Valuable discussion of u.s. capitalist culture success in overcoming 'vietnam syndrome' and preparing for new U.S. imperialist wars planned mainly for the 'middle east.' Activists like myself who built the Vietnam anti-war movement in collaboration and solidarity with u.s. soldiers and veterans were confronted with infectious 'recovery memory' spreading among veterans that we had cursed and spit on returning soldiers (something we never heard of during the actual Vietnam war and something that didn't happen, see Vietnam Veteran Jerry Lembcke's book "The Spitting Image"). Soldiers in the new wars needed to be inoculated against contact with antiwar activists, carefully screened for 'volunteers' only (economic draft), and the general public needed to be fed on government approved war-promoting 'patriotic' journalism, i.e.propaganda.
On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 6:49 AM Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > New Republic, Chris Lehmann > <https://newrepublic.com/authors/chris-lehmann>/May 21, 2021 > The White Men Who Wanted to Be Victims From the Vietnam War to the > present, how aggrieved men cast themselves as a discriminated-against > minority > UNIVERSAL PICTURES/GETTY > Tom Cruise in the 1989 movie “Born on the Fourth of July” > > The title of Joseph Darda’s new book, *How White Men Won the Culture Wars > <https://bookshop.org/a/1620/9780520381445>**,* may land awkwardly for > weary followers of recursive debates over cancel culture, wokeness, and the > like. The loudest and most visible partisans in these battles are aggrieved > white men, insisting that they’re scapegoats in unhinged identity-driven > witch hunts and eagerly putting themselves forward as martyrs in ugly > confrontations over free speech. How is it, then, that this demographic > emerged as the victors of the modern American culture wars and managed to > leverage that success into ongoing, ever-renewable plaints of grievance? > How White Men Won the Culture Wars: A History of Veteran America > by Joseph Darda > Buy on Bookshop > <https://www.bookshop.org/a/1620/https://bookshop.org/a/1620/9780520381445> > University of California Press, 266 pp., $27.95 > > The answer, Darda argues in this original and persuasive revisionist > study, lies in the overlap between the post-1960s culture wars and the > legacy of an actual war: the American debacle in Vietnam. The United States > withdrew in defeat from Vietnam in 1975—a fraught moment as well for the > American political economy, coinciding with the landmark civil rights and > feminist uprisings that convulsed the country as many American soldiers > served overseas. Returning Vietnam vets mimicked the rhetoric and > strategies of the era’s homegrown protest movements while developing a > powerful narrative of abandonment and trauma to convey their own sense of > disaffection. And in spite of the heavily nonwhite and working-class makeup > of the conscript army in Vietnam, the dominant image of the Vietnam vet > became a white, middle-class one. > > This curious work of cultural alchemy came about thanks to the convergence > of several other post–civil rights reckonings in 1970s America. As white > Vietnam vets struggled with the challenges of adapting to an American > social order transformed by the politics of anti-discrimination and > cultural representation, they were not simply echoing the well-worn > refrains of white reaction. Rather, as Darda shows in this wide-ranging and > provocative tour through the post-Vietnam cultural and political scene, > they fashioned their own new brand of therapeutically inflected grievance > politics, poised to capitalize in a host of ways on America’s emerging > postliberal backlash. > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#8686): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/8686 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/82984768/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
