Friends,
I well remember the vigorous anti-war movement in 2002 and 2003 as the Bush/Cheney administration was beating a war drum claiming Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I was working at the AFSC, and our meeting room would be filled with concerned citizens as we planned marches, civil resistance, contacting Congress and taking buses to D.C. and other activities to protest the war machine. As Phyllis Bennis recently pointed out on February 15, 2003, the people around the world engaged in the largest peace demonstration ever.
On that day in Baltimore, we organized a march, a rally at City Hall and a speak out at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church. Many activists from Baltimore went to New York City for a huge march.
Today there is confusion as some groups are against arming Ukraine. And others point out that Putin invaded Ukraine and violated the UN Charter and the Budapest Memorandum. Because of this chasm, we have an anemic peace movement.
One major anti-war group, CODEPINK, decided to try to make an alliance with right wing groups. For example, on November 24 the group hosted a CODEPINK Congress which featured Scott Horton, editorial director of Antiwar.com. I cringed listening to him state that he could bring in right-wing groups to speak out against US support for Ukraine. If you go to Horton's web site, you will see a listing of these articles: Who Really Started the Ukraine Wars? Blinken Says Retaking Crimea a 'Red Line.' Biden Bombed Nord Stream.
There is no mention of Russian barbarism and war crimes
or the use of poorly trained former prisoners as cannon fodder. There is no concern about the dire situation
for Ukrainian civilians.
Kagiso, Max
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/16/pers-f16.html
PERSPECTIVE
"Rage Against the War Machine" rally promotes alliance between the "left"
and the extreme right
Joseph Kishore@jkishore
16 February 2023
In 2016, analyzing the far-advanced tendencies toward a third world war, the International Committee of the Fourth International, in its statement "Socialism and the Fight Against War," summarized the fundamental programmatic basis of a new anti-war movement. It wrote:
1. The struggle against war must be based on the working class, the
great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it
all progressive elements in the population.
2. The
new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist,
since there can be no serious struggle against war except
in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system
that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war.
3. The
new anti-war movement must therefore, of necessity, be
completely and unequivocally independent of, and hostile
to, all political parties and organizations of the capitalist class.
4. The
new anti-war movement must, above all, be international,
mobilizing the vast power of the working class in a
unified global struggle against imperialism.
The development of a movement of the working class against imperialist war is not a utopian dream. Its emergence is foreshadowed today in the growth of the class struggle throughout the world, including demonstrations of millions of workers in France against pension cuts, strikes by hundreds of thousands in the UK against austerity and ongoing demonstrations of hundreds of thousands in Israel against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition, which includes far-right and fascistic forces.
Moreover, the fight against inequality and exploitation is inseparable from the fight against the massive diversion of social resources to the ruling class's preparations for World War III. All claims and proposals to oppose war that conceal its basis in the capitalist system are as false as they are hypocritical.
The demonstration being held in Washington D.C. on February 19, under the headline "Rage Against the War Machine," is opposed to a socialist and genuinely anti-war perspective. Based on the most shortsighted, pragmatic and opportunistic calculations, this event promotes an alliance and collaboration with the political right and even openly fascistic forces.
The primary organizers of the rally are the Libertarian Party, led by Angela McArdle, and the "People's Party," led by Nick Brana. The platform of the right-wing Libertarian Party is the demand for the full and unrestrained right of the capitalists to exploit the working class. It is virulently opposed not only to socialism, but to all social reforms. One of the main speakers at the rally is the former Libertarian Party candidate for president, Ron Paul, who has advocated the elimination of income taxes, minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance and Social Security. Angela McArdle is a member of the "Mises Caucus" of the Libertarian Party. Named after the fanatically anti-socialist economist Ludwig von Mises, this faction virulently upholds the absolute right of private property.
Under the direction of McArdle and the "Mises Caucus", the Libertarians have made a more direct orientation to the fascist right and the anti-Semitic groups involved in the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. In early 2021, McArdle defended the invitation of an anti-Semitic provocateur to the Mises Caucus convention in California, writing that a "truth-seeker" who asks "the question about whether or not Jews run Hollywood" is not an anti-Semite.
The "People's Party" originated in the "Movement for a People's Party"
(MPP), which held its inaugural convention in August
2020. Its purpose, indicated in its name, is to oppose the organization of the
working class as an independent political force. The specific social identity
and interests of the working class are dissolved into the amorphous category of
"the people." The program of the "People's Party" is
nationalistic and anti-socialist. The WSWS called attention at the time to the
MPP's orientation to the far right, which has in the intervening two-and-a-half
years exploded to the surface.
The Libertarians and the People's Party have, for their own purposes, assembled an assortment of "left" speakers to participate in the rally. They includes comedian Jimmy Dore and the editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal. Both Dore and Blumenthal have previously promoted an alliance with the far right forces that oppose all critical health measures to stop the COVID-19 pandemic. The have downplayed the significance of the January 6 coup. Dore's response to the coup was to promote an alliance with the fascistic Boogaloo Boys militia.
Other speakers are former Democratic Party presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich and Green Party politicians Jill Stein and Cynthia McKinney. Also speaking is former Democratic Party Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who is currently an active lieutenant colonel in the US Army.
The most putrid element of the rally is the direct involvement of fascists.
Among the featured speakers is Jackson Hinkle, a
supporter of Trump and promoter of "MAGA Communism," who has said it
is his aim to "finish the job of Donald Trump" by "uprooting
liberalism from America and getting rid of the globalists out of the MAGA
movement." Another participant is Jordan Page, a libertarian who in 2015
wrote the fascist "Oath Keeper" anthem, entitled "Arm
Yourselves."
Pacifist columnist and author Chris Hedges, who will also be speaking at the rally, attempts to legitimize and defend his own participation in a statement published on his Substack this week, "There Are No Permanent Allies, Only Permanent Power."
Hedges is known as a radical critic of American imperialism. Heavily influenced by Noam Chomsky and substituting middle-class moralizing for scientific political analysis, Hedges rejects Marxism and is implacably hostile to the "Trotskyites," an element of his politics that has become ever more explicit. His writings are characterized by a demoralized, even obsessive, pessimism, and explicit opposition to the organization of the working class as an independent political force. He is not necessarily opposed to working class participation in a popular movement, but only in a subordinate political role. This has now led him to calling for and legitimizing a completely unprincipled and reactionary alliance with the far right.
According to Hedges, "We will not topple corporate power and the war machine alone. There has to be a left-right coalition, which will include people whose opinions are not only unpalatable but even repugnant, or we will remain marginalized and ineffectual." Not only is it politically permissible to forge an alliance with the extreme right, Hedges insists, it is a necessity, a "fact of political life."
Hedges argues that it is possible to build a movement against war in alliance with the far right in isolation from any other social or political issue.
"The rally on February 19 is not about eliminating Social Security and Medicare or abolishing the minimum wage, which many libertarians propose," he writes. "It is not a rally to denounce the rights of the LGBTQ community, which have been attacked by at least one of the speakers. It is a rally to end permanent war. Should these right-wing participants organize around other issues, I will be on the other side of the barricades."
Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to
http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
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