Behind the Placards: The odd and troubling origins of today’s anti-war movement

FREE MUMIA. FREE THE CUBAN 5. FREE JAMIL AL-AMIN (that’s H. Rap Brown, the former Black Panther convicted in March of killing a sheriff’s deputy in 2000). And free Leonard Peltier. Also, defeat Zionism. And, while we’re at it, let’s bring the capitalist system to a halt.

When tens of thousands of people gathered near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for an anti-war rally and march in Washington last Saturday, the demands hurled by the speakers extended far beyond the call for no war against Iraq. Opponents of the war can be heartened by the sight of people coming together in Washington and other cities for pre-emptive protests. But demonstrations such as these are not necessarily strategic advances, for the crowds are still relatively small and, more importantly, the message is designed by the far left for consumption by those already in their choir.

In a telling sign of the organizers’ priorities, the cause of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the taxi driver/radical journalist sentenced to death two decades ago for killing a policeman, drew greater attention than the idea that revived and unfettered weapons inspections should occur in Iraq before George W. Bush launches a war. Few of the dozens of speakers, if any, bothered suggesting a policy option regarding Saddam Hussein other than a simplistic leave-Iraq-alone. Jesse Jackson may have been the only major figure to acknowledge Saddam’s brutality, noting that the Iraqi dictator “should be held accountable for his crimes.” What to do about Iraq? Most speakers had nothing to say about that. Instead, the Washington rally was a pander fest for the hard left.

If public-opinion polls are correct, 33 percent to 40 percent of the public opposes an Iraq war; even more are against a unilateral action. This means the burgeoning anti-war movement has a large recruiting pool, yet the demo was not intended to persuade doubters. Nor did it speak to Americans who oppose the war but who don’t consider the United States a force of unequaled imperialist evil and who don’t yearn to smash global capitalism.

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.

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. Inspections-before-invasion is an effective argument against the dash to war. But it conflicts with WWP support for opponents of U.S. imperialism. At the Washington event, the WWP succeeded in blocking out that line — while promoting anti-war messages more simpatico with its dogma.

WWP shaped the demonstration’s content by loading the speakers’ list with its own people. None, though, were identified as belonging to the WWP. Larry Holmes, who emceed much of the rally from a stage dominated by ANSWER posters, was introduced as a representative of the ANSWER Steering Committee and the International Action Center. The audience was not told that he is also a member of the secretariat of the Workers World Party. When Leslie Feinberg spoke and accused Bush of concocting a war to cover up “the capitalist economic crisis,” she informed the crowd that she is “a Jewish revolutionary” dedicated to the “fight against Zionism.” When I asked her what groups she worked with, she replied that she was a “lesbian-gay-bi-transgender movement activist.” Yet a May issue of Workers World describes Feinberg as a “lesbian and transgendered communist and a managing editor of Workers World.” The WWP’s Sara Flounders, who urged the crowd to resist “colonial subjugation,” was presented as an IAC rep. Shortly after she spoke, Holmes introduced one of the event’s big-name speakers: Ramsey Clark. He declared that the Bush administration aims to “end the idea of individual freedom.”

Most of the protesters, I assume, were oblivious to the WWP’s role in the event. They merely wanted to gather with other foes of the war and express their collective opposition. They waved signs (“We need an Axis of Sanity,” “Draft Perle,” “Collateral Damage = Civilian Deaths,” “Fuck Bush”). They cheered on rappers who sang, “No blood for oil.” They laughed when Medea Benjamin, the head of Global Exchange, said, “We need to stop the testosterone-poisoning of our globe.” They filled red ANSWER donation buckets with coins and bills. But how might they have reacted if Holmes and his comrades had asked them to stand with Saddam, Milosevic and Kim? Or to oppose further inspections in Iraq?

