“Left” apologists for US imperialism red-bait the anti-war movement
By David Walsh and Barry Grey
5 February 2003
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/left-f05.shtml
The emergence of a broad-based movement of opposition to the Bush administration’s war against Iraq caught the American political and media establishment unawares. In the response of the various factions of the ruling elite there has been one common theme: the need to purge the anti-war movement of its left-wing elements and render it politically harmless.
The instinctive response of the extreme right is to red-bait, denouncing the demonstrations as the organizational work of “communists” and other outside agitators. The establishment “liberals” of the New York Times variety intervene more subtly in an effort to isolate and discredit socialist tendencies and bring the protests under the control of a section of the Democratic Party.
Both factions have singled out for attack the Workers World Party, which plays a leading role in ANSWER, a coalition of anti-war groups that has organized large demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere.
These efforts are aided and abetted by another group—ex-radicals and former anti-war liberals centered around the Nation magazine. Three articles in particular, appearing at about the time of the first significant US protests, held last October, marked the beginning of this group’s intervention. The articles are: “A Smart Peace Movement is MIA,” by Marc Cooper, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times of September 29, 2002; “Who Will Lead?” by Todd Gitlin (Mother Jones magazine, October 14, 2002); and “Behind the Placards: The odd and troubling origins of today’s anti-war movement,” by David Corn (LA Weekly, November 1, 2002).
Cooper, a contributing editor of the Nation, went to Chile in 1971 to volunteer his services to the Salvador Allende Popular Front regime and was serving as Allende’s translator at the time of the military coup. Gitlin was the president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1963-64. After 16 years at the University of California at Berkeley, he now is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University in New York. Corn, the Washington editor of the Nation, formerly worked for Ralph Nader’s Center for Study of Responsive Law.
The three pieces in question constitute a type of “left” gutter journalism. Their authors are unable to muster serious arguments, resorting instead to distortions, amalgams and ad hominem attacks.
In their attacks on left-wing elements, they echo the professional red-baiters. One telling episode speaks volumes about the political and moral character of this political layer. On November 19, David Corn appeared on the “O’Reilly Factor”—a talk-show on Fox News hosted by the extreme-right demagogue Bill O’Reilly. Corn carried out his assignment for O’Reilly, witch-hunting the Workers World group and smearing the anti-war movement.
O’Reilly introduced Corn by saying, “And you say that the Workers World Party, a hardcore communist organization in the USA, is putting together these peace rallies, is that true?” Corn replied, “To call them an organization is perhaps giving them too much credit. I doubt they have enough people to fill a telephone booth. They’re a very small sectarian political outfit based in New York City.”
O’Reilly, a figure in the tradition of Joseph McCarthy, aptly characterized Corn’s appearance, saying, “[Y]ou finger a guy who is on the board of ANSWER ... you finger him as being really the driver behind all this, right?”
Gitlin and Cooper belong to the generation of former anti-war protesters and radicals who have undergone a dramatic transformation over the past two decades, shifting further and further to the right. They long ago made their peace with the existing social order and seek at every critical moment to demonstrate their loyalty to the powers that be.
A watershed in the evolution of this layer was the civil war in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and the US-led bombing campaign against Serbia in 1998. A host of former leftists became enthusiastic supporters of imperialist intervention and uncritically accepted the war propaganda doled out by the media, which portrayed the NATO war as a crusade against “ethnic cleansing.”
The Yugoslav tragedy, including its dismemberment in 1991 and the ensuing communalist strife in Bosnia and Kosovo, was the product of a concerted campaign of destabilization carried out by the US and the European powers. The ex-radicals ignored this process and lent their “left” credentials to the demonization of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Stalinist turned Serb nationalist. Marxists, notwithstanding their opposition to the Milosevic regime and its treatment of the Albanian Kosovars, recognized that the US-NATO assault on Serbia was an imperialist war and the prelude to greater, bloodier wars.
Given this background, it is noteworthy that in all three above-cited articles, the authors make great play of the presence of former US attorney general Ramsey Clark (a leading spokesman for ANSWER) on the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic. Corn observes that the “WWP [Workers World Party] has campaigned against the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic” and that Clark has called the tribunal “a tool of the West to crush those who stand in the way of US imperialism.”
Corn, Gitlin and Cooper all take for granted that only an ultra-left fanatic could hold such a position. That the Milosevic tribunal is a politically motivated travesty of justice, staged in large part to justify the US-NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, is now widely acknowledged. The former Serbian president has been able to turn the tables on his accusers and expose numerous distortions, exaggerations and fabrications.
For our three authors, support for the US-NATO war against Serbia was only the beginning of a new political career: that of “left” defender of US militarism. All three embraced the Bush administration’s “war on terror” and the US invasion of Afghanistan. Cooper writes in his LA Times piece that “a proportionate American military response to Al Qaeda was not only justified but absolutely necessary” and paints the present abysmal situation in Afghanistan in glowing colors.
