Nathan Newman wrote:
>The idiocy of prioritizing unity with ANSWER over other folks is why,
>despite massive disdain for the war, the "antiwar movement" has remained so
>marginal. It was depressing two years ago and it's depressing now.
-I love liberal sectarianism. Is this the political equivalent of the -one-drop-of-blood standard?
That's analogy is a repulsive degrading of the horror of racism.
And it's not sectarianism not to support a rally organized by a group who you fundamentally think it evil and promotes torture and the murder of students and labor unions -- as the ANSWER leadership has in the past in North Korea and Tiannenman Square and a range of other campaigns.
But the reality is that I went to almost every early antiwar rally-- even provided a legal presence as part of the NLG for ANSWER events -- despite those views, so it's the pathetic failure of the antiwar movement because of its association with ANSWER that I am commenting on. If folks were promoting immoral alliances as a needed "means to an end", my pragmatic streak might buy it, but the alliance with ANSWER has been both immoral and pragmatically stupid.
Here's as an example what Mydd.com, a popular antiwar political site with 20,000 visitors a day, has to say about tomorrow's rally:
"If we run it the way the deluded, totalitarian fuckwads over at ANSWER have been fucking things up (yeah, I don't like them very much), the anti-war majority could hit another recession when it comes to influencing both the public and elected officials. Now, I have heard that ANSWER has the permits for tomorrow's rally, so my hopes are not high. If that is the case, the chances are pretty good that the crowd will be harangued by endless speeches that inform us that those attending the rally are racists if they don't provide material support to the insurgency in the Philippines." Which is probably what many other antiwar folks are saying across the country. Repeated by people who are strenuously against the war, it's no wonder that the numbers at antiwar rallies are so pathetic.
Why are the Dems so pathetic if being antiwar is supposedly so popular? Possibily because the antiwar movement itself is so morally compromised that they've actually made it harder to be antiwar than if it didn't exist. Having ANSWER run the podium is just a gimme to the rightwing to say that being antiwar is being pro-Saddam and pro-Kim Il Jong.
So like a lot of folks, I'm not wasting my time going to a relatively small, ineffective march that will have a compromised message that will be easily characterized by the rightwing as being anti-American and pro-dictatorship.
I wouldn't go to an anti-war rally with the Klan and I wouldn't go at this point to one with ANSWER.
Call it sectarianism. I just call it both the moral and tactically correct thing to do.
Nathan