Abstract
In 1967, amid the U.S. war in Vietnam, distinguished leftist intellectuals and activists gathered in Sweden and Denmark to establish the first citizens’ tribunal. Initiated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, the purpose of the International War Crimes Tribunal (iwct) was to put the U.S. government on trial for its military actions in Southeast Asia. This article has two objectives. First, it argues that this activist endeavour was embedded in a larger internationalist movement against Western imperialism, namely Tricontinentalism, of which the war in Vietnam was a connecting factor. Second, the article investigates the tribunal as a manifestation of the solidarity that the New Left in the West maintained with revolutionary movements in the Third World. It aims to show the utility of the theoretical concept of political solidarity, most thoroughly elaborated by Sally J. Scholz, for the global history analysis of social justice movements. At the same time, it contends the necessity of additional parameters when studying manifestations of political solidarity in a post- and settler-colonial context, drawing on new scholarship on colonial-sensitive solidarity. By carving out the specificities of this case of activism on the theoretical ground, this investigation also highlights the importance, advantages, and pitfalls of political anti-imperialist solidarity.
I admit that I am, like other members of the ‘tribunal’, a declared enemy of imperialism and that I feel myself in solidarity with all those who fight against it.
jean paul sartre (1967)
It [The International War Crimes Tribunal] is a strong encouragement – not only for us, the people of Vietnam, but also for all those peoples fighting for national independence, liberty and peace.
hồ chí minh, Letter to Sartre, iwct Records, Folder 9
1 Introduction
“The course of history is being shaped in Vietnam” (Duffett 1968, 313). With these words, Bertrand Russell opened the second session of a tribunal against the U.S. government in 1967. The International War Crimes Tribunal (iwct) was set up amidst the ongoing war between the North Vietnamese Democratic Republic of Vietnam (drv) and the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (nlf), on the one hand, and the Southern Republic of Vietnam (rvn) and the United States on the other. Its goal was to investigate the potential infringement of international legal standards by the U.S. military and government – standards the United States themselves had co-created with the other allied nations in Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War ii. The tribunal was thoroughly prepared, having sent numerous investigative teams to North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos to collect evidence of war crimes. In May and November 1967, across two sessions in Stockholm, Sweden, and Roskilde, Denmark, the tribunal presented reports of the findings as well as witness accounts. Ten days after Russell’s second opening statement, the tribunal jury pronounced the U.S. government guilty on five accounts: waging a war of aggression, the employment of new or forbidden weapons, committing crimes against civilians, crimes against prisoners of war, and genocide.
Despite its grave allegations and condemning verdict, the tribunal and its outcome are rarely known today. The reason for this can be found in the nature of the tribunal. Instead of being carried out by an official court, it was the first “citizens’ tribunal” or “people-led war crimes tribunal” (pwct).1 That is, neither did it enjoy the legal legitimisation and executive authority of a court, nor was it officially supported by any nation state. On the contrary, it was a case of political activism against the U.S. aggression towards North Vietnam and the South Vietnamese nlf. Russell himself had initiated this endeavour and had found twenty-four prominent figures from fifteen different countries who agreed to serve as the tribunal Committee, including journalists, scholars, lawyers, novelists, as well as activists and politicians. Jean-Paul Sartre and Yugoslav historian and former partisan Vladimir Dedijer presided over the tribunal sessions. Other key figures included Simone de Beauvoir, former Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas, Filipino journalist Amado V. Hernandez, and U.S. author and civil rights activist James Baldwin. The iwct’s goal was not only to expose U.S. crimes but also to spark outrage and resistance among the population of what is today known as the Global North.2 Intensified protests, so the tribunal organisers hoped, would increase pressure on U.S. decision makers with the ultimate aim to end the U.S. military invasion.
While the tribunal was an endeavour mainly organised by activists from Western Europe, it was internationalist in nature and subject matter. Firstly, it brought together individuals from five continents and therefore constituted a point of intersection and connection for activists from different movements. Secondly, the tribunal was addressing a geographically distant cause that did not directly affect the majority of its members. Lastly, and like other revolutionary struggles against European or U.S. hegemony, Vietnam had become a symbol for a shared anti-imperialist fight, in the Third World as well as in the West. Not only did Vietnam inspire people and countries suffering from racist and imperial domination, but it also became a pressing issue for leftists in the West. Only by understanding the particular connection of the New Left in Europe and the United States with the Third World, the urgency of Russell’s quote above can be comprehended.
The article’s goal is twofold: first, it asks where the iwct was positioned within broader anti-imperialist solidarity movements of the period. I claim that the tribunal grew out of a specific environment created by an internationalism that emanated from and connected the Third World. This internationalism of the 1950s through to the 1970s, also known as Third Worldism, forged networks, conferences, organisations, and mutual support among the (formerly) colonised world and racially oppressed people in the West. It was based on the vision of a politically, economically, and culturally just international system, as well as of ridding the new world order of the lingering effects of colonial conquest, exploitation, and oppression. I argue that the specific Third Worldism of the late 1960s and early 1970s – so-called Tricontinentalism – had a constitutive significance for the New Left in the West. By doing so, I aim to contribute to a historiography that decentres the Global North and brings to the surface Global South agency and impact.
