Do-It-Yourself Surveillance
by KTKApril 10th, 2006
In keeping with the right’s penchant for harassment, wiretapping, and invasion of privacy, right-wing bloggers have establed an amateur surveillance program, including “undercover” secret tapings, on the leftist political group A.N.S.W.E.R. (”Something Something Stop War and End Racism”). The group is a mainstay of anti-administration protesting, and professes a grab-bag of left-wing policies that, frankly, don’t make a lot of sense - but they are energetic and ubiquitous at protest rallies. (Powerline, naturally, characterizes them as “communists”, which is one thing they are not, but it’s a cliche that never dies for the right wing.)
A.N.S.W.E.R. was organizing a rally to support undocumented workers last weekend. The blog “Vital Perspective” sent two people into their planning meeting pretending to be supporters, but toting hidden tape recorders. They got dramatic, damning evidence of such things as that ANSWER supports undocumented workers (”If you really think about who the undocumented worker is in America, you know, you easily come to the conclusion that they’re modern day slaves. . . . The money that they’re paying into the system, remains in the system to the tune of billions of dollars a year. Nobody’s talking about that!”), look forward to “revolution” (”The Sensenbrenner bill is so odious, such a threat, so far reaching . . . that it provoked the beginning of what could be a new revolutionary movement. Maybe it won’t be the ultimate revolution, but certainly it has the ingredients and elementary factors that make up all revolutionary movements. If you think about it, this is the way that all great movements start, including the American Revolution.”), oppose the war in Iraq (”a criminal war, a war of aggression.”), they oppose corporatism (”where all the benefits legislated by the respective countries are to directly benefit first and foremost, and almost exclusively, the corporations to the detriment of the national worker populations of those countries.”), and they support worker benefits (”The pension is being eliminated. Health care benefits, being eliminated. If you’re a young worker and you’re under 25 year old, the idea that you’re going to have what your parents had – or what some of your parents at least aspired to have – which is a decent job at a decent wage with health care benefits, that’s a myth, that’s a fiction, that’s gone. Because the globalization of capital, meaning the elimination of all obstacles that stand in the way of maximizing profit, that’s come home.”). As VP’s own commenters pointed out, this is hardly radical stuff. (Ooh! They used the word “revolution”! So did the supporters of Ronald Reagan, who managed to make it synonymous with “business as usual, only worse”.) I’m sure VP thinks they have some sort of journalistic coup on their hands, but this kind of rhetoric is hardly unreasonable, and pretty much standard for left organizers who haven’t got a real revolution to talk about. Anybody who’s attended a few campus protests has heard this a hundred times. I’m more worried about self-righteous yahoos with hidden tape recorders than I am about “revolutionaries” who hold openly-announced public meetings and tell their plans to any total stranger who comes in to listen.
Powerline, however, was galvanized by the shocking revelation that a workers’ interests group was concerned about the interests of workers. They organized an amateur video surveillance program aimed at ANSWER’s planned public demonstration - asking readers to attend the demonstration (maybe they’ll learn something!) and get the shocking truth down on tape:
How many people are participating in the demonstration? What signs are they carrying? What flags? Who seems to be in charge? If people are arriving in buses, who runs the buses? Are professionally made signs being distributed? If so, by whom? How about flags? How visible are radical groups like A.N.S.W.E.R.?
Good going, “citizen journalists” - it’s possible you might even discover that the organized demonstration was . . . organized, with, like, professionally printed signs (be sure to videotape the “Labor donated by Printers’ Local ###” stamp at the bottom). (One wonders why they care who runs the buses. Every large demonstration includes bused contingents - they hire commercial charter buses, run by . . . commercial charter bus companies. Unless they intend to harass the bus companies to prevent them serving clients the right wing does not approve of - as anti-abortion activists did to construction companies building a clinic in Texas - this information has no political meaning.) And why do you care who provides the flags? Somehow I get the feeling that Hindrocket has never actually attended a demonstration.
