Where have all the anti-globalization activists gone?

Just a few years ago, protests by 10,000 demonstrators at a G-8 summit would have been front page news. But yesterday's protests in Heiligendamm, Germany earned merely a few paragraphs on page 21 of today's Washington Post. That tells you just about everything you need to know about the strength and influence of the anti-globalization movement today.

Writing in the latest issue of Britain's Spectator, Ross Clark makes the argument that, "one of the little-remarked side effects of 9/11 was the eclipse of the anti-globalisation movement." It certainly seems that, following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many in the anti-globalization movement decided that globalization would simply go away. The reality, of course, as FP pointed in its September/October 2006 issue, couldn't be further from the truth. Globalization is not only alive and well, it is thriving in all corners of the globe.

So why hasn't the anti-globalization movement come back? It doesn't make sense. Globalization is bigger and badder than ever. The World Bank—anti-globalization's Enemy No. 1—has just been hit by a nasty ethics scandal. Yet the "movement," which just a few years ago was so powerful, is nowhere to be found. Why? Iraq probably has something to do with it. Rich, disillusioned youth and the tenured professors who teach them used to sit around vilifying well-intentioned bureaucrats at the World Bank. Now they spend their days vilifying well-intentioned bureaucrats at Embassy Baghdad.

But, perhaps more importantly, the reality is that the anti-globalization movement doesn't have a U.S. president to kick around anymore. It certainly doesn't have one in the Bush Administration, which has delivered more for the poor in Africa than Clinton or Carter did. That, as Al Gore would say, is an inconvenient truth for the anti-globalization left, particularly in Europe. As Bono told CNN (video) this week, "Europeans say Americans don't care, [that] it's a continent behaving like an island. They are wrong."

The sucking sound you hear in Heiligendamm isn't the riot police firing up their water cannons, which appeared to do nothing more than give the protestors a much needed shower. It is the gaping chest wound the Bush administration has inflicted upon the anti-globalization movement. And, if this week's protests are any indication, that wound appears to be fatal.

Of course, that isn't stopping Hollywood from trying its best to resuscitate the fledgling anti-globalization activists. Watch for the movie "Battle in Seattle" coming out in December, starring Charlize Theron and Woody Harrelson as erstwhile heroes.