Secondly, and more importantly, the article aims to answer the question of how a theoretical framework of political solidarity can be utilised for the historical analysis of social justice movements in a post-colonial context. I draw primarily on the philosophical conceptualisation of the term political solidarity put forward by U.S. philosopher Sally J. Scholz. In contrast to other types of solidarity, such as civic or social, she carves out the specifics of social justice movements and their moral implications. In addition to this formal theory, I include parameters to address materialist and discursive inequalities when examining solidarity movements in a post-colonial setting. In this paper, I present some examples of these additional parameters. With the help of the published tribunal proceedings Against the Crime of Silence (Duffett 1968) as well as the Russell Tribunal Records, stored in the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives in New York City, I explore this specific historic case study in an exemplary way and aim to demonstrate the importance, advantages, and pitfalls of solidarity activism across different economic, social, and global standings.3 In this, the iwct presents an interesting case study as it is a relatively early and radical example of Western-organised, internationalist, anti-imperialist solidarity activism and as it constitutes the beginning of a tradition of citizens’ tribunals.
2 Third Worldism, Tricontinentalism, and the Radical New Left
Drawing on a long and complex history, Third Worldist internationalism and cooperation – or what Vijay Prashad (2007) has called the “Third World Project” and R. Joseph Parrott (2022) the “Anti-Imperial Project” – had become one of the most attractive internationalist political forces by the 1960s. It was neither a homogenous project, nor can it be subsumed within a single definition. Rather, it was composed of a rich pool of philosophies and movements which engaged, allied, and, at times, competed and contended with each other. Despite this diversity, scholars have ascertained certain elements of the political project. Third Worldism was a response to imperialist and neo-colonial claims to power, global economic injustice, and racial suppression and gained momentum when newly independent states entered the stage of international politics during the era of decolonisation. Standing in the tradition of anti-colonial and anti-racist activism and thought – including Pan-Asian and Pan-African visions as well as institutions like the League Against Imperialism – post-colonial countries joined forces to create a third block and vision for an alternative world order. In 1952, French historian and anthropologist Alfred Sauvy coined the term “Third World” to label the emerging solidarity platforms amongst anti-colonial movements and leaders. Referring to the French Revolution, he observed the: “Ignored, exploited, scorned Third World, like the Third Estate, demands to become something as well” (cited in Prashad 2007, 11). Third World internationalism celebrated its first great success in 1955 with the Afro-Asian Conference at Bandung, Indonesia. With leaders such as Sukarno from Indonesia, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Indian Jawaharlal Nehru at its heart, the first generation of Third Worldist internationalism strove for an international order based on peaceful cooperation, just economic relations, and cultural equality (ibid 41–45). Despite challenging internal differences, the so-called “Bandung Spirit” gave birth to further conferences as well as projects like the Non-Aligned Movement (nam), the UN-Group of 77, and the New International Economic Order (nieo).
While the tone at Bandung had been critical, it maintained a moderate and diplomatic stance. However, the second generation of Third Worldist activities – Tricontinental internationalism – took on a more radical and unequivocally anti-capitalist character (Berger 2004, 19). The geopolitical events shaping the decade after Bandung had complicated the path of neutrality and peace. The lengthy and violent struggles for independence, pro-Western military coups, the revolution in Cuba, the Algerian independence, the war in Vietnam, and the rise of new and young Third World leaders shifted the Third Worldist tone towards revolutionary militancy. At the key event of the Tricontinental internationalism, the First Solidarity Conference of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (or Tricontinental Conference) in Havana, 1966, leader of the paigc (Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) Amílcar Cabral proclaimed: “We are not going to eliminate imperialism by shouting insults against it. For us, the best and worst shout against imperialism, whatever its form, is to take up arms and fight” (cited in Prashad 2007, 111).
Joseph R. Parrott has identified seven elements that made Tricontinentalism distinct within Third Worldist solidarity, including its militancy and Marxist critique of imperialism and economic inequality. It also broadened its spatial and conceptual realm as the point of reference became the racially oppressed identity and the existing Afro-Asian ties were extended into the Americas. Concurrently, more room for nonstate actors and movements was opened up in the Tricontinental’s appeal to all progressive forces worldwide. Furthermore, despite the will to commit to non-alignment, leaders saw themselves forced to seek support from the East, especially the Soviet Union, in their struggles against Western aggressors. Lastly, Tricontinental internationalism yielded tangible results as its political, military, and discursive influence rose to a new high (Parrott 2022, 14–25). Tricontinentalism weaved together different struggles and players worldwide, such as liberation movements in Africa and Asia, progressive post-colonial state leaders, radical and moderate activists fighting Jim Crow racism, the fight against South African Apartheid, Black feminist internationalism, or Indigenous activists for land rights. As scholars like Anne Garland Mahler have demonstrated, Tricontinental internationalism shaped and connected an entire generation of leftist forces and “became the driving force of international political radicalism and the primary engine of its cultural production around the world” (Mahler 2018, 3). While these struggles were bound together by the shared experience of racist exclusion, imperialist intrusion, and economic disadvantage, the Tricontinental critique and vision also found echoes within the Western left.
As Christoph Kalter (2016) has shown, the emergence of the “New Radical Left” in the mid-1950s was closely linked to Third World activities and thought. Frustrated by leftist reform policies and disillusioned by the ussr’s dogmatism as well as the absence of a revolutionary working class in the West, a new generation of leftists turned towards liberation movements in the colonial world. The uprising of oppressed and colonised people after World War ii solved the problem of a lacking revolutionary subject and the Third World became the bearer of hope to instigate global revolution (Nash 2003, 98). Concurrently, speeches and texts by prominent anti-colonial leaders and intellectuals, such as Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Hồ Chí Minh, or Malcolm X, became the reading material for inspiration and guidance. Kalter and Victor Barros have highlighted the particularly active role of the French left in their commitment to anti-colonial struggles, especially with antagonism towards their own government. Support committees and informal networks were formed to provide political, moral, financial, and medical support to liberation movements in Africa, while local protest was to put pressure on the Western governments to give up their colonial claims (Barros 2019, 1f.). When Third Worldist internationalism radicalised its approach and critique in the 1960s, connections with Western radicals intensified. The anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and revolutionary vision of the Tricontinental movement strongly corresponded with the New Radical Left.
