I am not interested in "winning", just getting my ideas out. You were the one who baited me by calling me "unprincipled". What was unprincipled? Stating that the Sandinistas regarded the Miskitus as being on a lower rung of civilization? It is all there in Engels after all.
> As noted previously, were he to read my letters addressed to him
>privately, he would see that I have said the opposite of what he wrote. Ward
>Churchill openly proclaimed his alliance with the CIA -- both in telling me
>(and many others) of his trip with Brooklyn Rivera to beg money and resources
>from Eliott Abrams, and in his article with Glenn Morris in Cultural
Survival,
>which explicitly called for an alliance with the CIA.
The Miskitu-CIA alliance was no secret. Neither was Russell Means and Ward Churchill's support of the Miskitu revolt. What you were stating is that Churchill was using the Miskitu revolt to further CIA interests, rather than the other way around: to use the CIA to further Miskitu interests. Now history will record that the Miskitus were mistaken. The CIA can not be used in this way. But when you lay down dotted lines between Churchill's apparently pro-CIA activities and his past employment at Soldier of Fortune (what are the facts on this, by the way), only an idiot would not connect them and conclude that Churchill's interest in politics is to further the aims of US imperialism. This is a disgusting slander.
> In some respects, this is a very old political matter, which has split
>indigenous people for generations. One can only weep in reading the
>explanations of those who joined the Confederacy, for example -- but cheer
>those who opposed that alliance and opted to join the slaves in their
>liberation struggle.
What the fuck is this supposed to mean? We need a civil war against the US bourgeosie. This civil war must include the most militant fighters from the labor movement and all the social movements, including the American Indian's. There is no other activist/intellectual in the American Indian movement who is more resolutely opposed to capitalism than Ward Churchill. Why else would he write for Z Magazine and be published by South End Press? I am well acquainted with Ward's writings and have not found a single instance of accomodation to the capitalist system.
> Quite a few activists have asked if I regard Ward as a provocateur (as I
>and many others do regard Russell Means), usually after he has failed to live
>up to their political expectations based on reading his publications. I have
>said in every case that I do not, as I have said to Ward himself. (Socialists
>who desire verification can easily obtain it; my activities are a matter of
>record in the movement.) Had I regarded Ward as a provocateur, I would not
>have sought to debate him in a respected movement journal.
"I", "I", "I". My, aren't we full of ourself. The first thing you did when you wrote me privately was give me a CV on all your radical credentials, from Covert Action Bulletin to "being there" in Nicaragua. The more I read your crap, the more convinced I am that you are a disgusting ego-tripper. The one thing you have not been able to do is promote a political analysis of indigenism and socialism, which was the substance of my post that prompted you to label me as "unprincipled" and make patronizing comments about my "Trotskyist roots". For somebody who trumpets his CLR James roots, I am surprised that you think this charge would have any merit. Perhaps you were not thinking. Let me take that back, perhaps you do not know how to think.
> But Ward is not a leftist, either; that is the point.
I have told Ward that unless Marxism dumps its dogmatic hostility to indigenism, then I am ready to dump Marxism.
> Like some of the less virtuous members of this list -- and like the
>people Louis has single out for warnings, which gave rise to my intervention
>-- Ward has politics that in a few particulars overlap concerns of the left,
>but he does not share our socialist aims. In those areas, we are obliged to
>join forces, particularly in struggles that have designated him for
>leadership, such as the movement to free Leonard Peltier.
Our socialist aims? I have no idea what kind of socialism you are for. If it is the kind that treats Miskitu interests as secondary to the "needs of the revolution", then count me out. Well, actually, I have no idea what socialism means to you except as a phrase that can be invoked in some kind of ritual incantation. God, please keep people like that away from my doorstep.
> This is really no different from any other sort of united front
activity,
>as long as it is understood as such. Alas, for Louis, this seems instead
to be
>a matter of transcendant faith, not susceptible to political evaluation and
>criticism.
Political evaluation? Please send me a signal when you are ready to commence with this and terminate your cheap slanders of people you have read out of the radical movement.
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)