The WWP, main force behind the Antiwar ANSWER, Splits

It is secretly being screamed all over left circles. The Workers’ World Party (WWP) has splintered. This will have no importance in the news if it wasn’t for the fact that for a long time the WWP – a formation of about 300 militants nationwide -- allegedly dominated ANSWER, one of the main antiwar coalitions in the US.

According to unofficial reports, the entire West Coast membership of the WWP left the organization following the discussions about the Presidential ticket of the organization. According to different sources, some of those leaving the group opposed the WWP running candidates for President and Vice-President and pushed for a line of activism rather than electoralism.

They argued that the party was too small and irrelevant to play any role in the elections and that that would alienate many allies in the antiwar movement who are supporting John Kerry, the Democratic Party candidate, as the “lesser of two evils.” The WWP have fielded presidential and vice-presidential candidates in the past, gathering a handful of votes in a few states.

This group allegedly does not support the Democrats or endorsing John Kerry, but they simply contend that the party should not oppose the “Anyone but Bush” trend, which translated into real world terms means “Nobody but Kerry.”

The majority in the leadership disagreed and pushed for the John Parker – Theresa Gutierrez displacing the Monica Moorehead – Gloria LaRiva team who represented the party in the last few elections. Gloria La Riva is heading the splinter group or was pushed out of the Workers World Party as a result of the crisis.

The Workers World Party (WWP) is allegedly a socialist party which was founded in 1959 by Sam Marcy after spliting from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). While Trotskyists were present in its initial formation, the WWP soon became pro-Maoist and even flirted briefly with the North Korean regime of Kim Il Sung. While the leadership of the party denies it vehemently, opponents characterized it as a neo-stalinist grouping.

Most likely, both characterizations are wrong as the WWP’s main characteristic is not theoretical but activist by nature, although adopting any “progressive” movement that emerged both domestically and abroad. Thus, they endorsed and supported the failed candidacies of Jesse Jackson, Cuban leader Fidel Castro and even Slovodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. They went so far as to support the massacre of Tianamen Square by the Chinese Communist Party, mirroring its explanation that was a CIA-inspired conspiracy.

But the WWP played an important role in providing the infrastructure for the antiwar movement during both Gulf Wars and lead a coalition, ANSWER, that many characterize as little more than WWP front groups. Criticisms of their soft stands towards Saddam Hussein during the last war were also leveled against the party. They did manage, however, to provide an umbrella for the first and some of the most significant and massive antiwar demonstrations in the recent past.

While respected for their antiwar work, the WWP was never able to capitalize from its leading role in organizing the movement as the party remained small and its electoral results never amounted to more than a few thousand voters. Signs of the internal difficulties emerged when the West Coast branches declined to participate in the primaries of the California Peace & Freedom Party – something they have done for over a decade and a half – which was interpreted as a shift away from electoral politics as the P&FP had been in the past the source of most of the WWP’s presidential ticket’s votes nationwide.

In the recent past, the most openly pro-Democratic Party wing of the antiwar movement launched a number of virulent attacks against the WWP and ANSWER, many of which were tantamount to red-baiting and reactionary attacks. In fact, many of those forces split the antiwar movement and formed rival coalitions like the UFPJ (United for Peace and Justice) which refused to link the Iraq war with the occupation of Palestine and have a pro-Democratic Party platform.

So far, neither the newspaper of the WWP or its web page have published anything about the party crisis, and they are trying to keep it under wraps as much as possible. We have noticed, however, that the ANSWER webpage has two URLs, one for the West Coast, and one for the rest of the country, possibly reflecting the lines of the split. We also noticed that the WWP and its allies in ANSWER are pushing to support the demonstrations at the National Conventions of both the Democratic and Republican parties, which seems to indicate that the WWP’s majority was able to impose its more left-based platform on these campaigns and to discipline its remaining loyalists.

It is important, however, for the WWP – and for the faction that abandoned it -- to come up publicly and explain the political reasons behind the split and how that could affect the antiwar work of ANSWER, not to satisfy a morbid wish to know the latest gossip gripping a small socialist group, but to help the rest of the left comprehend how that can affect their common antiwar activities.

I did a little googling and found this. I can't vouch for its veracity but it relays the ponderings of Greg Yardley (FrontPageMag.com):

