The Mormon Worker - Issue 4 - Jul 08

8/8/2019 The Mormon Worker - Issue 4 - Jul 08

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The Soviet Union Versus Socialismby Noam Chomsky

When the worlds two great propaganda systems agree on

some doctrine, it requires some intellectual eort to escape

its shackles. One such doctrine is that the society created

by Lenin and Trotsky and molded urther by Stalin and his

successors has some relation to socialism in some meaning-

ul or historically accurate sense o this concept. In act, i

there is a relation, it is the relation o contradiction.

It is clear enough why both major propaganda systemsinsist upon this antasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State

has attempted to harness the energies o its own popula-

tion and oppressed people elsewhere in the service o

the men who took ad vantage o the popular erment in

Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideologi-

cal weapon employed to this end has been the claim that

the State managers are leading their own society and the

world towards the socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any

THE

Mormon Worker

I Teach Them Correct Principles and They Govern Themselves josephsmith

Issue 4 July 2008

The Soviet Union Versus Socialism

by Noam ChomskyNational Flagophilia by Ron MadsonWhy an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified

by Norman G. Finkelstein

Interview with Stanley HauerwasInterviewed by Joshua Madson for The Mormon Worker

Racism, Violence and the United States, Pt. II:Torture and Lynching by Spencer Kingman

A Letter to the President by Abdullah MulhimThe Weapon Called the Word by Jeremy ClowardWhat Does It Mean To Follow Jesus Christ Today?

by Cory Bushman

The Resurrection of May Day by Gregory Van WagenenWhy Would We Go To War With Iran? by Stephen WellingtonTo Towel or Not to Towel? by Emily BushmanA Brief History of US Efforts to Promote Civil War

in Iraq by William Van WagenenBook Review: Building the City of God Community and

Cooperation Among the Mormons

Review by Jason BrownContributors Navigation

Hold your mouse cursor on the name o an author to see

a brie bio and an introduction to his or her article

Click on the name o an article to go there
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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2The Mormon Worker Issue 4

socialistsurely any serious Marxistshould have under-

stood at once (many did), and a lie o mammoth propor-

tions as history has revealed since the earliest days o the

Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain

legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura o socialist

ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, toconceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every

vestige o socialism.

As or the worlds second major propaganda system, as-

sociation o socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients

serves as a powerul ideological weapon to enorce con-

ormity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions,

to ensure that the necessity to rent onesel to the owners

and managers o these institutions will be regarded as

virtually a natural law, the only alternative to the social-

ist dungeon. The Soviet leadership thus portrays itsel as

socialist to protect its right to wield the club, and Western

ideologists adopt the same pretense in order to orestall

the threat o a more ree and just society. This joint attack

on socialism has been highly eective in undermining it

in the modern period.One may take note o another device used eectively

by State capitalist ideologists in their service to exist-

ing power and privilege. The ritual denunciation o the

so-called socialist States is replete with distortions and

oten outright lies. Nothing is easier than to denounce the

ocial enemy and to attribute to it any crime: there is no

need to be burdened by the demands o evidence or logic

as one marches in the parade. Critics o Western violence

A Note to Our Readers

The Mormon Worker is an independent newspaper/jour-

nal devoted to Mormonism and radical politics. It is pub-

lished by members o the LDS Church. The paper is mod-

eled ater the legendary Catholic Worker which has been

in publication or over seventy years.

The primary objective o The Mormon Worker is to mean-

ingully connect core ideas o Mormon theology with a

host o political, economic, ecological, philosophical, and

social topics.

Although most contributors o The Mormon Worker are

members o the LDS church, some are not, and we accept

submissions rom people o varying secular and religiousbackgrounds.

The opinions in The Mormon Worker are not the ocial

view o The Church o Jesus Christ o Latter-day Saints.

In solidarity,

The Mormon Worker

THE MORMON WORKER

140 West Oak Circle

Woodland Hills, UT 84653

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ends o domination; Hence their deepest disdain or the

more theoretical enlightenment o the workers about their

class interests, which include the overthrow o the Red

Bureaucracy and the creation o mechanisms o democratic

control over production and social lie. For the Leninist, the

masses must be strictly disciplined, while the socialist willstruggle to achieve a social order in which discipline will

become superfuous as the reely associated producers

work or their own accord (Marx). Libertarian socialism,

urthermore, does not limit its aims to democratic control

by producers over production, but seeks to abolish all

orms o domination and hierarchy in every aspect o social

and personal lie, an unending struggle, since progress in

achieving a more just society will lead to new insight and

understanding o orms o oppression that may be con-

cealed in traditional practice and consciousness.

The Leninist antagonism to the most essential eatures

o socialism was evident rom the very start. In revolution-

ary Russia, Soviets and actory committees developed as

instruments o struggle and liberation, with many faws, but

with a rich potential. Lenin and Trotsky, upon assumingpower, immediately devoted themselves to destroying the

liberatory potential o these instruments, establishing the

rule o the Party, in practice its Central Committee and

its Maximal Leaders exactly as Trotsky had predicted

years earlier, as Rosa Luxembourg and other let Marxists

warned at the time, and as the anarchists had always un-

derstood. Not only the masses, but even the Party must be

subject to vigilant control rom above, so Trotsky held

as he made the transition rom revolutionary intellectual

to State priest. Beore seizing State power, the Bolshevik

leadership adopted much o the rhetoric o people who

were engaged in the revolutionary struggle rom below,

but their true commitments were quite dierent. This was

evident beore and became crystal clear as they assumedState power in October 1917.

A historian sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, E.H. Carr,

writes that the spontaneous inclination o the workers

to organize actory committees and to intervene in the

management o the actories was inevitably encouraged

by a revolution which led the workers to believe that the

productive machinery o the country belonged to them

and could be operated by them at their own discretion and

to their own advantage (my emphasis). For the workers,

as one anarchist delegate said, The Factory committees

were cells o the uture... They, not the State, should now

administer.

But the State priests knew better, and moved at once to

destroy the actory committees and to reduce the Soviets to

organs o their rule. On November 3, Lenin announced in a

Drat Decree on Workers Control that delegates elected

to exercise such control were to be answerable to the State

or the maintenance o the strictest order and discipline

and or the protection o property. As the year ended,

Lenin noted that we passed rom workers control to the

creation o the Supreme Council o National Economy,

which was to replace, absorb and supersede the machinery

o workers control (Carr). The very idea o socialism is



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embodied in the concept o workers control, one Men-

shevik trade unionist lamented; the Bolshevik leadership

expressed the same lament in action, by demolishing the

very idea o socialism.

Soon Lenin was to decree that the leadership must

assume dictatorial powers over the workers, who mustaccept unquestioning submission to a single will and in

the interests o socialism, must unquestioningly obey the

single will o the leaders o the labour process. As Lenin

and Trotsky proceeded with the militarization o labour,

the transormation o the society into a labour army submit-

ted to their single will, Lenin explained that subordination

o the worker to individual authority is the system which

more than any other assures the best utilization o human

resources or as Robert McNamara expressed the same

idea, vital decision-making...must remain at the top...the

real threat to democracy comes not rom over management,

but rom under management; i it is not reason that rules

man, then man alls short o his potential, and management

is nothing other than the rule o reason, which keeps us

ree. At the same time, actionalism i.e., any modicum

o ree expression and organization was destroyed in the

interests o socialism, as the term was redened or their

purposes by Lenin and Trotsky, who proceeded to create

the basic proto-ascist structures converted by Stalin into

one o the horrors o the modern age. 1

Failure to understand the intense hostility to social-

ism on the part o the Leninist intelligentsia (with roots

in Marx, no doubt), and corresponding misunderstanding

o the Leninist model, has had a devastating impact on the

struggle or a more decent society and a livable world in

the West, and not only there. It is necessary to nd a way

to save the socialist ideal rom its enemies in both o the

worlds major centers o power, rom those who will always

seek to be the State priests and social managers, destroyingreedom in the name o liberation.

