However, when he starts to "call out" various (mostly moderate) anti-war bloggers for participating in A.N.S.W.E.R-organized marches, his self-righteousness gets the better of him. In my youth, which overlapped the tail-end of the J Edgar Hoover era, we called this "red-baiting." If you wanted to discredit someone's politics, you could always point to known Communists (or other equally extremist fellow-travellers) and perform guilt-by-association. (As indeed J Edgar attempted to do to MLK.) Since many of the early anti-Vietnam War movement were people who were active in the labor and civil rights movements, and many of those activists were, or had at one time, been members of the Communist Party, this was hard to deny. The only useful response was "so what?" (I remember various socialist splinter groups hanging around campuses in the early seventies, hawking newspapers, trying to get signatures for petitions, denouncing equally obscure splinter groups. Nobody took them seriously. We all thought it a prime example of Hoover's obtuseness that he thought these pathetic creatures were influential.)
As Gary Farber notes in his post on a new book about civil-rights activist Anne Braden, from the turn of the century up to WWII, if you thought segregation and Jim Crow were wrong, if you thought women should be able to get birth control and credit in their own names, if you didn't think Modern Art was the harbinger of social chaos, and if you wanted to find others like yourself and maybe even do something to further your ideals, you ended up hanging out with Communists. That's where the action was. Although its flawed ideas and the application of those ideas by fanatics led to economic ruin and enormous human-rights abuses which I have no desire to whitewash, Communism was at its core an ideology of human rights at a time when social inequalities were vast and many still believed in the divine ordination of social and gender heirarchy.
After WWII, the abuses of the Soviet system were becoming clearer, but if you came back from the war to legal segregation, women forced out of jobs, and Cold War hysteria about sex and literature, where were you going to go? As Gary points out (and as I have pointed out in numerous LGF threads where people have seriously tried to sell me the totally ahistorical idea that Republicans have always been the Jews' best friend)
The Republican Party, with a few exceptions, was not a part of the civil rights movement of the 20th century that led to the integration of the Armed Forces, the attempted desegregation of schools (in practice, many areas remain more segregated in schooling and housing than in the 1960's, a fact not nearly enough attention is paid to), the Voting Rights Acts, the armed intervention of the Federal Government with troops and tanks to enforce judicial civil rights decisions, the Civil Rights acts which made discrimination in public accomodations a violation of law, the long, slow, striking down of Jim Crow, and the eventual overall increase in minority opportunity. . . .If you basically supported these goals but weren't much of an activist, you probably voted Democrat and left it at that. If you were more of an activist, you had the same dilemma as recent "progressive" types about Gore vs. Nader or some other candidate, and your activism would inevitably bring you into contact with certified Socialists and Communists (who were at war with each other as well), some of whom were genuine American patriots who sincerely thought that more socialism would support the American ideal, and some of whom were Soviet agents.
The debate goes on about how much of each was going on and how much difference it ultimately made. No one can deny that at their peaks the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements were broadly based and profoundly American. Indeed we now take so many of their lessons and goals for granted that some of us try to claim them for the political groups who were opposed to them at the time (much like radical Islam claims Jesus and Moses as Muslims retroactively).
Up to a certain point, political purity is self-defeating. On this very blog, I disagree with Alisa about transfer, and several of us disagreed with Rami about Shinui, but we have enough in common that we all call this blog home. Meryl and I wade into LGF almost every day and swat at ignorant self-righteous commenters who assume that everyone who favors invading Iraq also rejects a liberal domestic social agenda, but we both value LGF for other reasons (maybe we even think those folks are educable!). I disagree with Orthodox Jews about women's roles but sometimes I will daven with them. Jewish and Black feminists have challenged anti-semitism and racism within the Western feminist movement, and all feminists have challenged sexism within various political movements. Many of the Jews at the anti-war protests were holding their noses every time they passed an anti-Israel sign.
However, past a certain point, if we want to have credibility, we have to challenge egregious violations within our movements of the values we claim to profess. The civil rights movement succeeded in the 60s because it morphed into something beyond the politics of 30s Communists into something that mainstream America could respond to, largely because its non-violent tactics begat respect and because its unassailable justice was not obscured by fringe politico antics. The political origins of early civil rights activists became irrelevant. (Romantic revolutionaries call this co-optation, and they're right. Any social goal that millions of ordinary Americans can sign on to will have migrated away from their pure revolutionary vision, and a good thing too.)
Since the 2000 elections, when I began to see anti-semitic rants on Nader websites, I have not seen much sign that the "progressive" movement has matured to the point where it has credibility with mainstream America. On the contrary, it has become degraded - by anarchist violence, reflexive anti-Americanism, and really bad arguments for every one of its positions, as well as anti-semitism. If A.N.S.W.E.R. is orchestrating the public manifestations of the movement, then A.N.S.W.E.R. has to do just as much explaining as Trent Lott (and if I know these splinter politicos, will do just as bad a job of it), and progressives have to start building a movement that isn't run by A.N.S.W.E.R.
So although I find Tacitus' call for political purity a bit too self-righteous, if rants like his force the left to do some house-cleaning, it will only benefit the antiwar movement's cause, and progressive politics in general.
(via Sullivan)
UPDATE: In Context and Winds of Change have examples of the antiwar movement compromising itself. Lileks has some observations.
UPDATE: Tacitus publicizes an alernative. Will the antiwar movement take advantage of it?
UPDATE: If you want to know how the antiwar movement rank-and-file are (not) dealing with the A.N.S.W.E.R. issue, read the comment threads on No War Blog. (They trash Kanan Makiya too. In the 60s they would have trashed Solzyienitzen. Hell, maybe even now they would trash Solzyienitzen.) And resident troll David Byron continues to be treated with serious respect. This is what today's antiwar organizers look like, folks. It ain't pretty.
UPDATE: Diane is back! With choice comments on Tacitus' post.
UPDATE: *sigh* As I browse Gotham (now back at its old URL) for the first time in 3 weeks, I also find that - although I have linked to and sided with Diane on this blog on several occasions - because she disagrees with Alisa on transfer (which I do also, BTW), we are all now lumped together as "Kesherites" (presumably under the mind control of our cult guru "Harold") who "don't link to her" (??? - I guess this means the blogroll?), not because, hey, she never asked, but because the Kesherite hive-mind doesn't like her dovish Israeli politics. Diane, get a good night's sleep and a clue, okay?
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