As the war in Vietnam escalated in 1965 – with the Operation Rolling Thunder and the U.S. ground war waged against South Vietnamese guerrilla troops – it became a focal point of Tricontinental discourse and solidarity. The fact that the Vietnamese revolutionaries managed to defy a global superpower with such little resources shocked the entire world. For progressive forces, their example of extraordinary resistance made them a symbol for all suppressed people fighting against imperialist powers. Across the world, anti-imperialists contemplated the question of how to provide solidarity to Vietnam. Accordingly, it was one of the central points of discussion at the Tricontinental Conference. For example, Cabral proclaimed that “our presence is in itself a cry of condemnation of imperialism and a proof of solidarity with all peoples who want to banish from their country the imperialist yoke, and in particular with the heroic people of Vietnam” (BlackPast 2009). Yet, most influential was Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s appeal to the participants by urging them to support the Vietnamese struggle, not with mere words, but with radical action. For him, “it is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory” (Guevara 1997 [1967]). Therefore, he called for the creation of “two, three or many Vietnams” worldwide to attack the United States in different arenas – a slogan that became a popular rallying cry amongst anti-imperialists worldwide and that French Trotskyist philosopher Daniel Bensaïd later called the “the internationalist manifesto of our generation” (cited in Mohandesi 2018, 233). From Black activists in the United States, who were fighting an “internal Vietnam”, to the Cuban government, which offered to send thousands of volunteers to join the war, to French radicals, who saw Europe as an important battlefield to increase pressure on the United States, the war in Vietnam became a crucial point of reference and identification (ibid 231–34). At the same time, Vietnamese communists themselves engaged in internationalist and diplomatic activities to encourage resistance against the war, as Harish C. Mehta (2009) has demonstrated.
3 Tricontinental Connections of the iwct
The International War Crimes Tribunal constitutes an example of how solidarity activism by the New Left connected to Tricontinental internationalism. Not only was the issue itself concerned with an anti-imperialist war in the Third World but the organisers, mainly British and French activists, were linked to the Third World in several ways. Russell himself had a long history of anti-war activism and was already well connected among anti-imperialists all over the world when he commenced the organisation of the tribunal, having forged diplomatic relations with heads of state in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe (Mehta 2012, 69). With the help of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (brpf) and Atlantic Peace Foundation, which were sponsored by presidents of several post-colonial states, Russell did much more than to fund the establishment of the tribunal. Due to his old age and inability to travel, he sent delegates to countries such as Cuba, Bolivia, and Vietnam throughout the 1960s to connect European activists with the Third World. Russell made a name for himself and his foundations to support and advance the causes of Third Worldist struggles. In his Bolivian Diary, not long before his death, Guevara had noted that “I must write letters to Sartre and Bertrand Russell, so they can organise an international fund to raise money for the Bolivian liberation movement” (Ali 2018, 286f.). Additionally, since 1963, Russell had been in frequent correspondence with Hồ Chí Minh. Despite ideological differences, the two established an amicable connection.
Furthermore, and most famously, tribunal organisers Sartre and Beauvoir were also heavily engaged with Third World thought and politics. Not only had Sartre written the influential prefaces to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth in 1963 or to Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Anthology of the New Black and Malagasy Poetry in French (1948), and Beauvoir co-written Djamila Boupacha (1962) with Tunisian-French lawyer Gisèle Halimi,4 but they had also built relationships with anti-imperialists all over the world. Throughout the 1960s, they had travelled to Cuba to meet with Castro and Guevara and had visited Japan, Mexico, China, and different African countries to form bonds with revolutionaries (archivesRC 2020, 14:04) – a trend in the 1960s that Robert Gildea, James Mark, and Niek Pas (2016, 453) have called “revolutionary tourism”.5
What is more, U.S. writer and tribunal member David Dellinger, who was active in several socialist and antiwar groups, reflects his activism in his biography From Yale to Jail (1993) that led him to North and South Vietnam in 1966. After he had met with Hồ Chí Minh and Prime Minister Văn Đồng, he concluded that “self-determination in the countries presently occupied by the American military-industrial complex and self-determination within the United States go hand in hand” (cited in Mehta 2009, 82). Dellinger also served as the editor of the magazine Liberation, which linked the Black movement with pacifist ideas. Throughout his life, he cultivated numerous contacts and friendships worldwide (81f., 85). Another prominent participant of the tribunal, Tariq Ali, had also established connections with various social movement leaders around the world prior to his involvement in the tribunal, such as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. In 1967, Russell sent him to Bolivia to attend a trial against the French writer and revolutionary Régis Debray (Ali 2018, 103, 193, 202f.). The close orientation of the Western left to Third Worldist politics and the mutual connections between them are documented in the activist’s autobiography, Street Fighting Years (2018 [1987]).
These examples demonstrate the ties and alliances that leftist radicals in the West built and maintained with Tricontinental revolutionaries and anti-imperialists. The more the war in Vietnam escalated in the mid-1960s the more urgently people in the West and elsewhere felt the need to show resistance. Thereby, questions arose with what means these interventions could be carried out, how pressure on governments be increased, and consciousness among the wider population be raised. With the set-up of the iwct, Russell and all the other members created an unprecedented form of solidarity activism, which brought together personalities from different movements and countries, such as Cuba, Turkey, Pakistan, and Japan, among others.
