Free Dartmouth

home

1/21/2003 09:00:00 PM | Timothy

An ANSWER to Justin

Here is a report by David Corn of The Nation, writing in L.A. Weekly on an anti-war protest in D.C. run by ANSWER (he was the first person to really catch how ANSWER was being a front for the Workers World Party):

This was no accident, for the demonstration was essentially organized by the Workers World Party, a small political sect that years ago split from the Socialist Workers Party to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. The party advocates socialist revolution and abolishing private property. It is a fan of Fidel Castro?s regime in Cuba, and it hails North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il for preserving his country?s ?socialist system,? which, according to the party?s newspaper, has kept North Korea ?from falling under the sway of the transnational banks and corporations that dictate to most of the world.? The WWP has campaigned against the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. A recent Workers World editorial declared, ?Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong.?

Officially, the organizer of the Washington demonstration was International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). But ANSWER is run by WWP activists, to such an extent that it seems fair to dub it a WWP front. Several key ANSWER officials ? including spokesperson Brian Becker ? are WWP members. Many local offices for ANSWER?s protest were housed in WWP offices. Earlier this year, when ANSWER conducted a press briefing, at least five of the 13 speakers were WWP activists. They were each identified, though, in other ways, including as members of the International Action Center.

Justin complains that the site I linked to had crimes that could be attributable to the U.S. government. If Justin wants to say ANSWER is as bad as the government they condemn, fine. If he wants to call Rumfeld-lovers and the Bushies hypocrites, fine. But hypocrites can also be pointing out your own hypocrisy. Furthermore, I hope Justin will realize the original reports on ANSWER came from David Corn of The Nation. If he doesn't feel he has to answer to right-wing bloggers, how does he answer lefties like him and Eric Alterman?

He says one could also say we are just as responsible if we don't violently overthrow the same U.S. if we stand by. But there is a difference between passively sitting by (or at least only acting non-violently) as your government enacts bad policies, and actively participating and associating yourself with certain groups (by the way, why are you against revolution, Justin?). Justin says: "This being the case, is it really fair to blame ANSWER protestors for opposing the overthrow of certain horrendous regimes in response to the crimes those regimes committed?" For shame. I get sick of people defending the purity of the United States. I do not draw a moral equivilance between say, the United States and North Korea. However fucked up the last election was, we still live in a basically sound democracy. And to the extent we do not (esp. John Ashcroft's actions), we have the capacity to reform and we must.

Justin says: "I can assure you all, none of ANSWER's protestors think Saddam is a particularly good leader, or holds power legitimately (of course there's always the occasional nutbag exception)." He can assure us?? Where is he getting this from? I trust Justin is right that most of the protesters don't like Saddam, but ANSWER and WWP avoids condemning Saddam (see David Corn above). I'm not trying to smear all the protesters at all. Even the warbloggers are not trying to do this: they assume the good intentions of most protestors, but ask why those who know what ANSWER is about decide to attend a rally led by them.

Justin speaks of the 'past evils' of organizations. Huh? The reports on WWP and ANSWER are not just talking about past actions. And it is not like the WWP has repented or anyway changed their views. Oddly, Justin cites evidence by Ramsey Clark, without mentioning that Ramsey founded another WWP offshoot and defended people like Milosevic. If this is the best Justin has got against the United States, this is pretty sad. Again, David Corn, who also talks about how ANSWER thinks just inspections ARE war:

The IAC, another WWP offshoot, was a key partner with ANSWER in promoting the protest. It was founded by Ramsey Clark, attorney general for President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. For years, Clark has been on a bizarre political odyssey, much of the time in sync with the Workers World Party. As an attorney, he has represented Lyndon LaRouche, the leader of a political cult. He has defended Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic and Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, who was accused of participating in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Clark is also a member of the International Committee To Defend Slobodan Milosevic. The international war-crimes tribunal, he explains, ?is war by other means? ? that is, a tool of the West to crush those who stand in the way of U.S. imperialism, like Milosevic. A critic of the ongoing sanctions against Iraq, Clark has appeared on talking-head shows and refused to concede any wrongdoing on Saddam?s part. There is no reason to send weapons inspectors to Iraq, he told CNN?s Wolf Blitzer: ?After 12 years of brutalization with sanctions and bombing they?d like to be a country again. They?d like to have sovereignty again. They?d like to be left alone.?
It is not redbaiting to note the WWP?s not-too-hidden hand in the nascent anti-war movement. It explains the tone and message of Saturday?s rally. Take the question of inspections. According to Workers World, at a party conference in September, Sara Flounders, a WWP activist, reported war opponents were using the slogan ?inspections, not war.? Flounders, the paper says, ?pointed out that ?inspections ARE war? in another form,? and that she had ?prepared party activists to struggle within the movement on this question.? Translation: The WWP would do whatever it could to smother the ?inspections, not war? cry.

Justin says: "But I don't see why the leftist should feel any more inclined to do this than, say, the Bush-wacker "patriot", whose defense of war descends from a heritage of equally awful atrocities."

Again, I laugh. If Justin thinks leftists should be as unthinking as a Bush-wacker 'patriot' go ahead! I'm asking for arguments to show why we on the left are BETTER than them, or at least not as bad. I'm not interested on being on the same moral level as a Bush-wacker 'patriot' (assuming I know what Justin means by that). The challenge was this: can you consistently condemn those on the right who use things like the Southern Strategy and still associate with groups like ANSWER? Now, mind you, I'm not saying you never march in a rally with them (no one can control everyone who you march with), but they were the main organizers here. There are some decent answers, but let's separate out two responses: one is to deny how bad ANSWER is. I'm not going to just 'trust' Justin on that unless he comes up some evidence. The other is to say that the cause of war overrides this, and ANSWER won't really benefit much anyway. Justin's logic leaves us without the ability to draw appropriate moral distinctions. If we have to accept some 'evils' first acknowledge it is evil, provide a justification for it, and don't excuse yourself by saying that the very people you criticize are just as bad, immoral, and unthinking. I am calling for those on the left to show not that they are pure in all respects, but at least that they are superior in their intellectual consistency.

Justin says: "Otherwise we'll have conservatives accusing welfare advocates of socialism, liberals accusing conservatives of slavery." Justin has come close to nailing it on the head (though overstating it). I will not give up the right to accuse conservatives of pandering to neo-confederates and people like John Ashcroft who praise Jefferson Davis in Southern Partisan. Do you want to? So is the Left as culpable as the Right for associating with unsavories? I don't think so (And I want people's thoughts on whether communist=Nazi), but I want to point out the nature of ANSWER so people realize this and it doesn't become this way. ANSWER stands for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. End Racism? We are not going to do that by giving up our right to call the Trent Lotts of the world to account. I relish those conversations and I welcome judgment by both sides.

perma link | | 0 comments

0 Comments:

0 Comments: