http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/07/27/why-is-the-antiwar-movement-stalled/
In two words: the left
by Justin Raimondo
July 28, 2010
A recent gathering of the remnants of the antiwar movement, sponsored
by something calling itself the United National Antiwar Conference,
underscores the reasons why there is almost no effective organized
opposition to the present administration's occupation of Iraq and
Afghanistan. One has only to look at the conference program to see
why the antiwar movement remains marginal, at best: a keynote address
by perennial leftist icon Noam Chomsky, who was paired with Donna
Dewitt, a left-wing labor official, and also featuring workshops
reflecting some of their primary concerns on "Health Care is a
Human Right," "Deepening the Base & Building Bridges between the
Climate Change, Peace & Economic Justice Movements," and most
telling of all "The Rise of Right Wing Populism & the Tea Party: Do
We Need a Right-Left Coalition?"
That this question is in dispute tells us how misguided, and out of
it, these people are. It also shows how immoral and narcissistic they
are: while Afghans, Iraqis, and Pakistanis are being blown to bits,
they are wondering whether we ought to be building a broad-based
movement that transcends their petty sectarian concerns, or whether
what passes for the antiwar movement should be their own personal sandbox.
The panelists were Medea Benjamin of Code Pink; Kevin Zeese,
co-founder of Voters for Peace; Chris Gauvreau of Connecticut United
Against the War and the National Assembly to End U.S. Wars and
Occupations; and Glen Ford, representing Black Agenda.
Now, I did not attend this conference, and have no idea what the
upshot of the discussion was; however, Benjamin and Zeese have
expressed their support for such a coalition (the former somewhat
tentatively, and the latter with more conviction). On the other hand,
one can easily imagine that Ford, who has called the Ron Paul
movement and the tea partiers "racists," and advocates of "white
nationalism," and Gauvreau, a leftist who spent much of this speech
mouthing all the expected slogans, see a left-right coalition as a
deadly threat to "their" movement. What's interesting, to me at
least, is that the cited Gauvreau speech, made at an antiwar
demonstration last year, opens with the speaker bemoaning the fact
that "It has been difficult to build this demonstration." The reason,
he averred, is because the media keeps telling us the war in Iraq is
winding down or over but surely this excuse doesn't hold true for
the war in Afghanistan, with casualties increasing daily and the
carnage making headlines. Yet he tries to put a brave face on it:
"Without a militant and independent movement in the streets, exposing
each and every escalation of this war, we can expect only more and
more desperate military acts in the service of corporate America.
That is why this demonstration, though smaller than some held in the
past, is a victory."
Earth to Gauvreau: A couple of dozen protesters standing around
dispiritedly listening to a speaker declare that the smallness of
their demonstration isn't their fault and certainly isn't his fault
is a defeat, and there's no two ways about it. Any bystander who
happened upon this mini-mobilization would have to conclude,
regardless of his own opinion of US foreign policy, that opponents of
US intervention are an isolated and somewhat eccentric minority, with
no chance of actually having an effect on the course of events.
After long and bitter experience in the leftist-dominated "peace
movement," I'm convinced that this is exactly how the left sectarians
who invariably dominate such gatherings like it. In a real mass
movement against interventionism, their influence would be
considerably reduced, and their ability to use it as a recruiting
ground to advance their organizational ambitions would be very close to nil.
The sectarians of "Socialist Action," a minuscule Trotskyist grouplet
which has been very visible on the West Coast at "peace actions,"
admit as much in a 2000-word polemic published in their plonky little
newspaper, and on their equally plonky web site (Marxists don't do
the internet, and when they do, the results are laughable). The piece
starts out by averring that the model cited by Zeese is the old
America First Committee, which opposed US intervention in World War
II, as well as the Anti-Imperialist League, which, earlier, led the
opposition to the US occupation of the Philippines. Without going
into any detail about the latter example, the author goes into a long
disquisition contrasting the Trotskyists' opposition to US entry into
WWII with the AFC's, hailing the "militant" labor "sit downs" as
exemplary, in spite of the fact that they had nothing to do with
antiwar activism. As the climax of the Trotskyists' glorious record,
Socialist Action avers:
"During the war, the Socialist Workers Party organized to aid
fraternization among working-class soldiers of all nations, and they
opposed the attempts of the government to prohibit strikes for better
wages and working conditions and to brand actions by the labor
movement as aiding the 'enemy.' Their militant opposition to the war
and wartime assaults on the rights of workers to defend their
standard of living led the government to indict leaders of the
Socialist Workers Party and the Minneapolis Teamsters under the Alien
Registration, or Smith Act."
So, the Trots wound up in jail, to the cheers of the Stalinists and
the pro-war "liberals" that looks like a defeat to me.
Their account of the America First movement repeats all the old
Stalinist canards about the biggest peace movement in American
history: it was run by big businessmen, it was "anti-Semitic," it
wasn't really for peace, just pro-Hitler. The article cites the
considered opinion of James P. Cannon, the Trotskyist leader at the
time, as saying "the 'isolationists' in elite circles merely held a
tactical difference with those of their peers who were for sending
U.S. armaments to Britain." Their real goal, he thought, was to
consolidate their control over the Western hemisphere in preparation
for intervening in Europe.