[ex-leftist Greg Yardley, formerly Mr CommieWatch, writes of the WWP split:]
If the split is clean, and International ANSWER as a whole (coast to coast) is taken over by the west coast (+ Brian Becker) WWP split, then relatively little will change. La Riva and the Becker brothers still hate the Dems, and I don't believe for a second that people with such long tenures as communist-cult-bosses are suddenly going to embrace an open principle of organizing.
That said, I don't think the split is clean. From my somewhat-limited perspective, it looks like the WWP split has resulted in different branches of at least two of their front groups, International ANSWER and the International Action Center, being partially controlled by the NYC-based WWP, and partially controlled by the ex-WWP in California. Maybe I'm wrong, but I predict that means things are eventually going to get real ugly. No group like the WWP gets along happily with their ex-members. Can they successfully manage a joint organization with them? I doubt it.
Here's what'll most likely happen: for the summer, the US gets divided up like the world at Yalta. The NYC WWP folks do the International ANSWER organizing for the DNC and RNC conventions; the SF folks support these from afar but largely get froze out. The folks from California who remain in the WWP get treated like gods and invited to speak on the East Coast; the ex-WWP doesn't. A few show up for the DNC / RNC and they're subtly made to feel like second-class citizens. Shortly after the January 2005 inauguration of Bush or Kerry, you'll have two separate ANSWER organizations.
Along the way, the WWP's going to ensure they get everything they're able to grasp. I predict the SF IAC is forced to change its name by mid-2005 after some on-the-down-low but nasty legal threatening from the WWP's very effective Partnership for Civil Justice. If the WWP can keep control over the West Coast's 501(c)3, the Progress Unity Fund, they will, and the ex-WWP members will be S.O.L. for cash - it all depends on which side of the split keeps at least two of the three legal directors.
Already the ways to donate on the International ANSWER site are divided up in a messy patchwork - in places, through their fiscal sponsorship with Alliance for Global Justice, in others, to the NYC-based Peoples Rights Fund, in the 'West Coast ANSWER' section, to the Progress Unity Fund. Do you think whichever coast controls that website is going to be able to resist trying to send a bit more funding their way? And as for the IAC - that's also big money and big reuptation. All of a sudden the main New York City IAC isn't linking to the SF IAC.
By the end of 2005 at the absolute latest, you're going to see a new WWP-style party composed of the ex-WWP members plus everyone they can draw in. That or they'll just try to take over what's left of the Freedom Socialist Party. They'll put out a paper as often as they can.
Unfortunately, I don't predict any public airing of the dirty laundry, except by word-of-mouth gossip and rumour. The WWP is pretty silent about its internal life. As much as I'd love to see the WWP-equivalent of a "Hate Communism, Hate the Spartacist League" series of rants, it probably won't happen. My curiosity will have to go unsatisfied.
For the 'movement' the whole thing doesn't mean much. The DNC & RNC protests aren't dominated by the WWP, and their occasional anti-occupation demos have petered out anyway. It just means that ANSWER on the West Coast won't be as actively encouraging a vote for the WWP as ANSWER elsewhere.

Greg Yardley had a CommieWatch Blog but he doesn't maintain it anymore.

Thanks. Was he implying that Becker brothers went with the West coast group?

Below post on May 27 (click here) in Internet newsgroup (aka usenet)alt.politics.socialism.trotsky says that Richard Becker resigned from the national organization:

3 or more of the major leaders of the WWP resigned from the WWP two weeks ago. Gloria La Riva, Richard Becker and a few others resigned. Reasons are not yet forthcoming. WWP pledges to issue a statement on this shortly. The above mentioned individuals are among the best known public WWP members and on the West Coast are THE best known leaders of the party. Additionally, Richard is the public spokesperson for Int'l ANSWER. How this will play out is important for the anti-war movement nationally given their stature.

See #11 above. Maybe Brian Becker left WWP with his brother?

See also the below story about a guy dealing with your "green hat" friends and others.

From World Net Daily comes this article, not about the split, but about ANSWER's suppression of dissent within the "antiwar" movement:

Activists: Anti-war leaders 'McCarthyists' Leftists who reveal movement's Stalinist ties silenced from within

-------------------------------------------
Posted: May 21, 2004

By Sherrie Gossett

[snip]

Away from the media spotlight, Nathan Newman, a prominent attorney and activist, accused the anti-war ANSWER coalition of having conducted an "ideological inquisition" and "witch hunt" against leftist critics.

Newman, former vice president of the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, is a union lawyer, political activist and frequent contributor to Technology Review, Progressive Populist, and American Prospect.

A political activist and former union organizer, he also was the project director at NetAction, a consumer technology advocacy group and wrote "Net Loss," a book addressing Internet policy and related issues of economic inequality.

Newman's offense? He repeatedly has described the ANSWER [Act Now to Stop War and End Racism] coalition, a prominent organizer of the anti-war rallies, as a front group for the neo-Stalinist Worker's World Party, or WWP, a group he describes as supporters of "mass murderers," "morally reprehensible," and "not fit to associate with."

[snip]

Newman later announced a resolution was passed by the Guild in order to stifle such dissent.

[snip]

How did the NLG come to pass the resolution? Newman explained the resolution was proposed by a member of the D.C.-based law firm, the Partnership for Civil Justice, which does legal work for Workers World and the International Action Center, or IAC, and was picked by the WWP as a member of ANSWER's steering committee.

Partnership for Civil Justice, or PCJ, lawyers Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo are frequent speakers at ANSWER-led events, and Verheyden-Hilliard was the emcee of the October rally in Washington.

[emphasis added]

Somehow, I don't seem to have the political acumen to comprehend all of this. These commie maggots all look the same to me through an ACOG, regardless of to which "People's Revolutionary Yuppie-Doublename-Lawyer" group they belong.

However, that said... I read Solzhenitsyn's "Lenin in Zurich" a while back, and this for all the world reminds me of his descriptions of how Lenin kept producing "splits" in the Communist movement, in order to enhance his own position. I couldn't quite fathom how a tiny group of disaffected leftist fruitcakes could possibly *benefit* from schisms and splits, but Solzhenitsyn clearly stated that Lenin "thrived on splits", and was forever manevering to produce schisming and splintering - and somehow he parlayed his results into control of the European Communist movement, and finally into control of Russia (with a little help from his friends, of curse).

So... Is there more to this than meets the eye? Are these goblins maneuvering for control of the "Movement", in some quintessentially commie-fruitcake manner which I, with my simpleminded "Exterminate The Whole Schumerpile Of Them" worldview, fail to comprehend??

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