<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Stuart—<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">You ask, What’s wrong with Phyllis Bennis' article "Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down [sic] for Racial and Economic Justice” <<a href="http://inthesetimes.com/features/us_anti-war_movement_trump_syria.html" class="">http://inthesetimes.com/features/us_anti-war_movement_trump_syria.html</a>>?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Short answer: it’s an exercise in ‘intersectionality’ (“that opiate of the professional managerial class,” as W. B. Michaels put it).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Bennis attempts to incorporate identity politics into the antiwar movement, without admitting that identity politics was constructed to deny and replace class politics, the true basis of US wars and therefore of opposition to them.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The US is not killing people in MENA for white supremacy, but for the profits of the one percent.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Class is objective (i.e., you belong to it, whether you know it or not), but ‘identity’ is subjective. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Identity politics attempts to turn class into ‘classism,’ another attitude about identity, parallel to racism, sexism, etc. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">It’s a snare and a delusion. Intersectionality leads to Bennis' curiously anemic conclusion on how to revitalize the anti-war movement: </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">"We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance.” </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">One would think we should be more accurate about the causes of the killing - not the costs (which are fairly obvious) "and the integral links between war and racism” (which is a cover story, not a cause).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Regards, CGE</div></body></html>