4 Political Solidarity and the Tribunal
While activists and intellectuals in the 1960s and beyond engaged with the question of how to commit to solidarity with a faraway cause, little philosophical conceptualisations were undertaken. Despite the fact that “solidarity” was often invoked during the 20th century and became one of the great terms of hope and aspiration, the term has barely been systematically explored and theorised (Große Kracht 2017, 7). Unlike other philosophical and political terms such as “freedom” or “justice”, for which sophisticated theories have been developed since the onset of ancient Greek philosophy, solidarity largely remains an obscure concept with competing and even contradictory associations. In response to the lack of systematic deliberations, Scholz put forward an in-depth conceptualisation of the term with her monograph, Political Solidarity (2008). She draws on a tradition of scholarly and activist involvement with the specifics of solidary praxis, including Beauvoir, bell hooks, Iris Marion Young, as well as Latin American Liberation Theology and the Polish workers’ movement Solidarność of 1980–82. To my knowledge, it is the only extensive philosophical treatise that takes up these decades-long considerations to formulate a theory of the type of solidarity that is associated with social justice activism. “Broadly speaking,” Scholz posits, “political solidarity is a unit of individuals who have made a commitment to struggle for liberation” (ibid 21). She develops different parameters to make the concept palpable, including the realms of the solidarity group, the ends, and the means. Each of these realms involve certain moral relations and obligations.
While solidarity is often evoked in the context of political projects committed to decolonization, it also provokes scepticism as a concept that can be mobilized to obscure the very dynamics of colonization that set the stage for – and are sometimes reproduced through – solidary relations […] This genealogy presents a challenge for the way we both think about and engage in projects of solidarity committed to decolonization.
gaztambide-fernández 2012, 43
Drawing on anticolonial and antiracist thinkers, such as Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, or W.E.B DuBois, these scholars have put forward concepts of “revolutionary solidarity” (Danewid 2018, 104–109), “decolonising solidarity” (Mahrouse 2014, chap. 7; Land 2015), “solidarity without guarantees” (Featherstone 2012, Conclusion.), or “relational solidarity committed to decolonisation” (Gaztambide-Fernández 2012, 53). In contrast to cosmopolitanism and philanthropy, these concepts take seriously the fact that racism and colonialism are not just distant phenomena of the past but haunt realities today as they still produce factual inequalities.6 Whether discursive or materialist, the ways in which the colonial past materialises should be considered when analysing solidarity activism. That is, I deem necessary the inclusion of concepts developed by critical race, decolonial, or feminist studies, such as the critique on Western universalism, cultural essentialism, and economic inequalities created by global capitalism.
4.1 The Solidarity Group
One of the first requirements of Scholz’s conception of political solidarity concerns access to the solidarity group. In contrast to civic or social solidarity, which rely on shared characteristics of its members – such as shared civil or social affiliation – political solidarity is based on personal commitment to a cause. That is, every individual must make a conscious and active decision to join a group or a movement. That choice is usually provoked by insight into an unjust situation or system, and an act of conscience (Scholz 2008, 34). It might contradict self-interest as it can involve sacrifices and hardships in the individual’s life, such as the critical examination of habits, language, and lifestyle or the experienced hostility from the broader community or society (ibid 52). While oppression is the content of political solidarity, the shared experience and history of oppression is not – even though they might overlap or even be the same in some cases (ibid 33f.). Thus, she argues against Marx’s idea that shared oppression is a necessary requirement for collective revolutionary action: “Instead of group consciousness causing the collective action, collective action in political solidarity causes group consciousness” (ibid 134). The danger of building a common struggle on perceived shared oppression has famously been pointed out by black feminists in criticism of white feminists and their assumption of a similar experience and background – the danger of omitting the manifold and intersecting realities of oppression. bell hooks, for example, calls for a “Sisterhood” based on a shared “political commitment to a feminist movement that aims to end sexist oppression” (hooks 2015, 47). Similarly, for Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “it is the common context of struggles against specific exploitative structures and systems that determines our potential political alliances” (cited in Scholz 2008, 38).
The participants of the iwct were known and outspoken anti-war activists who were bound together by their shared commitment against the U.S. war effort. As the tribunal’s goal was to gather material evidence of political crimes, as well as to create public consciousness and arouse indignation, the members had to decide whether they wanted to be associated with such a controversial undertaking. Even though the U.S. government dismissed and downplayed the tribunal publicly, the administration was concerned about its potential impact and went to great lengths to prevent and discredit it. In July 1966, an interagency group, headed by Under Secretary of State George Ball, was created to deal with the matter. Soon after, Ball reported to President Lyndon B. Johnson that the group was “quietly exploring with the British and French available legal steps that could be taken to forestall this spectacle. We also plan to stimulate press articles criticizing the ‘trials’ and detailing the unsavoury and leftwing background of the organizers and judges” (cited in Krever 2017, 485). As a result of this U.S. diplomacy, France as well as Great Britain denied visas for several members and witnesses and condemned the tribunal as biased (ibid 487). After the Swedish government allowed the iwct to convene in Stockholm (on the condition that no U.S. officials would be put on trial as Swedish law prohibited the insulting of foreign heads of state), ongoing pressure from the U.S. government resulted in the ban of the second tribunal session in Sweden (Zunino 2016, 214). Informal diplomatic efforts also pressured sponsors of the brpf, such as the presidents of Tanzania, Senegal, Ethiopia, and Zambia, to discontinue their support (Stewart 2018, 17f.; Foster 2021, 106f.). As a result of their public condemnation of the U.S. war, members faced repression ranging from state interception, arrest, travel restrictions, public ridicule, career damage, and even threats to their life (Mehta 2012, 81; Foster 2021, 119f.; Keenan 2009, 142).
