In 2001, I remember when every member of my family bought American flags to display outside our homes in hopes of heading off Islamophobic hate crimes, while fewer than 10 percent of U.S. voters opposed the march to war and a single member of Congress voted against it. In 2023, the U.S. political establishment is working to revive the 9/11 playbook in support of an equally destructive response to attacks in Israel: unlimited military funding for the mass death of Muslims and brown people abroad, and mass vilification and repression of those at home who stand against the escalation of atrocities.
But the results look vastly different today. In just weeks, a bloc in Congress including DSA Representatives Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has grown to nearly 20 times Representative Barbara Lee’s lone vote against war in 2001, bravely standing against a war from within its very source: the halls of the federal government. Even more starkly, the fiercest propaganda effort in decades has fallen flat on its face, with a supermajority 66 percent of voters supporting a cease-fire. You don’t need a poll to see this: Just look to the streets, where day after day, people from all walks of life are joining protests in a growing mass movement for Palestine.
This didn’t just happen: The difference is a resurgent organized left. Thanks to herculean organizing for decades by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS, movement globally and across the United States, growing visibility of Palestinians speaking for themselves about conditions on the ground, increasing normalization by DSA elected officials, and too much more organizing to count, the ruling-class strategy of manufacturing consent for war is nearing the end of its rope.