1. On the early destruction o socialism by Lenin and

Trotsky, see Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Work-

ers Control. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1978, and Peter

Rachle, Radical America, Nov. 1974, among much other

work

Originally published in Our Generation, Spring/Sum-

mer, 1986/Re-published by The Mormon Worker Collective

with permission by Noam Chomsky

National Flagophiliaby Ron Madson

In July o 2007 one hundred words waited anxiously to see i

they would be included in the latest edition o the Merriam-

Webster dictionaryonly twenty were inducted. Some

words stood above the crowd such as ginormous, perect

storm and smackdown while others were a credit to our

ever increasing cultural advancementscrunk, speed-

National "Flagophilia"


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dating and our latest entertainment importBollywood.

As i we needed another reason to support Operation Free-

dom in Iraq, less than 5% o our annual national budget

was spent on our Iraqi nation building exercise or which

we had a whopping 10% return o the twenty new words

added to our lexicon this past year thanks to our invest-ment there IEDs and fex-cu. While the word and

the device called IEDs can be ound everywhere, you

might think fex-cu plays a second ddle to IEDs, but

just type in fex-cu with the word Iraq on your search

engine and you will nd that there is a high probability that

fex-cus ar outnumber IEDsbut I digress.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary uses the ollowing

criteria to determine i a new word should be added: I a

word shows up enough in mainstream writing, the editors

consider dening it. In a previous edition o the Mormon

Worker (Volume II) I oered to provide my legal services

to Blackwater by providing a novel deense to acts o ag-

gression introduced by our Executive branch called the

one-percent doctrine. I suggested that innovative one

percent legal deense could be extended to gangs, domes-

tic disputes, and criminal proceedings. I have had no takers.

However, I have lowered my sights to reach what I consider

a very obtainable personal benet rom the Iraq adventure

that I am hoping Merriam-Webster dictionary people will

providethe introduction o a new word to the American

lexiconFlagophilia. I am sending a courtesy copy o the

Mormon Workersurely by now a mainstream writing

to the editors o the Merriam-Webster dictionary people

which includes this very article you are now reading. This

is a start. I would suggest the editors o Merriam-Webster

also consider a companion word coined by none other than

popular political commentator and television host Stephen

Colbert o the Colbert Nation who proclaims himsel as

the premier fagophile.Flagophilia. The word philia is a common sux

which means an intense or higher level o love o some-

thing. There are hundreds o words ollowed by philia

such as a Francophilia which means a love o France

and French culture (a word arguably disappearing rom

America during recent years) to only slightly less savory

philias such as necrophilia or which I will spare the

reader rom my dening it here. But some things merit

philia such as fags and nothing has been more evident in

our nation the last seven years then a clear demonstration

o fagophilia by a nation o fagophiles. Flagophilia

has been around since mankind with the assistance o car-

tographers decided to divide the earth into multicolored

line-divided nations.

However, the United States having a healthy dose o

nationphilia went as ar as institutionalizing a Pledge

o Allegiance to our fag in our public schools during the

1950s so we could easily sort out, as recommended by the

Honorable Senator Joseph McCarthy, those among us that

were real patriots, and not pretenders.

However, since 9/11a word that also should be

hung in the raters o any dictionaryfagophilia has

reached a zenith o societal approbation. Since 9/11 the



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Red, White and Blue can be seen everywhere rom sports

apparel to bumper stickers to creative tattoos, and every

size rom ginormous fags at ginormous retail stores to

the tiny but ashionable fag pin worn on suits by all real

patriots. In act, fag pins have become such a reliable in-

dicator o love o nation that this year when it was noticedthat one o the dozens o Presidential Candidates had not

been spotted wearing a fag pin there has been an unrelent-

ing smackdown as to his aux pasand every time I see

him it is hard to concentrate on the substance o what he

is saying when he is not wearing a fag pin.

I became a resident o Alpine, Utah in 2001. On nearly

every recognizable holiday i you drive through this small

but growing town o 12,000 you will nd almost every home

with an American Flag neatly placed along the street by

the local scout troops. It is quite a sight. Like the politician

fag pin, the only homes that stick out are those without

a fag. Some quacky psychiatrist might characterize the

need to have every home show their fag as community,

obsessive compulsive disorderbut I would preer to call

it fagophilia.

I ever a word deserves to be placed permanently in

our national lexicon it is fagophilia. What I wrote above

will be sent to the Board o Editors or Merriam-Webster,

but since the Mormon Worker addresses Mormon mat-

ters, I will address two issues that arise among Mormon

fagophiles: First, do we have a choice as to which fag

to adore and secondly, given our polygamous roots, is it

possible to love more than one fag at the same time, and

i so which fag should be given the highest place on our

fag poles?

Standard o Peace Flag

As to choice o fags, in our generation it is a little knownact that at the genesis o our aith an Ensign Flag was

designed which was fown at Zions Camp, Nauvoo and

then Ensign Peak. Ater persistent and violent attacks on

the Saints in Jackson County, Missouri, Joseph received

rom the Lord what is now canonized as Section 98 o the

Doctrine and Covenants where the Lord tells his saints

how to respond to enemies. The Lord commands us to

Renounce war and proclaim peace. (D&C 98:16). To makethat mandate clear to others, the Lord urther commanded

us to lit a standard o peace (D&C 98:34) or as reerred

to elsewhere the Ensign o Peace: And again I say unto

you, sue or peace not only to the people that have smitten

you, but also to all people; And lit up the ensign o peace,

and make a proclamation o peace unto the ends o the

earth; And make proposals or peace unto those who have

smitten you, according to the voice o the Spirit which is

in you, and all things shall work together or your good.

Doctrine & Covenants Section 105:38-40.

In obedience to the Lords commands in Sections 98 and

105 a blue and white standard o peace fag was prepared

and carried with Zions Army: I gave orders that a standard

be prepared or the nations (Joseph Smith History 6:528)

This fag stood in stark contrast to the red fag adopted



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by the mobs in Jackson County, Missouri. The Lord did

intervene and ght the battles or His people as promised,

and sotened the heart o their enemies through the power

and virtue o the words o peace, and then Zions Army

made the nal oer o peace by disbanding as commanded.

When the mobs were orming in Nauvoo, Joseph instructedthe church leaders that a standard to be made and raised

or the nations. Ater Josephs death and the Nauvoo City

Charter was repealed, Brigham Young used a blue and

white fag as a signal and standard o peace and hoisted it

above the temple, and then beore arriving in Salt Lake City,

Brigham Young discussed his plans to raise the LDS fag

on the top o Ensign Peak, which he had seen previously in

vision: The House o the Lord will be reared in the tops

o the mountains and the proud banner will wave over the

valleys...I know where the spot is and I know how to make

this fag, Joseph sent the colors and said where the colors

settle there will be the spot (Lee, Diary, Church Archives,

Historical Department, Salt Lake City). Then as Joseph F.

Smith noted this vision was ullled:

One 26 July 1847, just two days ater Brigham Young

arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, he and others ascended a

dome-shaped hill north o the present Utah State Capitol

Building. He had seen this prominent peak in vision. As

President Young raised a fag he also symbolically lited

the ensign to all nations...

Brother B.H. Roberts taught the signicance o this fag

that was unurled:

The Ensign that these Latter-day Saint Pioneers had

in mind, and o which they had requently spoke en route,

was something larger and greater than any national fag

whatsoever; and what it was meant to represent was greater

than any earthly kingdoms interest... This Ensign was in

the minds o the Mormon Pioneers concerned not with

one nation, but all nations....not nationality but humanityin its scope and concern. It was the sign o the Empire o

Christ.

The Deseret News conerence report o April 1853 re-

ports that an LDS fag a blue and white banner with stripes

and twelve stars encircling a single large star representing

the Gospel o Jesus Christ and His latter-day Kingdom was

displayed when the corner stones o the temple were laid.

Brigham called this fag three names: Flag o the King-

dom, Flag o Deseret and most telling, My fag. The

Standard o Peace or the Standard o Truth was unurled

High on a Mountain Top. (Joel Johnson, 1853 Hymn). The

standard o truth had been erected and the Lord had laid

a oundation o peace that would break up the patterns o

vengeance and death spawned by the contracted eelings

o nationalism and ethnocentric tribalism. The Lord had

communicated through his latter-day revelations a new

waya way o peace and that way now had a fag. We did

then and we continue to have a choice.

