Discipline and the antiwar left
Trump's war on Venezuela has exposed some of our worst unforced errors.
Activist Sam Husseini, in 2023:
Two examples of such attacks on Rage Against the War Machine are Carl Beijer’s piece which describes Rage Against the War Machine in its subhead thus: “Connected to a cult, overtly hostile to the antiwar left, and not even consistently against war. What's not to like?”
I took a lot of heat a few years ago for my opposition to the ostensibly antiwar RAWM rally, but my criticism was quite straightforward. First, I argued that even though Russia had legitimate grievances against Ukraine and NATO, antiwar activists had an obligation to categorically oppose its invasion and defend international law. This point mattered because several of RAWM’s scheduled speakers, such as Scott Ritter and Jackson Hinkle, had openly declared their support for Russia in the war. And that fact related to my second complaint: RAWM was elevating multiple speakers who were selective about their opposition to war at best. This included people like Ritter and Hinkle, but as alluded to above, it also included people like Science of Identity cultist and erstwhile warmonger Tulsi Gabbard.
Today we are seeing why I’ve made these calls for ideological discipline even though they’re often very unpopular among squishy populists like Husseini, and even though they can come off as counterproductive at the time. This morning, the United States invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its sitting president Nicolás Maduro. It did so in direct violation of the exact same international law that condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And it did so with the active support of Tulsi Gabbard.
To make matters worse, some of Gabbard’s critics have faced their own credibility problems. Here for example is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to the Trump Cabinet:
I actually think…Tulsi Gabbard’s appointment is devastating…as much as she says that she’s an anti-war person, she’s not. She supports very pro-war individuals abroad. Let’s be clear: a Tulsi Gabbard nomination is a pro-war nomination globally. Point-blank period.
Today it is hard to deny that this assessment has been utterly vindicated. Just a few months ago, for example, The New York Times reported on how Gabbard prepared the ground for Trump’s attack by firing analysts who rejected one of his key justifications: that Venezuela’s government was behind local drug traffickers. Still, activists associated with RAWM fired back at AOC:
See how this works? Gabbard has been inconsistent on war and so has AOC. If antiwar activists maintained their principles and minimal standards on who they ally with, we would be able to consistently reject both of them. But since we refuse to do so, these controversies just become a tribal feud over which warmonger you are going to support. Dem loyalists opposed Gabbard because of her association with Trump; Blumenthal opposed AOC because of her association with Biden; but neither consistently opposed war.
The result is that instead of building a coherent movement that can provide a moral compass for the US, antiwar activists face serious accusations of hypocrisy from all sides. Log into social media today and you’ll see two lines of criticism everywhere. On one side, academics like Marika Mikiashvilli are excorciating anti-imperialists for opposing Trump while hypocritically defending Russia; on the other, Republicans like Brad Wesley are scolding the left for backing war in Ukraine while opposing war in Venezuela. In truth, both of these are unfair generalizations; but because we have refused to maintain a consistent line on antiwar questions and continued to associate with opportunists, we’ve given them a fig leaf of plausibility.
Obviously there are narrow cases, like negotiating for antiwar votes in Congress, where it makes sense for the opponents of war to accept support from anyone who will sign on. When it comes to building an antiwar movement, however, the left needs to maintain some minimal standards.
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