George Walford: Movements and Members

Under the heading FOREIGN NEWS IC13 pointed out that the resistance to apartheid in South Africa, usually presented as a black movement against white oppression, was more comprehensible when seen as the outcome of ideological divisions, the association of a particular skin-colour, with each side being largely accidental. The news seems to be spreading; this is from the Observer of 8 Sept 85:

Outsiders see the current rebellion as black against white. Yet it reveals itself as more of a campaign against an oppressive system than against an oppressor race. Blacks working for the system have been attacked; whites opposed to it have been exempted.

Whether a system (or anything else) is or is not experienced as, oppressive depends upon ideology.

Under the heading WHAT SHALL WE CALL IT? IC16 pointed out that the identification of women with resistance to militarism is no more justified than the identification of blacks with resistance to apartheid; members of the peace movement are not distinguished by sex but by ideology. This news also seems to be spreading; the fact that the protesters against the American military establishment at Greenham Common are women has done a good deal to strengthen the fallacy that women are more inclined toward peace than men, but the Sunday Telegraph of 8 Sept 85 prints a front-page picture of the Greenham women alongside one of an armed American servicewoman guarding the base.

from Ideological Commentary 21, November 1985.