Cannon's view is nonsensical, as anyone who has read the writings of
America First leader and top activist John T. Flynn would readily
understand: Flynn was a principled opponent of US intervention
abroad, because he understood what turn of the century liberal
Randolph Bourne meant when he said "War is the health of the State."
Flynn and his co-thinkers wanted to limit the power of the American
state a goal not shared by Trotsky's disciples.
In any case, what the Socialist Actioneers fail to note, in their
endless polemic, is that the America First Committee mobilized
millions against the war: it had 800,000 members (dues-paying
members, I might add), and a Washington lobby that very nearly sunk
Roosevelt's ever-accelerating drive to drag us into war in Europe.
Massive rallies conducted on a nationwide scale kept the Roosevelt
administration in check, right up until the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor. The War Party had to take the "back door to war," as one
historian put it, in order to get us in.
So, faced with these two examples the isolated (and jailed)
Trotskyists, and the massive America First movement which would any
normal person consider a role model?
But we aren't dealing with normal people here: we're dealing with
sectarian ideologues, who fail to see the implications of their own
example. The rest of the article is denunciation of the politics of
Ron Paul, and traditional conservatives who oppose imperialism: why,
just look, they don't support nationalized health care! They are
against open borders! They oppose Social Security! Horrors! They conclude:
"To involve the great majority of the working people of the United
States today, the antiwar movement must be a safe place for the most
militant and combative components of the unions and of community
struggles. It must seem relevant to those whose first waking thought
is how to find a job or keep their house. It must be welcoming to the
200,000 LGBT activists who recently marched on DC.
"A united front with the anti-interventionist far right, on the
other hand, would require that our movement drop its demand for
"Money for Jobs, Not War!' … It would naturally draw in the openly
racist Tea Party elements. Such a 'united front' would make the
antiwar movement uninhabitable by those most crucial to its success."
Translation: a left-right coalition would make the antiwar movement
uninhabitable by the inveterate sectarians of the ultra-left, whose
only concern is to recruit naïve young people into their dying little
sects. Trotskyism, today, is about as relevant as phrenology, and
about as useful when it comes to building a mass political movement
of any kind and the sectarians know it. They are essentially
parasites who converge on any "peace" movement that arises and suck
the juice out of it until they've had their fill: then they feast on
the bones.
"The unity that we need in the antiwar movement today," the Trots
proclaim at the end of their piece, "is the kind of unity exemplified
by the United National Antiwar Conference to be held in Albany, NY,
on July 23, 2010."
No. What is needed is not another leftist-dominated "coalition,"
which puts on conferences that address the faithful, reasserts their
well-worn dogmas, and sponsors marches of a few thousand (at most).
You'll note that these marches nearly always take place on the coasts
especially San Francisco, that bastion of the left's past glories
but never penetrate into the American heartland. Until and unless
they do, the antiwar movement, as an organized force in American
politics, will literally remain a fringe phenomenon.
The irony here is that it was the Trotskyists in the 1960s who really
understood how to build a mass antiwar movement: the Socialist
Workers Party (SWP) had a really effective strategy and that was to
make the antiwar movement during the Vietnam era a single issue
movement. The idea was to unite all who could be united around a
simple axiomatic principle: Get the US out of Vietnam. Period. The
SWPers were among the most energetic and effective antiwar organizers
because they knew the difference between building a mass movement
around the issue of war and peace and building a political party: the
former had to be broad and all-inclusive, as opposed to the latter,
which, by definition, has a more comprehensive (and self-limiting) character.
Further irony: the cadres of Socialist Action were once members of
the SWP. They were thrown out in the purges of the 1980s, when the
SWP ditched Trotskyism for the "wisdom" of Fidel Castro. In trying to
recapture their glory days, Socialist Action is ignoring the lessons
of their own history.
But this isn't about Socialist Action a group with about 30 members
nationwide. It's about the widespread attitude on the Left or,
rather, what's left of the Left that they'd rather reign in Hell
than serve in Heaven. And more: it's about the whole "left-right"
paradigm that divides the oppressed and plays into the "mainstream"
media narrative that red is red, blue is blue, right is "reactionary"
and left is "progressive' and never the twain shall meet. We see
this on cable news shows: both Rachel Maddow and Rush Limbaugh profit
from this, but the rest of us lose big time. We lose because,
although we may agree on a vitally important issue the futility and
downright evil of a foreign policy premised [.pdf] on perpetual war
we are prevented from uniting to fight it because of outmoded ways of
thinking.
As long as the organized antiwar movement remains a leftist sandbox,
where sectarians get to pontificate and do little else it will
stay a sideshow. Once we get beyond all that nonsense, however, there
are no limits to what we can do: just look at the polls. The American
people are with us and they're ready to join us in our fight.
Indeed, they've never been readier. The question is: are we ready to
receive them, and lead them?
Right now, the answer is no: I'm hoping that someday soon the
answer will be an emphatic yes.
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