What is more, the realm of the solidarity group is informed by the moral obligation of mutuality and cooperation. Scholz’s conceptualisation requires individuals and the group to embark on an open-ended process of mutual learning and negotiation. Political solidarity calls for a mode of communication that acknowledges the diversity of views and knowledge claims, negotiates them in a compassionate way, and gives weight to the experiences of the marginalised and oppressed. The existence of privileges asks for members to engage with their own intersectional advantages in society, for a persistently attentive and caring perception of others, which holds the potential to build affective bonds (Scholz 2008, 83–94). Among others, Scholz draws on María Lugones’s concept of “world-travelling”, which refers to a commitment “to be open and attentive, to lovingly and proactively attempt to understand the world [and oneself] through the eyes of another” (cited in Scholz 2008, 184). The encounter of individuals within a political solidarity group is based on the mode of “working with”, rather than “working for” those who suffer injustice or oppression. This is one crucial aspect that distinguishes political solidarity from charity or philanthropic activities. The moral obligations of mutuality and cooperation contradict any paternalising approaches as they perpetuate existing power structures. Likewise, subalterns must not only have a powerful voice in the process but must be part of it (ibid 93f.). This particular point has been stressed especially by feminist and anti-racist activists. A quote from an Aboriginal activist group in Queensland in the 1970s underscores this notion: “If you’ve come to help me, you’re wasting your time. But if you’ve come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together” (Names 2008). Similarly, Angela Davis sheds light on the sensitive relationship between prison inmates and outside solidarity groups. She, too, stresses the importance of egalitarian relationships, which respect and acknowledge the experiences, the knowledge, and interests of people behind bars. She argues that solidarity has to involve “a commitment to break down the hierarchies that almost inevitably begin to assert themselves into relationships between people on the outside and people on the inside” (Critical Resistance 2018, 2:01).
Assessed on the basis of the archival sources, the tribunal only partly fulfils Scholz’s moral duties. The membership of the tribunal itself was hand-picked by only a few organisers and therefore not accessible to everyone. Even though the tribunal organisers worked closely with local activists and support groups in the quest of possible locations as well as funding, they placed the potentially higher success over the possibility for everyone to join. Despite the geographic diversity of the members, the selection nevertheless reflects political-societal privileges, such as class, gender, and race. What is more, the tribunal saw certain conflicts and frictions, for which there is no indication of a collective process to mediate and navigate such challenges. For instance, Russell’s secretary, Ralph Schoenman, a young activist from the United States, seemed to have attempted to control a large part of the organisation as well as the tribunal’s activities. Not only was he criticised of being “both an intimidating and also commanding person” (David Horowitz cited in Andersson 2015, 149), but he was also replaced with a media spokesperson after having misrepresented the iwct as an actual court of law rather than a commission of inquiry. A further consequence to this was when Sartre and Dedijer shifted the iwct’s headquarters from London to Paris. This implied a split of the brpf into a London and a Paris faction, with the latter running the second tribunal session in Roskilde (Mehta 2009, 267f.). Another example of conflict relates to the generational gap within the membership, as well as the different backgrounds of members. Reflecting the time at the tribunal, Julius Lester, a young sncc (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) activist, describes the debate over how to announce the results of the sessions and claims that Sartre threatened to leave if procedures would not comply with his ideas. While Sartre, representing an older generation of European intellectuals, insisted on diplomatic activism, young radicals were seeking revolutionary means to bring Guevara’s appeal to life. Lester, only 28 years old at the time of the iwct, admitted that while setting up the tribunal and contributing to the struggle against the “crime of silence” was better than doing nothing at all, limiting the tribunal’s function to mere words prevented real action. He even went so far as to conclude: “I couldn’t help but feel that Sartre was as much my enemy as L.B.J. [Lyndon B. Johnson]. Both are men of commitment” (cited in Keenan 2009, 221).
On the other hand, the endeavour did constitute an example of “working with” rather than “working for”. Even though the tribunal was carried out by people who were not directly affected by the U.S. aggression, North Vietnamese drv officials, South Vietnamese nlf revolutionaries, and even North Vietnamese citizens were involved in its set-up, investigations, and were present at the sessions. As early as 1965, Schoenman had met with members of the nlf central committee to present and discuss the idea of a tribunal. They were the first to be approached by Russell and stayed in close contact with him until the final session (Mehta 2012, 70f.). Both the nlf as well as the drv welcomed and hosted the investigation teams, and so did Cambodian and Lao communists. Hồ even became a donor to Russell’s foundation and the iwct. For the investigations, some of the tribunal participants had stayed in Vietnam for months or even years to witness and document the events unfolding. Cuban journalists Marta Rojas and Raúl Valdés Vivó suggested that during their stay they had “lived side by side with the heroic forces of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam” (Report, iwct Records, Folder 18).
What is more, both tribunal sessions took as evidence numerous reports, messages, and statements from Southeast Asian representatives and leaders. The head of the drv delegation, Phạm Văn Bạch, addressed the tribunal by giving “the sincerest thanks of the Vietnamese people for the active support that you are showing in our struggle for freedom, national independence and world peace”. He went on to emphasise the cooperation between the drv and the tribunal: “Our investigating commissions have collaborated with the Tribunal in receiving and aiding, in their investigative work in Vietnam, four investigating teams” (Statement of the Delegation, iwct Records, Folder 15). Similarly, many reports by the nlf, Cambodian, South Korean, and Lao delegations expressed their gratitude to the tribunal and gave account of the specific situations in the respective war theatres.
