[Peace-discuss] [Peace] YES!!! Patrick Martin nails it.

Tue Aug 14 17:42:59 UTC 2018

Karen, I'm not casting aspersions on ANSWER. I'm asking whether those who
showed up at the rally in questions would show up at a rally regarding
Yemen or Gaza. Yes, it's time to think strategically; that is: what is the
goal? what are the tactics to achieve that goal? Is the anti-fascist
response a tactic to achieve the goal of ending our involvement in Yemen
and Gaza? Is it even opposing Trump's facilitation of genocide in Yemen and
Gaza? I think these are pretty obvious questions. But it's not at all clear
that those who attend such a rally are challenging either capitalism or the
war machine. At least not to me. So tell me what I don't understand about
these people.

DG

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 11:42 AM Karen Aram <karenaram at hotmail.com> wrote:

> David, you and Carl are not listening. The article below is written by
> someone who has been telling the world about Yemen and Gaza every damn day,
> along with our other wars, not just Yemen and Gaza, but including them.
>
> The ANSWER group has been organizing for many years against the wars in
> Yemen and Gaza, as well as Syria, Iran Russia and China. This is not a
> group of Democrats blind to everything but fascism, and racism. If you want
> to rail against them or those in our community fine do so. But wake up to
> the reality that sitting in our own little corner of the world bemoaning
> the American people for not giving a damn sure as hell hasn’t gotten us
> anywhere in over 15 years.
>
> There were some anti-fa people there  but they weren’t the main group.
>
> It’s time to think strategically. These are groups who came together to
> unite against fascism, proving what a small bunch of buffoons the USG
> supported alt right, really are, that they are not a threat as some would
> like us to believe, that it is a distraction.
>
> The organizers of ANSWER are Brian Becker of “Loud and Clear” Gloria La
> Riva, Presidential candidate, for many years, Eugene Puryear, etc. they
> have been focused on “war” throughout, plus other issues of concern that
> you and Carl choose to ignore, because they aren’t as important. What you
> fail to recognize is that you have to join others in their causes and
> concerns if you wish to unite people against our government and capitalism.
> Not sit on your academic pedestals talking all the time. In the five years
> I was with AWARE we failed to recruite new members, other than one, losing
> more than that. Think about it. Even the Greens lost a chance to gain some
> environmentally concerned individuals because you didn’t show up, not
> wanting to “work with Democrats.” Where has that gotten AWARE?
>
> After 15 years, maybe you need to be a little more positive and stop just
> bashing everyone who doesn’t sit in awe of your intellectual discussions,
> that haven’t changed anything, only further deterioration.
>
> On Aug 14, 2018, at 09:23, David Green <davidgreen50 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So you can get all those people to counter-protest "fascists," but you
> can't get them to protest Yemen or Gaza?
>
> That's absolutely disheartening in my view, on a number of levels,
> including the authenticity of their alleged political consciousness.
>
> DG
>
> On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 9:30 AM Karen Aram via Peace <
> peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>    - Print
>>    <http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/14/wash-a14.html?view=print>
>>    - Leaflet
>>    <http://intsse.com/wswspdf/en/articles/2018/08/14/wash-a14.pdf>
>>    - Feedback
>>    <http://www.wsws.org/en/special/contact.html?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsws.org%2Fen%2Farticles%2F2018%2F08%2F14%2Fwash-a14.html&t=What%20the%20neo-Nazi%20debacle%20in%20Washington%20showed>
>>    - Share » <http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/14/wash-a14.html#>
>>
>> What the neo-Nazi debacle in Washington showed By Patrick Martin
>> 14 August 2018
>>
>> The turnout at the Washington neo-Nazi rally Sunday gave a glimpse of the
>> real character of the fascist and white supremacist forces in the United
>> States. Amid a blare of media publicity, grossly exaggerating the popular
>> support for the ultra-right, less than two dozen people turned up for the
>> “Unite the Right 2” rally in Lafayette Park, across from the White House.
>>
>> The entire affair should be described as a state-sponsored provocation
>> rather than an actual rally. The handful of neo-Nazis were given their own
>> private car on the Washington Metro, separated by police from other
>> passengers. They rode through subway stations patrolled by more police,
>> were escorted from the Foggy Bottom Metro station through a private exit,
>> escorted by still more police on the walk to Lafayette Square, and
>> protected there by hundreds of riot police, who kept away anti-fascist
>> protesters who outnumbered the neo-Nazis at least a hundred to one. After
>> the rally, the fascists boarded white vans, supplied either by the police
>> or Metro, and were whisked away to safety.
>>
>> At every point, the neo-Nazis were outnumbered by the journalists
