Pacifica Radio in Time of War
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by Matthew Lasar
Anarcho - pacifists created the Pacifica
Foundation. In the 1930s they belonged to groups like
the War
Resisters League and the Fellowship
of Reconciliation. So ardently did they oppose organized
violence that they challenged the United States' entry
into World War II, the most popular war in American history.
They feared nothing, these pacifists - not the camps and
prisons to which the government sent them or the jabs of those
who condemned their opposition as capricious and immature.
They did not even fear that which intellectuals dread most
- winding up on the wrong side of history. They believed that
using violence to solve problems simply led to more violence;
if the violence was to end, they declared, someone would have
to stop firing first. That someone was them.
But sitting in a remote, government supervised camp for
pacifists in 1942, Lewis Hill and his friend Roy Finch began
to reevaluate their strategy and tactics. Clearly their individual
refusal to fight had not accomplished very much. Whatever
moral arguments they presented, they had no effective political
response to the threat of Nazism. Pacifists had to do more
than simply witness their opposition to war, Hill and Finch
decided. They had to build institutions that demonstrated
as well as advocated alternatives to violence.
Inspired by the many co-operative enterprises that had flourished
during the Great Depression, they envisioned schools, theaters
and all manner of organizations that brought people together
to work out their differences, to understand each other before
war became the only means of resolution. These social formations
would be controlled by the people who ran them. As they proved
their success, they would grow into a world movement and provide
an alternative to the State, which Hill and his friends regarded
as the principal engine of organized violence.
That was the original Pacifica idea, hopeful and radical
beyond the imagination of most of us today. It was in this
ideological context that KPFA-FM
in Berkeley began broadcasting in 1949 [see Pacifica's
Mission Statement].
Pacifica's pacifist radio strategy came in two contexts-dialogue
and dissent - get people to talk to each other and speak out
against war and repression. In the first context, members
of the War Resisters League faced off against members of the
Daughters of the American Revolution. In the second context,
programmers spoke out uncompromisingly against the emerging
national security state of the 1950s.
I can think of no better example of the latter tradition
than Lewis Hill's August 1950 on-air condemnation of U.S.
entry into the Korean civil war, which he merged into a statement
against loyalty oaths in city and state government. Here is
some of what he said:
"I am going to oppose World War III, and the Oakland
loyalty oath, and the government purges, at every place
where they touch upon my life and provide a tangible opportunity
to oppose them. Whether I speak against them is not important.
What I do is important. I am going to refuse to fight the
war. I am going to refuse to support it by making ammunition
for it, or loading the ammunition on a boat for it, or helping
sail the boat. These are definite and particular things
which the American government in the near future is going
to demand that I do. I am going to refuse. It is quite possible
that I will never have a similar opportunity to oppose the
Oakland Loyalty Oath - the analogy would require that I
be an Oakland city employee. It may be that the government
purges will never enter my life directly, so that I will
lack the direct opportunity to oppose them in what I do.
But with World War III I can't miss. No, there is not a
ghost of a chance that I shall lack extensive opportunity
in that matter. I am going to refuse."
It was this adamant opposition to war and to state militarism,
for both its systematic violence and its suppression of individual
rights, that characterized Pacifica programming for the next
five decades. No U.S. sponsored war or domestic repression
during those years escaped the scrutiny of KPFA,
KPFK, WBAI,
KPFT and
WPFW: from the CIA sponsored
coups in Guatemala and Iran in the 1950s through the militarization
of the universities in the United States.
The Pacifica Foundation was one of the earliest organizations
to question the U.S. role in Vietnam, sponsoring a university
teach - in against the conflict in the early 1960s. WBAI
in New York City risked its very existence in 1962 by
interviewing a former FBI agent who described what he saw
during his training. Beginning in the 1970s, Pacifica fearlessly
broadcast the voices of the Palestine Liberation Organization
to the network's not always grateful audiences. During the
1980s the voices of Nicaraguans and El Salvadorans struggling
against murderous U.S. backed military governments filled
the network's airwaves.
What other U.S. radio network has ever provided live, on-going
coverage of another nation's election? That is what Pacifica's
Larry Bensky did in Nicaragua in 1989. In today's hyper
- corporatized broadcasting environment, what other U.S. network
would even think of providing daily live coverage from Durban,
South Africa's World Conference on Racism? That is what
Democracy Now did in 2001.
Was this historic radio flawless? Of course not. Sometimes
it romanticized those engaged in struggle against U.S. imperialism.
During the skewed years of the Cold War, Pacificans often
criticized the violence of the Right but said less about the
violence of the Left. As time went by, the dissent half of
Lewis Hill's vision received the lion's share of air time;
dialogue received far less attention than it needed.
But that is what happens when human beings-rather than automatons-come
to the microphone to seek peace instead of profits. No one
put it better than Hill in his 1951 essay, "The Theory
of Listener - Sponsored Broadcasting." "To get any
real art or any significant communication," he wrote,
"one must rely entirely on individuals, and must resign
himself to accept not only their uniqueness but the possibility
that the individual may at any time fail. By suppressing the
individual, the unique, the [broadcasting] industry reduces
the risk of failure (abnormality) and assures itself a standard
product for mass consumption." This network does not
exist in order to win a bigger slice of market share; it is
here to help build a world wide movement against war and repression.
As such, it is a process, not a finished product.
We fought a long, internecine struggle to define Pacifica
as such. Having done so, we have earned the right to be honest
with ourselves. Now we must confront what could be the biggest
war since Vietnam. The occasion is piled high with difficulty.
Never before in our lives has the U.S. national security state
so dominated the world militarily. Never before has it stood
so arrogantly above and beyond the world's peoples. And,
most frighteningly of all, not for half a century has our
government been so poised to respond to domestic dissent with
widespread repression. Yet we must defy the odds. We must
protest that Iraq has not attacked us, that our invasion may
cost the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people, and
that it could destabilize the region, sparking a generation
of bloody regional wars. We must expose this reckless imperial
adventure in every way we can, for we are the only network
in the United States willing to do so.
But we must also acknowledge the complexity of our task.
Iraq, the nation that we seek to defend from an immoral and
unlawful invasion, is controlled by one of the most monstrous
dictators of this century and the last. This makes our job
doubly difficult. We must not disengage ourselves from the
enormous crimes of the Iraqi government simply because it
is being attacked by the United States. And we must do more
than outline our own government's complicity in those
crimes. In the post-Cold War era, we must find a political
language that mobilizes our audiences against all warfare
states and their elites, even those who dominate peoples that
we seek to defend.
We can find that language using the tools the first Pacificans
gave us-dialogue and dissent. We must use dissent to
challenge the empire that now threatens to run rampant through
the world. But we must also use dialogue-free inquiry
and communication between many different points of view-to
break out of the binary mindset into which the Cold War forced
us. I have always seen the mission of this organization as
like a coin. One side of the coin says that if we do not live
for each other, we are no better than dust. The other side
says that if we do not tell the truth to power, we will be
ground into dust. Both sides of that mission must now be summoned
quickly, passionately, and intelligently. A terrible, unjust
war is coming.
It is time, once again, for us to do what we were created
for.
For more information of Pacifica's War and Peace Coverage,
visit Pacifica
Radio Archives online!
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