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| Supporters, at left, of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump face off with protesters after a rally was canceled last month at the University of Illinois, Chicago, over security concerns. (Charles Rex Arbogast / AP) |
By Chris Hedges
BALTIMORE—When
Rory Fanning, a burly veteran who served in the 2nd Army Ranger
Battalion and was deployed in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2004, appeared at
the Donald Trump rally in
Chicago last month he was wearing the top half of his combat fatigues.
As he moved through the crowd, dozens of Trump supporters shouted
greetings such as “Welcome home, brother” and “Thank you for your
service.” Then came the protest that shut down the rally. Fanning, one
of the demonstrators, pulled out a flag that read “Vets Against Racism,
War and Empire.”
Click here to
see a YouTube video of Rory Fanning being ejected from a Donald Trump
rally. During the incident he was doused with a drink and struck.
“Immediately
someone threw a drink on me,” he said when I interviewed him on my
teleSUR show, “Days of Revolt.” “I got hit from behind in the head three
or four times. It was quite the switch, quite the pivot on me.
Questioning the narrative, questioning Donald Trump’s narrative, and I
was suddenly out of their good graces.”
Nationalists do not venerate veterans. They venerate veterans who read from the approved patriotic script. America
is the greatest and most powerful country on earth. Those we fight are
depraved barbarians. Our enemies deserve death. God is on our side.
Victory is assured. Our soldiers and Marines are heroes. Deviate
from this cant, no matter how many military tours you may have served,
and you become despicable. The vaunted patriotism of the right wing is
about self-worship. It is a raw lust for violence. It is blind
subservience to the state. And it works to censor the reality of war.
“A
lot of soldiers who’ve come back from war see themselves as anything
but a hero,” Fanning said. “To throw that term around loosely is
dangerous. It’s a way to manipulate soldiers. It buys their silence.”
“Soldiers
are not encouraged to talk about the realities of war when they come
back,” he said. “They’re labeled a hero or warrior. That’s a major
problem. It leads to further seclusion, isolation with soldiers. We talk
about the suicide rates amongst
veterans—22 a day. It’s because we’re not allowed to talk about what we
saw overseas, how unjust it was, how we feel like bullies. How many
innocent people have been killed since 9/11? Throwing out words like
‘heroes’ does a disservice to the experience of veterans and all the
innocent people that have been killed since then.”
War,
up close, bears no relation to the myth. It is depraved and cruel. It
has nothing to do with noble ends or justice. Killing is a dirty, ugly
business. There is a vast disparity between war’s reality and the myth
peddled by the press, the entertainment industry, politicians and
churches.
Please continue this article here: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/04/lie-patriotism
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