The Return of the Undead: Cold War Liberalism

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Reading Alterman, Rorty, etc. bashing + trashing pomo intellectuals +
social movement activists, one would never know that more harm has been
done to the workers of the world--some of whom are indeed pale and male--by
the US military, the CIA, and the international department of the AFL-CIO,
which has dedicated itself for decades to the destruction of communist and
other left-led/influenced unions all over the world than by, say, the
disciples of a handful of French philosophers in academia or young punkers
who signed a petition for Mumia because they heard about it at a Rage
Against the Machine concert.

What Alterman, Rorty, etc. are afraid of can't be the specter of
postmodernism haunting the classrooms + dorm rooms of elite universities.
Whether they are conscious of it or not, their fear must arise out of a
possibility that national pride and the Democratic Party might suffer from,
for instance, kids learning about the dirty history of cold war
liberalism--and the union bureaucrats' complicity in it--that didn't think
twice about sacrificing workers--the third world people who dared to
contemplate an alternative to capitalism as well as the working-class
Americans who were used as grunts--for the sake of getting a piece of
action generated by the military-industrial complex.

Kids who want justice for Mumia, more likely than not, will learn about the
FBI and its war against black and other radicals (or even 'moderates' like
MLK), police brutality, how racism has helped those who wanted the 'war on
crime' and prison labor, how the 'war on drug' has been used to gain
'consent' to repression here and abroad.

Hey, kids might even read books by subversive white guys like Chomsky and
Michale Parenti! Imagine that! 'Can't allow that to happen,' think
Alterman, Rorty, and the Undead of cold war liberalism. (Ever wonder why
the undead in horror films are always white?) So they are working hard to
erase the word 'imperialism' from public discourse. Food for thought after
the Memorial Day weekend.

Yoshie