re lerner flap

Chuck0 chuck at mutualaid.org
Wed Feb 12 10:41:58 PST 2003


Thomas Seay wrote:
> --- steve philion <philion at hawaii.edu> wrote:
> this has little to do with objecitons
>
>>to tactics, it's just
>>one more method of dividing the anti-war movement.
>
>
> The anti-war movement IS divided. Why deny that?
> We are not all the same. We are all going to
> demonstrate this weekend. Isn't that enough? Or do we
> have to continue this charade of "unity".
>
> And this recent banning or "uninvitation" of Lerner is
> just one more act in this silly charade of unity.
>
> There are NO MASSES. There are MULTIPLICITIES.
> Let the various people speak. What's to be afraid of?
>
> -Thomas

Exactly! Like I've been trying to point out for the longest time, there are many different anti-war and peace movements. This is a GOOD thing because it allows the different movements to have their different politics and tactics. The problem arises when we try to shoehorn everything into ONE BIG MOVEMENT.

This will only result in lots of infighting, because all the different tendencies will fight over everything. This aesthetically pleasing idea of one big MOVEMENT plays into the hands of those groups who preach party-building and democratic centralism. It's in their interest to preach the fiction of ONE MOVEMENT, because it put them into a position of LEADING and SPEAKING FOR that movement.

Now, if we could get ANSWER to understand this and get them to stop speaking for everybody in their typical unaccountable fashion, perhaps we could move along in our various movements. People might actually start being nice to ANSWER.

Chuck0

------------------------------------------------------------ Personal homepage -> http://chuck.mahost.org/ Infoshop.org -> http://www.infoshop.org/ MutualAid.org -> http://www.mutualaid.org/ Alternative Press Review -> http://www.altpr.org/ Practical Anarchy Online -> http://www.practicalanarchy.org/ Anarchy: AJODA -> http://www.anarchymag.org/

"The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free..." ---Utah Phillips



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