Attack Of The Liberals

[Mark Pavlick]

>From: ZNet Commentaries <sysop at zmag.org>
>Subject: Dominick / Attack Of The Liberals / Nov 11
>
>
>ZNet Commentary
>Attack Of The Liberals November 11, 2002
>By Brian Dominick
>
>The four high-horsemen of the Liberal Left have mounted and are riding
>again, sprinkling no-brainer criticism of the current anti-war movement in
>with gobs of self-righteous, mindless Left-bashing. Renowned white, male,
>former leftists David Corn, Christopher Hitchens, Marc Cooper, and Todd
>Gitlin are once again sounding off against the contemporary Left, and in
>tacit support of the Bush Administration.
>
>Each man has published at least one commentary (in LA Weekly, The Washington
>Post, The LA Times and Mother Jones, respectively) taking cheap shots
>against the Left and regurgitating standard establishment lies about
>subjects like September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq. It's no surprise that a
>bunch of white men might want to hijack or undermine the Left while currying
>favor from the liberal establishment. And it isn't particularly difficult to
>poke holes in the Left of today (or of yesterday). But the fervor these
>fellows manage to muster, and the audience they choose to address, are
>indeed quite alarming.
>
>While all four of these would-be leaders of a less "leftist" Left are
>voicing opposition to the coming war on Iraq, each is careful in this latest
>round of entreaties to avoid bucking up against the system in the process.
>Nowhere do they advocate challenging the fundamental beliefs of the
>"mainstream Americans" each carefully purports to love so much. What's
>worse, these guys are getting mainstream attention as moderate, reasonable
>"leftists" who are more palatable to the American public, not least because
>they oppose any real challenges to the institutions of greed and violence
>which run our society.
>
>Each of these men makes candid arguments against the likes of Ramsey Clark
>and his cadre at the International Action Center having a prominent role in
>any antiwar movement. They are right that Clark is not a sound leader, and
>that the Workers World Party front group poses a serious, long-term threat
>to the Left if it continues to grow and garner support from diverse groups.
>Numerous concerns about Workers World front groups and their ploys and
>tactics have been exposed of late. But each of these four writers has also
>managed to lump most of the present day Left in with Clark and his miniscule
>minions. The truth is, most American leftists are anything but
>pro-Saddam/pro-Stalinism types like Clark's WWP. And there is plenty of
>middle ground between the genocide apologetics of Ramsey Clark's ilk and the
>venomous pro-Establishment viewpoints of wankers like Cooper, Gitlin, Corn
>and Hitchens.
>
>Todd Gitlin, whose despisal of all things radical surfaced loudest during
>NATO's war against the people of Serbia and Kosovo, has been ranting on the
>pages of Mother Jones in support of various slaughters ever since. His
>methods are particularly underhanded, as he espouses traditional government
>lies in order to make his case. For instance, in this latest commentary
>("Who Will Lead," Mother Jones, 10/14/02), Gitlin makes tired and false
>claims such as upholding the US government's purportedly honest desire to
>protect Kurds in Northern Iraq. Remarkably, Gitlin calls "credible" the
>illegal no-fly imposed unilaterally on Iraq by the US and UK. We've heard
>this one before, from three administrations now, and it's incontrovertibly
>false. I wonder what Mr. Gitlin thinks about the fact that Turkey's infantry
>and air forces have been attacking Kurds in Northern Iraq (using US weapons
>and money) without being fired on by US warplanes. If we're so concerned
>about the plight of the Kurdish people, why don't we stop Turkey from
>slaughtering them, instead of encouraging such activity?
>
>So what are Gitlin's prescriptions for us? He says, "Liberal-left
>antiwarriors need to be out-front patriots." That may well be the case, so
>let it be a lesson for us to avoid anything called the "liberal-left." His
>only practical piece of advice for us is to stop demonstrating and start
>holding teach-ins. Thanks a lot, Todd, that's super helpful.
