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Comments by YACCS

 

Just a reminder

This was written about the previous Washington "Pro-Saddam"anti-war rally," but given the play this past weekend's one got in the media, I thought it would be useful to bring it up again. David Corn (who writes for The Nation, so he's no hawk trying to discredit the movement), describes The Odd and Troubling Origins of Today’s Anti-War Movement (with emphasis added):

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.

In short, these people are hard-core wackos. They're not mere leftists who think that the U.S. isn't morally pure enough to take on Saddam, or idealists who think that if we all just love and hug each other enough, that Saddam will agree to leave power. They're people who approve of Saddam Hussein. That's why they're organizing these protests.

Of course, that doesn't describe all the protesters this weekend; many were probably only dimly aware of these facts. Still, if the Aryan Nations sponsored a rally in Washington, and thousands of conservatives showed up to join in, would anybody buy the excuse that they didn't know? More to the point, what kind of excuse is that? If the only people who care passionately enough about an issue to organize a protest are, like the WWP, supporters of genocide, what does it say about the movement?
posted by David Nieporent at 1/21/2003 02:07:00 AM |