Do You Still Consider Yourself an Anarchist?
Press Action
Saturday, November 15, 2008
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/ayresanarchist11152008/
During the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Bill O’Reilly instructed one of his flunkies to confront Bill Ayres outside his home in Chicago about his ties to Barack Obama. Along with urging Ayres to repent for his work as a member of the Weathermen and Weather Underground, the O’Reilly flunkie asked Ayres if he still considers himself an anarchist.
Ayres didn’t answer the question or respond to any of the other on-camera taunts, except to ask the O’Reilly flunkie to respect his property as he headed to his front door.
I don’t know if Ayres has ever considered himself an anarchist. During a Democracy Now! interview with Ayres and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, which aired Nov. 14, Ayres didn’t say he was an anarchist nor did he say he sympathized with anarchists. However, many of the beliefs he expressed during the interview were grounded in anarchism: the notion of participatory, grass-roots democracy, and a radical restructuring of education away from highly supervised and surveilled education and away from the teaching of obedience and conformity.
Now, if Ayres had told the O’Reilly flunkie, “Yes, I’m an anarchist,” what difference would have it made? O’Reilly, members of the news media and the McCain campaign would have attempted to use the statement against Obama’s candidacy. But it’s doubtful the statement would have changed the course of the election, given how Obama successfully distanced himself from Ayres, as well as claims late in the campaign that he espoused socialist and Marxist economic policies.
Is there a lesson to be learned from this electoral episode? Have we transcended the old notion that socialism, communism and anarchism are antithetical to the American way of life? If Obama can easily deflect accusations of past associations with “anarchists” and absorb charges that his economic policies are tantamount to socialism, then perhaps these political philosophies are no longer viewed as objectionable by either the political elite or the American public.
However, it would be naïve for anyone to draw these conclusions, given how Obama’s policies, if you look beyond his campaign slogans of hope and change, remain deeply rooted in the past. It will be business as usual, except for a few cosmetic changes, under an Obama administration. If the economic and political elite in the United States had sensed a threat to their standing, there is no way Obama would have received the financing, favorable media coverage and support from the Democratic Party establishment necessary to win the election.
-Mark Hand