notion of humanity and diversity—from the East Coast to the Middle East. The
further immiserization of people demands even more that production and
distribution be structured around desire not domination. And perhaps most
compellingly, the greater consolidation of hierarchical networks of
suprapowers in the post–September 11 world must be thwarted by a directly
democratic, confederal politics at the global grass roots. Far from over, our
project is now more crucial than ever, and potentially bears more resonance
in and outside any peace movement.

Nevertheless, we now find ourselves in the rather awkward position of
having good ideas under increasingly bad circumstances. In this globalizing
world, we too have no place to hide, we too are increasingly vulnerable. Thus
we must continue to solidify our own infrastructure, including but not
limited to independent media, physical spaces, a material base, and political
organizations. We must distance ourselves from positions within our milieu
that either glamorize acts of terror, like setting police on fire, or condone
it, like supporting the Unabomber's deeds. We must reach out beyond our
counterculture, both globally and continentally, yet also by working where we
live. It is a good thing that the world is opening up, that borders are
blurring and power is shifting, but only if we begin to create living
examples of how to organize power in ways that globalize freedom.

Capitalism was not brought down by September 11; it forges on in a
macabre though hypocritical tribute to the victims of that morning.
Authoritarians from al Qaeda to G. W. Bush retain their power to command, to
stir up wars in the name of God, albeit different ones. The WTO will go ahead
with its fall meeting, shamelessly dangling the newly poor in the wake of
September 11 as the reason, without mentioning its own deeper complicity in
this impoverishment. The world looks bleak, the good society seems distant.
But small openings still appear. It is up to us to raise alternative beacons
of light in the coming storm.

This essay is reprinted with permission of Night Vision, a special
co-publication of Onward, Arsenal, Clamor, Active Transformation, and Turning
the Tide. Copies of Night Vision can be obtained from Onward, P.O. Box 2671,
Gainesville, FL 32602-2671. Cindy (cbmilstein@aol.com) is a faculty member at
the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont and a board member for the
Institute for Anarchist Studies.