A.N.S.W.E.R. is not the answer

can you give more info on these groups?

A.N.S.W.E.R. was set up last September by the IAC/WWP and individuals sympathetic to them in other groups. They claim to be a coalition, but they are really a front group for the International Action Center, which itself is a front group for the Workers World Party. The Workers World Party goes back several decades and they publish the paper Workers World. Their variety of Trotskyism is so odious to most working people, that they've been forced to create a variety of front groups to build fame and credibility for the WWP inner circle (the Beckers, Sarah Sloan, Ramsey Clark). They set up the International Action Center several years ago to be their front group for organizing large left protests. If you look very closely, the IAC is all about protest and doesn't have any politics. That's because the politics are back in the WWP.

Ramsey Clark is their public leader for the IAC. He was the U.S. Attorney General during the Johnson administration. The WWP uses Clark and an assortment of other famous activist sympathizers to build street cred for their organizations.

These groups are headquartered in New York city. If you compare the phone numbers listed for each group, they all resolve to the same office in Manhattan. ANSWER has set up an office in Washington, DC through a sympathetic individual at the Alliance for Global Justice. The WWP and IAC also have a strong presence in San Francisco, in case you haven't noticed.

Check out the page listed above. It's a really good into to these groups.

Since this attack on Workers World Party is airing right before the big demo in DC, I'd like to add a couple of points.

I didn't join the left to refer to other leftists, even ones I strongly disagree with, as "scumfucks." I understand how to use smears like that to say that some people aren't even worth talking to, listening to or debating. It is a way of shutting down understanding through blanket assaults and I want nothing to do with it.

That said, just about everything the Infoshop sectarians have to say is true. Workers World does all of those things. Don't join them. Build the kind of participatory movement you believe in.

The things left out, of course, are the countless demonstrations they organized that no one else took the time to bother with, that anarchists show up at the sidelines to bitch about when they don't organize another alternative. Look, their form of organization is good for consistency, something you are still stumbling with. When the US went to war in the Balkans and the liberals and soft-marxists ran for the hills or supported the war and the anarchists took a "plague on all your houses" approach, WWP said we should oppose this imposition of German and US imperialism on the region. They were the ONLY people who did this and they were right. The IMF and company are now running the region.

But, then they also soft-peddled the war crimes of Milosevic and his racist buddies.

Workers World Party has a mechanical politics that thinks anyone who the US isn't getting along with is automatically an ally. They then distort the truth, or more often just don't mention it, and build a broad series of demonstrations. That they permit demos is because a huge amount of immigrants, parents and others not able to throw down in the street attend their marches.

During the WEF events here in New York, several mothers I know went to the their permitted rally because they could not chance going to jail. One of the reasons they continue to draw people and activists is that they really do take things like that into consideration.

I don't trust anyone who wants me to just shit on other groups. Sure, criticize people. But they aren't a cult. They aren't in danger of running New York or the left. They are mainly frustrating because they are able to maneuver themselves in mass protest movements in a way that gives them prominence their numbers and bankrupt strategies don't deserve.

Until non-sectarian radicals are able to build an infrastructure capable of replacing them, they will continue to do their thing. It will take much more sophistication than the attack pieces Chuck Munson collects at Infoshop.org to get beyond sectarianism. In fact, the Infoshop.org-type anarchists are worse than WWP when it comes to that shit.

Sectarianism is a method, not an ideology. And finally, Workers World is a Trot party, not a stalinist one. Like Trotsky they believe in supporting Stalinist states (or anyone who mouths any vague leftish rhetoric) over aggressively capitalist states. It's called the "Global Class War" theory and has nothing to do with Stalinism. Just ask them, read their materials and compare them to other parties. The RCP is a Maoist party and refuses to denounce Stalin. When the students rose up in China, the RCP supported them whole-heartedly against the pro-capitalist police state that is modern, post-socialist China. Stalinists are hardly the monolithic group our anti-communist training would lead us to believe.

In fact, at the root of Infoshop.org's continuing assault on everything not them is a hatred for pretty much the entire history of successful social revolutions. They bring up the ugliest side of this, like North Korea and sectarian parties in the US. But have nothing to say about what socialism did for Cuba, Russia, China, Vietnam, the anti-colonial movements, the anti-Apartheid movement, rent control in New York City, the civil rights movement, the sixties and so on. Other "Stalinists" they don't really give the treatment include the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and many of the people who built SDS. Their memory is short and they want us to believe that only "anti-authoritarians" ever resist tyranny. Well, that's just not true..

