Stalinists for MOVE

“The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowleged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States...”
-George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism

There are fewer and fewer groups who still actively support MOVE and their chief supporter and apologist, Mumia Abu-Jamal. One group that has remained steadfast in it’s support of Jamal and MOVE is a group that calls itself the International Action Center.

If you have heard anything about the International Action Center (IAC) than what you have likely heard is what the group and it’s various offshoots (such as the International A.N.S.W.E.R) are opposed to.

According to the group’s website the IAC is dedicated to:

"Information, Activism, and Resistance to U.S.
Militarism, War, and Corporate Greed,
Linking with Struggles Against Racism and Oppression
within the United States"

The IAC has made enormous contributions to the movement to “free Mumia” and has been a conduit for MOVE’s inane propaganda throughout the years. The IAC and it’s various front groups are well funded and relatively organized. But what lies behind the facade of leftist populism that the IAC uses to recruit followers and raise funds?

Looking at the reality of the IAC, it is not hard to see why they so readily support a murderer and a cult that enslaves it’s children and threatens it’s critics.

A website that examined the IAC concludes that:

“The International Action Center is a prominent Left organization located in New York City which is known for organizing large Left protests. What most people don't know is that an authoritarian left organization stands behind the IAC, an organization known as the Workers World Party. Both organizations have been criticized by Left activists for supporting unsavory leaders such as Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. They support these unsavory rulers because they subscribe to a shallow version of anti-imperialism. Quite simply, they will support any regime, no matter how vile they really are, if that regime is opposed to U.S. imperialism and aggression.”

Perhaps the best known IAC figure is former U.S. Attorney General under the Johnson administration, Ramsey Clark. Clark, who recently offered his legal services to his friend Saddam Hussein, is an apologist for, and defender of, some of the most vile human beings that one could imagine. He also has no problem defending cultists in their efforts to dupe and extort money from their followers and supporters. Again, from the same website:

“Things started to smell really fishy in 1989, when Clark represented ultra-right cult-master Lyndon LaRouche and six cohorts on conspiracy and mail fraud charges. The LaRouchies had been bilking their naive followers of their savings by getting them to cough up their credit card numbers. Clark (who had been silent when the real COINTELPRO was conducted under his watch at the Justice Department) now charged that the LaRouche case was an "outgrowth" of COINTELPRO. He said the case was manufactured by LaRouche's "powerful enemies within the establishment" who targeted the cult because of its crusade "to combat the traffic in so-called 'recreational drugs'...and the practice of usury."

Ramsey Clark however, did not limit his activism to merely protecting quirky and relatively harmless political cults. He moved onto to terrorists and war criminals. A look at Ramsey’s career is like looking at a snap-shot of pure evil. Consider:

“Clark also represented PLO leaders in a suit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the elderly vacationer who was shot and thrown overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise-ship by renegade Palestinian terrorists in 1986...Another Clark client was Karl Linnas, an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard in Estonia (where he had overseen the murder of some 12,000 resistance fighters and Jews), who was being deported from the US to the USSR to face war crimes charges. Clark again lost the case, but again went to bat for his client in the public arena, questioning the need to prosecute Nazis "forty years after some god-awful crime they're alleged to have committed."...In 1992, Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, was served with federal subpoenas when he touched down in New York for UN meetings. The National Organization for Women and the Center for Constitutional Rights, acting on behalf of Bosnian refugee women, were charging him with ordering mass rape and war crimes. Clark, of course, immediately came forward to represent Karadzic. Clark also made junkets to Serb-occupied Bosnia to schmooze with Karadzic (as did various Russian neo-fascists, like Vladimir Zhirinovsky)...Clark..., represented Elizaphan Ntakirutimana,, a Rwandan Hutu fighting extradition from the US to face charges of genocide collaboration before the UN tribunal. The WWP line simultaneously (and predictably) tilted to the genocidal Hutu militias as the UN wrote up war crime charges against their leaders for ordering the slaughter of half a million Tutsi civilians in 1994. (Clark lost the case, and in March 2000, Ntakirutimana was deported to Tanzania, where the UN tribunal on Rwanda was held).”

Upon reading through the above information one might be tempted to conclude that it is all just “right wing” propaganda designed to demonize the one of the largest anti-war groups and it’s most visible and articulate spokesperson. This conclusion, however would be wrong. All of the information cited about the IAC and Ramsey Clark came from an anarchist website.

I guess not everyone on the left is duped by the Stalinists at the Workers World Party and the numerous front groups that they use to hide their nefarious agenda. And I must say that it is refreshing to see true anti-authoritarian leftists speaking out against the IAC “hacktivists” who have attempted to hijack progressive movements with their thuggish and dishonest tactics.

For groups like the IAC it doesn’t matter that Saddam Hussein murdered thousands of his own people just as it doesn’t matter to them that MOVE enslaves their own children and forces their twelve year old daughters to be sexually violated.

This is a group that cares nothing about freedom or justice or even peace. Their aim is for the destruction of democratic values and the installation of hardline communist regimes. And they will take up the banner of anyone who claims to be anti-American, no matter the crimes they commit or how disconnected from reality they are.

And people wonder why the left in this country has a hard time getting people to listen to their message...