>
>Christopher Hitchens, for his part, creates a straw man of the Left,
>portraying us as believing Osama bin Laden to be "a slightly misguided
>anti-imperialist," and says we generally consider Saddam Hussein and
>Slobodan Milosevic to be "victims." ("So Long, Fellow Travellers," WP,
>10/20/2002) While this may be true of the International Action Center and
>their strongest adherents, it is decidedly untrue of the Left in general. He
>also takes a shot at what he calls "pacifist types," who oppose war but also
>think nothing at all should be done, by anyone, about Saddam Hussein's
>brutal regime. I haven't met or heard from many of these people, and I'm
>certain they too are in a minority on the Left. It occurs that rather than
>painting the entire Left with such broad brushes, Hitchens might opt to
>point out that believing such things is contrary to the spirit of leftism in
>the first place. Instead, Hitchens is hell-bent on distorting the Left's
>actual positions in order to attack them.
>
>Least vicious but still intent on making sure the off-track antiwar movement
>remains ineffective against the dominant institutions, is David Corn, among
>whose major gripes is the multi-issue focus of modern demonstrations
>("Behind the Placards," LA Weekly, 11/1/02). It offends Corn's sensibilities
>that we would consider tying various domestic issues in with work against
>the war. Granted, Corn spends most of his time suggesting a sort of regime
>change inside the IAC-led antiwar movement, which is hard to argue against.
>But it seems Corn wants a lowest common denominator, single-issue movement,
>instead of one which might be smaller (at first), yet actually addresses the
>roots of the impending war and their interconnectedness among diverse other
>issues and causes. And he doesn't seem to have considered that privileged
>white Americans are not the only audience for antiwar organizers; that we've
>seen connecting issues of poverty, racism, the prison system, health care,
>education and other concerns is typically a boon to the movement.
>Predictably, various constituencies see their own priorities validated by a
>more encompassing agenda, and in turn elites feel more threatened as dissent
>is bolstered among more sectors of the population.
>
>Marc Cooper admits out front that he drooled over the US's revenge attack
>against the people of Afghanistan, calling it a "proportionate response,"
>"justified" and "absolutely necessary." He suggests that those who raised
>concerns of civilian deaths were somehow proved wrong when the blood of only
>several thousand Afghanis turned up on American hands. ("A Smart Peace
>Movement is MIA," LA Weekly, 9/29/02) Then, once those assertions prove
>Cooper's heart is in the right place, the reader is treated to a feverish
>liberal rant against the Left. Since Cooper is certain he hates Osama bin
>Laden more than leftists do, he tells us, "An effective peace movement must
>avoid linking opposition to the war in Iraq with opposition to the war
>against Al Qaeda." While it's certainly true that the Bush Administration
>should avoid such linkages, the same advice doesn't apply to the Left. Bush'
>s "crusade" against the particular kinds of terrorism he dislikes is not
>only horrific in and of itself, its momentum is very much tied to his
>aspirations in Iraq and other hotspots-to-be around the world.
>
>What is most disturbing about these four essays is that they appear in
>widely-circulated mainstream publications, ostensibly addressed to those who
>might consider taking an active stance against the war, and doing a fine job
>of turning them off. Preaching beyond the choir is of course a necessary
>activity the Left needs to spend more time doing - but when the subject is
>the choir itself, the old clichÈ does not apply. If one has concerns about
>certain, prominent elements of the Left - and we all should be very
>concerned about IAC dominance of events, as well as critical of
>fundamentalist pacifism and its do-nothing irrationalities - why not address
>them to the Left itself, instead of making a generalized portrayal to the
>outside and suggesting that involvement in antiwar work is a waste of time?
>
>Just about every activist community is home to at least one token liberal
>who despises anything to the left of his or her own perspective, and
>accordingly bashes all things radical or progressive. We should not need
>these people to attack the Left publicly in order to prompt us to deal with
>our dirty laundry. Instead, we should welcome criticism and dissent as long
>as they are presented in a manner which promotes positive internal change,
>and which is not in fact intended to undermine truly radical social
>movements or support the establishment and uphold the system of privilege.
>That system has looked quite favorably on non-radical critics like Corn,
>Gitlin, Cooper and Hitchens since long before the Left was ever a tangible
>entity to attack.