Now, however, Cooper, Gitlin and Corn claim to be opponents of a war against Iraq. Why they choose to oppose this particular war, while defending its precursors, they do not explain. In fact, as we shall see, they do not really oppose war against Iraq.
On the contrary, they accept uncritically all of the basic premises of the American establishment, echoing the line of the New York Times, which has criticized Bush’s anti-Iraq war drive on purely tactical, rather than principled, grounds.
The hallmark of all three is a lack of any serious analysis—historical, political or social. In their haste to smear socialist and anti-imperialist critics of Bush’s war policy, they cannot be bothered with such matters as the driving forces of the coming war, the history of US intervention in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, the policies and political character of the Bush administration, the social situation in the US, or the economic context within which the war drive is unfolding.
Significantly, the word “oil” does not appear in any of these articles.
All three writers presume to speak as political authorities offering the benefit of their insight to “save” the anti-war movement from self-destruction. But even apart from the reactionary content of their politics, the dearth of substantive analysis brands them as charlatans and imposters.
The “good” side of US imperialism
Cooper, in his article, denounces the “knee-jerk faction of the left” who opposed the US war on Afghanistan: “Steeped in four decades’ worth of a crude anti-Americanism, it believed that the use of any American military power was and would always be immoral.” Returning to this theme later in his article, Cooper calls on what he refers to as “more mature segments of the left” to “step into the forefront of the peace movement and displace those who can only see evil in America.”
Cooper’s modus operandi is that of all demagogues: setting up a straw man “who can only see evil in America” in order to knock it down. Socialists do not see “only evil” in America. They make a fundamental distinction between the ruling elite, its political representatives and military command, on the one hand, and its working population, on the other.
In any event, Cooper is not defending the American people from crude attempts to lump them together with the US ruling elite. He is defending American imperialism against those who fail to see its “positive” side.
Cooper goes on to argue that “the full dimensions of the standoff with Iraq must be honestly acknowledged.” He writes: “Yes, Bush is exploiting war fever for domestic political purposes. But it’s also true that Hussein is a bloody tyrant and that the Iraqi people would be much better off without him; he has violated many UN resolutions; he continues to try to develop horrific weapons of mass destruction; he cynically manipulated the UN weapons inspection program and might again attempt to do so if its is reinstated.”
By David Walsh and Barry Grey
5 February 2003
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/left-f05.shtml
The emergence of a broad-based movement of opposition to the Bush administration’s war against Iraq caught the American political and media establishment unawares. In the response of the various factions of the ruling elite there has been one common theme: the need to purge the anti-war movement of its left-wing elements and render it politically harmless.
The instinctive response of the extreme right is to red-bait, denouncing the demonstrations as the organizational work of “communists” and other outside agitators. The establishment “liberals” of the New York Times variety intervene more subtly in an effort to isolate and discredit socialist tendencies and bring the protests under the control of a section of the Democratic Party.
Both factions have singled out for attack the Workers World Party, which plays a leading role in ANSWER, a coalition of anti-war groups that has organized large demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere.
These efforts are aided and abetted by another group—ex-radicals and former anti-war liberals centered around the Nation magazine. Three articles in particular, appearing at about the time of the first significant US protests, held last October, marked the beginning of this group’s intervention. The articles are: “A Smart Peace Movement is MIA,” by Marc Cooper, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times of September 29, 2002; “Who Will Lead?” by Todd Gitlin (Mother Jones magazine, October 14, 2002); and “Behind the Placards: The odd and troubling origins of today’s anti-war movement,” by David Corn (LA Weekly, November 1, 2002).
Cooper, a contributing editor of the Nation, went to Chile in 1971 to volunteer his services to the Salvador Allende Popular Front regime and was serving as Allende’s translator at the time of the military coup. Gitlin was the president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1963-64. After 16 years at the University of California at Berkeley, he now is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University in New York. Corn, the Washington editor of the Nation, formerly worked for Ralph Nader’s Center for Study of Responsive Law.
The three pieces in question constitute a type of “left” gutter journalism. Their authors are unable to muster serious arguments, resorting instead to distortions, amalgams and ad hominem attacks.
In their attacks on left-wing elements, they echo the professional red-baiters. One telling episode speaks volumes about the political and moral character of this political layer. On November 19, David Corn appeared on the “O’Reilly Factor”—a talk-show on Fox News hosted by the extreme-right demagogue Bill O’Reilly. Corn carried out his assignment for O’Reilly, witch-hunting the Workers World group and smearing the anti-war movement.