That was the original fag o our aithmandated by

revelation and designed to uniy us under a new message.

The question then arose when we were given statehood

into our host nationwhich fag would be placed the high-

est on the fag pole? The verdict is in and Old Glory fies



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alone. How that came about is a subject o another more

in-depth article.

My Choice

I believe I have a deep philia or our nations Constitutionand Bill o Rights and the Anglo-Saxon traditions ound in

our Common Law. I revere the ree-

dom we have in our nation to dis-

sent and learn rom our critics even

within our nation. Thomas Jeerson

understood that national justiers or

enablers should not be considered

as having a monopoly on the title opatriot: Dissent is the highest orm

o patriotism. That being said, here

is my fag preerence: No national

fag and no pledge o allegiance to the

fag o any nation. I recognize how

oensive such a choice must appear

to those in our nation suering rom

fagophilia and I do not pretend to

require that anyone else even under-

stand much less respect my choice.

However, my choice is tied to my un-

derstanding o my Christian aith. The only person I have

Pledged My Allegiance to said this:

But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven;

or it is Gods Throne; Nor by the earth, or it is his oot-

stool; neither by Jerusalem; or it is the city o the Great

King; Neither shall thou swear by the head, because thou

canst not make one hair white or black. But let your com-

munication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay : or whatsoever is more

than these cometh o evil. (Matthew 5: 34-37).

Is there evil that comes rom pledging ones allegianceto a nation? The obvious danger or olly associated with

pledging allegiance to any politi-

cal entity no matter the country

whether neutral Switzerland or Nazi

Germanyis that you have given

your conscience and potentially your

agency to a group which can decide

at any time to contravene the Gospel

o Christ. In other words, I chose to

only sustain the law o the land to

the extent the law protects me in my

inalienable rightsbut no urther:

We believe that no government

can exist in peace, except such laws

are ramed and held inviolate as will

secure to each individual the ree

exercise o conscience...We believe

that all men are bound to sustain and

uphold the respective governments

in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and

inalienable rights... D&C 134:2, 5

I sustain a law or government only to the extent it sus-

tains my reedom o conscience and inalienable right to


Bu I sy un yu, S n ; ni y vn; f i isGs Tn; N y ,

f i is is fs; ni yJusm; f i is iy f G King; Ni s u

s y , us uns n mk n i i bk. Bu yu mmuni-

in , Y, y; Ny, ny: fsv is m n s

m f vi.

(Matthew 5: 34-37)


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withhold any personal support to any endeavors o my na-

tion which I consider contrary to my religious conscience.

My religious belie is that I owe no oath or allegiance to

a symbol such as a fag that might be waved in a manner

dened by Merriam-Webster, to wit: Flag Waving: Ardent

or violently emotional appeal to or expression o patrioticor partisan sentiment. While sometimes the appeal might

be considered noble, it is oten, nonetheless, blind and all

too requently violent in the name o some noble cause.

And partisanship and nationalism is a threshold removal

rom the Gospel and Light o Christ.

A statement rom one o our recent Presidents refects

the nature o national partisanship: I will never apologize

or the USA, I dont care what the acts are. George Bush,

Senior. I recognize that many i not most that wave fags

have noble and loyal intentions but my belie is that i an

endeavor or confict is on its merits just and righteous it

needs no artice beyond its justness, while the more du-

bious the endeavor the more it requires slogans and fag

waving. Two other dictionaries said it best: patriotism is

the last resort o a scoundrel (Dr. Samuel Johnsons Dic-

tionary) to which Ambrose Bierce in his Devils Dictionary

responded:

Patriotism: Combustible rubbish read to the torch o

any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnsons

amous dictionary patriotism is dened as the last resort

o a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened lexi-

cographer I beg to submit that it is the rst.

The problem with a group pledge or oath to a nation

is that it does not in the oath or pledge itsel reserve the

right to withdraw support or any endeavor which I indi-

vidually nd contrary to my conscience. For example, my

Christian aith does not allow the killing o any innocent

lie whether sanctioned by the state or not. In the words

o Howard Zinn, there is no fag large enough to coverthe shame o killing innocent people. I reuse to pledge

allegiance to a fag that represents any orm o taking o

innocent lie in the pursuit o any orm o retaliation. (see

D&C 98:24). Thereore, my rst choice is that I pledge al-

legiance to no nations fag.

But I I Must

On October 3, 2007 James Broussard, saw a Reno, Nevada

business establishment with a Mexican Flag hoisted above

the American fagthe making o a perect storm. Taking

his military knie he cut down the Mexican fag and threw

it on the ground. Interviewed by the news he explained: I

they want to ght us, then they need to be men, and they

need to come ght us. But I want somebody to ght or me

and or this fag. To all the James Broussards out there I

want to let you know that I do not want to ght you, I do

not want to ght anyone, but i I must have a fag that

not being my rst preerence I choose the Standard o

Peace fag shown in this article. My wie and son can and

should fy the American fag every Holiday and I respect

their eelings, but I only ask that the Standard o Peace not

be considered as an invitation to ght but an invitation to



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not ght under any national banner.

With the Standard o Peace fying on Ensign Peak Apos-

tle Heber C. Kimball expressed my sentiments best:

I am not national or sectional, and God orbid that I

should be, or I have that spirit that delighteth in the wel-

are and salvation o the human amily. And when I havethat Spirit about me, can I be national? You never knew

that eeling to be in me or I abhor it. I will not bow my

head to that national spirit, nor to any spirit that is not o

God. (Heber C. Kimball JD 4:278).

I attended Glenn Dale Elementary School in Mary-

land rom 1960 to 1966. Every day we recited both the

Pledge o Allegiance to the Flag as well as our prayers to

the Virgin Mary and other Saintsthis being a Maryland

Catholic community. It did me no harm not knowing then

the signicance o anything I recited. But now I appreci-

ate more ully the signicance o pledges and oaths and I

reuse in good conscience to pledge any allegiance to any

nation and its fag no matter how noble that nation may

perceive itsel to be. Thank God I live in a country where

fagophilia, while widespread, is still optional and volun-

tary. I will not burn a fag, I will not deny anyone the right

to wrap themselves in the fag, any politician the right to

tether their ambitions to the fag, or any military to use

their fag to identiy which team uses the IEDs rom those

that employ the fex cus.

Why an Economic Boycott o Israelis Justifedby Norman G. Finkelstein

The recent proposal that Norway boycott Israeli goods has

provoked passionate debate. In my view, a rational exami-

nation o this issue would pose two questions: 1) Do Israeli

human rights violations warrant an economic boycott? and

2) Can such a boycott make a meaningul contribution to-

ward ending these violations? I would argue that both these

questions should be answered in the armative. Although

the subject o many reports by human rights organizations,Israels real human rights record in the Occupied Palestin-

ian Territory is generally not well known abroad. This is

primarily due to the ormidable public relations industry

o Israels deenders as well as the eectiveness o their

tactics o intimidation, such as labeling critics o Israeli

policy anti-Semitic.

Yet, it is an incontestable act that Israel has commit-

ted a broad range o human rights violations, many rising

to the level o war crimes and crimes against humanity.

These include:

Illegal Killings. Whereas Palestinian suicide attacks tar-

geting Israeli civilians have garnered much media attention,

Israels quantitatively worse record o killing non-com-

batants is less well known. According to the most recent

gures o the Israeli Inormation Center or Human Rights

Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified


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in the Occupied Territories (BTselem), 3,386 Palestinians

have been killed since September 2000, o whom 1,008 were

identied as combatants, as opposed to 992 Israelis killed,

o whom 309 were combatants. This means that three

times more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed and

up to three times more Palestinian civilians than Israeli

civilians. Israels deenders maintain that theres a dier-

ence between targeting civilians and inadvertently killing

them. BTselem disputes this: [W]hen so many civilians

have been killed and wounded, the lack o intent makes

no dierence. Israel remains responsible. Furthermore,Amnesty International reports that many Palestinians

have not been accidentally killed but deliberately targeted,

while the award-winning New York Times journalist Chris

Hedges reports that Israeli soldiers entice children like

mice into a trap and murder them or sport.