One man in the crowd was wise to the behind-the-scenes politics. When Brian Becker, a WWP member introduced (of course) as an ANSWER activist, hit the stage, Paul Donahue, a middle-aged fellow who works with the Thomas Merton Peace and Social Justice Center in Pittsburgh, shouted, “Stalinist!” Donahue and his colleagues at the Merton Center, upset that WWP activists were in charge of this demonstration, had debated whether to attend. “Some of us tried to convince others to come,” Donahue recalled. “We figured we could dilute the [WWP] part of the message. But in the end most didn’t come. People were saying, ‘They’re Maoists.’ But they’re the only game in town, and I’ve got to admit they’re good organizers. They remembered everything but the Porta-Johns.” Rock singer Patti Smith, though, was not troubled by the organizers. “My main concern now is the anti-war movement,” she said before playing for the crowd. “I’m for a nonpartisan, globalist movement. I don’t care who it is as long as they feel the same.”

The WWP does have the shock troops and talent needed to construct a quasi mass demonstration. But the bodies have to come from elsewhere. So WWPers create fronts and trim their message, and anti-war Americans, who presumably don’t share WWP sentiments, have an opportunity to assemble and register their stand against the war. At the same time, WWP activists, hiding their true colors, gain a forum where thousands of people listen to their exhortations. Is this a good deal — or a dangerous one? Who’s using whom?

“Organizing against the silence is important,” Bob Borosage, executive director of Campaign for America’s Future, a leading progressive policy shop in Washington, said backstage at the rally: “This [rally] is easy to dismiss as the radical fringe, but it holds the potential for a larger movement down the road.” Borosage did add that the WWP “puts a slant on the speakers and that limits the appeal to others. But history shows that protests are organized first by militant, radical fringe parties and then get taken over by more centrist voices as the movement grows. They provide a vessel for people who want to protest.”

That’s the vessel-half-filled view. The other argument is that WWP’s involvement will prevent the anti-war movement from growing. Sure, the commies can rent buses and obtain parade permits, but if they have a say in the message, as they have had, the anti-war movement is going to have a tough time signing up non-lefties. When the organizers tried and failed to play a recorded message from Al-Amin, Lorena Stackpole, a 20-year-old New York University student, said, “This is not what I came for.” And an organizer for a non-revolutionary peace group that participated in the event remarked, “The rhetoric here is not useful if we want to expand.” After all, how does urging the release of Cubans accused of committing espionage in the United States — a pet project of the WWP — help draw more people into the anti-war movement? (In a similar reds-take-control situation, the “Not in My Name” campaign — which pushes an anti-war statement signed by scores of prominent and celebrity lefties, including Jane Fonda, Martin Luther King III, Marisa Tomei, Kurt Vonnegut and Oliver Stone — has been directed, in part, by C. Clark Kissinger, a longtime Maoist activist and member of the Revolutionary Communist Party.)

Let’s be real: A Washington demonstration involving tens of thousands of people will not yield much political impact — especially when held while Congress is out of town and the relevant legislation has already been rubber-stamped. (The organizers claimed 200,000 showed, but that seemed a pumped-up guesstimate, perhaps three or four times the real number.) The anti-war movement won’t have a chance of applying pressure on the political system unless it becomes much larger and able to squeeze elected officials at home and in Washington.

To reach that stage, the new peace movement will need the involvement of labor unions and churches. That’s where the troops are — in the pews, in the union halls. How probable is it, though, that mainstream churches and unions will join a coalition led by the we-love-North-Korea set? Moreover, is it appropriate for groups and churches that care about human rights and worker rights abroad and at home to make common cause with those who champion socialist tyrants?

At the rally, speaker after speaker declared, “We are the real Americans.” But most “real Americans” do not see a direct connection between Mumia, the Cuban Five and the war against Iraq. Jackson, for one, exclaimed, “This time the silent majority is on our side.” If the goal is to bring the silent majority into the anti-war movement, it’s not going to be achieved by people carrying pictures of Kim Jong-Il — even if they keep them hidden in their wallets.

