NATION VS. NATION: Katha Pollitt writes:

[Y]ou’ve offered a view of those who oppose Bush’s military plans that is seriously at odds with reality: The antiwar movement equals the left and the left equals the followers of Ramsey Clark, defender of Slobodan Milosevic and assorted Hutu genocidaires and other thugs, who is the founder of the International Action Center, which is closely linked to ANSWER, a front for the Workers World Party. Your picture of the big antiwar demo in October could have come straight out of David Horowitz’s column: “100,000 Communists March on Washington to Give Aid and Comfort to Saddam Hussein.”

Now, it is a fact that ANSWER called the big demonstration in Washington, it arranged for the permits, organized many buses and brought on all those speakers no one listens to. That’s not the same as controlling the movement–99 percent of the people who go to those demonstrations don’t even know ANSWER exists.

Compare this with what David Corn wrote:

This was no accident, for the demonstration was essentially organized by the Workers World Party, a small political sect that years ago split from the Socialist Workers Party to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. The party advocates socialist revolution and abolishing private property. It is a fan of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, and it hails North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il for preserving his country’s “socialist system,” which, according to the party’s newspaper, has kept North Korea “from falling under the sway of the transnational banks and corporations that dictate to most of the world.” The WWP has campaigned against the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. A recent Workers World editorial declared, “Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong.”

Officially, the organizer of the Washington demonstration was International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). But ANSWER is run by WWP activists, to such an extent that it seems fair to dub it a WWP front.

Pollitt does mention Corn’s piece, and says that he exaggerates ANSWER’s role. But she doesn’t actually say why, and I think it rather weakens her argument that Hitchens (and by extension, Corn) is wrong about the anti-war movement. Having said that, her piece is civil and sincere, and worth reading.

UPDATE: Reader Sameer Parekh writes:

It was interesting to read Katha Pollitt’s remarks about the anti-war movement. She raises potentially valid points. However, living in San Francisco, speaking from experience, everyone I have spoken to who is against the war falls into the anti-american/anti-capitalist category. I have yet to meet someone against the war whose rationale against going to war doesn’t logically conclude with supporting socialist dictators and exterminating the Jews. That’s clearly only anecdotal evidence, maybe there is a vast silent majority of anti-war people who don’t fit into that category. I have yet to meet them.

Yes, like the anti-Israel-but-not-anti-semitic supporters of Arafat, the category of pro-American, pro-capitalist peace protesters is logically possible, but admits of relatively few actual instances.