Torture. From 1967, Amnesty reports, the Israeli se-

curity services have routinely tortured Palestinian political

suspects in the Occupied Territories. BTselem ound that

eighty-ve percent o Palestinians interrogated by Israeli

security services were subjected to methods constitut-

ing torture, while already a decade ago Human Rights

Watch estimated that the number o Palestinians tortured

or severely ill-treated was in the tens o thousands a

number that becomes especially signicant when it is re-

membered that the universe o adult and adolescent male

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is under three-

quarters o one million. In 1987 Israel became the only

country in the world to have eectively legalized torture

(Amnesty). Although the Israeli Supreme Court seemed

to ban torture in a 1999 decision, the Public Committee

Against Torture in Israel reported in 2003 that Israeli se-

curity orces continued to apply torture in a methodical

and routine ashion. A 2001 BTselem study documented



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that Israeli security orces oten applied severe torture

to Palestinian minors.

House demolitions. Israel has implemented a policy

o mass demolition o Palestinian houses in the Occupied

Territories, BTselem reports, and since September 2000

has destroyed some 4,170 Palestinian homes. Until justrecently Israel routinely

resorted to house demo-

litions as a orm o collec-

tive punishment. Accord-

ing to Middle East Watch,

apart rom Israel, the only

other country in the world

that used such a draconian

punishment was Iraq un-

der Saddam Hussein. In

addition, Israel has demol-

ished thousands o illegal

homes that Palestinians

built because o Israels

reusal to provide build-

ing permits. The motive

behind destroying these

homes, according to Am-

nesty, has been to maxi-

mize the area available or Jewish settlers: Palestinians

are targeted or no other reason than they are Palestinians.

Finally, Israel has destroyed hundred o homes on security

pretexts, yet a Human Rights Watch report on Gaza ound

that the pattern o destruction...strongly suggests that

Israeli orces demolished homes wholesale, regardless o

whether they posed a specic threat. Amnesty likewise

ound that Israels extensive destruction o homes and

properties throughout the West Bank and Gaza...is not

justied by military necessity, and that Some o theseacts o destruction amount to grave breaches o the Fourth

Geneva Convention and are war crimes.

Apart rom the sheer magnitude o its human rights

violations, the uniqueness o Israeli policies merits notice.

Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime o

separation based on discrimination, applying two separate

systems o law in the same area and basing the rights o

individuals on their nationality, BTselem has concluded.

This regime is the only one o its kind in the world, and

is reminiscent o distasteul regimes rom the past, such

as the apartheid regime in South Arica. I singling out

South Arica or an international economic boycott was

deensible, it would seem equally deensible to single out

Israels occupation, which uniquely resembles the apart-

heid regime.

Although an economic boycott can be justied on moral

grounds, the question remains whether diplomacy might

be more eectively employed instead. The documentary

record in this regard, however, is not encouraging. The

basic terms or resolving the Israel-Palestine confict are

embodied in U.N. resolution 242 and subsequent U.N. reso-

lutions, which call or a ull Israeli withdrawal rom the

West Bank and Gaza and the establishment o a Palestinian



14/57

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state in these areas in exchange or recognition o Israels

right to live in peace and security with its neighbors. Each

year the overwhelming majority

o member States o the United

Nations vote in avor o this two-

state settlement, and each yearIsrael and the United States (and

a ew South Pacic islands) op-

pose it. Similarly, in March 2002 all

twenty-two member States o the

Arab League proposed this two-

state settlement as well as nor-

mal relations with Israel. Israel

ignored the proposal.

Not only has Israel stubbornly

rejected this two-state settlement,

but the policies it is currently pur-

suing will abort any possibility o

a viable Palestinian state. While

world attention has been riveted

by Israels redeployment rom

Gaza, Sara Roy o Harvard Uni-

versity observes that the Gaza

Disengagement Plan is, at heart, an

instrument or Israels continued annexation o West Bank

land and the physical integration o that land into Israel. In

particular Israel has been constructing a wall deep inside

the West Bank that will annex the most productive land

and water resources as well as East Jerusalem, the center

o Palestinian lie. It will also eectively sever the West

Bank in two. Although Israel initially claimed that it was

building the wall to ght terrorism,

the consensus among human rights

organizations is that it is really a

land grab to annex illegal Jewishsettlements into Israel. Recently

Israels Justice Minister rankly

acknowledged that the wall will

serve as the uture border o the

state o Israel.

The current policies o the Is-

raeli government will lead either to

endless bloodshed or the dismem-

berment o Palestine. It remains

virtually impossible to conceive o

a Palestinian state without its cap-

ital in Jerusalem, the respected

Crisis Group recently concluded,

and accordingly Israeli policies in

the West Bank are at war with any

viable two-state solution and will

not bolster Israels security; in act,

they will undermine it, weakening

Palestinian pragmatists...and sowing the seeds o growing

radicalization.

Recalling the U.N. Charter principle that it is inadmis-

sible to acquire territory by war, the International Court

o Justice declared in a landmark 2004 opinion that Israels


Banksy, West Bank


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settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the

wall being built to annex them to Israel were illegal under

international law. It called on Israel to cease construction

o the wall, dismantle those parts already completed and

compensate Palestinians or damages. Crucially, it also

stressed the legal responsibilities o the international com-munity: all States are under an obligation not to recognize

the illegal situation resulting rom the construction o the

wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and

around East Jerusalem. They are also under an obligation

not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation

created by such construction. It is also or all States, while

respecting the United Nations Charter and international

law, to see to it that any impediment, resulting rom the

construction o the wall, to the exercise by the Palestin-

ian people o its right to sel-determination is brought to

an end.

A subsequent U.N. General Assembly resolution sup-

porting the World Court opinion passed overwhelmingly.

However, the Israeli government ignored the Courts opin-

ion, continuing construction at a rapid pace, while Israels

Supreme Court ruled that the wall was legal.

Due to the obstructionist tactics o the United States,

the United Nations has not been able to eectively conront

Israels illegal practices. Indeed, although it is true that the

U.N. keeps Israel to a double standard, its exactly the re-

verse o the one Israels deenders allege: Israel is held not

to a higher but lower standard than other member States. A

study by Marc Weller o Cambridge University comparing

Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory with compa-

rable situations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, East

Timor, occupied Kuwait and Iraq, and Rwanda ound that

Israel has enjoyed virtual immunity rom enorcement

measures such as an arms embargo and economic sanc-

tions typically adopted by the U.N. against member Statescondemned or identical violations o international law.

Due in part to an aggressive campaign accusing Europe o

a new anti-Semitism, the European Union has also ailed

in its legal obligation to enorce international law in the

Occupied Palestinian Territory. Although the claim o a

new anti-Semitism has no basis in act (all the evidence

points to a lessening o anti-Semitism in Europe), the EU

has reacted by appeasing Israel. It has even suppressed pub-

lication o one o its own reports, because the authors like

the Crisis Group and many others concluded that due to

Israeli policies the prospects or a two-state solution with

east Jerusalem as the capital o Palestine are receding.

The moral burden to avert the impending catastrophe

must now be borne by individual states that are prepared

to respect their obligations under international law and by

individual men and women o conscience. In a courageous

initiative American-based Human Rights Watch recently

called on the U.S. government to reduce signicantly its

nancial aid to Israel until Israel terminates its illegal poli-

cies in the West Bank. An economic boycott would seem

to be an equally judicious undertaking. A nonviolent tactic

the purpose o which is to achieve a just and lasting settle-

ment o the Israel-Palestine confict.



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Interview with Stanley HauerwasInterviewed by Joshua Madson or The Mormon Worker

Stanley Haurwas is a United Methodist theologian, ethicist,and professor of law. He received a PhD from Yale Univer-

sity and a D.D. from The University of Edinburgh, and has

taught at the University of Notre Dame. He is currently the

Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Di-

vinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University

School of Law.

