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First of all, as you can tell from examining the many posts at this site, many people pin on to ANSWER all their frustrations with Communism, including the well-founded horror stories that do indeed abound, from E Europe to China and E Asia.
But all of this misses the point. ANSWER is but one organization in a COALITION that sponsored these demonstrations. In fact, you hear almost nothing in the mainstream media about the MAIN coalition, United for Peace and Justice, itself composed of literally THOUSANDS of peace groups. So the focus on ANSWER -- a well-known Stalinist group that has in the past played a more central role in the recent (90's-00's) peace movement than it does today -- is simply a media focus on something that is journalistically a distortion in order to discredit the movement.
I would agree that, as a supporter of the peace movement and of the DC protests, if ANSWER were the leading or one of two or three leading groups organizing the protests, I would have a problem with that as I find their politics distasteful, and I know that their mass support within the movement, including the hundreds of thousands who went to DC and who protested elsewhere this weekend, is minimal. They would be lucky to count 1% of all the protestors as followers or adherents to their particular strain within the movement, even by the loosest of definitions.
Remember that in each election year, you have people like David Duke endorse the Republicans, and some groups that consider themselves Leninist (though fewer and fewer) endorse the Democrats. JFK was once asked by a leading mafioso what the latter could do to help him win the presidency -- JFK's famous response 'Tell everyone you are voting for my opponent'. In politics with broad coalitions, there are lots of different groups, and the thing to really look at (aside from analyzing how journalists do the job of justifying the lying by digging up any fact that can discredit progressive politics and trumpeting it, often distorting the facts as Rx) is the overall character of the movement. What percentage of the protestors, or of the leaders of the main broad coalition (UFPJ) are actually Leninists, let alone Stalinists (the latter theoretically a subset of the former). Not a whole lot. Most are independent socialists and populists of various sorts like myself.
Also, it is sheer stupidity to complain that in a huge rally, with events and feeder marches from the IMF that they 'stick to the subject'. Who died and made these protestators king of the demo? In fact, UFPJ included helping the victims of Katrina in its MAIN slogans for the march. The feeder march from the IMF protest had other focal points. The point is that the leadership of the peace movement focuses, as I believe they should, on the broader problem of something called IMPERIALISM, the 'i-word' that you don't hear much about in US politics but which is routinely a part of mainstream political discourse in Europe. Iraq didn't just come out of nowhere -- it is an example and manifestation of the disease of imperialism. And imperialism is linked with the issue of the IMF, and with the broad rubric of US intervention in and involvement in the Mideast. One of the main purposes of these demonstrations is to educate and enlighten participants who may only have come with a vague sense that the war was wrong. Given the whole schedule of weekend events, there was and is at such actions much that one can learn.
That said, there is something to be said for message discipline. Some or even many in the leadership may agree with the speaker who called for a free Palestine "from the river to the sea" but I don't think the majority of those in the City would agree with that (from one of the speeches). Broadening the focus of topics to a certain point is good -- protestations from various quarters to the contrary being something to dismiss as mere whining -- but you need to express a broad CONSENSUS of what people think rather than factional often more radical views that everyone is afraid to question. The point is that such things (as opposed to having a focus on related issues that some, merely looking for something to whine about, whine about) can indeed drive people away from the antiwar movement, as it reflects views opposed by the vast majority of the supporters of getting out of Iraq.
You didn't see anyone from ANSWER on the podium calling for the glories of Stalinism or giving a pro-Milosevic speech or anything, because THEIR crappola was kept disciplined.
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