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speak to millions and unite all those who oppose this war and repression -
and bring out the truth?

And the irony is that the anti-war movement that we have been part of
building is speaking to millions. It is resonating with people who are not
activists, but who are being drawn into opposition to the actions of the
government. So it is curious that Michelle Goldberg, on one hand, describes
the Not In Our Name statement as a "beautifully written declaration of
conscience whose sentiments would be shared by a great many liberals" --
i.e. a statement that is actually giving voice to the sentiments of millions
-- and on the other hand, Goldberg demands that the movement take distance
from Maoists like C. Clark Kissinger, who has been an important organizer for
the statement, because his participation will alienate the masses.

A more logical conclusion would be that these communists and all the people
involved in these efforts are doing something right. If people like Goldberg
are so concerned about the anti-war movement and they think the statement is
"beautiful," then why not urge others to sign it? Why focus on attacking
revolutionaries in the mix?

Goldberg claims to be fulfilling her journalistic responsibility by calling
attention to Kissinger's politics in her articles. But we have to say quite
frankly that there are serious problems with Goldberg's journalism.

First, she has attributed completely false statements to Clark Kissinger --
relying on hearsay that Clark has previously refuted -- without even
bothering to ask Clark about it.

In characterizing Kissinger's political beliefs, the Salon article makes this
outrageous distortion: "In an article for WorkingForChange.com, Seattle Times
journalist Geov Parris writes about Not in Our Name statement coordinator Clark
Kissinger, who he identifies as a 'core member' of the RCP [Revolutionary
Communist Party], 'I still have vivid memories of Kissinger
explaining calmly to me once why, when the RCP took over, it would be
necessary to shoot everyone who didn't agree with them.'"

In response to this charge, Clark Kissinger writes: "Let me say clearly: Geov
Parrish is lying and Michelle Goldberg is repeating the lie. It is
unconscionable to resort to hearsay and gossip to characterize my views when I
have written many articles on a range of political questions, from the death
penalty to the experience of China during Mao's leadership. These manufactured
comments are totally antithetical to my revolutionary politics. The truth is
that for decades I have identified with the Maoist movement that has summed up
the experience, both positive and negative, of all previous socialist societies,
including the importance of dissent in any new socialist society."

A passage from the RCP Draft Programme speaks to the importance of having a
wrangling atmosphere with "air to breathe" for different views: "Dissent can
play an important role in sparking debate and struggle over the unresolved
contradictions and problems facing socialist society in moving toward classless,
communist society. But unless it is clear that there is 'space' for such dissent
in society, unless people feel that they have room to
disagree with those in authority, unless an atmosphere is created in which
the masses actually grasp not only the possibility but the importance of
their debate and wrangling over all the questions of the day - then any
dissenting views and sentiments will be forced underground, the vigorous
debate and struggle necessary to actually move society forward to communism will
not flower, and the atmosphere in society will become lifeless and boring."

This discussion of the RCP's view of dissent after the revolution is
available on the rwor.org website, along with extensive writings by RCP
Chairman Bob Avakian on dissent and intellectual life before and after the
revolution.

And if Goldberg were seriously concerned to share the truth with her readers,
she might have taken the trouble to find out what Kissinger and the RCP
actually think.

In a similar vein, Goldberg claims to reveal to her readers information on
the political positions of the RCP and assigns herself to set standards for
the leadership of the anti-war movement.

"The RCP's ideology isn't just harmless campus Marxism," she writes. She
then goes on to criticize the RCP for supporting the efforts of people around
the world to liberate themselves from oppression. Her writing is full of buzz
words and distortions. She resorts to crude characterizations of serious
revolutionary movements that echo the lies of the media -- describing the
Communist Party of Peru as "'fanatically brutal' terrorists" and the people's
war in Nepal as a "bloody insurgency."

Goldberg crudely dismisses a series of articles in the RW that go deeply into
the line and practice of revolutionaries in Tibet, during the revolutionary
days of Mao - articles that delve into the truth of this situation, including
the unbearable poverty and oppression suffered by the Tibetan people under
the old Dalai Lama.

She describes a 1997 article in the RW as an "impassioned defense" of Pol
Pot. She has not done her homework. In fact, that article was a call for a
real revolutionary investigation of what went wrong in Cambodia, and why. It
made clear that the policies of Pol Pot in Cambodia were very different than
Maoism. The RW article pointed out that any serious analysis of what happened in
Cambodia had to proceed from an understanding that the Cambodian people have a
right to liberate themselves from U.S. domination. But Goldberg mocks the idea
that traditional Cambodia was a brutal feudal society that needed a revolution.
And nowhere does Goldberg mention the massive secret bombing of Cambodia by the
U.S. - which subjected the Cambodian people to mass murder from the skies and
touched off a huge wage of protest in the early 1970s. (People who are
interested in subsequent Maoist analysis of what went wrong with the Pol Pot
regime could read an article in the London-based Maoist journal A World to Win,
issue #25, 1999.)

Goldberg apparently moves in a journalistic world where it is acceptable to
throw around facile denunciations of anyone who attempts to throw off
semi-feudal oppression and big power domination by rising up and taking up
arms. This is a world where facile verdicts on what actually happened in
Tibet, or China during the Cultural Revolution, pass for progressive politics
-- a world where no distinction is made between revolutionary society in
Maoist China and the actions of the pro-capitalist regime that carried out
the Tienanmen Square massacre; a world where no one asks why the Dalai Lama
worked with the CIA; a world where TINA (There Is No Alternative) rules.

It is all too fashionable for cynical verdicts about how "revolution is worse
than the social ills it attempts to cure" to cover for lack of any serious
discussion about real problems confronting oppressed classes taking history
into their hands. How convenient that such claims coincide with the
prevailing verdicts of the official ideology of the very people who profit
from global sweatshops and send arms to disgusting regimes all over the
planet.

But we live in a world where millions and millions of people are suffering
from oppressive regimes backed by the U.S. government who condemn the
peasantry to poverty, drive them off the land into vast urban shantytowns,
sell their daughters in the sex trade and work their fingers to the bone in
factories.

Our party's political support for the people's wars in Peru and Nepal stems
from the experience and analysis of our Maoist movement -- that the only way
the masses of people in the oppressed countries of the third world can get
free of this oppression is to rise up in a new democratic revolution, wage a
people's war, and build a new society. These movements and other movements now
under attack -- like the people's war in the Philippines -- are genuine
struggles for national and social liberation and they are based on mobilizing
the masses of people.

We know that many people involved in the anti-war movement do not share our
perspective on these problems. And, again, they are not responsible for our
positions.

But in a situation where the U.S. power structure is attempting to brand as
terrorists any movement that dares to challenge their domination -- or rises
up against a regime they support -- thinking people really need to insist on
more rigorous standards of debate and discussion about the rights of the
people of the world to make revolution.

And, while we continue to have healthy debate and struggle about the
direction of the anti-war movement, we cannot allow those who actually stand
opposed to the movement to tell us what we should say and who should be
involved. Part of their political objective is really to get us to water down
the message so that it means nothing. And to those people we have to say:
Don't tell us you have to cut off our arms and legs to make our movement more
powerful.

*****