Reclaiming a culture of resistance

THE IDEA of a culture of resistance is being deliberately erased from simplistic media reporting of struggles across the world.

That's the view of Ramzy Baroud, distinguished Arab American commentator and author, most recently, of 'My father was a freedom fighter’ published by Pluto Press.

He writes in the Khaleej Times: "Resistance is not a band of armed men hell-bent on wreaking havoc. It is not a cell of terrorists scheming ways to detonate buildings. True resistance is a culture. It is a collective retort to oppression.

"Even those who purport to sympathise with resisting nations often contribute to the confusion. Activists from Western countries tend to follow an academic comprehension of what is happening in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. Thus certain ideas are perpetuated: suicide bombings bad, non-violent resistance good; Hamas rockets bad, slingshots good; armed resistance bad, vigils in front of Red Cross offices good.

"Many activists will quote Martin Luther King Jr., but not Malcolm X. They will infuse a selective understanding of Gandhi, but never of Guevara. This supposedly ‘strategic’ discourse has robbed many of what could be a precious understanding of resistance – as both concept and culture.

"If resistance is 'the action of opposing something that you disapprove or disagree with', then a culture of resistance is what occurs when an entire culture reaches this collective decision to oppose that disagreeable element - often a foreign occupation."

Propaganda and the BBC

"A SPOOF of Big Brother-style thought control" is how a media campaign group has described a BBC report on the United Nations.

In its latest Alert, Media Lens details its correspondence with journalist Barbara Plett following her article 'Debuts and diatribes at the UN'.

It told her: "Through an unsubtle mix of swoons and snarls we're told who are the 'good guys' and who the 'bad guys'. The BBC insists its journalism is carefully balanced with all personal opinions omitted - but this is not journalism, it is propaganda."

Plett had written with breathless enthusiasm of the American head of state: "New US President Barack Obama set the stage with a sweeping speech announcing America's re-engagement with the UN. Coming after the winter years of the Bush administration, this was a gale of spring air."

By contrast, the "quixotic colonel", Libya's Colonel Gaddafi, "embarked on a diatribe that rambled on for an hour-and-a-half."

Plett added, regarding the UK's Prime Minister: "After the Libyan leader finally sat down, an indignant Mr Brown changed his speech to defend the founding principles of the UN."

And as for the Iranian president: "Mr Ahmadinejad himself didn't mention Iran's nuclear programme in front of the assembly, nor did he seem distracted by walkouts to protest his denials of the Nazi Holocaust, and what many see as his fraudulent re-election. In typical style he lambasted Israel and the West for double standards, failed ideologies and imperial interventions."

The Media Alert includes Plett's reply in which she speaks of "stains on the US record". Media Lens don't pick it up, but this is a joke in itself. Forget "stains". The whole US record in international affairs is one huge filthy slick of aggression and hypocrisy. And so is Britain's for that matter.