That revolution thing? My bad
Former leader of anti-war group apologizes, reveals secrets, says it is a "cult"
But it didn’t stop at extortion. Drury alleges that things turned violent when another founding member tried to resign in 2005. (See letter for more).
MAWO is not only in the business of controlling and manipulating young activists, but, writes Drury, is obsessed with undermining its opponents — opponents that often included those who were allegedly allies. For instance, Drury participated in widely distributing and publishing the personal emails of Derrick O’Keefe, another Vancouver anti-war activist after “accidentally” hacking into O’Keefe’s email account. (“While joking with Yerevani… that most far-leftists in Vancouver probably used some combination revolutionary names as email account passwords, I tested my joke on Derrick O’Keefe’s account,” writes Drury. “And the account opened.”) Drury alleges that MAWO also actively crashed other activist groups’ rallies and meetings and purposefully engineered animosity within groups with whom they were supposedly cooperating.
Ali Yerevani did not respond to interview requests.
Drury is now calling for the dissolution of all groups associated with MAWO. But judging from the picket signs and shouted slogans outside the Canadian Armed Forces Recruitment Centre in downtown Vancouver last week, the movement is far from finished. Nonetheless, Drury’s story will likely resonate in the Vancouver activist scene for some time: “I understand that the majority [of] the political work I have done in my life has led in the very opposite direction from what I now believe is necessary,” writes Drury. However, he remains committed to the “fight against the extremely reactionary imperialist order that is tearing our world apart.”
“I am a Marxist,” he states in his open letter. “I believe that capitalism cannot be reformed. I believe that capitalism must be replaced with socialized property and production through socialist revolution. I believe that it is only through the self-action of oppressed people that revolution can occur.”
But perhaps some day he’ll change his mind about that, too.
“If there is anything I am glad to have taken from my experience,” Drury writes in the conclusion of his open letter, “it is to have been humbled by the enormity of my capacity to error.”
In a way it’s scary to see that an anti-war group could be a cult. On the other hand it’s expected that any cult will form around some “noble cause”. I hope people who are involved in groups like this go out there and meet different groups who actually practice the “values they preach”.
The MAWO group, cult or not, is the logical end of the continuum that has been underway for some decades in our universities. Their antithesis on the continuum is open debate, without prejudice, for the purpose of mutual understanding and the achievement of a reasoned position on a given topic. Rather than persue this classic goal of education at the university level, single-focus interest groups on our campuses have been moving to the extreme right of the continuum in their protests, which are actually no more than blatant attempts to drown out opposing voices on any given topic. Often they disguise themselves under the envelope of political correctness. But make no mistake, their forebears wore brown shirts in Germany and refined protest into a cruel art. MAWO is but a few steps, or one more charasmatic nut or psychopath, away.
It is to be hoped that this young man’s “coming out” will have a positive impact on our campuses. He is to be congratulated for his courage and recognized for beginning to bear the broadening fruits of a university education. It is even possible that a solid grounding in historical study will give him a better understanding of Marxism and what chaos that gentleman’s followers have wrought in the past century.
>>obsessed with reining over even the smallest details of his followers’ lives<<
‘Reigning over’ or ‘reining in’?
Is the allusion to a monarch or a team of horses?
I don’t think universities support or promote critical thinking that much, not because of “interest groups”, but just based on the curriculum taught. Is it of concern that the result of 16+ years of formal education is people who can be indoctrinated by cults and/or governments and/or media.
MAWO’s standard campus tactic is to take over the social justice committee, use it as a conduit for MAWO events, and funnel its money to MAWO. Objections to their tactics are met with loud accusations of racism, ostensibly because Yerevani is Iranian. This has been public knowledge for a while.
From the Peak at SFU:
http://www.peak.sfu.ca/the-peak/2004-3/issue10/ne-langara.html
A copy of an article from the Langara Gleaner, distributed over left mailing lists:
https://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/project-x/2004-November/007947.html
Similar issues arose with UBC’s Social Justice Centre:
http://ubcinsiders.blogspot.com/2007/04/justice-for-social-justice-centre.html
They’re successful in part because of student turnover and a general desire left activists have to avoid sectarian bullshit. That said, their numbers at pickets have been flat for a long time, and their numbers at demos have been declining (as have demo numbers in other parts of the anti-war movement). They’re active, but they’re not growing.
One other thing: the author might have had trouble locating Yerevani for comment because his name is a pseudonym, as are the names of some other MAWO members. The Kira Daley mentioned in the Langara article uses Kira Koshelanyk in her MAWO activities, and Yerevani’s real name is Ali Izadi-Kharrazi.
http://www.cupe15.org/aboutus/executive.htm
http://stopwaroniran.org/statement.shtml#signers
It’s too bad to see this writer editorializing in ways that clearly suit her employer’s far right-wing outlook. Maclean’s has been full of pro-war, Islamophobic nonsense in recent years. This piece, which could have just been good investigative journalism, instead tries to undermine the anti-war movement in general, such as when the author puts the word “occupation” in quotation marks when talking about Iraq and Afghanistan.
Plenty of people of people are opposed to war and to capitalism in general, and yet want nothing to do with a wacky cult like MAWO and its leader Mr. Yerevani (Izadi-Kharrazi).
