[lbo-talk] What Is Red-Baiting? (was Re: Justin and Dennis)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Sep 23 16:56:37 PDT 2003


At 4:31 PM -0700 9/23/03, mike larkin wrote:
>>It is surely unnecessary for anyone to imply that I am secretly "a
>>cadre" of WWP to criticize WWP or my support of particular
>>demonstrations initially called by ANSWER or anything else.
>
>True, but over and over again, sectarians get caught with their
>hands in the cookie jar after announcing they NEVER do any of those
>terrible things and how dare you accuse them.

The problem of red-baiting is that, when red-baiting rhetoric becomes an accepted behavior, it destroys chances of having necessary discussion and making well-examined political decisions. The UFPJ steering committee did many conference calls and email exchanges (for more than a month) to discuss the merits and demerits of co-sponsoring the October 25 mobilization to end the occupation of Iraq. At no time any one in UFPJ insinuated that so and so must be secretly a "cadre" of WWP (or any other socialist organization) because he argues for co-sponsorship (or whatever). If anyone insinuated any such thing about anyone or engaged in other sorts of red-baiting rhetoric, not only would we have failed to have free discussion but we would have likely destroyed the working relationship. -- Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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