---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 11:04:16 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Marching With Stalinists
Marching With Stalinists
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25043-2003Jan21.html
By Michael Kelly
January 23, 2003
The left in America has for a long time now resembled not so much a
political movement
as a contest to see how many schismatics could dance on the head of a pin, a
conversation that has gone from being national to factional to simply
eccentric. At some
point, progressive politics reached a state where freeing Mumia was
considered critical
and electing a Democratic president was considered optional.
Then came Sept. 11, and the left found itself plunged into a debate on a
subject of
fundamental importance. And this was a debate in which to be of the left
was to be, by
definition, involved: In al Qaeda and in the Taliban and in Saddam
Hussein's Iraq, liberal
civilization faced an enemy that represented nearly every evil that
liberalism has ever
stood against.
What was the left going to do? A pretty straightforward call, you might
say. America
has its flaws. But war involves choosing sides, and the American side,
which was, after
all, the side of liberalism, of progressivism, of democracy, of freedom, of
not chucking
gays off rooftops and not stoning adulterers and not whipping women in the
town
square, and not gassing minority populations and not torturing advocates of
free
speechwas surely preferable to the side of the "Islamofascists," to borrow
a word
from the essayist and former man of the left, Christopher Hitchens.
Which is the point: Hitchens is a former man of the left. In the left's
debate, Hitchens
insisted that progressives must not in their disdain for America allow
themselves to
effectively support the perpetuation of despotism, must not betray the
left's own values.
Others, notably the political philosopher Michael Walzer, the independent
essayist
Andrew Sullivan, New Republic writer Jonathan Chait and New York Observer
columnist
Ron Rosenbaum, also made this argument with great force and clarity.
The debate is over. The left has hardened itself around the core value of a
furious,
permanent, reactionary opposition to the devil-state America, which stands
as the
paramount evil of the world and the paramount threat to the world, and
whose aims must
be thwarted even at the cost of supporting fascists and tyrants. Those who
could not
stomach this have left the lefta few publicly, as did Hitchens and
Rosenbaum, and
many more, I am sure, in the privacy of their consciences.
Last weekend, the left held large antiwar marches in Washington, San
Francisco and
elsewhere. Major media coverage of these marches was highly respectful.
This was "A
Stirring in the Nation," in the words of an approving New York Times
editorial,
"impressive for the obvious mainstream roots of the marchers."
There is, increasingly, much that happens in the world that the Times feels
its readers
should be sheltered from knowing. The marches in Washington and San
Francisco were
chiefly sponsored, as was last October's antiwar march in Washington, by a
group the
Times chose to call in its only passing reference "the activist group
International
Answer."
International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is a front group
for the
communist Workers World Party. The Workers World Party is, literally, a
Stalinist
organization. It rose out of a split within the old Socialist Workers Party
over the Soviet
Union's 1956 invasion of Hungary, the breakaway Workers World Party was all
for the
invasion. International ANSWER today unquestioningly supports any despotic
regime
that lays any claim to socialism, or simply to anti-Americanism. It
supported the
butchers of Beijing after the slaughter of Tiananmen Square. It supports
Saddam
Hussein and his Baathist torture-state. It supports the last official
Stalinist state, North
Korea, in the mass starvation of its citizens. It supported Slobodan
Milosevic after the
massacre at Srebrenica. It supports the mullahs of Iran, and the
narco-gangsters of
Colombia and the bus-bombers of Hamas.
This is whom the left now marches with. The left marches with the
Stalinists. The left
marches with those who would maintain in power the leading oppressors of
humanity in
the world. It marches with, stands with and cheers on people like the
speaker at the
Washington rally who declared that "the real terrorists have always been
the United
Snakes of America." It marches with people like the former Black Panther
Charles Baron,
who said in Washington, "if you're looking for an axis of evil then look in
the belly of
this beast."
The Times' "mainstream" Americans marched last weekend with people who held
signs
comparing the president and vice president of their country to Hitler, and
declaring,
"The difference between Bush and Saddam is that Saddam was elected," and
this one: "I
want you to die for Israel. Israel sings Onward Christian Soldiers."
March on.
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