They bank on our collective ignorance about these events and movements to push their own highly dogmatic vision of some PURE revolution that last for all eternity. They are like Christians waiting for the messiah. The fact is anarchists have never built any society anywhere ever. And from their sub-cultures, I don't trust their plans to generalize through society.

But they use slurs and scandal to attack anyone they perceive as a threat. Just like the admittedly sectarian parties. I hope more people, regardless of how they label their philosophies, will see sectarianism for what it is. Changing your name won't do it.

There is nothing to see here... please move along.

There's nothing going on in Palestine that is of any concern to anyone, so please just stay home and don't think. Specially because you don't agree with someone you might be standing next to at such an obviously evil and vile event such as a peace rally.

Frankly, these are the groups that are getting out there and organizing. It's sad that the left is cutting itself to bits over ideology when children are being shot, adults are being strapped to tanks, and people are bleeding to death on the streets in the Middle East. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who is organizing and DOING SOMETHING deserves a break. When the murder has stopped, we can all take a breath and assess these differences - not now, please.

If you haven't sent some email, made some phone calls, or helped to organize something in the name of peace / human rights over this beautiful weekend, why on earth are you attacking people who ARE taking the time to do these things???

And if you are taking action, thank you! Let's join now and bicker later.

anarchist societies:
pretty much all pre-history societies. which goes to show that humanity has spent most of its time in anarchist societies.
also, Spain and the Ukraine are probably the most famous anarchist societies.
so in fact there have been anarchist societies.
and anarchists are so against authoritative commies because in both of these cases it was commies that stabbed the anarchists in the back.

That's right people, no dissenting! Critising A.N.S.W.E.R. is sectarian and hinders unity! Ashcroft & Bush know this well, that's why dissent is demonized in America. The left should follow their lead and not allow any internal dissent.

I love the list of "successes". Let's see now, "Russia' - Stalin exterminated 250% more people than Hitler at the LOW estimate of 25 million. "China' the so-called Great Leap Forward did in just about as many in itself, let alone all of the other Communist victims. I guess the RCP are to commended for supporting mass murder instead of "capitalism". Why not take "non-sectarianism" to its logical conclusion and join with the "anti-capitalist" fascists and, of course, never, never dare to criticize them ?

I'm not going to argue history, it's not fruitful with people who don't bother to read about it.

Again, the power of anti-communism is that it uses statements like the above to halt any discussion of socialist countries. Aside from the lack of truth in them and blatant exageration, they don't enlighten us about anything.

Stalin killed 25 million people? Yeah, if you count everyone who died fighting Hitler and who died of old age. The Soviet Union's population was 100 million people. 12 million died in World War 1. Then between 1 and 3 million died in the civil war. Then several million died in the famines related to the nationalization of land. Then 20 million died so Hitler didn't get to rule the world. If Stalin killed another 25 million, there wouldn't be anyone left. But don't let that get in your way.

I don't even like Stalin, but this kind of crap is so typical of Americans I can't stand it. Again, if anyone knows any socialists who are trying to exterminate people, introduce me to them. I've never met them except in the minds of anarchists and the far-right, who needless to say have quite a bit in common.

For a more balanced and thoughtful history of socialism, read:

Fanshen, by William Hinton
The Long Revolution, by Edgar Snow
Class Struggles in the USSR, by Bettelheim (2 vols.)


Last point: demonization helps no one and anyone reading this exchange should at least recognize that we were indotrinated from youth in anti-communism. I can spout anti-communist nonsense from memory. Let's be a little more, how do you say it, "honest."

burningman i couldn't agree any more. it's quite annoying to see when individuals (democrats, republicans, green party hippies, or even anarchists, unfortunately) like to toss out the "millions butchered by" number game.

maybe they should read some books, watch a PBS special and take critical thinking 101 at the local community college and they'd be able to recognize all for themselves that people like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and even Pol-Pot (read Chomsky) did not go out and butcher the millions of people that died during their times in power. the actual reasons for why people die during a person's time in power isn't necessarily attributed to that person's intentions to kill them (read critical thinking book). =]

i could go on forever defending Mao and Lenin and the likes (even when i don't like them) about the "millions" they supposedly butchered with my own history knowledge, but i guess it's better to analyze why/how people even come to think about numbers so badly.