4.2 Social Justice End
For Scholz, political solidarity differs from other kinds of solidarity or bonds not only because of the unique relationship between members. It also involves a special relationship to the goal or cause. “Political solidarity is a response to injustice, oppression, or social vulnerability” (Scholz 2008, 189). This is what Scholz calls the oppositional clause of the goal: political solidarity aims to abolish an unjust social or political order. This struggle combines the attempt to achieve substantive as well as formative goals. While the former refer to more or less concrete aims, the latter describe broader, more long-term visions of liberation, justice, and ending oppression (ibid 190f.).
Overwhelming evidence besieges us daily of crimes without precedent […] We investigate in order to expose. We document in order to indict. We arouse consciousness in order to create mass resistance.
duffett 1968, 49
These immediate goals were geared to bring the formative goals closer to reality – ending the U.S. war effort and realising Vietnamese self-determination. In line with Tricontinental thought, the tribunal also took a stance against imperialism and oppression in general. In the publication of the tribunal sessions, Against the Crime of Silence, editor John Duffett proclaimed: “We sincerely hope that our efforts will contribute to the world’s justice, to the re-establishment of peace and the liberation of oppressed peoples” (ibid 16).
whether the U.S. can win at an acceptable cost, but rather whether it should win, whether it should be involved at all in the internal affairs of the Vietnamese, whether it has any right to try to settle or even influence these internal matters by force.
duffett 1968, xxiii
4.3 The Means of Political Solidarity
To achieve its goal, Scholz argues, political solidarity can deploy a range of different methods, such as resistance, protest, challenges to law, or the change of personal choices and everyday-life decisions (Scholz 2008, 54). The chosen means must, however, align with the social justice goals being pursued. That is, “employing unjust or oppressive methods would not only be counterproductive but also contradict the very logic of political solidarity” (ibid 194). As a result, political solidarity cannot adopt violent means.7 What is more, Scholz identifies two elements that political solidarity movements and actions call for. Firstly, the movement must serve the oppressed, whether they join the struggle or not. This, moreover, requires that the needs and desires of those that are served must be heeded instead of using models established by the privileged, oppressive group. Secondly, the movement must actively confront and challenge the systems of oppression, “that create, perpetuate, or legitimate that suffering” (ibid 194f.). When the social justice cause has been identified through social criticism, and individuals have joined in a collective for social change, they are then morally obligated to engage in activism, creating a social movement to raise consciousness in the wider society (ibid 58, 83f.).
While the cause the tribunal was fighting for was a common concern for people and governments worldwide, the means chosen presented a new form of protest. The tribunal’s concept was loosely based on the only two cases of non-official juridical projects that had taken place before – a 1933 commission in London to counter the German Nazi propaganda on the Reichstag fire; and the Dewey Commission in 1937, which aimed to counteract the Moscow show trials against Leon Trotsky (Moita 2015, 33). In contrast to the commission, the iwct staged a trial-like gathering whose “goal was to alter an American policy while it was in progress, not to redress a previous miscarriage of justice” (Klinghoffer and Klinghoffer 2002, 103).
The fact that the tribunal could not draw on any factual and legal legitimisation, however, was one of the main criticisms the endeavour faced. “Justice of any sort,” Charles de Gaulle responded to Sartre in a letter, “in principle as in execution, emanates from the State” (cited in Krever 2017, 486). French sociologist Marcel Merle called the tribunal a “mockery of justice for propaganda purposes” (cited in Moita 2015, 44), while other critics and much of the Western media titled it “show trials,” “kangaroo trials,” or “theatrical charades” (Boyle and Kobayashi 2015, 701). In their defence, organisers claimed that the fact that a civilian-led tribunal had no power was the guarantor for their independence. Russell declared: “We have no armies and no gallows. We lack power, even the power of mass communication. It is overdue that those without power sit in judgement over those who have it” (Duffett 1968, 51). By focussing on international law and investigating the legality of the war as well as war crimes, the activists wished to fill a void because, as Sartre argued, “neither governments nor people are, at the present time, capable of creating such an institution” (ibid 42). Therefore, it was up to independent civilians to take up the Nuremberg legacy and defend its principles. Chomsky wrote: “We can hardly suppress the memory of our initiative at Nuremberg and Tokyo, or the explicit insistence of the U.S. prosecutor, Robert Jackson, that the principles of Nuremberg are to be regarded as universal in their applicability” (ibid xxiii).
Therefore, the organisers wished their project to be closely associated with the tribunal in Nuremberg and structured it accordingly. They had a “list of charges” against the accused – the same charges that had been brought against German and Japanese officials –, a “jury” that listened to the “evidence” brought forward by experts, “witnesses”, documents, photographs, and films. In the end, they announced a “verdict”. The most evident formal differences between this tribunal and an actual trial were the lack of a judge and a defendant. Numerous invitations to U.S. officials, such as President Johnson or Secretary of State Dean Rusk, to appear before the tribunal and defend themselves had been ignored. To show the tribunal’s proximity and adherence to international law, several juridical reports were heard. For instance, the U.S. civil rights attorney Stanley Faulkner, lawyer Samuel Rosenwein, or French attorney Yves Jouffa outlined the current situation of international law and how the U.S. war or the military draft was an infringement of the Hague Convention (1907), The Declaration of the Hague (1923), the Briand-Kellogg Pact (1928), the Nuremberg Judgement, the Law of Land Warfare (1956), the Convention of Geneva (1949), the Charter of the United Nations, or the U.S. Constitution (Duffett 1968, 91–104; Report on the Law of War, iwct Records, Folder 10). Rosenwein concluded that “the war now in Vietnam is an aggressive war, forbidden by international law. The war is also a violation of the principle of the self-determination of nations” (Duffett 1968, 103).