As yet another WWP-in-disguise speaker addressed the crowd, Steve Cobble, a progressive political consultant, gazed out at the swarm of protesters and observed, “People are looking for something to do.” Good for them. But they ought to also look at the leaders they are following and wonder if those individuals will guide them toward a broader, more effective movement or toward the fringe irrelevance the WWPers know so well.

I missed the re-run tonight, but I saw the original. I have tried to pass this along to others and no one seems to be paying much attention.

You know, there was a lot of talk of communists being behind much of the Vietnam war protests and no one believed it, now it makes me wonder. When my cousin was a student at Berkeley during Vietnam, she was approached by the FBI and asked to infiltrate some of the anti-war groups to monitor communist involvement. Now it makes me wonder.

"Still, I think in these remarks is a subtle message to leave clinton alone."

While the text cited is superficially innocuous, it could be interpreted that way. And doubtless was, by those so inclined.

This address does seem to have been part of a regularly scheduled series, rather than a special pleading. And it obviously did not occur prior to the opening of the impeachment trial, at the special meeting in the Old Senate Chamber where the rules of procedure were decided upon.

Interesting that, under the circumstances, Bush 41 did not choose to beg off the speech. He would have been justified in doing so, certainly. That he did not is a message all its own.

Thanks for the follow-up. Yes, it was a strange time. And your nugget makes it a wee tad stranger...

Once again, one wonders what our world would be like had the Senate exhibited the courage to do their duty. In all liklihood, Algore would be President today. I shiver at the notion.

As is said, the good Lord moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.

I have no doubt that the pattern we are seeing now vis a vis the antiwar protests match what went on in the sixties. Small cadres or cells of hard core communists and lefties, organizing much larger groups of people who show up for a whole broad range of reasons (including to have fun, smoke dope and meet members of the oppposite sex). There are certainly stories I have read and heard about the professional organizers agitating and stirring up the crowd and then ducking out when the rocks started flying and the police showed up. As this article and others make clear, someone has to get the permits, make the signs, rent the buses, print the newspapers, recruit the speakers, etc. etc. etc. And lest we forget, from the very beginning, the communist movement and the union movement was always fundamentally about organizing . That has always been what these people have excelled at. It's what they do. But they try to cover up their tracks, whenever possible.

Agree with all of your comments. I would only add one thing, albeit a highly subjective note. My recollection was that the Bush speech was very much a momentum stopper. Like a key goal line stand in a tight football game. If my memory serves, things were still in a somewhat early stage in the Senate on 1/20/99 and there was still optimism that witnesses would be called and senators would truly vote their conscience. My recollection was that after the Bush speech, the momentum seemed to shift and before we knew it, we were treated to pictures of Rehnquist dressed up in his Gilbert and Sullivan costume (Rehnquist had stripes sewn onto his judicial robes because he favored the costumes from Trial by Jury ). In other words, high drama became low farce. And I seem to remember the Bush speech having something to do with it all. But, in the end, who knows.

I agree, the thought of a Gore presidency is not a nice one to contemplate.

"If my memory serves, things were still in a somewhat early stage in the Senate on 1/20/99 and there was still optimism that witnesses would be called and senators would truly vote their conscience."
According to the Lott transcript, the Bush 41 speech came at the end of Day 1 of the actual presentations. By that time, the rules of procedure had already been decided -- including that there would be no witnesses.
Thus, Mighty Mo was already going downhill...
Still, I'm stunned that I didn't remember a damn thing about Bush 41 addressing the Senate at this time. Shows you how you can miss things, even if you're paying close attention...

Whew. Another marathon search to find the story of "the dour little" Byrd's burned hand during impeachment. I found it here.

