AUT: In the US: ANSWER and the liberals

[Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx>]

The guy who wrote this is apparently a liberal
Democrat. His article got posted on a public archive
list which seems to cater for that current of the US
'left', and was greeted by much whining about the
extremism of ANSWER, and the need to drag the anti-war
movement back into the 'mainstream' (scroll down the
page on the link). It's hilarious, but it also shows
that the Workers World Party/ANSWER are, like the SWP
in the UK, well to the left of some of the people who
have dominated protest campaigns in the 80s and 90s
(in the UK I'd mention CND and maybe Jubilee 2000 and
Greenpeace; in the US, the liberal wing of the
Democrats).

I tend to see this sort of stuff as confirmation for
the view that the leadership of the anti-war movement
is passing from the liberals with no labour movement
orientation to left bureaucrats who do look to the
labour movement, albeit as part of a Popular Front.
This is an important transition, I think. The thing to
do, of course, is to swing the pendulum further left,
from the undemocratic Pop Fronts which sponsor
symbolic labour movement action to pressure govts to
'act', to United Fronts that organise democratically
for seriously direct action to stop the war machine on
the ground, rather than pressure politicians. This is
what some of the new anarchist-initiated United Fronts
I've seen announced on @ infos seem to be trying to
do. Whether they are doing it effectively is another
matter - I'd be interested to get some firsthand
reports on stuff like the anarchist intervention at
San Fransisco to pass on. Left commies too.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DemocraticLeft/message/4780
The Washington Post

"Marching With Stalinists"

By Michael Kelly

Wednesday, January 22, 2003; Page A15

The left in America has for a long time now resembled
not so much a political movement as a contest to see
how many schismatics could dance on the head of a pin,
a conversation that has gone from being national
to factional to simply eccentric. At some point,
progressive politics reached a state where freeing
Mumia was considered critical and electing
a Democratic president was considered optional.

Then came Sept. 11, and the left found itself plunged
into a debate on a subject of fundamental importance.
And this was a debate in which to be of the left was
to be, by definition, involved: In al Qaeda and in the
Taliban and in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, liberal
civilization faced an enemy that represented nearly
every evil that liberalism has ever stood
against.

What was the left going to do? A pretty
straightforward call, you might
say. America has its flaws. But war involves choosing
sides, and the
American side -- which was, after all, the side of
liberalism, of
progressivism, of democracy, of freedom, of not
chucking gays off
rooftops and not stoning adulterers and not whipping
women in the town
square, and not gassing minority populations and not
torturing advocates
of free speech -- was surely preferable to the side of
the
"Islamofascists," to borrow a word from the essayist
and former man of
the left, Christopher Hitchens.

Which is the point: Hitchens is a former man of the
left. In the left's debate, Hitchens insisted that
progressives must not in their disdain
for America allow themselves to effectively support
the perpetuation of despotism, must not betray the
left's own values. Others -- notably the
political philosopher Michael Walzer, the independent
essayist Andrew Sullivan, New Republic writer Jonathan
Chait and New York Observer columnist Ron Rosenbaum --
also made this argument with great force and
clarity.

The debate is over. The left has hardened itself
around the core value of a furious, permanent,
reactionary opposition to the devil-state
America, which stands as the paramount evil of the
world and the paramount threat to the world, and whose
aims must be thwarted even at the cost of supporting
fascists and tyrants. Those who could not stomach
this have left the left -- a few publicly, as did
Hitchens and Rosenbaum, and many more, I am sure, in
the privacy of their consciences.

Last weekend, the left held large antiwar marches in
Washington, San Francisco and elsewhere. Major media
coverage of these marches was highly respectful. This
was "A Stirring in the Nation," in the words of
an approving New York Times editorial, "impressive for
the obvious mainstream roots of the marchers."

There is, increasingly, much that happens in the world
that the Times feels its readers should be sheltered
from knowing. The marches in Washington and San
Francisco were chiefly sponsored, as was last
October's antiwar march in Washington, by a group the
Times chose to call in its only passing reference "the
activist group International Answer."

International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End
Racism) is a front group for the communist Workers
World Party. The Workers World Party is, literally, a
Stalinist organization. It rose out of a split within
the old Socialist Workers Party over the Soviet
Union's 1956 invasion of Hungary -- the breakaway
Workers World Party was all for the invasion.
International ANSWER today unquestioningly supports
any despotic regime that lays any claim to socialism,
or simply to anti-Americanism. It supported the
butchers of Beijing after the slaughter of Tiananmen
Square. It supports Saddam Hussein and his Baathist
torture-state. It supports the last official Stalinist
state, North Korea, in the mass starvation of its
citizens. It supported Slobodan Milosevic after the
massacre at Srebrenica. It supports the mullahs of
Iran, and the narco-gangsters of Colombia and the
bus-bombers of Hamas.

This is whom the left now marches with. The left
marches with the Stalinists. The left marches with
those who would maintain in power the leading
oppressors of humanity in the world. It marches with,
stands with and cheers on people like the speaker at
the Washington rally who declared that "the real
terrorists have always been the United Snakes of
America." It marches with people like the former Black
Panther Charles Baron, who said in Washington, "if
you're looking for an axis of evil then look in the
belly of this beast."

The Times' "mainstream" Americans marched last weekend
with people who held signs comparing the president and
vice president of their country to Hitler, and
declaring, "The difference between Bush and Saddam is
that Saddam was elected," and this one: "I want you to
die for Israel. Israel sings Onward Christian
Soldiers."

March on.


C 2003 The Washington Post Company


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