A brief word on tomorrow’s Union Square demonstration, organized by The World Can’t Wait. Cornel West, Eve Ensler, Tom Duane and other well-known figures have signed on to the group’s campaign. I’ve written about WCW before, when the group held a New Orleans-style jazz funeral march in the wake of Katrina.
Anti-Bush street demonstrations are justified and necessary. But why are so many of them being steered by extremist organizations? The World Can’t Wait is a front for the Revolutionary Communist Party. This is more or less stated plainly in a FAQ on the group’s website. Here is a snippet from the FAQ:
> Q: But aren’t there communists in World Can’t Wait?
A: Yeah, there are. Supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party helped initiate it. They’re in it because they think it’s absolutely urgent to get rid of this regime, that it would both lift a huge burden from the world and would also give people a sense of their own potential power, and they think all that would open up avenues to get to the society they want. Same as a whole lot of other people in World Can’t Wait — which, by the way, includes Greens, Christians, Republicans, anarchists, Muslims, Jews, feminists, Democrats, pacifists, and people who claim no affiliation — who also think it’s urgent to drive out the Bush Regime and who also think it can help lead to bigger changes that they want in society, coming from their own viewpoints.
But to turn the question around, if you refuse to pitch in to November 2, when you know that this is what has to be done, just because there are communists in it, then you need to think about how well that worked back in Nazi Germany (when the many forces opposed to Hitler could not find the ways to unite). And how exactly would you explain your particular brand of “abstinence only” policy to a prisoner at Abu Ghraib or a teenager in Tennessee who desperately needs an abortion or someone whose mother was killed at a checkpoint near Falluja? And then after you think about that, you need to actually start working on November 2. To stand aside at this point is really unconscionable.
Thus do browbeating, sanctimony and emotional blackmail take the place of reasoned argument. I’m sure the RCP folks can rationalize at length their support of the Shining Path in Peru, or their current enthusiasm for the Maoist insurrection in Nepal, or the shelves full of writings by Stalin and Mao they hawk in their bookstore. Their critique of the Khmer Rouge? It wasn’t Maoist enough. (Read Mike Ely’s “analysis” here.) RCP activists have quite a nerve to lecture the rest of us about what’s unconscionable.
The real scandal here, however, is that right-wingers, eager to discredit Bush’s critics, are the only ones exposing the RCP’s puppeteering of WCW. This enables the RCP to scream “redbaiting” and dismiss legitimate attacks on its odious politics.
These are rather desperate times, I’ll agree. But “unity” with the fanatics of the RCP is morally weak and ultimately counterproductive. Progressives ought to be raising alarms about the RCP, rather than helping the group legitimize itself.
**11/7 update: Welcome, Harry’s Place readers!
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