4.4 Political Solidarity in a Post-Colonial Context
While Scholz rules out paternalising and power-maintaining approaches with the moral obligations of mutuality, cooperation, and social criticism, I argue that the concrete pitfalls of solidarity in a post-colonial context should be addressed with the help of critiques sensitive to material and immaterial colonial legacies. Firstly, scholars such as Mahrouse have drawn attention to possible underlying universalist presumption of internationalist solidarity. Only by questioning the universalism of Western paradigms, by engaging in creative processes of learning, and by creating alternative epistemological frameworks can “truly transformative decolonising solidarity practices” be imaginable (Mahrouse 2014, 154). The decision to create a tribunal modelled on the Nuremberg example drew on certain Western universalist ideas. As Sartre pointed out in the Inaugural Statement, the legitimacy of the tribunal derived “equally from its total powerlessness, and from its universality” (Duffett 1968, 43). That is, members argued that the legal principles, created to address the crimes committed by the axis powers during World War ii, were universal in their content and application. The tribunal further relied on agreements and institutions with universalist aspiration to forward their case. For instance, references were made to the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, agreements on permitted weapons of war, the treatment of pow s, and many more to prove the U.S. infringement of the agreements and statutes. However, the claim of universality of these organisations and agreements has been criticised. International law, as the school and movement of Third World Approaches to International Law (twail) has shown, is fundamentally linked to Western hegemony. At the same time, while the tribunal relied on Western jurisdiction and presented them as universally applicable, it did impose these standards on a country that had co-created them – and not on a government or on people with a different juridical tradition.
Secondly, post-colonial thinkers have pointed out the manifestation of colonial and racist patterns in language, such as the essentialisation of culture and identity, romanticising, or denigration of groups. If taking the colonial effects seriously, the analysis of international solidarity activism must include the discursive level in which colonialist thinking is reinscribed. Similar to the question of Western universalism, the issue of discursive images at the iwct is ambivalent. While the tribunal participants at times resorted to a language that created an idealising, under-complex, and homogenising depiction of the oppressed, they also counteracted prominent racist images. Throughout the tribunal, Vietnamese people were portrayed as a unity, which denied the complexity of different fronts and dissents among them. At the tribunal, Fourniau suggested a national and social cohesion among Vietnamese by pointing out a long common history. “There has been an independent Vietnamese state since the eleventh century, and the sense of belonging to a single national community is the basic characteristic of Vietnamese history.” He further claimed: “As a matter of fact, few peoples present a unity, a national cohesion, as strong or as old as the Vietnamese people.” He even went so far as to ask, “How can such a unified people commit aggression against itself?” (ibid 81). With that, he denied any kind of dissent among the Vietnamese population and implied an absolute homogeneity. On the other hand, tribunal members addressed the racist component of imperialist endeavours. As Russell expressed it, imperialism “is the attempt to create empires that produces war crimes because, as the Nazis also reminded us, empires are founded on a self-righteous and deep-rooted belief in racial superiority and God-given mission” (ibid 4). He then pointed to the racist discourse in the United States that helped legitimise the war. “Untermensch is a word which lives again in the vocabulary of powerful men in Washington” (ibid 51).
true account of the social dynamic of a war between a small peasant people and an industrial technology in the hands of a great imperial power. Distilled from the suffering of the Vietnamese is the inexorable nature of a war waged by a foreign occupier seeking through its ruling class to bludgeon a people into submission.
duffett 1968, 9
As seen, the two images were not mutually exclusive. By stressing the vulnerability as well as the legitimacy of their fight, the iwct members tackled dehumanising and derogatory images of the former colonial subjects prevalent in U.S. discourse.
Thirdly, while the discursive level matters, the materialist legacies of colonialism and the global “colour-line” – a term coined and used by Frederick Douglass and DuBois to exhibit the demarcation that racism, slavery, and colonialism created – should be addressed as they produce factual realities. Following Mahrouse, international solidarity must understand “racialized identities as fluid, constructed, and shifting over time and place” and, at the same time, “think about racial identification and subject formation in ways that are nuanced and relevant for contemporary geopolitics” (Mahrouse 2014, 14). The iwct did not only challenge stereotypical images and give Southeast Asian people the chance to be heard in the Western public, but it also voiced profound criticism of historical and contemporary global political and economic power asymmetries. In contrast to international cosmopolitan solidarity, the tribunal’s goal was to stress the political, historical, and economic factors that played into the war in Vietnam. Several reports engaged with past and current circumstances in order to contextualise the war and to raise consciousness for the power dynamics underlying the conflict and the imperialist intent of the United States. For Russell, imperialist ideology was the reason for the U.S. meddling in Southeast Asia and the deployment of such brutal warfare. “The objects [of imperialism] are domination, markets, cheap labor, raw materials, conscript armies and strategic points from which to control or threaten” (Duffett 1968, 3).
it creates in the very heart of the West a window on the Third World. We who live among the oppressors and who try to fight them in our lives need as acutely to know what happens in Bolivia, in Argentina and in Ghana as well as what happens in Paris, London, and New York. This represents a most vital role for the Tribunal to fill in the building of an internationally solid New-Left movement.
duffett 1968, 322
Head of the drv delegation, Phạm Ngọc Thạch, responded to the solidarity: “It is for us a source of hope and a great moral comfort to see that the people of the entire world, regardless of race or regime, are at our sides in our hard and long struggle against American imperialism” (Report, iwct Records, Folder 66).