Then there was Sen. Robert C. Byrd. The dour little West Virginia Democrat was sporting a large bandage wrapping his left hand. According to his office, Byrd was inbound from his home in McLean in his chauffeured Lincoln Town Car about 9 a.m. yesterday, reading in the back seat, as is his wont, when one of the specially installed reading lights burst into flames. The doughty Byrd quashed the fire with his hand, sustaining burns in the process, but he wasn't late for the office. He never even had the driver pull over.

Probably not a horse's head, probably just one of them things, but speculation abounded at the time!

I give the Wobblies lots more credit than that, and I don't think they'd feel at all "at home" with today's snotty-nosed anti-gkobalist crowd. I think that was implicit in Corn's article, that there is an instinctive pulling back among legitimate leftists and pacifists from these groups who have successfully hijacked this immediate historical moment of the (still impending) "War on Iraq". The Wobblies were part of their own historical moment and a great deal was going on across the world, including the beginnings of
the Russian Revolution, which was the lodestar for decades for millions of people concerned with "social justice". Of course they were deluded, of course they worshiped a "God that Failed", but they were the first generation and hence made the biggest and most embarrassing mistakes, and were the first to learn from their mistakes (some did, some didn't.). The motley crews as described by Corn in this article haven't learned anything from the present or the past---they virtually have NO sense of history, or any appreciation of the fate of the kind of ideas that history has shown us wind up on the proverbial "ash-heap of discarded notions".

I love how these jokers never claim he's NOT developing WMD or that he ISN'T a threat to his neighbors, and to regional and national stability. They just claim we don't have enough evidence to convict. If the glove don't fit'cha gotta vote to acquit. And their other big ploy is to claim that NK represents a greater threat, why aren't we pushing war with them? If we were prioritizing NK they'd be saying "What about Saddam?'

Also this article says hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children murdered. I thought they were claiming millions. But Iraq claims they've provided iraqi families with months of extra rations. Whose lying? I suspect the lefties.

Don't underestimate them though. NBC has been having nightly man-on-the-street interviews with iraqi citizens crying "DOn't bomb us. Don't mess up our wonderful country'. They'll be singing a different tune when we liberate them. Then there will be NO ONE that supported Saddam. Just like the 'good chermans'.

Your points are well made and well taken. Nice historical background. I tend to believe in the "timelessness" of people and events. What do I mean by that? By this I mean if you look at soldiers from different points in history, they are a lot more alike than they are different, be they revolutionary war, civil war, napoleonic war, WWI, WWII, Vietnam etc. The same might be said about political leaders, writers, athletes, religous leaders, whatever.

While admittedly it's only a theory, I am tempted to look for similarities instead of differences. I think human nature is more or less constant, as are external pressures such as social, economic, political. I would tend to view the revolutionaries from the early 20th century as maybe slightly less unique and historic as you choose to, and I would view today's anti-globalists or anarchists as slightly more dangerous and committed than you may choose to.

To me this is sort of the joke about the so-called "New Left" that was so much a part of the scene in the '60s. Many of these members of the "New Left" were "Red Diapers" ro children of an earlier crop of radicals. But they were somehow different, hence the "New" in "New Left". Maybe they were less enamored of Stalin, or whatever. But in joke was that, in the end, the "New Left" turned out to be very much like the "Old Left". There were just as many bomb throwers (maybe more), just as many working hand in glove with the USSR, just as many that were intolerant of opposing points of view.

It seems like every generations spawns their share of bomb throwing leftist revolutionaries, and at least to me, they all turn out pretty much the same.

Nice posts.

The communists have so successfully infiltrated our college campuses and other institutions that it is the rare liberal who objects to their leading the anti-war movement.

Corn and Hitchens are among the few on the left who have spoken out against IAC-ANSWER. The rest are happy to march no matter whose banner is waved.

Thanks for posting this article. It'll come in handy soon....

"But having Croatian ancestors, when I was a kid in Chicago I saw hostility from Serbians. Couldn't figure why."

But you do now, of course.

"Would like to know where to get the truth."

Hang around FR. It passes through with some regularity.

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