Politics Etc.

War of the Worlds Redux

It was only a radio broadcast -- yet all hell broke loose.

Working from an adaptation of the science fiction novel "The War of the Worlds," a young media impresario named Orson Welles convinced much of the public that Earth was under invasion by hostile Martians on Halloween eve in 1938.

Martians were first seen in Grovers Mill, N.J., it was claimed during the  broadcast, and sure enough, police were called to restore order after unruly crowds converged on the town.

News accounts in the month to follow -- some 12,500 in all -- described widespread panic, mainly in New York and New Jersey, though historians would later conclude the disruption was not as widespread as initially believed.

Still, of an estimated 6 million people who heard the program in this pre-television era, more than a quarter believed it consisted of actual news reports. While the show contained several disclaimers that its contents were fictional, the first came right the beginning of the 55-minute broadcast and the second wasn't aired until 40 minutes later.

Watching news coverage of last week's Cartoon Network marketing stunt that put Boston on high alert, I was reminded of the Welles' broadcast. It is clear in hindsight that the reactions to both were overblown and more than a bit comical. But it is equally clear in hindsight, at least to this observer, that the geopolitical backdrop for each provided ample justification for the reactions that followed.

Only a month before the Welles' broadcast, England and France relented under pressure from Adolf Hitler and allowed Germay to seize the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. By then, Germany had already annexed the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and manipulated an Anschluss unification with Austria, land of Hitler's birth.

By the time Hitler was demanding the Sudetenland, Western leaders had grown distrustful of the German leader. British and French mobilized their militaries for the first time since World War I and the perception of imminent war was widespread.

Conflict was avoided, at least for a time, by Western acquiescence to Hitler. Why was this done? British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, invoking the horror of the trenches in the first world war,  famously said that Britain cared little for "a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing."

Just a month after a triumphant Chamberlain returned from Munich waving a signed agreement with "Herr Hitler" and declaring "peace in our time," a fictionalized radio broadcast of marauding Martians set off panic in America.  Suddenly a far away planet of which we knew little did not seem so distant.

Would the Welles' broadcast have provoked the same reaction in 1928 as it did in the fall of 1938, with Europe on the verge of war? Impossible to say, but allow me to refashion the question: would the Cartoon Network marketing ploy have prompted the same uproar had it occurred in the halcyon, pre-Sept. 11 days of 1997? I doubt it.

I also doubt it's mere coincidence that all three incarnations of "The War of the Worlds" -- the  '38 radio broadcast, its first depiction on film in 1953 and the Steven Spielberg version to follow in 2005  -- took place against a larger context of genuine threats posed by evolving versions of totalitarianism -- fascism being the first, expansionist communism the second, Islamic fanaticism the most current.

Take a look at the Martian invaders in "The War of the Worlds" and what do you see: a relentless, predatory and murderous foe,  implacable and beyond reason -- much like their earthly counterparts of the last century.

Fighting back against the Martians proved futile yet they were ultimately defeated, not by force of arms, but by germs and bacteria, the lowliest of life forms triumphant against the greatest challenge to humanity.

In hindsight, it is doubtful that fascism could have been defeated without the Allies resorting to force.  But in the decades to follow, it was not warfare that broke the Soviets, it was their inability to compete economically when the United States rearmed under Ronald Reagan.  Their defeat came mainly in the marketplace, not on the battlefield.

Using force against radical Islam has brought mixed results -- we've not suffered another catastrophic attack since Sept. 11, but the war in Iraq has proven more difficult than expected. That its outcome will be decidedly solely on a military basis appears in doubt.

But as with the Martian invaders in "The War of the Worlds," the greatest threat to radical Islam may come not from fear of the West's military might -- deterrence is a tenuous concept against religious fanatics bent on martyrdom -- but by Islamists' congenital inability to accept the unfettered freedom and markets of the modern world. It is a germ they are determined to destroy before it eradicates them. And on this they are correct -- modernity and radical Islam cannot co-exist, and claims to the contrary ignore the realities of both.

Others around the world, including religious fundamentalists in the West, share a similar abhorrence of modernity (the Amish come to mind and, for liberal Democrats, the Republican Party). The difference is that few other traditionalists share radical Islam's willingness to slaughter innocent people on a mass scale, in rejection of all civilized norms, to achieve its goals.  Cults of death never enjoy lasting broad appeal, and tens of thousands of people willing to wrap themselves with explosives in a world numbering 6 billion and counting comes down to a relative few.

The question is -- can the West hold off radical Islam long enough before the ultimately benign bacteria of modernity finishes it off for good?

 (photo credit, http://billdouglas.ex.ac.uk)