While I did call the marchers fuzz-brains who support no coherent policy beyond "No War!" (I don't regard leaving Saddam Hussein alone as a well-conceived humanitarian policy), Win invented the "commie dupe" line. Just as JohnM said it was illegitimate for LindyBill to call International Answer socialists, since "socialist" is a bad name in LB's book (LB had held that International Action was doing some smart politicking by organizing this front group). My reaction was, they are socialists - what is LB supposed to call them?
Siiigh! Revisionist history alert.
1. The argument, which should not be revisited, was that the march was sponsored by many groups, one of which was ANSWER. ANSWER is a coalition of groups, one of which is, I gather, linked, through several layers of linking to the WWP. On the basis of that, as they say, convoluted logic, the assertion was made that the march was organized by socialists and participants were "clueless." Fuzzbrains was, I thought, creative.
2. The tool of these kinds of assertions is to use the binary logic, with which we are now sadly well aware, to label the marchers as politically unacceptable--socialists, dupes, whatever. Thus, the attempt to make political dissent unacceptable.
3. We see this strategy repeatedly. Take some fringe element in a demonstration--Sullivan did this about Europe, note how distasteful the politics of that fringe element is, then label the march, the movement, whatever with that.
One of the sadder things about the present political moment is that this old and, I thought, discredited political strategy is back in play.
Just as JohnM said it was illegitimate for LindyBill to call International Answer socialists. . .
Sigh, again. The target of my comment was the attempt to generalize the label to the entire group of protestors. |
