----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
>the role of The Nation comes as no surprise, either.
-How's that? Despite Corn & Cooper's associations with The Nation, -these articles haven't appeared there, because such attacks on the -antiwar movement aren't welcome in the magazine. Corn's appeared in -the LA Weekly, Cooper's in the LA Times, and the odious Gitlin's in -Mother Jones. Perhaps you should rephrase this.
Which speaks to why Hitchens left the Nation, since even dissenting views from long-time columnists are not welcome there. This closing down of dissent within some left institutions is exactly the problem with the whole "red baiting" charge, since rather than defending dissent, it's actually a call for intolerance and silencing dissent.
At the moment, I am being denounced by name within the National Exec Committee of my own organization, the National Lawyers Guild, for being critical of the WWP's connection to ANSWER on my personal blog, and a resolution is being voted on to denounce all such criticisms as red-baiting and denying that ANSWER can in any way be described as a front group of WWP, thus making any accusation of such "unfounded" and a "vicious attack." Our executive director wanted to add part of the resolution that no local chapter could criticize the WWP's role or otherwise deviate from the national line (something the NYC chapter already has done in its own resolutions), so this "anti-red baiting" position is turning into its own form of authoritarianism within various left organizations and publications.
BTW our own Chuck O was described as an agent of the cops by the leadership of the NLG (repeating the views of our WWP-allied DC folks) based on the post I forwarded where Chuck described ANSWER's treatment of other activists over the January protests. Anyone who criticizes the WWP's role gets described one way or the other as agents of the rightwing, a pretty disgusting approach to treating differing opinions by people who all oppose the war with Iraq.
-- Nathan Newman