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| Who's Behind The "Anti-War" Protest Canard |
| 2005-09-28 |
| The best piece on the weekend shenanigans in D.C. was by Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate ("Anti-War, My Foot–the Phony Peaceniks Who Protested in Washington"). His point is that antiwar is the wrong word. The organizers are actually pro-war. They just want the other side to win. International ANSWER, one of the two groups supporting the demonstration, is run by the Workers World Party, which backs Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq. The WWP applauded the Soviet invasion of Hungary and China's massacre in Tiananmen Square. The main reason these people keep comparing Bush to Hitler is that Der Fuhrer is the only well-known fascist not approved of by ANSWER. You probably never learned this from the Associated Press or your local paper, but ANSWER is frankly anti-American and pro-fascist. Many dupes at the demonstration apparently didn't know this or didn't care. As Hitchens notes, two radical left journalists, men of integrity and honesty–David Corn and Marc Cooper–exposed International ANSWER as a front for fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism. A dip into any database could have informed journalists about the groups they were covering, as Hitchens notes, but here's how the innocent Michael Janofsky of the New York Times described the sponsors: "The protests were largely sponsored by the two groups, the ANSWER Coalition, which embodies a wide range of progressive political objectives, and United for Peace and Justice, which has a more narrow, antiwar focus." Either Janofsky is under age 21, with no knowledge at all of radical politics, or he works for a newspaper that is determined to sugarcoat leaders of the antiwar movement. Probably the latter. I have referred twice to the Times treatment of Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice (Universal Press Syndicate column for March 5, 2003, U.S. News column May 9, 2005). She is a prominent old-time Communist who left the American Communist Party only in 1991 and only because of an ideological split. After the 2003 antiwar rally in Manhattan, the conservative New York Sun described her as "a longtime unapologetic Communist who has remained one of Fidel Castro's most tireless supporters." In the liberal New York Times, however, she was merely "one of the grandes dames of the country's progressive movement." The Times gave her favorable biographic treatment in its "Public Lives" column, where there was no room to mention her Communist roots or radical ideas. When the mainstream press approves of marches and demonstrations, it can't resist gussying them up to make them seem more wholesome than they really are. The Times used to do that with gay pride marches, excising the nasty and crude contingents and the sex-with-children advocates but focusing on the stable and well-dressed gay neighbors next door. The media has a habit of doing the same thing with antiwar rallies. In February 2003, they offered a mainstream motherhood-and-apple-pie image of the marchers. But if you poked around the Internet, you could pick up images that didn't fit the press theme–hate-Israel cards, hammer-and-sickle flags, pictures of Che Guevara, the usual "Bush is Hitler" signs, and the huge banners of the sponsoring Stalinists at ANSWER. The usual excuse about coverage of the demonstrations is that it doesn't really matter who the sponsors are–the issue is the war, not the organizers. Blogger Andrew Sullivan said he has many questions himself about the war, but "anyone who attends rallies organized by International ANSWER deserves no quarter and no hearing." The mainstream press doesn't seem to notice–or mind–that America-hating fascists are doing the organizing. But you can bet that if the demonstrations were being run by a tobacco company or the Augusta National Golf Club, the press would be awash in moral dudgeon. |
| Posted by:Captain America |
| #1 I have an answer for ANSWER ..|.. |
| Posted by: mmurray821 2005-09-28 21:26 |