Warmongers Say Cultural Symbols and Local Politics Are Futile, They're Wrong
Gaza, Stalin, and This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race.
The New York Times, in its story “Frustrated by Washington, Pro-Palestinian Activists Take Their Fight to City Hall,” claims “local officials have little power.” The writers insist “Local resolutions on international affairs largely amount to symbolic gestures that play no direct role in foreign policymaking.” The Times article’s framing is simply war-mongering propaganda designed to mislead and disempower.
First, Israel cares deeply about local resolutions, and not just at the municipal level. Israel has gone so far as to run covert operations in U.S. university student government elections. So of course, contrary to the Times article’s assertions, local officials have tremendous power.
Second, there’s this idea that the symbolic is meaningless or inherently perfunctory – another lie. Local resolutions on international affairs do play a direct role in foreign policymaking, if for no other reason than cities conduct foreign policy directly. For example, if a municipality designates a Palestinian city as a sister city, then municipal, cultural, educational, and economic exchanges can be arranged between the cities.
International recognition of the Palestinian people — a quintessentially “symbolic gesture” (as the Times derisively put it) — is crucial for their claim to statehood. The symbol act of recognition is meaningful at whatever level of civil society, including local institutions such as municipalities. That’s why so much effort is being made to repress cultural and political affinity for the Palestinian people on college campuses.
Symbols are as real as any bullet.
Art is a Weapon
Israel knows this fact well. Moshe Dayan, the former Israeli defense minister, once told the Israeli newspaper Ma’areef, “One poem of Fadwa Tuqan is enough to create ten Palestinian terrorists.”
'My sister, our land has a throbbing heart,
it doesn't cease to beat, and it endures
the unendurable. It keeps the secrets
of hills and wombs. This land sprouting
with spikes and palms is also the land
that gives birth to a freedom-fighter.
This land, my sister, is a woman.'
Throughout the Palestinian uprisings, particularly the intifadas, little children have taken to the streets. These kids, many no older than grade schoolers, risked death to throw stones at the Israeli tanks occupying their neighborhoods. What tremendous courage these little Palestinian children showed, to stand before huge Israeli tanks and throw stones at their oppressor, knowing some of them would die. Those Palestinian children carried more than rocks, they were armed with the words of poets Fadwa Tuqan, Mahmoud Darwish, and all the other revolutionary Palestinian writers who transformed personal suffering into political consciousness.
Given the revolutionary power of Palestinian literature, it should not be a surprise that the University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill was forced to resign. Well before the October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel, the UPenn president was under tremendous pressure for allowing the Palestine Writes Literature Festival to take place September 22-24, 2023. The New York Times article reporting Magill’s resignation in the wake of a farcical December 2023 congressional hearing on antisemitism, acknowledges the role that Penn’s the cultural recognition of Palestinian literature played in Magill’s removal:
Ms. Magill was embattled long before she arrived on Capitol Hill.
Over the summer, donors asked her to cancel a planned Palestinian literary conference on campus. Ms. Magill, citing free speech, said that it would go on as planned in September.
The other university presidents to appear at the hearing have thus far not resigned. Though these presidents face severe scrutiny, Magill was in an entirely different category of scrutiny due to her having allowed cultural affinity for Palestine to take place on campus, a “symbolic gesture” and enough to topple an administration. Symbols matter, because people are the decisive element in war.
Wars Are Not Won Merely By Killing
“I am an arms dealer, fitting you with weapons in the form of words,” Fall Out Boy singer Patrick Stump belts in his nasal-driven wail during the band’s 2004 hit This Ain’t a Scene, It’s a Goddamn Arms Race. Stump is speaking to the opportunism of the music industry, but the song’s metaphor works because art is a weapon, and the cultural front is a theater of war.
It’s 1932, and Stalin is hosting a party.
The event is for non-communist writers from across the Soviet Union, about 50 of them, invited to mingle with Soviet leadership. After a night of discussion and revelry, Stalin says of the writers, “There are various forms of production: artillery, locomotives, automobiles, trucks. You also produce ‘commodities,’ ‘works,’ ‘products,’... You are engineers of human souls.”
Stalin raises a glass to toast the engineers of human souls, placing them on equal footing as physical weapons and infrastructure, only for the Soviet Defense Commissar Voroshilov to interject in disbelief. “Not Really,” Voroshilov scoffs. Stalin, undeterred, retorts, “Your tanks would be worth little if the souls inside them were rotten. No, the production of souls is more important than the production of tanks.”
Stalin, in effect, insisted to his artist guests this ain’t a scene, it’s a goddamn arms race. There’s a tendency to fetishize bombs, guns, and killing. But it is people – and the ideas we hold – which are paramount, even in times of kinetic war. War is merely “the continuation of politics by other means,” and not an end to itself. Politics – and thus people and their ideas – remain supreme.
General David Petreus notes in his 2009 U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual that “political factors have primacy in counterinsurgency.” Even at the height of its full spectrum dominance folly at the turn of the 21st century, the U.S. military acknowledged the importance of people:
The overarching focus of this vision is full spectrum dominance… However, material superiority alone is not sufficient. Of greater importance is the development of doctrine, organizations, training and education, leaders, and people that effectively take advantage of the technology.
Mao, whose combat theory is positively referenced numerous times throughout the U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual and other U.S. Army reading lists and official publications, staunchly held that people mattered more than weapons. In a 1938 lecture, Mao summed up his position:
This is the so-called theory that "weapons decide everything," which constitutes a mechanical approach to the question of war and a subjective and one-sided view. Our view is opposed to this; we see not only weapons but also people. Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive. The contest of strength is not only a contest of military and economic power, but also a contest of human power and morale. Military and economic power is necessarily wielded by people.
It was this belief in the primacy of people – and thus ideology – that led to Mao’s famous aphorism “all reactionaries are paper tigers” in his 1946 interview with Anne Louis Strong, comments he made in response to the very real threat of nuclear attack.
The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't. Of course, the atom bomb is a weapon of mass slaughter, but the outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weapon. All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful.
Yes, the Israeli death machine is horrific. Its capacity to kill is unimaginable. But weapons don’t decide everything. We cannot allow war-mongering propagandists to convince us that culture is irrelevant, that our local efforts are futile. “People, not things” will be decisive in the struggle for life after empire.
Again, we encourage people to continue to push for Palestinian liberation. We outlined a few suggestions in the guide, “What You Can Do for Palestinian Liberation.” We want to particularly emphasize the initiative for you to get your cities to be sister cities with Ramallah, Bethlehem, Gaza City, or other Palestinian cities. Such symbolic affirmation is crucial at this time when the lives and dignity of Palestinian people are being snuffed out across all fronts.