This behavior is not illegal, but it is certainly worrisome. There’s nothing wrong with photographing or taping actual newsworthy incidents - the Zapruder film and the Rodney King video are vital legal records - but there is something wrong with people being under surveillance all the time. This is why they object to police cameras in public areas, and to unnecessary collection of personal information by stores or marketers. When private citizens begin surveillance on each other, legally or not, there is then no public place - and sometimes no private place - people can enjoy the expectation of non-interference. And when hostile groups take it on themselves to pressure and harass people they oppose, simply as a means of exerting political force, one’s personal life becomes ammunition for someone else’s belligerent self-indulgence.
This is standard practice on the right. Dinesh D’Souza - a “researcher” whose every written word evokes pages of factual disproof - made himself a right-wing star by infiltrating gay-interest groups at Dartmouth and publicizing personal remarks made by the members. Anti-choice forces have made a science of harassment, stalking abortion providers to their homes, sending anonymous death threats by phone and mail, and videotaping clients and staff at abortion clinics and posting their photos, license plate numbers, and home addresses on the Web. Secret tapings of policital meetings, or organized surveillance of peaceful marches, are minor in comparison. Again, much of this is not illegal, but it is a deliberate breakdown of social order in the service of political goals. They are making the world a worse place, and harassing people exercising basic personal freedoms, in order to score cheap political points.
Categories: Culture, General, Legal Issues, Media, Politics, Privacy |
Never heard of A.N.S.W.E.R. before. What is their web address. Is it in the above article and I’m so dumb I missed it?
No wonder the leftests are so intent on keeping their true goals and views secret. Those who infiltrate the groups supporting criminal immigrants and let us know what they are up to are doing us a great service. Thanks.
Yeah, Fred, becasue the purpose of a pro-immigrant rally is so cleverly disguised. nice to know the intrepid bloggers brought to our attention the fact that the rally is in favor of immigrants! How fiendishly clever the organizers of the pro-immigrant rally were to keep that from the general public.
Correction in terms: Pro illegal (criminal) immigrants.
I C. Immigration is what it’s all about. I’m for bashing immigrants. Which ones will we start with first, the Irish or the Itilians?
By the way, my real name is Crazy Horse. I was discussing the immigration problem with Sitting Bull only yesterday. He said that maybe if we give them a really close haircut they’ll get the message and leave. I said yeah and especially if you manage to convince them the next time it’ll be even closer. But then, why wait until next time?
KTK, you say Powerline calls ANSWER “‘communists,’ which is one thing they are not.” I’m curious as to your reasoning.
It’s my understanding that ANSWER was founded by the Workers World Party, and now operates essentially as an affiliate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a splinter group of the WWP. (Wikipedia has the whole story, which fits with what I’ve read elsewhere.)
Am I wrong? Are you? Or are we using our terms differently?
ANSWER’s Web site is here:
http://www.internationalanswer.org/
“I C. Immigration is what it’s all about. I’m for bashing immigrants. Which ones will we start with first, the Irish or the Itilians?”
Comment by Bill | 4/10/2006
Fred: I start (and end) with illegal immigrants. If Irish or Italians come here illegally, it is a good thing to oppose their criminal immigration.
Re: “communists”
ANSWER is clearly affiliated with some communist groups, and many more non-communist groups; some of its founding members were drawn from the WWP and PSL, but others were not. More importantly, its work does not appear to reflect or involve communism.
From Wikipedia:
Like a lot of big leftist groups, they’re a grab-bag of participants from all around, some of whom have other affiliations as well. And at least a couple members of the ANSWER board of directors are also leaders in the WWP or PSL, and they tend to get more press than other members. But the list above hardly constitutes a “communist” organization. It’s a leftist organization drawing from across the spectrum - most of them ethnic workers’ groups. The Green Party, Pastors for Peace, Dick Gregory, and VVAW are hardly communists. And if you read the critical reports from David Horowitz or National Review, linked from the Wikipedia article, the entire “communist” charge comes down to nothing more than that some of their funding and organization came from WWP and PSL (oh, and NR is all het up because they use words like “imperialism” and “oppression” - it’s not imperialism and oppression that NR objects to, you understand, it’s the words “imperialism” and “oppression”). They say absolutely nothing about any supposedly “communist” activities ANSWER has undertaken.