>> covering the non-event. Dozens of reporters trailed Jason Kessler, the
>> organizer of the rally, recording his every word. As for the scale of the
>> media hype, the number of hours of cable television coverage proved to be
>> greater than the number of neo-Nazis in attendance.
>>
>> And this was not primarily Fox News, which was somewhat embarrassed by
>> the pro-Trump character of the white supremacist rally. CNN and MSNBC
>> provided virtually unlimited airtime, and National Public Radio granted
>> Kessler a seven-minute-long interview to spew his racist filth virtually
>> uninterrupted to a nationwide audience. The effect was to build up the
>> neo-Nazis as a potentially formidable force, out of all proportion to their
>> actual support among the American people.
>>
>> Kessler called the rally to spit on the memory of Heather Heyer, the
>> anti-fascist protester murdered by a white supremacist in Charlottesville,
>> Virginia, exactly a year before, during the first “Unite the Right” rally
>> in that university town. But it was clear that he miscalculated. While
>> Charlottesville in 2017 was the scene of a full-scale fascist riot
>> involving hundreds of torch-bearing racists, ostensibly defending
>> Confederate statues from planned removal, Lafayette Park in 2018 was a
>> debacle.
>>
>> Many of the racist groups that took part in Charlottesville decided not
>> to come to Washington, at least in part because of the planned left-wing
>> counterprotests. Also, much of the Virginia-based ultra-right is engaged in
>> the campaign of Republican Senate candidate Corey Stewart, who is openly
>> appealing to racism and anti-immigrant bigotry and is being shunned by the
>> Republican Party establishment, although not by Trump, who has effusively
>> endorsed him.
>>
>> It is worth pointing out that efforts to organize counterprotests to
>> “Unite the Right 2” were censored by Facebook, on the thoroughly bogus
>> grounds that they represented an artificial movement supposedly instigated
>> by the Russian government to set Americans against each other. Facebook
>> shut down one website promoting the counterprotest claiming that it showed
>> signs of “inauthentic activity.”
>>
>> In reality, thousands of young people and working people turned out for
>> the counterprotest, with some traveling from New York City or even further
>> to show their hatred for the fascists as well as their hostility to the
>> Trump administration, which they clearly regarded as the moral author of
>> the neo-Nazi rally, if not the actual sponsor.
>>
>> It was “Unite the Right 2” which better deserved the label “inauthentic”
>> since it was made possible only by state and media manipulation, attracted
>> almost no one, and had no genuine popular support.
>>
>> The debacle in Lafayette Park does not mean that neo-Nazis and white
>> supremacists can be dismissed or ignored. But it showed where the real
>> danger lies: not as yet in any significant mass support for their
>> ultra-reactionary politics, but in the systematic promotion of such forces
>> by the capitalist state, both by the Trump administration and through
>> police forces at every level, from ICE and the Border Patrol down to the
>> local cops.
>>
>> Fascist elements are promoted to intimidate popular opposition to the
>> Trump administration, and to create the impression that there is
>> significant support for its right-wing rampage against immigrants and its
>> all-out backing of police violence and brutality against the working class.
>>
>> A particularly foul role is played by the corporate media, backed by
>> sections of the pseudo-left, who present the white supremacist groups as
>> having widespread support, in keeping with their habitual slanders of white
>> workers as being incorrigibly racist.
>>
>> For nearly two years, the Democratic Party and its media allies have
>> peddled a racialist explanation for the election of Trump and the
>> right-wing policies being pursued by his administration. According to this
>> narrative, Trump won the presidency because of a white racist vote in the
>> working class in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
>>
>> The claims that America is awash in racism, and that Trump’s election
>> proves it, have been repeatedly disproven by serious analyses of the voting
>> patterns in 2016 (see: “The myth of the reactionary white working class
>> <http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/11/12/pers-n12.html>”).
>>
>> It is especially absurd, given that the same states voted twice for
>> Barack Obama, the first African-American president, and several were won by
>> Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries over Hillary Clinton. It was
>> only the right-wing campaign of Clinton, who made not the slightest appeal
>> to the working class, that drove down turnout among both white and black
>> workers and gave Trump the opening to win support on the basis of economic
>> nationalism and populist demagogy.
>>
>> WSWS.ORG <http://wsws.org/>
>>
>> *The author also recommends:*
>>
>> Facebook censors the left
>> <http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/03/pers-a02.html>[3 August 2018]
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