I have nothing against right-left coalitions, especially right-left coalitions that protest against war. Any action that has the potential to rile up and inform people about the violence that is being waged in their names is an action that is long overdue. And with the potential that both the current U.S. proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, and the saber-rattling of the U.S. against China, will lead directly to a nuclear World War III makes a resurgent antiwar movement absolutely essential.
The problem with this Sunday's Rage Against the War Machine rally in Washington, D.C. is that both the organizations leading it are tainted.
Most of the criticism has been leveled against the Libertarian Party side, whose ascendant Mises faction has been rightly called out for racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. Leftist participants in the rally, including the respected journalist Chris Hedges, now find themselves the targets of all the "guilt by association" smears we've come to expect whenever disparate groups join together in common cause or even so much as talk to each other.
Thus has the overriding narrative of the Rage Against the War Machine rally devolved into yet another of those circular firing squads, largely playing out on YouTube. The actual wars and the danger they pose to the world are taking a back seat.
And it certainly doesn't help that "the left" is being solely represented at this rally by a PAC calling itself Movement for a People's Party. I looked into this outfit back in 2021, and I didn't much like what I discovered. The details are here.
To synopsize that post: after five years of existence, the People's Party PAC has yet to put forth a single candidate for any local, state or national office. (It has, however, expressed great excitement that comedian Jimmy Dore, a rally headliner, "might run for president'.) This PAC has conducted regular purges of its mostly volunteer staff, and its website even admonishes potential members that any internal arguments or outbursts of office rudeness will get them hauled before a "Regenerative Culture Circle."
Since I wrote that blog-post, the MPP's founder and director, Nick Brana, was accused of harassing and assaulting his paid communications consultant and one-time girlfriend, Zeynap Day. But rather than go before his own creepy regenerative culture circle, he hightailed it to Jimmy Dore's YouTube channel to defend himself. (Since you have to be paid subscriber of the Jimmy Dore Show in order to watch this clip, I can't link to it... sad, right?)
But according to Jordan Cheriton, another YouTuber and blogger, Brana ending up purging all the members of his own board for investigating the charges against him. He accused them of being "Democratic Party infiltrators" out to destroy both him and his PAC.
So the World Socialist Website absolutely nails it when it characterizes the organizers of this weekend's rally as an alignment of the far right with "many of the conceptions of the Stalinist Popular Front." Chris Hedges and other participants no doubt are striving to look past the personalities and the rhetoric involved in order to just get the antiwar message out, no matter what the sources and no matter what the cost and personal reputational damage to themselves that it might engender.
Isn't it possible ihat some attendees will be inspired enough to reject both organizations, forge partnerships of their own, and then go forth to protest the wars in new coalitions?
Perhaps the younger people attending the rally will not, as the World Socialists fear, be confused and disoriented by these phony factions posing as activists against the war in Ukraine. But it's still disappointing that in an essay defending his participation in the rally, the influential Chris Hedges approvingly quotes Nick Brana, who claims that the "left" (as opposed to his defective brand of authoritarian populism) is just concerned with identity politics and "condemns half the country as deplorables." Hedges fails to push back at Brana's characterization of the Democratic Party as the "left" - a ridiculous definition, by the way, and one that is wholeheartedly shared by Republicans unhappy that the Dems are horning in on their own right-wing turf.
I'm not saying that people should boycott this rally. I'm saying that people who attend should keep their eyes and ears wide open and their bullshit detectors on high alert at all times. Engage with the people around you. But watch out for those FBI provocateurs as you march to the White House! You can usually spot them by how well-dressed or how poorly dressed they are compared to everyone else.
Above all, don't give any of these organizing people and their vendors selling overpriced T shirts any of your money.
