In the comments over at Talk Left, Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Electrolite says this:
The context is the widespread claim by pro-war bloggers, Glenn among them, that those of us who attended anti-war events co-sponsored by A.N.S.W.E.R., a front group for a bunch of Marxist-Leninist whack jobs, have by so doing lent aid and comfort to neo-Stalinist evil. Even though 98% of the people at those marches don't know diddly about A.N.S.W.E.R. or its controlling entity, the Worker's World Party, and certainly don't care about the WWP's opinions about the 1956 Hungarian uprising.
In this context, Atrios was raising the question: if we're tarnished by going to an anti-war march co-sponsored by A.N.S.W.E.R., surely anyone who writes for the Washington Times is just as morally culpable? It seems like a fair point, and the fact that Glenn only wrote for them once and didn't get paid doesn't seem like much of a, you should pardon the expression, answer. I only went to one march (so far), and what do you know, I didn't get paid either.
The Reverend Moon is no joke, and I'm amazed that you haven't been tracking on him. He really is a real-life comic-book supervillain, complete with portentous declarations about his desire to bend the United States to his will, and the fact that he has more or less bought and paid for big chunks of the institutional Right in this country is something that thoughtful conservatives ought to be a lot more concerned about than they seem to be. Certainly Moon wields a lot more power in the real world than the piddling Worker's World Party. This was Atrios's point, and I haven't seen it refuted yet.
Personally, I'd be happy to give Glenn a pass; I'm not actually into policing people's every association. I believe in coalition politics, and if you practice coalition politics, you inevitably wind up being associated with some people you don't care for. Sometimes those people are so distasteful that you need to reconsider your coalition. I actually think the Washington Times meets that standard, but I'm not proposing that Glenn Reynolds meets that standard if he disagrees with me on this point. I actually quite like Glenn, overall, and all of our interactions have been benign. I also like the mysterious Atrios. Yes, he's confrontational and rude as hell, and yes, he's often asking the right questions.
Me rude?
First the usual suspects claimed that anti-war protesters were "objectively pro-Saddam." Then they claimed there wouldn't be many of them. Then they claimed that by going to an anti-war rally fronted by a group most of them had never heard of they were supporting Stalinism/Marxism/whatever. Then they claimed that, well, they weren't really supporting Stalinism, but they were giving the group 'legitimacy' and 'credibility' which they wouldn't otherwise have.
The entire conservative intellectual establishment and the Republican party lends the Reverend Moon, the Unification Church, and its newspaper legitimacy and credibility every day. This is a far more well-financed explicitly anti-American organization than anything some unreconstructed commies can offer up.
Or, as this letter written in response to Michael Kelly's witless screed on the subject puts it:
A vast conspiracy
This is so exciting! I can't remember the last time I was an unwitting pawn of a vast international communist conspiracy. And here I thought I was just exercising my First Amendment rights by putting a No Iraq War sign in my yard.
Tim Gilbery, Bothell
