Myth #7 - The IWW is a fifth column, controlled by hostile powers

This is an old myth that dates back to World War I itself, and was created and perpetuated by the US Government and the American capitalist class. Many IWW members believed that the justifications for the American involvement in World War I were questionable, and the IWW believed then as now that the primary motivation of the US participation in the war was for profit. Many IWW members believed the war was one set of capitalist powers fighting against another using workers as cannon fodder. However many IWW members fought on the Allied side during the war and were later lynched by American jingoists who swallowed the lies that the IWW supported the Central Powers, including Germany and Austria-Hungary.

The IWW was targeted because it was very powerful during World War I, especially among agricultural workers and timber workers. The IWW refused to curtail strikes and other forms of workers organizing during the war, because it held true to its principles and most IWW members believed that the workers of the world had no country (neither American, nor German, or any other for that matter). Meanwhile, the employing class claimed that the IWW employed strikes in order to sabotage the allied war effort so that the Central Powers would win. For example they claimed that IWW timber workers engaged in job actions specifically to thwart the production of timber for biplanes (they conveniently forgot to mention that the lumber corporations jacked up their prices by almost 650% before the IWW even considered striking for better working conditions so they could make a windfall profit!)

The fact is that no connection to the Central Powers was ever proven, and such a conspiracy would be antithetical to the mission of the IWW who seeks to organize workers everywhere regardless of what their government or the employing class thinks of them. The employing class knew perfectly well that the IWW had no ties to the German or Austria-Hungarians or the Ottoman Empire, but they knew that they could whip unsuspecting workers and middle class Americans into a reactionary anti IWW hysteria if they spread fear and propaganda based on lies. This in turn caused workers to turn against the IWW because of a perceived "lack of patriotism". The IWW certainly believed in organizing the workers of the world as a single class into One Big Union, but they never supported one imperialist government (in this case the Central Powers) against another (such as the United States of America).

Bosses love to use this as evidence of some sort of "alien conspiracy" by appealing to workers with jingoistic tendencies. If the bosses can demonstrate that the IWW supports the "enemies of the state" this somehow makes us undesirable to workers. However the truth is that the IWW would never support any state that uses its workers as cannon fodder. Both sides did this in World War I and the IWW was not afraid to fight against it then and it is certainly not afraid to protest this now.

Next page: Myth #8 - The IWW is an anarchist and/or anarcho-syndicalist union.