These parameters of Western universalism, discursive images, colonial materialist legacies, and the actors’ involvement present some examples of how Scholz’s theory can be extended. Other aspects might include the analysis of privilege, eurocentrism, othering, and white hegemony. All these aspects help to contextualise the activities of international solidarity in historical and continuous forms of international economic exploitation, political dominance, imperialist endeavours, and racist ideologies.
5 Conclusion
With the setup of the International War Crimes Tribunal, the organisers aimed to not only show their solidarity with the Vietnamese struggle against the U.S. invasion but to create resistance against imperialism in the very heart of the West. The goal of this article was to demonstrate the influence of Tricontinental thought and politics on the Western left as well as the specificities, pitfalls, and advantages of political solidarity by the example of the iwct. In further consequence, with the help of this case study, I aimed to show the utility of Scholz’s theory of political solidarity for the analysis of solidarity activism.
While I overall assess the iwct to be an example of political solidarity according to Scholz, the tribunal also shows some limitations. Both the goal as well as the chosen means of the endeavour meet Scholz’s requirements. The iwct was a project that strove for social justice by unveiling the U.S. infringement of international jurisdiction on warfare and criticising Western hypocrisy on the application of these legal standards. Moreover, the choice of setting up a citizens’ tribunal was not only in line with the social justice goal but also served the subject of solidarity and challenged the system of oppression. On the other hand, the iwct collective did not entirely satisfy Scholz’s moral conditions of political solidarity. While the group was commitment-based, it lacked a group process committed to overcome privileges and hierarchies within. Considering the limited number of jury members, all of which were hand-picked and prominent personalities, it is safe to conclude that the iwct was an elitist and male-dominated project. At the same time, the tribunal constituted a striking example of “working with” rather than “working for” the subject of solidarity. By including Southeast Asian revolutionaries and leaders in most aspects of the iwct and providing a platform to speak at the sessions, the organisers challenged the opposition of passive non-Western objects to active Western subjects. Similarly, my assessment is split on the questions relating to colonialism and its materialist and discursive manifestations. While tribunal members deployed Western universalist ideas, homogenising rhetoric, and romanticising images, they also tackled common racist conceptions. What is more, the tribunal did provide a thorough critique on the economic and political inequality deriving from U.S. imperialist endeavours.
Complementing Scholz’s theory with materialist, anti-racist, and feminist approaches, does not imply a lack in her theoretical groundwork. It does, instead, only fulfil her requirement to examine the type of social injustice, the moral obligations, and privilege that shapes solidarity activism. Recent conceptions of “decolonising solidarity,” “solidarity without guarantees,” or “revolutionary solidarity” can be fruitful tools for activists and scholars alike, who engage in a post-colonial or anticolonial setting – such as the case of transnational solidarity or of solidarity in countries built on settler colonialism. As “transnational solidarity activism is fraught with contradictions and paradoxes with respect to race and power” (Mahrouse 2014, 146), I believe that critical assessment and analysis is necessary. It should have become clear that there is no blueprint for solidarity or interactions across social, political, and economic positionings. Instead, hierarchies might be best addressed in an open-ended process. Political or revolutionary solidarity without guarantees bears the potential to confront systematic and internalised inequalities and stereotypes, and to develop connections and bonds that aim to surmount social injustices. At the same time, decolonising internationalist solidarity should acknowledge that encounters are still always embedded in an unjust system, or, as Mahrouse says, “solidarity needs to be conceived as both a central element for effective political movements and as a set of practices that rely on racialized and gendered structures of colonialism and imperialism” (ibid 152). With these theoretical considerations and the exemplary assessment of a case study, I contribute to a discussion on political and decolonising solidarity – which can inform not only the study of historical examples of activism but also local and internationalist activism today and in the future.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Anna Grimaldi, Sandrine Gukelberger, Katherina Braschel, John Barton, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on previous drafts of this article.
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I employ the terms “West” and “Third World” to refer to historically specific Cold War constellations and power relations. However, I recognise that they are ideologically loaded, analytically limited, and rooted in inequalities created by the age of European empires. Similarly, with the binaries “Global North” and “Global South” – equally politically charged terms – I refer to global post-Cold War power configurations.
This article draws on the longer and more thorough analysis of the iwct with the help of Scholz’s theory of political solidarity in an unpublished manuscript by the same author.
Djamila Boupacha deals with the trial of Algerian militant Boupacha during the French-Algerian War whose confession about her attempt to bomb a café in Algiers had been obtained by torture and rape by French soldiers. The book caused a scandal in France and changed public opinion in France on the French warfare in Algeria.
The wide circle of Parisian intellectuals, including tribunal members Laurent Schwartz and Claude Lanzmann, had already established support committees and networks during the liberation wars in Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau (Barros 2019; Kalter 2016, chap. 4). In the 1970s, the focus shifted towards human rights solidarity with Latin American victims of military dictatorships. For more on this, see Moyn 2010; Quadrat 2008; Grimaldi 2019; Striffler 2019.
For an in-depth discussion on cosmopolitanism, see Danewid 2018.
Against the argument that violent means may be necessary in the case of anti-colonial resistance struggle, as argued by Fanon and Sartre, Scholz objects that this is a case of self-defence and lies outside of the moral relations of political solidarity (111f.).