Q: How did you come to be a pacist?

Hauerwas: Well, it was through the infuence o John

Howard Yoder. I was educated in the work o Reinhold

Niebuhr and I assumed that was the last word to be said

about pacism. But I was also deeply shaped by the work

o Karl Barth and once Yoders Christological pacism

became known to me and I really studied it I became in-

creasingly convinced that Niebuhr had simply ailed to ap-

preciate the kind o nonviolence that Yoder had deendedas constitutive o discipleship and so I declared mysel a

pacist although I had no idea what that really meant, but

Ive grown into it.

Q: In your essay Sacricing the Sacrice o War you

observe that nationalistic patriotism has become or many

a substitute religion, and or Christians in particular. What

has caused that to occur in your opinion?

Hauerwas: Im not sure any o us know how that hap-

pened, other than the general subservience o the Christian

church in America to America. The general view o most

Christian Americans is they can let their children make up

their minds about whether they are a Christian or not but

they dont let them make up their minds about being anAmerican. Now thats an indication that national identica-

tion has become more determinative or the way people

live than their Christian identication. Now Im sure they

will deny that i you suggest it, but ask them i they dont

believe that they ought to raise children to grow up to make

up their minds and they will always say, yes o course. But

then they dont, when it comes to the issues o national

loyalty. They dont let children make up their own minds;

it kind o comes with the drinking water.

Q: What evidence do you believe supports that con-

clusion?

Hauerwas: Well I think generally that American Chris-

tians unproblematic support o war clearly supports that

conclusion.

Q: Do you believe that Christianity and patriotism are

compatible?

Hauerwas: It depends. I might well be a Ugandan pa-

triot. Im sure you cant be an American patriot. I wrote an

essay on this in which I use Alasdair Macintyres account

o why patriotism is incoherent in the modern world be-

cause patriotism asks your support o nations that represent

reedom and equality and so those become abstract ideals

Interview with Stanley Hauerwas


17/57

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that are not interestingly enough nationally specic. Thats

the reason why patriotism in America is undamentally an

imperialist position. But Macintyre argues that in the past

patriotism was loyalty to land with a history. Now thats

more interesting and I think Christians want you to be loyal

and supportive o the near neighbors who have made youpossible. So I think that might well be a kind o patriotism

that Christians could support.

Q: In the scriptures we have statements such as Christs

render unto Caesar what is Caesars, and we have Paul

talking about the powers that be. How does the Christian

aith draw the line between those statements and admoni-

tions with Christian teachings that are oten inconsistent

with our own nation?

Hauerwas: Well I dont think Romans 13; people read

Romans 13 and dont read Romans 12. Paul would have

thought that the emperor should also orgive his enemies

and so I think that chapter division is just a disaster. Ren-

der unto Caesar the things that are Caesars, unto God thethings that are o God. I treat that in the new commentary

that has just been published on the gospel o Matthew and

I think its pretty clear that that wasnt saying, Oh, well

Caesar gets to do what Caesar does. I mean you know

when Jesus says let me see the coin, the very act that the

people that had asked him the question handed him the

coin already indicated that they were complicit with Rome

in a way that was incompatible with being Jewish. So I

think that the assumption that, oh well Caesar is Caesar

and the church is church and we can get along, well you

know Caesar wants it all and I think the idea that we got

that straightened out by separation o church and state is

just crazy.

Q: I thats the case, can Christians be engaged politi-

cally?

Hauerwas: O course. It depends on the politics thats

around but nothing about my position prevents Christians

rom being engaged in politics as long as they are Chris-

tians. What bothers me is when they want to say well as

a Christian I couldnt kill anyone but as a congressman or

senator I have to do it. Well I dont think that works.

Q: How then should Christians be engaged politically?

What should we be doing as Christians?


Mural in the Denver Airport. Photo by C. Bushman


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Hauerwas: You shouldnt let anyone tell you, you

need to privatize your aith. You say: No, Im going to vote

this way because Im a ollower o Jesus and thats what

it means to be a ollower o Jesus. So thats what I would

think is necessary.

Q: Does Christ demand any duties or loyalties o us toour government?

Hauerwas: No.

Q: John Howard Yoder oten discusses the problem o

associating with the system, becoming Herodians, that in

the end we will end up supporting the government over our

Christian belies. How do we avoid that as Christians?

Hauerwas: By making sure we got good riends whowill tell us when we are doing it. You need people who

have been through the re so to speak and can tell you

when you may think you are just doing your duty but in

act youre really collaborating with the devil.

Q: One o the things in your appeal to abolish war you

discuss that we should no longer study war but instead

study peace. What would we be studying i we studied

peace? How do we approach that?

Hauerwas: What would it mean to envision what in-

ternational relations might look like i we dont assume

the necessity o war? What kind o nation would we need

to be in which war was not seen to be a necessity? Once

you start down the road o just saying, you know, war is

just kind o a given then as a matter o act you will make

sure it is a given.

Q: A common complaint directed at pacists and ad-

vocates o nonviolence is that they have criticisms but no

solutions. What should we be doing as Christians to change

the world or the approaches to war?

Hauerwas: By being who we are. People matter. For

example, we live in a country now that is determined byear. What would it mean or Christians to be a people that

are not determined by ear? That makes possibilities open

that otherwise would not exist.

Q: Could you elaborate on how we would live i we

were not determined by ear?

Hauerwas: It would mean that death didnt hold sway

over us in a way that we might well be ready to take risksthat might envision the possibility youll have to die.

Q: In your essay or the call to abolish war, you discuss

the struggle to end slavery and there is this comparison

with the struggle to abolish war. Do you see any trends

towards either a national or global rejection o war in the

same way we see a rejection o slavery?

Hauerwas: No. I dont. I wish I could say I do, but Idont.

Q: What will it take or Christianity or or the world to

reject war as universally as it has rejected slavery?

Hauerwas: You just got to do the same kind o hard

slogging, one person at a time convincing that I think is

the heart o what our Christianity is about.



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Q: In your essay Why War is a Moral Necessity or

America, you state, Christians conuse the sacrice o

war with the sacrice o Christ. In what ways does that

conusion make itsel maniest?

Hauerwas: By the fag in the American church chancel.

Its everywhere. I think that that fag usually stands or thesacrices that were made in World War II and in many

ways thats a much more real sacrice or most Americans

than the sacrice o Christ.

Q: Why do you think Christians conuse that with the

sacrice o Christ?

Hauerwas: Because we havent aced up to the particu-

larity o Jesus as a Jewish Messiah and we instead turnedJesus into a generalized savior rather than the one who

preached the Sermon on the Mount.

Q: What is the central message o the Sermon on the

Mount?

Hauerwas: I think that to try to give it a central mes-

sage like you ought to love your neighbor or that you cant

serve God and mammon; I think that to try to seize onsomething central like that is to try to avoid the particular-

ity o the Sermon on the Mount. So, Im against trying to

give it a central message.

Q: What do you eel the particularity o the Sermon

on the Mount is?

Hauerwas: This is what it means to be disciple o

Jesus.

Q: Do you eel that Christians in todays world believe

in the Sermon on the Mount or ollow the Sermon on the

Mount?

Hauerwas: No. Clearly we think that the Sermon on

the Mount is an ideal we ought to strive or but you really

cant live it. You cant orgive enemies. Its just not goingto work.

Q: Why is it that we dont embrace the Sermon on the

Mount then?

Hauerwas: Because we dont want lie to be that com-

plicated or interesting. It puts us to much out o step.

Q: Is there anything Christians should be willing to

kill or?

Hauerwas: No.

Q: Is there anything Christians should be willing to

die or?

Hauerwas: Everything.

Q: There is a quote in your article that states Ameri-

cans have rarely bled, sacriced or died or Christianity

or any other sectarian aith. What is the signicance o

that quote?