O’Reilly introduced Corn by saying, “And you say that the Workers World Party, a hardcore communist organization in the USA, is putting together these peace rallies, is that true?” Corn replied, “To call them an organization is perhaps giving them too much credit. I doubt they have enough people to fill a telephone booth. They’re a very small sectarian political outfit based in New York City.”
O’Reilly, a figure in the tradition of Joseph McCarthy, aptly characterized Corn’s appearance, saying, “[Y]ou finger a guy who is on the board of ANSWER ... you finger him as being really the driver behind all this, right?”
Gitlin and Cooper belong to the generation of former anti-war protesters and radicals who have undergone a dramatic transformation over the past two decades, shifting further and further to the right. They long ago made their peace with the existing social order and seek at every critical moment to demonstrate their loyalty to the powers that be.
A watershed in the evolution of this layer was the civil war in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and the US-led bombing campaign against Serbia in 1998. A host of former leftists became enthusiastic supporters of imperialist intervention and uncritically accepted the war propaganda doled out by the media, which portrayed the NATO war as a crusade against “ethnic cleansing.”
The Yugoslav tragedy, including its dismemberment in 1991 and the ensuing communalist strife in Bosnia and Kosovo, was the product of a concerted campaign of destabilization carried out by the US and the European powers. The ex-radicals ignored this process and lent their “left” credentials to the demonization of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Stalinist turned Serb nationalist. Marxists, notwithstanding their opposition to the Milosevic regime and its treatment of the Albanian Kosovars, recognized that the US-NATO assault on Serbia was an imperialist war and the prelude to greater, bloodier wars.
Given this background, it is noteworthy that in all three above-cited articles, the authors make great play of the presence of former US attorney general Ramsey Clark (a leading spokesman for ANSWER) on the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic. Corn observes that the “WWP [Workers World Party] has campaigned against the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic” and that Clark has called the tribunal “a tool of the West to crush those who stand in the way of US imperialism.”
Corn, Gitlin and Cooper all take for granted that only an ultra-left fanatic could hold such a position. That the Milosevic tribunal is a politically motivated travesty of justice, staged in large part to justify the US-NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, is now widely acknowledged. The former Serbian president has been able to turn the tables on his accusers and expose numerous distortions, exaggerations and fabrications.
For our three authors, support for the US-NATO war against Serbia was only the beginning of a new political career: that of “left” defender of US militarism. All three embraced the Bush administration’s “war on terror” and the US invasion of Afghanistan. Cooper writes in his LA Times piece that “a proportionate American military response to Al Qaeda was not only justified but absolutely necessary” and paints the present abysmal situation in Afghanistan in glowing colors.
Now, however, Cooper, Gitlin and Corn claim to be opponents of a war against Iraq. Why they choose to oppose this particular war, while defending its precursors, they do not explain. In fact, as we shall see, they do not really oppose war against Iraq.
On the contrary, they accept uncritically all of the basic premises of the American establishment, echoing the line of the New York Times, which has criticized Bush’s anti-Iraq war drive on purely tactical, rather than principled, grounds.
The hallmark of all three is a lack of any serious analysis—historical, political or social. In their haste to smear socialist and anti-imperialist critics of Bush’s war policy, they cannot be bothered with such matters as the driving forces of the coming war, the history of US intervention in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, the policies and political character of the Bush administration, the social situation in the US, or the economic context within which the war drive is unfolding.
Significantly, the word “oil” does not appear in any of these articles.
All three writers presume to speak as political authorities offering the benefit of their insight to “save” the anti-war movement from self-destruction. But even apart from the reactionary content of their politics, the dearth of substantive analysis brands them as charlatans and imposters.
The “good” side of US imperialism
Cooper, in his article, denounces the “knee-jerk faction of the left” who opposed the US war on Afghanistan: “Steeped in four decades’ worth of a crude anti-Americanism, it believed that the use of any American military power was and would always be immoral.” Returning to this theme later in his article, Cooper calls on what he refers to as “more mature segments of the left” to “step into the forefront of the peace movement and displace those who can only see evil in America.”
Cooper’s modus operandi is that of all demagogues: setting up a straw man “who can only see evil in America” in order to knock it down. Socialists do not see “only evil” in America. They make a fundamental distinction between the ruling elite, its political representatives and military command, on the one hand, and its working population, on the other.
In any event, Cooper is not defending the American people from crude attempts to lump them together with the US ruling elite. He is defending American imperialism against those who fail to see its “positive” side.
Cooper goes on to argue that “the full dimensions of the standoff with Iraq must be honestly acknowledged.” He writes: “Yes, Bush is exploiting war fever for domestic political purposes. But it’s also true that Hussein is a bloody tyrant and that the Iraqi people would be much better off without him; he has violated many UN resolutions; he continues to try to develop horrific weapons of mass destruction; he cynically manipulated the UN weapons inspection program and might again attempt to do so if its is reinstated.”