Occupy Wall Street is even more radical than you think

I’ve been spending as much time as I can down at Occupy Wall Street, listening to the speeches, reading the literature, talking to the organizers. Here’s something to keep in mind: You’ll hear in a lot of the conservative media that this is some kind of socialist/communist enterprise piggybacking on a populist protest. In reality, it is much worse than even most of the conservative media is reporting.

Almost every organization present at OWS is explicitly communist or socialist. Almost every piece of literature being handed out is explicitly communist or socialist. I don’t mean half, and I don’t mean the overwhelming majority — I mean almost all of it. Yes, there are the usual union goons trying to figure out how to get OWS to do the bidding of the AFL-CIO and the Democratic party, and the usual smattering of New Age goo (the “Free Empathy” table) and po-mo Left wackiness (animal-rights nuts), the inevitable Let’s-Eradicate-Israel crowd (“Free Palestine, from the river to the sea!”). But, that being said, almost every organized enterprise and piece of printed material I have encountered has been socialist or communist. It’s been a long time since I saw anybody peddling books by Lenin. It’s been a long time since anybody told me the Ukrainians had it coming.

When the protesters were rallying to march to Times Square, out went the call: “Follow the red flag!” Which is what they did, literally and, I fear, figuratively.