That’s what really makes the difference for me. ANSWER is not communist because they don’t work for communism. They work against Bush’s wars, against imperialism, and for workers’ rights, but the most “communist” thing you can find at their rallies or in their literature is a persistent concern for NAFTA and the globalization of capital, and the occasional use of the word “comrade” (another smoking gun National Review ferreted out). And I find it hard to imagine they are some sort of underground organization, or “front group”, as their critics keep claiming - the group memberships of their members that supposedly link them to real communist groups are openly acknowledged. (One thing real communists know is that undercover agents can’t be open members of the party. Hell, even McCarthy knew that.)
They’re a leftist group with far-left, including communist, connections in the form of some initial funding and shared membership. But they don’t espouse communism, their chosen issues are not communist, and most of their leaders aren’t communist. I don’t know what else it takes.
Update on “communism”:
Michelle Malkin has signed on to the “DIY Surveillance” program, encouraging bloggers to video the demonstrations and report back to her. She has some clown’s Flickr page of photos of the New York City rally on her blog.
One of the shots shows a banner whose entire text (Brooklynite will appreciate this) reads “PSC/CUNY says - ADJUNCTS UNITE!” The blogger’s comment, repeated in two places, refers to “Communist professors”.
PSC is the faculty union of the City University of New York. They are trying to get adjunct teachers - part-time, non-tenure-eligible faculty, usually graduate students working to pay their bills - to be more active in the union. A less-communist organization you can hardly imagine.
As usual, the right just labels anyone they don’t agree with “communist”. I don’t care that much about ANSWER, and I find their approach to issues somewhat annoying, but I don’t favor letting just any dipshit with a comic-book level of political knowledge sling around the word “communist” out of ignorance.
KTK writes:
[ANSWER is a] leftist group with far-left, including communist, connections in the form of some initial funding and shared membership.
From what I’ve read, “some initial funding and shared membership” is a euphemistic way of putting it. It’s my understanding that ANSWER was created by the International Action Center, which many consider a front for the WWP.
But they don’t espouse communism, their chosen issues are not communist, and most of their leaders aren’t communist. I don’t know what else it takes.
Front groups generally don’t embrace the ideology of the parent group — that’s the whole idea. As for leadership, a successful front group will attract members who aren’t part of the parent organization, and promote those members to positions of prominence. The question is how the organization’s leadership is structured, and who wields real power in the organization.
None of the groups you’ve listed as being on the ANSWER steering committee are ones that I’m familiar with, and a quick google turned up indications that several of them have close ties to the WWP, the PSL, and/or the IAC, and allegations that they are themselves WWP fronts. If there were more prominent progressive organizations on the steering committee, I’d be a lot less skeptical.
I find it hard to imagine they are some sort of underground organization, or “front group”, as their critics keep claiming - the group memberships of their members that supposedly link them to real communist groups are openly acknowledged.
Some of them are, yes. And that allows ANSWER to say that although they were founded as a WWP offshoot, they’re now a broader-based organization.
I can’t say for certain one way or another. But I know what my nose is telling me.
It is interesting how communism remains a four letter word in the US, as opposed to Europe, where several countries have active communist political parties. I suppose it is a hangover from the Cold War.
It is also interesting how folks are quick to condemn using guilt by association if the party in question is on the opposite side of the political spectrum. But when the condemned party is on their side, questionable associations are immediately discounted. I suppose that’s human nature, but it’s not one of our more admirable qualities.
Well, the problem with calling ANSWER a communist group si that it implies support for communist aims — revolution of the proletariat, state control of the means of production — and ANSWER, as far as I can tell, does not as a group have those goals as its aims.
Brooklynite:
The problem with your reasoning, as I see it, is that you could use similar reasoning to get the “front group” allegation to stick to just about any group, or at least any group that has some Kevin Baconesque ties to whatever evil group you’re trying to associate them with. (As an aside, I linked Kevin Bacon to al-Qaeda, and though I was not the first, I needed fewer steps.)
Kevin, Tgirsch —
I think you’re both missing a bit of the history here. There’s a long tradition in American fringe politics of front groups — sock-puppet organizations, in essence. That’s what ANSWER is accused of being, and I think there’s some evidence that it’s a valid charge.
Kevin: The question on the table is whether ANSWER’s stated aims and its actual aims are the same. If ANSWER is controlled by a political party, then it’s not unreasonable to hypothesize that it exists to further that party’s goals, whatever its official platform may be.
