Promoting a culture of dissent

A dissenting voice: Jake Lynch

It might not be a message the Federal Police or the Government would support at the moment, but according to Jake Lynch we need to promote a culture of dissent.

Democracy is kept alive through dissent, says Associate Professor Lynch, and people who refuse to buy into the official line are dissenters who highlight the "disconnect" between government policy and public opinion.

Professor Lynch, a former journalist and war correspondent, is the director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) at the University of Sydney, and last night he gave a lecture to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Sydney Peace Foundation.

"In a few weeks you will see news pictures of activists being carted off by robocops guarding delegates to the APEC summit," said Professor Lynch. "But remember they are the guardians of democracy and the hope of a safer world that we could now create".

Professor Lynch examined the claim that the war in Iraq is keeping the West safe from terrorism and that terrorist plots have "nothing to do with the mess we are making in the Middle East". But time and again, public opinion surveys showed that people believe the war in Iraq is making the countries of the Coalition of the Willing less safe and more of a terrorist target.

In fact, said Professor Lynch, most people in most countries would prefer a non-violent solution to conflict, but the majority acquiesce to the military/industrial response.

"We need to stop acquiescing. We need to wake up. Sometime, somewhere, the fighting and the destruction has to stop," he said.

The "dissenting voices" at the APEC summit will be protesting against the world's biggest military machine and its commander-in-chief President Bush, he said.

He said these same activists recently protested "valiantly" against the "idiocy" of Operation Talisman Sabre, the biggest military exercise on Australian soil, which has just taken place in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Professor Lynch said: "Australia's interests are better served by playing to our traditional strengths of UN peacekeeping and diplomacy."

Keeping an open mind and a healthy cynicism for the official line is crucial, he said. A real war on terror would address the root causes: hopelessness, injustice and oppression.

"CPACS's part in this is to insist that social conflict and even violence are intelligible phenomena. They can be understood and explained, without excusing or justifying them.

"The proposition that we can make any useful observations about them without context is absurd. With context - an understanding of how conflicts arise out of injustice and unmet human needs - we can begin to divert them along non-violent paths."

Contact: Elizabeth Heath

Phone: 02 9351 3168