Re: The emerging antiwar movement

[Adam Levenstein <cleon42@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- gdunkel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> It is very interesting that cmrd. Proyect and the "fair minded and
> honest"
> Sarah Ferguson quote and present the views of people like Dave
> McReynolds, a bitter opponent of ANSWER, Leslie Kagan, Medea
> Benjamin but don't manage to either get a response or bother to quote
>
> spokepeople from ANSWER.

For the record, I am active with the local IAC and work closely with
comrades from the WWP. Despite my political differences, I have a lot
respect for WWP and have defended them more than once on this listserv
and in other forums.

That said, what Louis is responding to is IAC/ANSWER/WWP's habit of
having numerous Party leaders speak at these events, wearing different
hats but speaking for the Party nonetheless. For example, Brian Becker
might speak for IAC, Larry Holmes might speak for ANSWER, Leslie
Feinburg might speak as "a transgendered activist and author"--but
they're all WWP inner circle. Essentially they're flooding the speaker
list with WWPers without saying they're WWP. This is seen as dishonest
by a number of activists, and it is, to a certain extent. But at the
same time, WWP is heavily involved in a number of organizations and
coalitions, and demanding that Person B speak from that organization
just because Person A is a WWP member isn't a desireable alternative.
By and large, WWP's involvement with ANSWER and IAC does more good than
harm.

In any event, McReynolds' statement denouncing October 26 based on
ANSWER's involvement was already soundly denounced in this forum, and
he admittedly backtracked a couple weeks ago and endorsed the
demonstration.

> In particular, I don't think defending Iraq, north Korea and
> Milosevich as
> best can be done from the attacks of U.S. imperialism is to become
> "apologists" for those regimes.  Solidarity is not apology.

But what WWP does goes way beyond defense against imperialism. What
they do is glorify these states and regimes. In the October 10 issue of
their paper, Fred Goldstein wrote: "This war is about destroying the
vestiges of Iraq's 1958 revolution, seizing its 100 billion barrels of
oil reserves--the second-largest reserve in the world--and beginning
the re-conquest of the Middle East by U.S. and British imperialism."

While the oil concerns are obvious, notice the first phrase--they're
talking about Iraq as if it were a workers' state. They routinely talk
about Iraq's gains (such as free education, health care, etc.) as if it
were a living socialist revolution. This is not a Marxist analysis; a
Marxist analysis would be to say, "Yes, Saddam's a brutal dictator, but
here's *why* he's a dictator and why we defend Iraq against imperialism
anyway." Instead they effectively say, "no, he's not a dictator, he's a
really nice guy!"

Adam


=====
-----------------------------------------------------------
Adam Levenstein                          cleon42@xxxxxxxxx
ICQ: 17125158

Microsoft will make something that doesn't suck when
they start manufacturing vacuum cleaners.

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