In the wake of the horrific Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and the killing of more than 7,000 people, the subsequent “war on terrorism” has led to a dangerous polarization of beliefs and attitudes.

In this new, simplistic black-vs-white, good-vs-evil universe –best reflected in U.S. President George W. Bush’s claim that “you are either with us or with the terrorists”–any attempt to explore the motivation of the hijackers or explain their hatred of the U.S. is scorned as weakness, cowardice, or even treason. Rationality, objectivity, and clear thinking of any kind have been among the victims buried under the rubble of the World Trade Centre towers. We have been engulfed by a wave of jingoism, xenophobia, paranoia–and yes, ethnic hatred–incited by ideologues and the mass media. So pervasive has this polarization become that it has spilled over to hamper most of the efforts by concerned citizens to deal with pressing social, economic and environmental problems. We may be living in a world that has changed in many ways since Sept. 11, but it is still a world ravaged by poverty, hunger, homelessness, pollution, and wide disparities in wealth and power. Indeed, if most people were not blinded by grief and anger and super-patriotism, they would see that the atrocities of Sept. 11 were not unrelated to the broader issues of corporate globalization and Third World injustice.

Those of us who have been engaged in campaigns to create a better world are now under enormous pressures to support whatever our political, corporate and military “leaders” decide to do. If we don’t conform, don’t give our unqualified approval, we are stigmatized as being soft on terrorism. If we commit the worse crime of continuing to voice criticism or dissent, we are denounced as traitors. Some right-wing commentators are even saying that any future street protests against the WTO, the World Bank and IMF, or any other establishment institution will be equated with acts of terrorism.

It will take courage to resist these pressures. But resist them we must. It is impossible to keep striving against social and economic injustice and environmental contamination without exposing the roots and causes of these problems. And this, in turn, is impossible without reference to U.S. foreign policy and the greed and rapacity of the transnational corporations. To pretend that the worthwhile struggles against free trade and corporate rule can continue to be fought while entertaining the illusion that the United States and its allies are completely pure and blameless (and always have been) is to resign ourselves to futility and defeat.

Fortunately, we don’t have to regroup and start once again from ground zero. Not everyone–even in the U.S.–has succumbed to the “us-vs-them” hysteria. Calm and clear reasoning has not been much in evidence, but it has been exercised by a few newspaper columnists (The Toronto Star’s Tom Walkom and Dalton Camp, and the Globe and Mail’s Naomi Klein and Rick Salutin among others) and by an encouragingly significant number of writers of letters to the editor. In the U.S., some notable journalists and academics have also insisted on putting the Sept. 11 attacks in a useful historical perspective that is far from supportive of U.S. foreign policy. The sharp and insightful analyses of The London Independent’s Robert Fisk, imbued with his many years’ experience in the Middle East, have been especially helpful.

So we should not be intimidated by the bullies in government, in the media, or in the business boardrooms. They are exploiting the Sept. 11 attacks as an excuse to suppress dissent, to impose conformity of thought and action, to restrict the freedoms of speech and assembly, and to justify the further expansion of their economic and military power.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the difficulties this new wave of McCarthyism will create for us. The police may feel they now have implicit political sanction for an even harsher crackdown on peaceful protesters. Some of our supporters, confused or frightened, may fall away. Some may want to water down or delay our efforts. But the fight for a better world has never been easy. The whipped-up post-Sept. 11 paranoia, as disturbing as it may be, is simply the latest in a long series of obstacles that have been thrown in our path.

Like all the others, it too, eventually, will be overcome.