Hauerwas: Its a very important quote. It means that

exactly where Christians lose their aith is the overriding

presumption that what you are willing to die or or have

your children die or is true and that means the country

and it doesnt mean the church. Mormon persecution is o



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course, just as Christians say that our aith is built upon the

blood o the martyrs, your aith is also built on the blood

o your martyrs.

Q: In that Christians have a history o the blood o the

martyrs and I would argue Mormons have a history o the

blood o the martyrs. Why have we abandoned that tradi-tion and now it is the blood o the patriots and blood o

the Americans?

Hauerwas: Well because America has been very very

good to us and we are wealthy.

Q: Do you see this allegiance as a monetary or material

sort o allegiance?

Hauerwas: It certainly helps but no its deeper thanthat, it gives you identity.

Q: I you were given a orum to address Mormons or

LDS what would you want to share with us?

Hauerwas: Well, I did it once. I addressed Sunstone

and they didnt like it at all. Because Sunstone o course is

the Mormon liberals and my critique o liberalism wasnt

to their liking. I was not a success. I think Mormons haveproved to be extra loyal to the United States because they

know they are seen as religiously so weird. So a Mormon

can run or president just like a catholic ran or president

and said, dont worry Im not going to take my theological

convictions serious when it comes to running the country.

You know youve gone to hell in a hand basket when that

happens.

Q: What would be your admonition or your call to

Mormons? What should we be doing with our religion?

Hauerwas: O course I think you ought to read the

New Testament more and the Book o Mormon less. I un-

derstand the debate within Mormons about whether you

are Christian or not. I understand it. I understand that thereis a debate. I dont necessarily understand all the nuances

o the debate. I think the more Mormons move towards

classical Christianity, the better o you will be.

Q: What makes someone a Christian in your mind?

Hauerwas: That they have been baptized into the lie

death and resurrection o Christ and that they are identied

by a body o people that hold them accountable.Q: Oten times pacists get marginalized when they

identiy themselves as a pacist. Do you believe that sel-

identiying as a pacist marginalizes ones ability to be part

o the war debate?

Hauerwas: I try not to let it do that. Obviously Im

pretty well. But i marginalization is marginalization its

better than the alternatives. My way o putting it is that Idont think that Im committed to Christian non-violence

because obviously Im a violent son o a bitch. But by cre-

ating the expectations in you I hope that you will keep me

honest o what I know is true. So thats the way you got

to begin to think about what it means to be committed to

Christian non-violence.



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Racism, Violence and the United States,Pt. II: Torture and Lynchingby Spencer Kingman

In a previous article, I tried to expose the racist roots o the

massive U.S. prison system and its continuities with slavery.

I described a system that severs people rom amily and

society, renders them invisible and untouchable, then puts

the to work or almost no pay. This is indeed violence,

but it is so pervasive, and so deeply institutionalized, that

it is sometimes hard to recognize it as such. Sometimes the

weight o the system can just roll over people withoutany identiable villains or messy conrontations.

The violence o torture, on the other hand, is unmistak-

able. It scars the deenseless body and wrecks the captive

mind. These days, our discussions o torture are too oten

limited to what is happening in Iraq or Guantanamo Bay,

and we ail to connect these outrages to what occurs within

domestic prisons or at the hands o police. We also ail to

trace the racist lineage o all these practices. In this article,

I will try to establish some o the historical links between

racism, prison, and torture all the way back through slav-

ery. In the next article, I will try to relate these things to

the present day situation. Reader be advised: this article

contains some disturbing descriptions o torture.

With emancipation in 1863, millions o black people

stepped back rom a system that tried to place them be-

yond the pale o human sympathy, 1a system that, by any

means necessary, worked them rom cradle to grave, a

system that mangled their genealogy and hurled it, with

so many lives, into a great abyss o loss. For each o these

exslaves, the past held tortured stories o annihilation

and rape, escape and revenge. It held the bitter smell odisease, the rough sound o unknown languages, and the

naked crush o people in holds the size o crawl spaces.

For every Arican slave that was actually imported to the

Americas, there were perhaps ve other Aricans killed

in conquest, capture, or transport.2This statistic should

speak not just to the unhinged destructiveness o the Eu-

ropeans, but also to the do-or-die resistance o Aricans.

From buyer-to-buyer, branded and chained, those whosurvived this holocaust were sold out to arms in the U.S.

south. Perhaps, with time, the brutality o capture receded,

elongated and blunted by elaborate rituals o white pater-

nalism or the routines o back-breaking labor. But or 250

years, the rapes and whippings continued. Slave work was

demeaning and dangerous while the prots went to others.

Rebellions ignited hysterical violence, and escapees braved

an ocean o hostility.

But in some ways, black people were less vulnerable as

slaves than they would become ater emancipation. Ater

all, as slaves, they belonged to somebody. As valuable

property they could count on some protection rom their

owners against other whites, and their status was well

dened. As ree people, with the caste system in disarray,

they were held in near universal contempt by a deeated,

Racism, Violence and the United States, Pt. II: Torture and Lynching


22/57

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earul white population. Within a short time, rife clubs and

groups like the Ku Klux Klan ormed to terrorize blacks and

cancel their newly won rights. Instead o voting, learning,

owning land and holding oce, exslaves, poor and poorly

armed, were whipped, burned, and run to death by dogs.

The line between vigilantism and court justice was thin.Juries and judges were nearly always white. At the end o

the Civil War, the population o southern jails promptly

fipped rom mostly-white to mostly-black and multiplied

our-, ve-, even ten-old as people were locked up or

trivial crimes: stealing ood, trouble-making, disrespect.

Soon there were ar more black convicts than the states

could handle. As a solution, states started leasing black

convicts out to entrepreneurs (white convicts remained inthe state jailbeds). In return or taking on the responsibility

o eeding, clothing, and holding the black inmates, these

businessmen were allowed to work them as hard as they

pleased. In many cases the conditions and work were ar

more dangerous than during slavery.

As one southern employer put it in 1883, Beore the war

we owned the negroes. I a man had a good n-----, he could

aord to take care o him; i he was sick get a doctor. He

might even put gold plugs in his teeth. But these convicts:

we dont own em. One dies, get another. 3Big arming,

logging and mining companies all rushed to drink rom this

poison well, acquiring convicts or their most dangerous

and expensive projects. In 1876, one group o leased-out

convicts was put to work clearing a path through the jun-

gles o Florida. There were no provisions or shelter or ood.

Instead, the prisoners were orced to construct rude huts

and scour the woods to eat. They soon met with starva-

tion, exposure, scurvy, dysentery, pneumonia, and malaria.

To keep them working, overseers rained whips down on

their backs, and some were let hanging by their thumbs

rom trees, leaving them with hands resembling the pawso certain apes. Only 27 o 72 survived. Other leased-out

convicts constructed the precious railroads. They were

moved and housed in rolling iron cages, twenty men

shackled together with a bucket or waste and a tub or

bathing in a space the size o a small U-haul truck. One

observer called it an oven... a small piece o hell. 4

One did not survive more than a year or two on these

jobs, but there were other jobs that were slightly less deadly.Some black convicts even ound themselves doing agri-

cultural labor on the very same land they had worked as

slaves. No matter where black convicts were armed out

to, their work-broken bodies were subject to emaciation,

disease, swit punishments or minor slips, and the sadism

o guards or ellow prisoners. When torture was applied,

the techniques were medieval: the lash, the rack, the con-

sized sweatbox. Many were simply shot down trying to

escape. Once incarcerated, the average lie o a convict in

Texas was 7 years. In Georgia, no convict was expected to

survive longer than 10. 5

Southern blacks who managed to avoid the chain gang

were nonetheless subject to the terrors o lynch law. Whites

could explode with rage over the slightest breach o racial

etiquette, and white-on-black crime went unpunished. Any



23/57

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black who tried to break out o debt-poverty or hesitated

to bow to white power could be beaten to a pulp or have

their house burned. Those unlucky ones suspected o rap-

ing or murdering a white person were hung, drowned, or

dragged rom automobiles. Picture postcards o their last

moments were passed around by whites and sold at localstores.(Some o these can be viewed online at www.with-

outsanctuary.org).

