Since then Rakesh and I have become friends, though we still disagree on the issues common to the earlier dispute and the current one.
Rakesh, of course, has the right to say what he has on this thread. However, I noticed in reading this thread that Rakesh is casted to an extent as representing "the" or "a" Black point of view in the dispute. This is a substantially false representation.
I feel responsible as a Black LBOer to say emphatically to those LBOers who do not have a lot of communication with Black people that the overwhelming majority of Black people, in fact, would disagree with what Rakesh is saying on this thread. No, not all Black people are Black nationalists
or Malcolm X enthusiasts. But many are and of the remaining they have varying degrees of sympathy for some dimension of Black nationalism and self-determination, without using that terminology. Very, very, very, few have an attitude like Rakesh's. And of those who do, a large percentage are the new black conservatives, like Clarence Thomas.
It is important for white leftists to know this. We cannot make the changes we must make in our society and world without white/black unity. But, the path to that unity will have to go through several steps. And a first step will have to be white people, ESPECIALLY white leftists demonstrating respect for the self-determination of Black people. The first step toward this unity will not be that Black people assimilate or "integrate" with whites, abandoning black history and culture. This is basically what Rakesh is advocating by his extreme anti-nationalism and socalled radical integrationism. Any white leftists who think that is his effective strategy are not living in the real world.
I might add it is not a Marxist strategy either.
In this vein, the issue arises: but even if this is a fact, is it good for the struggle and the revolution ? I think that is a way of saying it. But for a white person or a non-Black person to ask this is an extraordinary disrespect and disregard for the definite conclusion of the overwhelming majority of Black left and radical leaders, intellectuals and activists as to the correct and most effective strategy for radicals and the masses. It is to substitute one's judgement for that of of virtually all who have any reasonable claim to being spokespeople for Black people. It would be an incredibly arrogant disregard for a people's self-determination, not to mention the vast majority of white radicals, as represented by Louis Pro and Ken Lawrence , et al. here.
Some of the proof of what I am saying is Rakesh's assessment of the Black Radical Congress as a bad strategy for the movement.
The BRC is clearly representative of left black leadership as a whole. Its occurrence and continuing existence represents the thinking judgement of literally thousands of Black left activists. There is no countercurrent comparable to it in the Black community.
Similarly with the political and cultural icon Malcolm X: Frankly, any white person who thinks they are going to act in unity with any significant number of Black leftists (or people for that matter) , and do so with the ideas and attitudes described by Rakesh and those supporting him here , anyone who thinks that is (I am sorry) daft.
It really wouldn't be such a big deal in a way. You would be just considered another typical arrogant, racist white person. Black people won't necessarily tell you so to your face. But you can be sure they will be calling you a racist among themselves. But it won't be a big deal because that is typical of their experiences with white people. You shouldn't think your being left will get you some special dispensation.
I am not saying this to call white people on this list names. I am saying this because it is so true it is not funny, and the only hope I see for fighting racism is unity with white leftists in the first place. I need you. I don't want you to go into the black community with such an off the wall position, or we don't have a chance.
I don't want to dis Rakesh personally, but I would do a disservice to this list to not advise everyone in this way.
Charles Brown
>>> <Apsken at aol.com> 01/12 10:39 AM >>>
I have no dispute with Doug's ruling. Indeed, my posts have remained true to his spirit in the face of mighty provocation from Rakesh.
However, I want to register in the strongest terms my disagreement with Nathan Newman's off-list protest, which prompted Doug to act and Louis to depart. (It is noteworthy that Nathan and the other touchingly tender, easily offended complainers were scrupulously silent a few months back while Louis hammered me with much harsher words than he has ever applied to Rakesh. Not all of them, though; some of today's civility gang directed their own colorful insults my way.)
The kernel of my viewpoint is this: If white supremacy in the United States does not offend you sufficiently to bring forth intemperate words (at minimum), who could ever rely on you as a comrade in struggle? If the exemplar of courage in opposing white supremacy will not bestir you to stand and be counted, who ever will?
In this context the demand for civility is a reactionary academic fraud, to anesthetize political debate so that all issues, from the momentous to the trivial, are regarded (equally and) dispassionately. That's step one on the road to abstention from militant struggle and, as Nathan would prefer, into the Democratic Party (where incivility is never tolerated and young people are never alienated, as we recognize).
Aside from the hypocrisy of selective distress mentioned earlier, there is another. Most participants on the LBO list take a favorable view of intramural insult on the left as sport, alternately praising Christopher Hitchens or Alexander Cockburn as the most skillful player in that league. You can't have it both ways, folks.
Finally, the civility police face one direction only (to their left). Rakesh has been handy with offensive taunts throughout. When he libeled Malcolm X as a Nazi, and slurred his [Rakesh's] critics with racial taunts, his words drew no objection from Angela and but a flaccid disquisition from Nathan.
Rakesh himself whined about ad hominems, though his every allegation had been soundly trounced directly in rebuttal, yet he has not answered my political points except with white-baiting slurs and a plea for indulgence while he ponders a response. So I begin to wonder, when Rakesh slags "whiteys," what word does he really have in mind?
Let us direct a bit more light toward that thought. Is Rakesh a Nazi? He has declared himself a disciple of Paul Mattick, the council communist. As I reported several months ago, Mattick was an admirer of the "left" Nazi leader Otto Strasser. This was no youthful indiscretion on Mattick's part, nor does it reflect political immaturity of the stripe that Rakesh exploits as he combs Malcolm's early texts for examples. Mattick organized Strasser's speaking tour of North America in the postwar 1940s, after the full force of the Nazi Holocaust was well known. Strasser and his plebeian followers were as obsessive Jew-haters as Hitler. "Otto Strasser proclaimed that it was a German duty to develop 'unique racial individuality' and resist the 'cultural predominance of alien Jewry'," [Who's Who in Nazi Germany, page 248.] Before the war, Mattick's journal Living Marxism had proclaimed, "The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle against Bolshevism," an unusual slogan for a united front, but one that has provided a useful precedent for Rakesh, merely substituting "Black nationalism" for "Bolshevism."
Perhaps Rakesh can excavate an apology from Mattick's later texts. I never found one, but I never regarded Mattick's works as sufficiently worthy to spend a great deal of time wading through them. Nonetheless, even if Mattick grew to regret his flirtation with Strasser, the episode itself makes me wonder whether Rakesh's attack on Malcolm X might have an unstated purpose, a preemptive attack, as it were, of the so's-your-mother style. Did my passing reference to Mattick's shameful deed plant this seed in Rakesh's mind?
Yes, folks, I do regard the foregoing words as odious to contemplate, and would never have posted them had not the even more odious combination of Rakesh's hate-words and his admirers' demand for civility sidetracked a nobler and more worthy cause. You want civility? Begin by demanding, as Louis did on several occasions, some scrupulous scholarship from Rakesh, and adherence to those standards by his acolytes.
Ken Lawrence