Steve,
There is nothing in the article that is pro-war or Islamophobic. I believe that war is a complex issue and I don’t think this article suggests that I am pro-war.
I also would like to point out that I covered this organization long before I worked for Maclean’s. In fact, I wrote about the group when I worked for a student paper — back in the days when I was criticized for my employer’s far left-wing outlook.
Ah, how things change.
I’ve just posted a response to Millar’s article which, I agree with Steve, is completely pro-war. I’m including the excerpt that deals with Millar’s article below, but you can find the whole thing here: http://ivandrury.wordpress.com
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In an article syndicated in the Capilano Courier under the title “A Campus Cult” and the Macleans online campus edition under the title “That revolution thing? My bad…” Erin Millar uses my statement to smear anti-war activism as inherently Marxist-revolutionary, and Marxism as inherently cultist. The article finds its way into each publication with slight differences, but in each, the theme remains the essentially the same. The most marked difference between the two is that the Cap Courier version includes a line drawing of Yerevani (for some perplexing reason), and the Macleans version concludes with the outright statement “perhaps some day [Drury will] change his mind about [the need for revolution], too.”
It is really quite amazing that Millar possesses such confidence in her ideas that she is able to deride the anti-war movement and Marxism with a single wave of the hand without ever substantiating her accusations or explaining what she offers as an alternative. What is she saying? Does she support the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq? Only one or the other? Does she believe that capitalism is clicking along just fine and that its opponents are whiny and immature brats who need to grow up? Certainly that can be read in the “some day” that she wishes upon me. Why doesn’t she state what she believes? Left in the dark about Erin Millar’s political / ethical / moral stances, we’re left to assume that her sympathies lie with the Macleans school of the uber-Canadian right wing.
Millar cites sources such as J.J. McCullough, the editor of the Douglas College newspaper The Other Press who also writes a regular hard-right-wing column for the same newspaper. Blind to his own political alignments, McCollough “describes MAWO members as ‘hard-line communists of the old sort — extraordinarily dogmatic, non-compromising.’ He believes that a MAWO member was ‘assigned’ to his [sic.] newspaper […]. ‘She was an agent of theirs. She openly tried to co-opt the paper’.”
With such a jump, Millar extends the criticism of FTT’s sectarian and cultish behavior and theoretical bases to a blanket condemnation of leftists who seek to publicize their views in campus newspapers. This is hypocrisy to the n’th degree. What is the difference between a left wing political line being carried into student newspapers, by MAWO or anyone else, vs. a right wing political line being carried into student newspapers by McCullough and countless others like him? Millar’s implied argument is that leftists are inherently duplicitous because they consciously enter the arena of college print journalism to put out their ideas. While leftists and progressive people are forced to organize consciously, as an opposition and minority in the world of corporate controlled media, great spaces are made for people like McCullough by the same media and the unconscious status quo that they represent in the “common sense” of hegemonic social ideology. Millar herself provides the best evidence of capitalism’s hegemonic control of media and mass consciousness: when was the last time 2,000 words of space was made available for an article about the anti-war movement in Macleans magazine? How convenient.
Discourse or debate in time of war has to be considered in the context, which is that war continues as we discuss it.
Anyone who truly believes war is “a complex issue” should certainly not support countries starting war on an emotional/whim basis, like it was done in Iraq/Afghanistan. And if we truly need to reflect about it, then we should not be actively fighting at the same time.
Now the question is: are we, individually and collectively, taking the time to reflect about this BEFORE the political choices are being made?
Regarding the above letter of Ivan Drury’s posted criticism of this article… I think it’s a fair jab at JJ McCullough that his right-sided politics could make his comments particularly suspect. But regarding the reference to the “countless other’s like him”, I would argue that the typical student newspaper climate is a left-leaning one, and a right-wing agenda within student press (at least in this country) is a rarity. Accordingly, McCullough is valued within the Other Press for his institutional experience, but regarded as somewhat of a one-man-show in regards to his politics. To put it more succinctly, he certainly didn’t rally any followers within the staff or the campus to his support of Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign. So likening his rightwing agenda to that of MAWO is far from the reality.
I have witnessed the zealot-like fervour with which MAWO supporters try to spread their message. Within the Other Press, it escalated to the degree that our News Editor was submitting whole news sections containing only MAWO information and ignoring all other news.
In defence of Miller’s article and the information presented therein, I think the situation is presented quite fairly.
Speaking personally, I am fairly left of centre politically yet openly condemn the MAWO approach to furthering their message. It is not so much what they have to say, but how they go about saying it. The concept of a radical political group intentionally infiltrating campuses to further their message is inherently wrong in my mind, regardless of what their specific message is.
I’m all for getting one’s message out there, but not when it’s done by playing weekend Zapatista.
To be clear, I did not charge Millar’s article with being Islamophobic. I said Maclean’s has run a bunch of Islamophobic material, which is a matter of record (see their disgusting Mark Steyn cover story a couple years back). And, yes, Maclean’s is also pro-war, and although Millar says these are “complex” issues, her bias is shown when she puts the words “occupation” in quotation marks.
It’s too bad maniacs like this Yerevani are around; they make for easy fodder for smear jobs like this on the whole left.