By the late 1890s, lynchings were

becoming large, morbid spectacles, dis-

plays o white supremacy that could

attract thousands o people. In 1893, an-

ti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells wrote

to President McKinley: Masks havelong since been thrown aside.6Men

and women were castrated or mutilat-

ed. Fingers were chopped o and dis-

tributed as souvenirs. In 1893, Henry

Smith, a black man, was tortured or ty

minutes with red-hot irons beore be-

ing burned in ront o a cheering crowd

o 10,000. In 1904, Luther Holbert and

his wie, suspected o killing a white,

had chunks o their bodies removed

with a corkscrew beore a huge Mis- sissippi crowd. In

1928, when Charley Shepherd, a black mentally-retarded

prisoner escaped, killing a white guard and kidnapping

his daughter, a raiding party o ve-thousand men hunted

him down. Ater he was captured, he was paraded rom

town-to-town. He was eventually burned to death, but not

beore the crowd tortured him or seven hours. 7

Thousands o black people were lynched between

emancipation and the civil-rights era, but not all victims

were black, and not all mobs were southern. In the west

and mid-west hundreds o Mexicans, Chinese, and Ameri-can Indians were killed by mobs. Irish, Jews, and whites

could also be targeted. As LDS readers

know, Joseph Smith and other Mormons

ell victim to earlier mob violence. The

largest mass lynching in U.S. history

involved 11 Italian immigrants killed

in New Orleans in 1891, and just three

decades later, the Ku Klux Klan was amajor orce in cities as ar west as Port-

land, Oregon and as ar north as Detroit,

Michigan. However, nowhere but the

south was racial dictatorship so total, so

violent, or so deeply written into law.

It would also be a mistake to char-

acterize white society as unied in its

support o lynching. Local ocials and

media oten supported the killings, but

in most places the killings elicited hor-

ror and condem- nation. Even within the back country o

southern states, there were divisions among whites. Public

lynchings were an act o war by the most extreme elements

o society. They were opportunities to intimidate white

opponents and enlist poor rural whites in urther white

http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/


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power activism or terrorism. As lynching spread through

the late nineteenth century, the penal system was evolv-

ing. Convict leasing had been a protable solution to the

unmanageable number o black prisoners, and it upheld

white supremacy during the transition rom slavery to Jim

Crow. But it pushed down the wages o poor whites andmade a mockery o the law. It was also extremely brutal,

and reormers were busy exposing it. The system was

abandoned in the early twentieth-century and replaced by

large state-run arms. Some, like Angola Farm in Louisiana

or Parchman Farm in Mississippi, still exist today. These

prisons presented themselves as more humane and more

accountable to the law, but in many ways, they merely

institutionalized the brutality and racism o prior systems.They centralized more prisoners in larger institutions ar-

ther rom the public eye, a trend that continues to the

present day.

The inmates were still mostly black, the conditions still

those o slavery, or worse, and the primary orm o punish-

ment was still public whipping: or ghting, or disrespect

to white ocials, or or simply ailing to work ast enough.

Lynching was also slowly brought under the auspices o

the law. In the nineteenth century, local police might sim-

ply hold a victim until the mob showed up. Or they might

preer to hold a speedy little trial and perorm the hangings

themselves, but legal executions played mostly the same

role as illegal ones; they attracted the same estive town

crowds. Even as executions became more impersonal and

orderly, legal capital punishment continued to perorm

some o the social unctions o lynchings. In 1940, the state

o Mississippi hired Jimmy Thompson, a ormer hypnotist

in traveling carnivals, to perorm executions with an elec-

tric chair that he carried around in the back o a pickup

truck. Most o the executions were held inside county

jails, but newspapers printed large photographs with grislydescriptions. One observer recalled a 1942 electrocution

perormed by Thompson in Philadelphia, Mississippi: A

crowd gathered late at night on the courthouse square with

chairs, crackers, and children, waiting or the current to

be turned on and the street lights to dim. 8

We tend to associate torture with secrecy, and this is

mostly accurate. When the public eye is active and critical,

torturers hide their work and adopt non-scarring methods.However, Arican slaves, early prisoners, and black share-

croppers were oten subjected to torture that was explicitly

public. It was meant to intimidate people, de-humanize

them, and orce them into extremely exploitative labor.

Public torture lynchings served these purposes and more.

Seized with ears o losing status and economic security

and drunk on the hard-core racism that went with slav-

ery, whites turned their wounded rage on imagined black

brutes and rapists. Through public torture lynchings,

extremist whites dragged their communities into antasies

o total mastery and domination, delusions o unity, violent

demonstrations o a will to power. The dimensions o this

torture, as usual, were political, economic, racial and erotic.

Cloaked in the rhetoric o crime and punishment, reus-

ing to accept the personhood o blacks, lynchers believed


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that they were protecting women, protecting Christian-

ity, even protecting democracy.9Determined long-term

anti-racist activism put an end to most o these activities,

but echoes o this past infect our modern-day supermax

prisons, regular police brutality, and even what happens

in the war on terror.

1. Ida B. Wells phrase.

2. Anderson, S. E. The Black Holocaust: For Beginners.

New York: Writers and Readers, 1995.

3. Oshinsky, David M. Worse Than Slavery: Parchman

Farm and the Ordeal o Jim Crow Justice. New York: Free

Press, 1995. 55.

4. Ibid. 59.

5. Ibid. 61-3.

6. Voices o a Peoples History o the United States.

ed. Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove. New York: Seven

Stories, 2004. 232.

7. Oshinsky 118, 101-2, 141-2; also Garland, David. Death,

Denial, Discourse: On the Forms and Functions o American

Capital Punishment. Crime, Social Control, and HumanRights. Devon, UK: Willan, 2007. 148.

8. Oshinsky 205-6.

9. Garland, David. Penal Excess and Surplus Meaning:

Public Torture Lynchings in Twentieth-Century America.

Law and Society Review. vol.39 n.4 (2005).

A Letter to the Presidentby Abdullah Mulhim

Dear President,

As you embark on our years in oce, acing major

issues, attacking obstacles, and trying to nd solutions to

domestic and international problems, I would like to oer

my help in resolving one o the major problems that has

aced us in the past century and which continues to be a

puzzle in nding a solution to. I would like to advise you

on the Middle East problem. I understand that I am not a

political advisor, I understand I lack experience in interna-tional diplomacy, and I am not a Harvard or Yale graduate,

but as a young Palestinian who grew up in the Middle East,

I lived under the harsh and dicult circumstances o the

Israeli occupation, and I witnessed ailed negotiations and

a peace process that neglects one o the main parties in

this confict: the young generation o Arabs.

Since the days o the Lyndon Johnson administration,

the U.S policy toward the Middle East has been to build a

ull partnership with Israel, while the continuous call or

democracy in the Arab world has in act been ollowed by

blind US support or authoritarian Arab regimes that dont

threaten American interests in the region. It is a policy that

has been eective until now, despite its major faw, namely

ignoring the ambitions o a generation o young Arabs,

who have their own dreams and goals o a better social

A Letter to the President

RETURNTO ARTICLE

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and economic situation. This policy, given the events o

September 11th, the ailure o the peace agreement between

the Palestinians and the Israelis, and the unstable situation

in Iraq, needs to be rethought. It requires an overhaul o

the State Departments views toward the Middle East. The

policy I propose asks the new administration to choose theyoung Arabs as a partner and or the rst time to truly ol-

low up on previous demands or ull democracy and human

rights in the region. It asks the President to dump the old

guards o the Middle East, such as the current Egyptian,

Jordanian and Saudi regimes, and to put ull pressure on

Israel, economically and military, to ully withdraw rom

Palestinian lands occupied in 1967. These actions require

courage and would be dicult, but are necessary to assurea better uture or both the United States and the Middle

East.