Tgirsch: The question of whether ANSWER is a front group is an empirical question, and you’ll note that I haven’t yet made that charge. Yes, guilt by association is a bad thing. Certainly. But political sock-puppeting is a bad thing, too.
Brooklynite:
That’s fair, as far as it goes, but then KTK’s criticism — that it’s unfair to characterize them as a “communist” group — remains valid.
I’m not sure what you mean. If they’re a sock-puppet for a communist political party, which I increasingly suspect they are, then they’re a communist group.
If they’re a sock-puppet for a communist political party, which I increasingly suspect they are, then they’re a communist group.
If, by “sock puppet”, you mean only that some significant fraction of their leaders are also leaders of communist groups, then they are a communist group that doesn’t espouse communism, work for communist causes, promote communist solutions to social issues, or focus mostly on issues that are characteristic of communists, and whose membership at large consists almost entirely of non-communists. They would also be a “sock puppet” whose ties to communist groups are widely reported and openly acknowledged. That makes an odd “communist group”. If, however, “sock puppet” means a group whose leadership is secretly steering them to support causes other than their openly-stated ones, for the benefit of the parent group, then they just don’t seem to be a sock puppet in that sense.
It still seems to me that they are simply what they are: a leftist group whose organizing impulse came from communist groups with the specific intention of drawing in a wide spectrum of left/liberal activists, and which focuses on anti-war, anti-imperialism, and anti-globalism issues of interest to many across that spectrum. The articles that label them “communist” also include numerous quotes from liberals who are leery of ANSWER leadership but willing to work with them precisely because they haven’t pushed the communist angle. If anything, you’d have to conclude that the WWP and PSL are being taken advantage of by the liberals, who put their organizing skills to good use and then don’t let them say anything more communist-sounding than “global capitalization is bad”, which hardly makes you a communist these days.
If WWP was motivated to support ANSWER as a way of promoting WWP’s own larger goals, I’d say they failed. Alternatively, they promoted ANSWER as a way of drawing non-communists into a cause they all could support - which is what it actually appears they were doing, and what, upon inspection, they have actually succeeded in doing. That doesn’t make ANSWER a “front”.
I guess I’m not explaining myself well.
The big problem with front groups is that they exist to serve a covert agenda. There are several ways they can do this:
One way is by steering folks who join the front into the parent group. The front is essentially a recruiting gambit, like those “free personality tests” that glassy-eyed believers accost you on the street with.
A second way is by diverting supporters’ resources to the furtherance of the parent group’s agenda. This is what happens if I join (the hypothetical) “Citizens for Better Recycling” because I believe in recycling, but wind up pestering my congresscritter to support a bottle law that was written by a beer-industry lobbyist, or donating money that pays that lobbyist’s “consulting fees.”
A third way is by building up the organization until it’s got some credibility, and then use that credibility to give the parent group’s agenda a boost. This is (pretty much) what happened in the thirties. Lots of lefties joined Communist Party fronts because they were doing important work, and then got burned when the leadership of those groups declared their support for the Hitler-Stalin pact.
Is ANSWER a front? I’m still not certain. But several of the groups on its steering committee are WWP/PSL subsidiaries, and others seem to be paper organizations with no independent existence to speak of. If there’s a majority on the steering committee that’s beholden to WWP and/or PSL, or if the steering committee is a figurehead, with the real power in the organization lying elsewhere, that’d be a flashing warning sign for me.
Horowitz and his ilk are cretins, and they’d be red-baiting ANSWER whatever its relationship with WWP and PSL. But they’re not the only ones calling ANSWER a front. Follow the links at the Wikipedia articles on ANSWER and WWP, and see what progressives are saying about these guys.
KTK:
If anything, you’d have to conclude that the WWP and PSL are being taken advantage of by the liberals, who put their organizing skills to good use and then don’t let them say anything more communist-sounding than “global capitalization is bad”, which hardly makes you a communist these days.
That’s exactly what the liberals (and socialists) in the American Student Union would have said in 1939, right before the CP faction in ASU used their pull in the organization to get ASU to come out in favor of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
(There’s an Emily Litella joke to be made here about “global capitalization,” but I’ll restrain myself.)
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