Among other tripe, you offered:
> When SNCC became a black nationalist organization, it broke with liberal
> politics. As Max makes a speciality of blurring the difference between
> liberalism and radicalism, this comment is completely understandable.
SNCC's break with non-nationalist politics set it on the road to oblivion, but at least it was radical oblivion. Integrationist politics could have led to more radical politics, as in the case of ML King and his successors.
The gains of the civil rights movement and its successors (e.g., Jackson) are pretty straight- forward. Some nationalist currents did some substantive work at the community level (e.g., Baraka). What were the gains of so-called black power? Self-esteem? Poetry anthologies?
> SNCC was a victim of a powerful ultraleftist current in the black
> community, which affected the Black Panthers as well. This, plus
> provocations from the FBI, threw the young, activist group into chaos. Max
> really has no analysis of what went on except that creepy people became
> creepier at a certain point. Moralizing makes a poor substitute for
Now we seem to be patronizing black nationalists, or worse, calling them creeps, which I never did, as if they were somehow too lacking in self- consciousness to know what they were about. I don't doubt for a second they knew what they were about. They were wrong, but they weren't pigeons being herded about by provocateurs.
This is the first I've heard of the idea that the FBI screwed up SNCC. I always thought Stokely did a fine job of that all by himself. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what happened, since you can see the same reasoning on this list.
> political analysis. Carmichael eventually went to Africa where he stopped
> acting as an influence on American politics. I have no doubt that he made
> antisemitic remarks since he was susceptible to influences all around him
He was (is) an adult. He knew what he was doing. He fell for Third Worldist bullshit. It's not so complicated. He happens to be dying now--prostate cancer--and I feel sorry for the guy. A lot of people admire him, since a great number showed up for a tribute to him in D.C. The Panthers called him a cop at one point. In my view, at the least, he played a negative role. It happens. My record as a bit player isn't golden either. The future is what matters.
> at this point. Of course, the notion of black antisemitism was a favorite
> device of liberals in the 1980s to tarnish black radicalism. Jim Sleeper
> made a speciality of this. I have no doubt that Max reflects these
> influences, which are powerful in the inside-the-beltway
> politics, where he functions.
Now you've got me in bed with that prick Sleeper? Jesus Christ on a bike.
I don't tarnish black radicalism in the slightest. Anti-semites can't be radical. They're too . . . let's see, what's the scientific term . . . fucked up. That's it. The Panthers were radicals. So was the League of REvolutionary Black Workers. So were the blacks in the CP, SWP, etc. So was Baraka, eventually. Then there were the clowns. But funnier than the clowns were those tailing the clowns--those white guys. Some like the Weatherpeople we called "liberals with bombs."
Others like my antagonists here are just liberals with guilt. They've got plans to run the economy with some computer in the sky, but that's much later. Meanwhile they dismiss social-democratic/integrationist politics as "reformist," but embrace nationalist reformism as revolutionary. The UAW stinks, but black caucuses LP alleges to have agitated for "affirmative action" were radical. It's called liberalism. And not particularly progressive in content, since it entails reducing workers' consumption for the sake of the environment and our trade balance. Maybe neo-liberalism is more apt.
>
> >In addition, it reflects an inept effort to claim
> >leadership of that which it cannot win by force of
> >positive persuasion. Otherwise known as selling
> >wolf tickets.
>
> As inept as it was, the FBI murdered many of these young black nationalist
> activists. If they had been permitted to develop politically instead of
Now we're waving the bloody shirt. Of course, the real radicals were the ones who got shot up, and they were not the ones playing a skin game to gain leadership of a movement. They were real. The clowns never seemed to run afoul of repression. Funny thing about that.
What's going on here is Louis is trying to graft his uncritical support for nationalism onto nationalists whom I regard as positive, accuse me of hating them because I don't buy his analysis, dismiss the nationalist car-wrecks as a product of FBI shenanigans, and lump me with those to my right.
> facing the brute fist of capitalist injustice, perhaps the US
> left would be
> in better shape today. Max seems to gloat in their misfortune. If
> only they
> had put away their foolish radicalism and gotten good responsible jobs
> advising the AFL-CIO....
This is your worst performance in reading comprehension yet, and with sadness I have to conclude it's deliberate, since you're not dumb.
Let's try this:
Some black nationalists: GOOD
Other black nationalists: BAD
Task for the left: figure out which is which.
* * *
Yes, it's true I have a well-paying job which entails "advising the AFL-CIO" once in a while. I'll probably broil in hell with my brother pork chops. If I had only stuck with lit-crit so I could be a really radical English prof whose working life could have sub-zero effect on the real world. Then Louis could lord his super- activism all over me, and I would cast my gaze downward in the presence of all the revolutionary brothers whose color and anger make right whatever in the Sam Hill they have a notion to say or do. I would know my place.
It ain't gonna happen.
MBS
"Help I'm white and I can't get down;
Got two left feet planted on the ground . . . "
-- Geezinslaw Brothers