These steps will draw the young Arabs away rom radi-

cal movements which have fourished under the current

US policy. These groups oer young Arabs, who see their

dreams as unachievable in the current situation, a hope

or a better lie, even though these young Arabs disagree

with the tactics and goals o these groups in changing thecurrent regimes and guards o the region. Those radical

groups have shown the ailure o the US policy in achiev-

ing stability economically or socially or the region. Their

success highlights the act that poverty has grown to its

highest level among Arabs. That the region is not devel-

oping economically, as most Arab countries are becoming

more and more consuming markets, without any source o

agriculture or production income. That reedom o speechis just a dream. These radical groups cherish the current

US policy and the current situation, as they sell young

Arabs the hope, that with them, change will happen in the

region. These changes, they say, despite being unclear o

what they are, will bring a new hope and a resh start that

might help brighten the uture that we all dream o.

The past ten years those young educated Arabs have

been crying or change as they protested in Egypt, went

to the streets in Lebanon, participated in ree elections in

the Palestinian territories, and used the limited ree media

outlets available to them in Saudi Arabia. As they asked

or changes and said enough to current conditions, they

extended their hand to the US and the world or help in

their cause. Those actions went ignored by the US and the

West, however, who instead launched more attacks on the

A Letter to the President

7The Mormon Worker I 4 Th W C ll d th W d


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Palestinians and Iraqis, supported the Egyptian regimes

detention o Muslim Brotherhood candidates running or

election, and published humiliating pictures o the prophet

Mohammad. These events urther showed the ineective-

ness o the current Arab regimes ability to support and

protect their own people. Actions that the US could haveavoided, they instead promoted, and stood rm with their

authoritarian allies in the Middle East, giving those radical

groups more uel and power in recruiting ambitious young

Arabs looking or a better uture and sel respect.

Mr./Mrs. President I ask you when you take oce not

to continue the current policy, but to have a dierent vision

or the Middle East, knowing that the majority o Arabs are

young, ambitious individuals, who, like every other youngperson, hope or a decent lie under good social, economic,

and political conditions. They are in search o sel respect,

reedom and the realization o personal goals. They hope

or equality and a better uture or themselves and their

kids. They are in search o a peaceul region empty o cor-

ruption. They are in search o leaders that give them hope.

I ask you to take active steps toward the realization o Arab

interests. Those actions will help in securing the interests

and uture o the US, and will weaken those radical groups

and limit their recruiting abilities.

The Weapon Called the WordA song of the righteous is a prayer unto me.by Jeremy Cloward

Greetings. Allow me to introduce mysel, My Name is Jer-

emy Cloward. I am a new member o the Mormon Worker,

a devout member o the Mormon Church, and a hardcore

anarchist. I owe that to, not just the punk bands the Sex

Pistols or The Dead Kennedys, but the actual Kennedys.

I was raised to think that the Kennedys were the primo

breed o the United States, and that i we had a royal amily,

they would be it. When I began listening to Punk at age 12,I heard the Dead Kennedys singing songs like, Weve got

a bigger problem now, citing lyrics such as:

Welcome to 1984

Are you ready or the third world war?!?

You too will meet the secret police

Theyll drat you and theyll jail your niece

Youll go quietly to boot campTheyll shoot you dead, make you a man

Dont you worry, its or a cause

Feeding global corporations claws

Die on our brand new poison gas

El Salvador or Aghanistan

Making money or President Reagan

And all the riends o President Reagan

The Weapon Called the Word

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Since I liked Reagan at the time, I at rst thought, wow,

thats oensive, but I was getting into the punk world more

and more. I later read an article pointing out the act that

the real Kennedys were an elitist bunch o corrupt slugs,

and that the Dead Kennedys took their name based on the

mockery o the American dream and to say that politicalpower was attained by sleazy means. I did more research

to nd out that they were ar worse in their lust or power

than I could have believed. All the research pointed to the

view that we were all

duped into worshiping

the modern day King

Herods. I went all

through high schoolbeing taught dier-

ently than what really

happened in history. I

was soon not to trust

governments, or what

I was told at ace value

by the media, and the politicians. I embraced anarchism

or the pure version o what the Lord wants or us, a highly

organized system, with a complete absence o power. Only

people clinging to the righteous values the Lord has given

us. I am going to hopeully be contributing regularly to the

paper and the movement, or now I will start the music

column or the paper. I am a music addict, and have spent a

better part o my lie going to shows and collecting albums,

and live concert recordings.

This Issue: The Levellers. Based on the historical move-

ment o anarchists in the 1600s, John Lilbourne, or as he was

titled Freeborne John, led a splinter group rom Crom-

wells New Model Army. They were originally called the

Diggers, and later the name o the Levellers stuck.

The modern day punk band called the Levellers hailrom Brighton England. I was rst exposed to them in 1992

in Phoenix AZ at the 4th o July est. I went down to see

Peter Murphy, who was headlining, but the Levellers were

one o the 9 bands scheduled to play that day. I met 3 o

them hanging out in the audience right ater the Machines

o Loving Grace set. I met John Sevink, the ddle player,

one o the techies, and Charlie Heather the drummer. They

were polite, told me about the band, their history, and whatthey were doing around the states. I was kind o shocked

to hear that they had a ddle player. He explained it was

a kind o ddle I had probably never heard beore. They

came out a while later, plugged in, and pumped out some

incredible sounds, ull o energy, anger, hope, love and a

vast challenge to the world as it stands. The song that stood

out the most was One Way: Theres only one way o lie,

and thats your own. Belting out some incredible melodies,

but sounding like nothing I had ever heard beore, they have

since become one o my all time avorite bands. They are

an earthy olk band, that took a bass guitar and bashed the

Sex Pistols into the undamental sound. They sound like

The Alarm, meets New Model Army , meets The Water-

boys. Imagine olk ddle played Metalllica speed, with all

the roar o pure anarchist lyrics riding on top delivering

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the message. I you can imagine that, then you understand

the Levellers.

The band has become disenranchised with the United

States and does not play here much anymore. I saw them

again in Paris in 1997, with a ull arena o ellow anarchists,

enjoying the music, and speed o an intense olk band play-ing to a large mosh pit. The rst album called The Weapon

called the Word, is the one o the ew albums never to

chart, and still go platinum. The band hates music press,

and or the most part record companies, because even

something as holy and pure as music, has been capitalized,

and making money has become more important than good

music and the message getting out. The Levellers have

tackled issues such as heroine addiction, housing projects,and crime, all catching people in a vicious cycle because o

poor social programs and laws not protecting individuals

but corporate greed instead.

Everyday I look at you

Dressed up in your ties o blue

Saying theres not much you can do

To help the kids on Hope StreetThey dont seem to even care

That it was you that put them there

You seem to think they like it there

Hanging out on Hope Street

From the song Hope Street o the album Zietgeist

The Levellers joined orces with Rev Hammer (another

noted Vocal anarchist) in 1997 to put together a sort o

opera telling the story o Freeborn John, and the original

Levellers. They also became disillusioned with the estival

Circuit in the UK, and ounded their own estival o music.

It is called Beautiul Days, celebrating and promoting

Anarchism, and environmental causes. At times joiningthem in the estival is at Alabama 3, New Model Army, The

Stranglers, Echo & the Bunnymen, Billy Brag, and many

more.

The band sings o things that resonate in my heart, to

music that I can just enjoy, I recommend them to everyone

I can. The wisdom in the music is pure, timeless, and most

important, wise. All the problems in the world, wont be

solved by this guitar.For more ino on the band, see www.levellers.co.uk

What Does It Mean To FollowJesus Christ Today?by Cory Bushman

Christs teaching to live each day as if it were your last is

much smarter than the worlds teaching to get more and

more money for the future. Both sides will die, but only one

will die prepared and happy. Disciples of Christ will be poor,

but that does not mean that they will be sad. It may mean

that they will live out on the land or sleep under the stars,

What Does it Mean To Follow Jesus Christ Today?

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that they will be hungry three times a day (just before each

meal), that they will be so tired at night that they will fall

asleep easily and sleep right through the night, that they will

use their time to listen to and help others, and that when they

die, their death will have meaning.

Leo ToLsToy(What I BelIeve)

Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.

D&C 18:10

The Mormon Worker - Issue 4 - Jul 08

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