A peace movement that's going nowhere

New York Daily News ^ | 1/22/03 | Zev Chafets

[kattracks]

'A broad cross-section of America." That's how National Public Radio's reporter described the anti-war protesters who converged Saturday on the Mall in Washington.

The New York Times agreed. Its editorial page called the gathering "impressive for the obvious mainstream roots of the marchers."

I watched the march on C-SPAN, and I saw a different event - a thin crowd of cold white people cheering on an assortment of America-hating radicals, second-rate demagogues and plain weirdos.

The rally was kicked off by a Native American activist, Moonanum James, who set the day's tone by accusing the U.S. of genocide and ended his oration with this exhortation: "In the spirit of Crazy Horse, no more war!" (I'm not making that up.)

James was one of 11 speakers from the rally's organizing group, ANSWER - Act Now to Stop War & End Racism. ANSWER is intimately connected with the Workers of the World Party, an outfit that is, according to David Corn of the hard-left The Nation magazine, a "small, revolutionary-Socialist sect." Is there anyone on Earth more maliciously stupid than a revolutionary Socialist?

Other featured speakers included the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, former Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney, ex-U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Ron ("Born on the Fourth of July") Kovic, two silly actresses, a few folk singers and a very distressed British member of Parliament, Jeremy Corbyn.

There were also a great many Arab and Islamic apologists for Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein among the orators: Elias Rashmawi of the Free Palestine Alliance; Mansoor Khan from "Peace TV"; Ashraf el-Bayoumi, an Egyptian "intellectual"; Esam Omeish of the Muslim-American Society; Imam Mousa (who made an appeal for convicted cop-killer H. Rap Brown and called for a "revolution" to bring down the "American system"); Ismael Kamal representing the Muslim-Student Association, and, at the end of the rally, a poet from the Council on American-Islamic Relations who delivered his indictment of Yankee aggression and repression in doggerel verse.

A White House spokeswoman, asked about the rally, called it an example of American free speech, which, of course, it was. And I have no doubt there were some well-meaning mainstream people in the crowd. But public rallies, like public lynchings, are normally judged not by the quality of the crowd, but by the character of the people staging the event.

That's why calling Saturday's demonstration mainstream misses the point. So much so, in fact, that a suspicious type might even detect a certain amount of ideological dissembling in the coverage.

Too bad, because there was a real story on the Mall in Washington over the weekend. The rally revealed that the anti-war movement, since its last meeting in October, has gone precisely nowhere. Saturday was, in fact, a carbon copy of the October effort - same speakers, same B-list celebrities, same small crowd. An hour into it, Rashmawi conceded this last point, announcing that half the buses were still on their way. Afterward, ANSWER claimed 500,000 - a hilarious exaggeration.

But exaggeration won't help the anti-war movement as it is currently constituted. Neither will disingenuous reporting. ANSWER and its fellow travelers clearly want to turn Iraq into another Vietnam, but they are being frustrated by a technological irony. A generation ago, network television showed the American public the truth about a bad war. Now C-SPAN, with its unmediated, unblinking cameras, is doing the same for a bad "peace" movement.

[Support Free Republic]

Interesting.

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[Savage Beast]

"a thin crowd of cold white people cheering on an assortment of America-hating radicals, second-rate demagogues and plain weirdos."

But that sounds like NPR...

[EternalVigilance]

Well, I agree that their 'peace movement' is going nowhere...but that doesn't mean it hasn't served a purpose: That of revealing to the world the fact that leftists, communists, greens, Democrats, anarchists, and Islamists are all joined at the hip in their hatred for America and Israel.

The age-old anti-semitic spirit of the Nazis (another generation's socialist problem) has obviously found its modern home in the Democratic Party.

Of course, that destructive and hateful demon has never departed from the ranks of the Islamists.

The rats are all out of the bag, and we saw them race through the streets last weekend.

Believe me when I say, they are plague-carriers.

[stocksthatgoup]

How is it that NPR and PBS as public interest funded entities dont provide complete unedited coverage of these types of events as well as the presidential speeches etc???

[Bonaparte]

More on media coverage at Media Research Center.

[driftless]

On DU today a few posters expressed deep reservations about being allied with commies (ANSWER). Naturally they were drowned out by the chorus of leftist nutjobs who overpopulate that website and don't care who their bedfellows are. Of course a great many of DU's clientele are undoubtedly to the left of ANSWER. The thread was good for a lot of laughs. Just imagine the screaming from Dems if conservatives had gone to a rally organized by the Klan.

[guitfiddlist]

"All we really want...is to give appeasement a chance.....man."

-- Neville Chamberlain, Jr. --

[sirchtruth]

"assortment of America-hating radicals, second-rate demagogues and plain weirdos."

I would add just one group to this assorment: - The EXTREMELY DUPED.

These people have no idea who was fronting this idiotic protest. What concerns me though, is if they would have known, would they still have joined in?

[N. Theknow]

Quote of the day?

"In the spirit of Crazy Horse, no more war!"

Like saying, "In the spirit of Hitler, let's build a synagogue."

[EternalVigilance]

Some would have backed out, but certainly not a majority.