February 23, 2025
157th Anniversary of the Birth of W.E.B. Du Bois
Opposition in 1949 to Creation of NATO
Original NATO headquarters in Paris
In 1949, W.E.B. Du Bois testified before the U.S. Congress to protest against a bill that would fund the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). His speech provides a clear framing of the central issues and contradictions involved in the original formation of NATO and its aims of establishing grounds in Europe for war against the Soviet Union.
The question of war and peace, in his mind, most starkly illustrated the divergence between the interests and aspirations of the people of the United States and those of their true enemy – the ruling class. While the world has evolved in years since, Du Bois’s critique of the war agenda still serves as a guiding light for comprehending our own times, where NATO is portrayed as a bastion of democracy, dissent is cast as treason, and tens of billions of dollars are funnelled to fuel the U.S.’s unchecked proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and a future war with China.
Through mainstream media, the public is told to accept the costs of their government’s massive economic and military war-drive; no discussion is had about the origins of the present conflict and what it will mean for a global political and financial system that is on the brink of epoch-defining changes. For Du Bois in 1949, the possibility of a third world war placed a responsibility on the people of the United States to struggle for truth, for democratic rule, and for profound moral courage in the fight for a genuine and just world peace.
I appear here at the request of the Continental Peace Congress to be held in Mexico next month and of the Council on African Affairs to protest against the proposal for the United States to arm Europe for war. Congress is asked to vote down a payment of $1.5 billion together with unspecified sums in the future to implement the Atlantic pact.
This huge sum is not for education, although our schools are in desperate need of help. It is not for infantile paralysis which is sweeping the land, nor for cancer which is killing thousands. It is not for curbing and putting to work the mad waters of those great rivers which annually kill men, women, and children and destroy their homes, stock, and property, leaving muddy and stinking disease behind. This rich country has not enough money to spend for fighting ignorance, disease, and waste, or for the old-age security of its workers, but nevertheless is asked to spend a vast treasure to murder men, women, and children; to blind and cripple them and drive them insane; to destroy property by fire and flood; and for the third time in 50 years to jeopardize the whole edifice of civilization.
We are assured that these arms are for peace, not war – just as we were promised that the pact was for peace, not arms. None but the stupid believe this assurance. Mr. Acheson’s logic is flawless for fools:
“Gentlemen, this a pact for peace. Thank you, gentlemen; now arms for the pact, not for war but for peace, war for peace. Russia? We do not mention Russia. We just must fight Russia. It is simple, gentlemen.”
We are led to believe that this country is in danger of attack from Russia or that Russia is ready to conquer the world. We did not believe this when we asked 10,000,000 Russians to die in order to save the world from Hitler. We did not believe it when we begged Russia to help conquer Japan. We only began to believe it when we realized that the Russian concept of a state was not going to collapse but was spreading.
Assuming that you do not like and even fear Russian communism, by what right do we assume that it can be stopped by force? One idea seems to be that we can conquer the world and make it do our bidding because we are rich and have the atom bomb. Even if this were true it begs the question of the right and justice of our rule.
Why in God’s name do we want to control the earth? Is it because of our success in ruling man?
– We want to rule Russia and we cannot rule Alabama.
– We tried to rule Puerto Rico and gave it the highest suicide rate in the world.
– We sought to rule China and have just confessed our failure.
– We set out to rule Germany and apparently our only result is surrender to the very forces which we fought a world war to subdue.
How have we equipped ourselves to teach the world?
– To teach the world democracy, we chose a Secretary of State trained in the democracy of South Carolina.
– When we wanted to unravel the worst economic snarl of the modern world, we chose a general trained in military tactics at West Point; and when we want to study race relations within our borders we summon a baseball player.
If we aim to rule the world we have got to learn to rule ourselves. We have got to free our science from the control of the Army and Navy. We have got to make our schools centres of real learning and not of propaganda and hysteria. We have got to clear our minds of unreasoning prejudices. We who hate n—s and darkies, propose to control a world full of coloured people. Will they have no voice in the matter?
Without exact and careful knowledge of this world, how can we guide it? Yet we know that our knowledge of the world today is fed to us by a press whose reporters say what the owners of the press order them to say. This is not the reporters’ fault. If they want to eat they will write as they are told. It is our fault, who are unwilling to pay even five cents for our morning news. Big business which pays millions for control of news gets what it wants printed. We naively assume that what we read in our press is the whole truth, when a little reflection would convince us that we have in America no complete picture of what is transpiring behind the iron curtain. […]
|
|
[BACK]
